[Lemmy]

commanderkai commanderkai:

When was this?

1995

[ShepherdsDog]

Gunnair Gunnair:

MeganC MeganC:

Gunnair Gunnair:

It's fascinating which murderous regimes you can have some empathy which and which ones you do not.

The words it's fascinating what use you what you're saying describe.

I guess we both speak gibberish.

I thought I was having a stroke

[commanderkai]

Lemmy Lemmy:

commanderkai commanderkai:

When was this?

1995

I'm going to have to ask for a link, since I was never "debunked" back when I used the casualty estimates for Operation Downfall back in university. There is healthy debate on the subject even today, but there is no sole, correct position where you can say one side debunked another.

[Lemmy]

The declassification of White House memos prove that Japan had already surrendered. So no lives were saved as there would not have been an invasion.

The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, by Gar Alperovitz. New York: Alfred Knopf Books, 1995

Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie Groves, The Indispensable Man, by Robert Norris. South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press, 2002

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Lemmy Lemmy:

The declassification of White House memos prove that Japan had already surrendered. So no lives were saved as there would not have been an invasion.

The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, by Gar Alperovitz. New York: Alfred Knopf Books, 1995

Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie Groves, The Indispensable Man, by Robert Norris. South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press, 2002

Wait a sec. So Japan had already surrendered but was nuked to "send a message" to the USSR?

Or are you saying that the US never intended to invade in the first place so they could send a message to the USSR by nuking Japan.

[Lemmy]

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Wait a sec. So Japan had already surrendered but was nuked to "send a message" to the USSR?

That's a good part of it, yes.

PublicAnimalNo9 PublicAnimalNo9:

Or are you saying that the US never intended to invade in the first place so they could send a message to the USSR by nuking Japan.

Sure they intended to invade, but didn't need to after June '45 because the Japanese were defeated. Marines wouldn't be killed on the beaches of mainland Japan because they would have walked right off the boats without resistance.

[andyt]

Lemmy Lemmy:

The declassification of White House memos prove that Japan had already surrendered. So no lives were saved as there would not have been an invasion.

The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, by Gar Alperovitz. New York: Alfred Knopf Books, 1995

Racing for the Bomb: General Leslie Groves, The Indispensable Man, by Robert Norris. South Royalton, Vermont: Steerforth Press, 2002

If this is true, seems to me the US also has something to apologize for. All those civilians incinerated for what you seem to be saying was revenge. You'd actually think there would be more of a fuss made about this, since the whole justification of using the bomb was that it did save lives.

[Lemmy]

Of course. But it's not new news. Lt. Gen. George Kenney, the head of MacArthur's air forces, wrote the book "The MacArthur I Knew", published in 1951. He states that MacArthur knew the Japs were licked by the spring of '45 and there would be no invasion: "When I was in Washington in March 1945, I repeated MacArthur's ideas, but everyone I talked to in the War Department and even among the Air crowd disagreed. The consensus was that Japan would hold out for possibly another two years.... While the dropping of the two atomic bombs may have hurried the Japanese decision to quit, there is little doubt that MacArthur was right in July when he told me that the projected Operation Olympic—to invade Japan on November 1, 1945—would never take place."

So the motivation for dropping the bomb (scare Stalin, whatever) isn't really important vis a vis whether there was going to be a conventional assault on Japan. The powers that be knew that no such landing would ever be needed, whether a-bombs were used or not. That's why Saturn_656's original statement was fiction, popular fiction, but fiction nonetheless.

[andyt]

Ok, but that excerpt paints a different picture than that Japan had already surrendered and from Truman on down knew there would be no invasion. In fact it makes clear that Japan had not surrendered when the bombs were dropped. Same deal as Dresden, I guess.

[Lemmy]

No, you're confusing what the Whitehouse knew with what the generals knew. The Whitehouse knew the Japanese had surrendered and there would be no invasion. That is proved by declassified Whitehouse memos (see Alperovitz' book). MacArthur and others also knew the Japanese were defeated so no invasion would be necessary, though they didn't know what discussions about surrender had already been taking place between the Whitehouse and the Japanese. The bottom line is that, either way, no invasion was necessary, so the myth that the bombs being dropped saved lives is just that.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

$1:

there is little doubt that MacArthur was right in July when he told me that the projected Operation Olympic—to invade Japan on November 1, 1945—would never take place.

Well no kidding, there'd be no need to invade 3 months after they nuked a city or two.
I also honestly believe that the powers that be were reluctant to invade Japan proper after witnessing the mass suicides on Okinawa and Saipan, particularily knowing that there was little Japan could to defend itself militarily at that point. But Japan wasn't going to surrender without a good reason other than things weren't looking very good for them. Ritual seppuku would have been the order of the day if they had.
In a strange way that would seem to defy logic, nuking Japan was probably the best possible outcome for them.
Either risk mass suicides by the hundreds of thousands, or hope they get the hint when a single bomber drops a single bomb and obliterates a large section of Hiroshima.
At the same time, the US got to show off its new toy to Stalin.

[andyt]

How would nuking a few hundred thousand people prevent seppuku by the survivors? I don't see your logic here.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

andyt andyt:

How would nuking a few hundred thousand people prevent seppuku by the survivors? I don't see your logic here.

The people of Okinawa and Saipan didn't kill themselves until the US had boots on the ground there.
The Japanese propaganda campaign had instilled a genuine fear of the Americans as murderous savages that would do unspeakable things to you. Oddly enough, a description that fit some of the Japanese military officer class to a "T".

When other Japanese cities were razed to the ground by fire-bombing campaigns, the survivors didn't commit mass suicide then, so why assume they would over being bombed again?

[andyt]

Americans still put boots on the ground after the surrender, and there was no mass suicide. Lemmy's sources are saying the surrender was a done deal before the bombing, and that MacArthur knew an invasion would be unnecessary. I think you're clutching at straws here, saying nuking a couple of hundred thousand people prevented more deaths by suicide. I just don't see the logic.

[Thanos]

Gar Alperovitz is about as legitimate a source for actual information on WW2 as the jerk-off who wrote the book claiming that Eisenhower and Churchill deliberately starved 2 million German POW's to death is. Nothing Alperovitz ever claimed has been backed up by any other legitimate historian. He's a historical revisionist with a grudge against the United States who's been thoroughly debunked ever since he put that POS book of his out. You'd get more real information out of a Pat Buchanan or David Duke historical tome than you ever would out of Alperovitz.

One of the great losses to this board has been that Mustang never posts any more. This sucks because if he saw Alperovitz' name being used as a credible source Mustang would have flipped out on this thread and not stopped until everyone had been reliably re-educated.