Thank God for the Atom Bomb
Tomorrow is the 66th anniversary of the atomic blast over Hiroshima, which effectively brought the Pacific side of World War II to a close.
Paul Fussell, in his excellent book Thank God for the Atom Bomb, describes his experience in the 45th Infantry Division, heading to the Philippines to prepare for the invasion of Honshu. It turns out, lucky for him, that an invasion of Honshu wasn't necessary, thanks to the atomic blasts over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He puts it this way:
John Kenneth Galbraith is persuaded that the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion. He thinks the A-bombs were unnecessary and unjustified because the war was ending anyway. The A-bombs meant, he says, “a difference, at most, of two or three weeks.” But at the time, with no indication that surrender was on the way, the kamikazes were sinking American vessels, the Indianapolis was sunk (880 men killed), and Allied casualties were running to over 7,000 per week. “Two or three weeks,” says Galbraith.
Two weeks more means 14,000 more killed and wounded, three weeks more, 21,000. Those weeks mean the world if you’re one of those thousands -3-or related to one of them. During the time between the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb on August 9 and the actual surrender on the fifteenth, the war pursued its accustomed course: on the twelfth of August eight captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off); the fifty-first United States submarine, Bonefish, was sunk (all aboard drowned); the destroyer Callaghan went down, the seventieth to be sunk, and the Destroyer Escort Underhill was lost.
That’s a bit of what happened in six days of the two or three weeks posited by Galbraith. What did he do in the war? He worked in the Office of Price Administration in Washington. I don’t demand that he experience having his ass shot off. I merely note that he didn’t.
Persuasive.
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Jun '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
One paper cut can spoil your whole day, Rob. Being a writer you ought to know that.
May '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
The A-bomb. It's what made Harry Truman the only Democrat to get a pass in my house growing up. Dad was Navy stationed in the North Atlantic on DEs with orders to ship to the Pacific. Boom. Orders changed. Back to Norfolk for decommissioning.
Dec '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
. "The A-bombs meant, he says, “a difference, at most, of two or three weeks.”
Are the people who believe this aware that even after Nagasaki Tojo wanted to fight on. It was only the intervention of Emperor Hirihito that caused the Japanese to surrender.
Aug '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
When was John K Galbraith right about anything ? And why didn't he just stay in his own country ?
Jun '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
Don't blame us Canadians for exporting our rot, when we import so much American rot. Have you been to a movie lately?
And, flownover, when you balance imports and exports, just remember Canada is by far America's biggest oil supplier, so one jerk economist is a small price to pay..
Sep '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
Fussell wrote this while he was on the English faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. Of course, he'd already had tenure there for years. One can imagine what would have happened if he'd published this before tenure.
Sep '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
A Japanese surrender in November would equate to two or three more months of war. Any calculations of two or three months of Japanese deaths due to fire bombing during those months, or battle deaths in China, Burma and the Pacific? Or the potential famine in Japan due to the continued dismantleing of the rail network, leading to the upcomming rice harvest not getting to market? Not to mention Allied deaths in the Pacific, China, etc. Or Chinese deaths from the new and improved version of bubonic plague introduced by Japan into China?
Hard to imagine that the Bomb did not save many more lives than it took, even assuming a November surrender.
May '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
One thing no one here has mentioned, however, is that the U.S. was demanding an unconditional surrender, which was unthinkable to the Japanese. Could we make an argument, perhaps, that this demand was over-stringent?
Edited on Aug 5, 2011 at 10:29amMar '11
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
Brandon Zaffini: One thing no one here has mentioned, however, is that the U.S. was demanding an unconditional surrender, which was unthinkable to the Japanese. Could we make an argument, perhaps, that this demand was over-stringent? · Aug 5 at 10:29am
Edited on Aug 05 at 10:29 am
Not when you look at the ruthless way the Japanese executed the war. My pops was a Marine cruising across the Pacific as a part of the invasion force when Japan surrendered. Those men and the men in the following waves believe the bomb gave them their lives back.
Mar '11
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
The History Channel has a good program on the planned invasion "Operation Downfall" its called X-Day: The Plan to Invade Japan.
Someone put it on youtube in 10 parts, here' part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVSuUF3KaCI
Aug '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
Brandon Zaffini: One thing no one here has mentioned, however, is that the U.S. was demanding an unconditional surrender, which was unthinkable to the Japanese. Could we make an argument, perhaps, that this demand was over-stringent? · Aug 5 at 10:29am
Edited on Aug 05 at 10:29 am
How unthinkable could it be... after ~15 years of war they understood exactly what it meant, they had been demanding it of their victims that long. See Nanking. Please ask about the Korean pleasure women or their treatment of both interned civilians or prisioners of war.
I would submit that any nation who practiced such barbarism is graced that those who conqured them practiced mercy.
Apr '11
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
Bob Croft: A Japanese surrender in November would equate to two or three more months of war. Any calculations of two or three months of Japanese deaths due to fire bombing during those months, or battle deaths in China, Burma and the Pacific? Or the potential famine in Japan due to the continued dismantleing of the rail network, leading to the upcomming rice harvest not getting to market? Not to mention Allied deaths in the Pacific, China, etc. Or Chinese deaths from the new and improved version of bubonic plague introduced by Japan into China?
Hard to imagine that the Bomb did not save many more lives than it took, even assuming a November surrender. · Aug 5 at 10:23am
Why let facts and statistics and logic get in the way of a perfectly good story that the US is a racist country? Haven't you learned anything from liberals yet?
May '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
Instugator
How unthinkable could it be... after ~15 years of war they understood exactly what it meant, they had been demanding it of their victims that long. See Nanking. Please ask about the Korean pleasure women or their treatment of both interned civilians or prisioners of war.
I would submit that any nation who practiced such barbarism is graced that those who conqured them practiced mercy. · Aug 5 at 11:02am
Sentiment understood. I think it was more complicated than that though. For example, what affect if any did the fiasco with Commodore Perry in 1853 have on the Japanese, whether in pushing them toward creating their Empire or in strengthening their resolve never again to suffer humiliation at the hands of the U.S.? How well do we understand the motivations of the Japanese in the second World War (and by motivations, I mean the root causes of the motivations) even now? How well did we understand them then?
I serve in the U.S. army Infantry right now, and I daily hear the types of emotionalized arguments that Paul Fussell offers here. It's soothing for our conscience to think only in black and white.
Nov '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
From wikipedia "335 B-29s took off to raid on the night of 9–10 March, with 279 of them dropping around 1,700 tons of bombs. Fourteen B-29s were lost. Approximately 16 square miles (41 km²) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting firestorm"
What is the moral difference between a massive firebombing and a nuclear bombing?
Aug '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
Cas Balicki
Don't blame us Canadians for exporting our rot, when we import so much American rot. Have you been to a movie lately?
And, flownover, when you balance imports and exports, just remember Canada is by far America's biggest oil supplier, so one jerk economist is a small price to pay.. · Aug 5 at 10:08am
Cas, I am not dissing Canada, thanks for Margaret Trudeau and Neil Young !
Galbraith could have been from Seborga and I would have said the same thing.
Now if our government will let us avail ourselves of the lovely petroleum products from Canada and if your government will remove the stupid laws that restrict beer drinking while fishing , things should be fine in our northern Hemisphere.
Edited on Aug 5, 2011 at 12:16pmSep '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
That's a good question. I recall that Churchill was dismayed by Roosevelt's insistence on unconditional surrender in Europe (I wish I had a reference, but I'm away from home). If I recall correctly, he thought this would unnecessarily prolong the war with the Germans.
Aug '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
RPD: From wikipedia "335 B-29s took off to raid on the night of 9–10 March, with 279 of them dropping around 1,700 tons of bombs. Fourteen B-29s were lost. Approximately 16 square miles (41 km²) of the city were destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died in the resulting firestorm"
What is the moral difference between a massive firebombing and a nuclear bombing? · Aug 5 at 11:56am
Probably comes down to a cost basis difference rather than a moral one.
Sep '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
This will sound like a minor quibble--OK, maybe it is a minor quibble--but it was the bombing of Nagasaki that effectively brought the war to a close. But it's worth examining why, because it suggests that those who say we should have exploded a "demonstration" A-bomb are wrong.
After the bombing of Hiroshima, the Japanese high command did their best to shrug it off. Only one city had been destroyed, and some thought that might be all that we could do. (The Japanese had been working on their own bomb.) When the second bomb exploded over Nagasaki, it convinced them that we had an assembly line of these bombs and that we could methodically obliterate city after city until Japan was blasted back to the invention of the brick. It was this false impression as much as the sheer power of the bombs that convinced them to surrender.
Sep '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
dogsbody
That's a good question. I recall that Churchill was dismayed by Roosevelt's insistence on unconditional surrender in Europe (I wish I had a reference, but I'm away from home). If I recall correctly, he thought this would unnecessarily prolong the war with the Germans.
The lesson from WWI was what drove the demand for unconditional surrender in WWII. Roosevelt was not going to repeat the mistake of letting belligerent states like Germany and Japan stew and fester in their own juices after a "peace" settlement likely resulting in more war down the road. The success of unconditional surrender is in the evidence:
Why is this not good? As others have mentioned, even without the A-bomb there was a terrible price payed by the Japanese near the end of the war.
May '10
Re: Thank God for the Atom Bomb
Predictability. Firestorms are not created on purpose. The conditions can be intentional, but generally are not, I would guess.
I researched the Dresden bombing for a college paper: