
Lecture from the Man Who Dropped Both Atomic Bombs - vinnyglennon
http://warisboring.com/articles/listen-to-this-lecture-from-the-man-who-dropped-both-atomic-bombs/
======
codeshaman
Surely the pilots were briefed about the destructive power of the weapon they
were going to drop on civilians. He knew. He had a choice. He could have
chosen not to fly that mission. Even with the risk of being court marshalled.
Even if somebody else would have done it anyway. He could have stepped aside
and chosen despise or even punishment over glory. But he didn't. He went ahead
and pulled the trigger on women and children. He chose the glory.

Saying later that "those were the times" does not exonerate you from the sins
committed.

\--

This is a good example of choices that we might face in our lives.

We all have a choice not to participate in the insanity (or "immorality") of
war. In fact, if we all did, wars wouldn't exist at all.

Refusing to go to the battlefield and kill other young people is not immoral.
It is the most moral and humane thing you can do.

If you ever need to make that choice, remember this.

I highly recommend reading Tolstoy's "The kingdom of God is within you", were
he does a very deep analysis of war, state, violence and Christianity not as
religion, but as a non-violent philosophy of life.

~~~
talmand
Hindsight is easy isn't it?

Thoughts on the matter might be different when fighting an enemy that has more
or less threatened to wipe out all who disagree with them. Including the fact
they have no problem killing your women and children before you've even
decided to fight back.

You should really speak to some Chinese that are old enough to remember what
they survived before you start judging with your modern sensibilities.

It was total war not declared by the side that eventually won. Consider
yourself lucky.

~~~
ue_
Maybe I'm misinterpreting, but I don't think he or she is referring to only
the Allies side doing harm. The same blame would be placed on any war-wager,
and that includes Japan.

This feels a bit like a "the other side did worse things therefore revenge or
killing is justified" type of argument to me. Using this kind of
justification, either side could use it to their own advantage and we'd end up
with an long spiral of justifications simply because "the other side attacked
first" or "the other side did bad things, and we'll make it right by killing
more people".

That said, this is just my view of what's right and wrong, and I'm quite
ignorant on WWII - but the idea of attacking and invading in the name of
preventing killing would seem to be not only unethical (killing is being done)
but also irresponsible because the other side will retaliate with more
killing. Not many people think of the responsibility.

~~~
talmand
If you are referring to me, I am speaking in terms of the actions of the
Japanese against the Chinese. I'm not even discussing Allied behaviors. I do
feel that in many ways the Allies did things I personally would not have
approved of, I still have no problems that they were done.

The problem as I see it with these discussions, much as you point out you are
ignorant of WWII, is that too many people do not fully understand WWII. They
look at it with their modern sensibilities and judge accordingly. This is
extreme ignorance in action. The simplest reason is because we are now working
on our second or third generation of separation of the time. We have not had a
total war like there was with WWII. People are losing that perspective, that
it was total war. I would imagine many recent college grads don't even realize
what the term total war means.

So, why do I not have a problem with the nuclear bombings of Japan and the
potential invasion? Because the Japanese were the aggressors. I have little
problems with the actions of people defending themselves against aggression.

~~~
LordKano
_They look at it with their modern sensibilities and judge accordingly._

It seems that they think that Hitler was evil and everyone else got taken
along for the ride. It's so much more complicated than that, especially for
those people who were there at the time.

 _I would imagine many recent college grads don 't even realize what the term
total war means._

A great many college grads, high school grads and people born after 1950.

We're talking about people who don't understand that "War" means more than
people shooting at each other. People who don't understand that we haven't had
a war in over 70 years.

------
forinti
The US dropped incendiary bombs in dozens of japanese cities, so an atomic
bomb didn't really add much to the brutality of the situation.

Furthermore, if the objective of these bombs was to simply convince the
japanese to shorten the war, couldn't they have been dropped off the coast of
Tokyo?

~~~
adnam
They needed to demonstrate not only the awesome and terrible power of the
bomb, but also that it could be accurately targeted (hence, two bombs).

~~~
maratd
> but also that it could be accurately targeted

I think it was more to prove that it wasn't a one-off ... that it was
repeatable and could be used as many times as is necessary. But that too.

------
veidr
_" I say war by its very nature is immoral. If you are going to prolong a war
by using a lesser weapon, that is an immorality. But I do not see any special
immoralities where it comes to using the best weapon to get it over with in a
hurry."_

That's a pretty unassailable statement.

~~~
prof_hobart
I'm not sure it is unassailable.

More quickly doesn't always equal less casualties, for instance. And even
where more quickly does equal less casualties for your side, it could mean
vastly more for the other side, or less military deaths but more civilian one.
Or how about the potential for ongoing damage to both environment and
survivors health.

This isn't to say that a nuclear attack, or any other weapon that could bring
a war to a swift close, is automatically worse - just that's not automatically
and unassailably better either.

~~~
merpnderp
Given an average of 100,000 [EDIT 100,000 per month since 1937] civilian
deaths at the hands of the imperial army just in China alone (there were
civilians being slaughtered in Indo-china and the Korean peninsula also), if
the bombs ended the war just two months earlier than it would have ended
(incredibly unlikely to the point of absurdity), it was a net gain in
civilians saved.

And it can be well argued that the Japanese civilian deaths should be blamed
on the imperial army for not capitulating when it was obvious the war was
lost.

~~~
termain
100,000 per... month I'm guessing?

~~~
merpnderp
Yikes, thanks. Yes it averages out to about 100,000 per month since the start
of the mainland invasion in 1937.

------
mclee
Probably related: The testimony of Charles Sweeney, who flew both atomic
missions: [https://eahnc.wordpress.com/2015/08/07/senate-testimony-
of-m...](https://eahnc.wordpress.com/2015/08/07/senate-testimony-of-major-
general-charles-w-sweeney-may-11-1995/)

Both seem to claim they are the only one who flew both missions though, I
can't tell if they are correct.

[Edit: Changed the link to a wordpress site for easier reading.]

------
ioanpopovici
All new evidence points to the fact that the Japanese were thinking of
surrendering and that the Americans new it, before the bombs were dropped.
Also it shows that the bombs had little to no effect on their reasoning. They
whished to surrender on their own terms which they did, more or less, despite
the "unconditional surrender" bs.

~~~
sanoli
What new evidence? I searched for this a couple of months ago and found that
the "Japanese were close to surrendering" is one more recent 'internet myth'
that's been propagating lately, with no real hard, substantiated evidence.
Please help me correct myself on this issue.

~~~
notahacker
The intercepts collected by the Allies on the internal debates of some of the
Japanese, and the internal debates the US decision makers had over whether to
opt for unconditional surrender or something believed to be more likely to be
accepted are pretty well documented by this reasonably neutral source:
[http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/](http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/)

~~~
hga
I'd really appreciate your at least calling out which of these 75 documents
supports this thesis. I started skimming the titles and descriptions but
didn't find anything contradicting the Official Story which I've been studying
closely for the last few months before giving up.

Yes, of course, the Japanese were considering surrender, that was no secret to
our decision makers, and yes, of course there was consideration of relaxing
"unconditional" surrender, as we signaled to them WRT to the Emperor. We
weren't stupid, that was one of many reasons War Secretary Stimpson removed
Kyoto from all target lists (he was familiar with the east Pacific region and
had visited the city prior to the war).

~~~
notahacker
Fair enough. Try documents 33 and especially 40

Of course it doesn't make it clear that some form of surrender is going to be
straightforward since the Ambassador who's outspoken in acknowledging Japan
should accept a settlement like that forced on Germany as the only way to
preserve the Emperor is not in a position to influence an internal vote, and
the more important Foreign Minister attempting to arrange "end the war" is
also quite adamant that it won't be "like a unconditional surrender".

But it's also impossible to cogently argue that the US, being aware through
intercepts that Japanese ministers both (i) want peace and acknowledge it
might be painful and (ii) don't want peace if it involves "unconditional
surrender", was sincerely interested in avoiding further casualties when after
internal debate they chose to unambiguously insist upon (ii) being the
condition for not wiping out cities.

Document 49, an appraisal of the situation which opens "President, Leahy and
JFB agreed Japan looking for peace. President afraid they will sue for peace
through Russia rather than some country like Sweden" is a reasonable
indication the substance of these intercepts was available to Truman and other
decision makers. Easy to see why the U.S. wanted to avoid protracted and
potentially duplicitous negotiations via their frenemies; less easy to set the
value of uncomplicated negotiations at ~200,000 lives...

As for Stimson, he wasn't stupid, but he was also heavily outgunned by the war
party when it came to arguing for the relaxation of unconditional surrender,
which is why it was not included in the Potsdam declaration against his
express wishes. [There's also no evidence that signals of the relaxation of
unconditional surrender were sent separately from this (and abundant evidence
from cables the US was intercepting either side of Hiroshima that even Japan's
peaceniks were only _hoping_ they might be able to secure the Emperor's
status)]

The US had of course outlined conditions for peace much earlier (before it was
clear Japan had lost) which included a right to choose a form of government,
were aware the Japanese ambassador was using this as a basis to argue the
emperor's status might be an acceptable surrender condition _prior_ to the
Potsdam Declaration, and yet opted to _remove_ signals of the Emperor's status
from earlier drafts of that ultimatum before issuing it. Given all this was
known and debated at the time, it's difficult to cogently argue the Potsdam
Declaration that actually went out was intended as anything other than a
prelude to dropping the bomb.

~~~
hga
Sorry for this not well proofread wall 'o text, I don't have time to condense
it. It's based my analysis of the 3 documents you cited, and to the point of
analyzing document #49 was written without close notice to all the points you
make above.

The #1 point I'd make in response to them, which I touch on below, is that the
Foreign Ministry had no power to speak of in the government to affect the
needed change in posture. Not all ministries and ministers are created equal,
the US traditionally elevated the Secretary of State to the highest level,
xeno"phobic" Imperial Japan not at all.

33, MAGIC intercept (diplomatic PURPLE, and I'll note the leadership of Japan
didn't trust the Foreign Ministry as of Pearl Harbor....), Foreign Secretary
Togo to USSR Ambassador Sato, July 17th, a month after we took Okinawa, things
were utterly dire, the US Navy was freely rampaging on the coasts and 3 days
earlier had sunk 7 of the 12 railroad ferries that ran between Hokkaido and
Honshu, taking out 80% of 1/4 of Japan's coal supply.

WHOA! I wrote the preceding before reading to the end of this document, based
on _Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945_
([https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10132884](https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10132884)),
and this exact set of facts with numbers is discussed in detail at the end.

Anyway, note this language in the message to Sato:

" _Please bear particularly in mind, however, that we are not asking the
Russians ' mediation in anything like unconditional surrender._"

40: Wow, Sato ... spoke truth to power, totally burned his relationship with
the government back in Japan (the members of which would soon be tried as war
criminals, e.g. Togo died in prison), put Togo, subject to assassination, in
an untenable position, and Sato's suggestion for immediate action, what we
signaled we were willing to do, and which we actually did, surrender with the
one condition of retaining the Imperial House, was utterly rejected.

And in part II we see us signaling the all but Imperial House surrender prior
to dropping the first bomb. And:

" _I am fully aware of the delicate aspects this matter involves at home._ "

Yep, do the right thing, get assassinated for your trouble. A bit like Germany
falling to the Nazi's, Japan was doomed in the 1920s when a culture of
acceptable political assassination developed. That plus a constitution that
required the Army to form a government (the Navy as well, but for Japan the
Navy was survival, the Army a luxury, a very very expensive one in the end).

Also mention of the rail ferry sinkings in Sato's July 20 message to Togo; it
really was a big deal.

Side note, the Japanese never had any air or civil defenses to speak of. They
really were unprepared. And they're really concerned about food and the fall
harvest, something I've heard before. Plans were being draw up to collect
acorns....

Sato also realizes that the only path to peace is through the Emperor, only he
had the station to get the Army etc. to stand down, and even then it was
resisted with murder
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident)).

" _The Government will surely choose the road..._ "; yeah, following this
message, just barely after 2 cities got nuked, the Soviets invaded Manchuria,
and the Emperor intervened at the possible cost of his life.

" _We must also recognize that another cause for the evils we have drawn upon
ourselves today lies in the fact that even before the Manchurian incident
there were those who showed contempt for diplomacy and indifference toward
international relations_ ".

I.e. those who rejected this proposal by Sato.

" _We should, however, give a fair hearing to the argument that 'if the enemy
actually carries out a landing, we will concentrate all our strength on a
counter-attack and will thus bring about his disillusionment._"

Note, this is a strong argument. Kyushu had been massively reinforced, 9
division or so, enough to prevent a successful amphibious assault, along with
8,000 or so kamikazes, which, under more difficult conditions, a long flight
over water, had off Okinawa inflicted the worse causalities in a battle on the
US Navy. Something we had no answer to. BTW, we knew they had ... at least
6,000, our estimate turned out to be an underestimate.

Anyway, Sato is wrong here, Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu, as
originally planned was dead except in the eyes of MacArthur, who didn't
believe the intelligence we were producing. Those who knew about the atomic
bomb were planning on using a total of around 15 in the invasions of Kyushu
and Honshu, 5-9 in the former. After the 2nd bomb was dropped, there was
serious discussion about using the 3rd in another strike against the homeland
vs. reserving it for Olympic. See this excellent account about that period:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691128189](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691128189)

Ah, those who didn't know about the bomb? They were planning the details of
liberal use of poison gas, this was not a "clean" theater like the one in
Europe, this was war to the knife.

And, as I noted above, Sato's proposal was soundly rejected.

I don't think 49 is at all definitive, I'm not sure it's even useful. It was
clearly drafted after the fact, it's undated but written after the surrender,
and is a brief summary of two consecutive days two days before Hiroshima.

It's usefulness depends on one non-major actor's interpretation of events that
I'm not even 100% sure he was a eyewitness of. I'm not even sure what the hell
the content of the middle sentences of the first day is about.

What news was Leahy supposed to be holding out on? Neither he nor his Navy
were involved in the future atomic bombings besides potential rescue of crews
if ditching was required. It was all Army/War Department, and it almost
resulted in the effective abolition of the Navy under Truman (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Admirals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Admirals)).

Anyway, I still see no better alternative to the bombings as soon as we could
possibly do them.

------
ant6n
I still don't really buy this whole trade-off idea used to justify dropping
the bombs, massacre from above vs massacre on the ground.

~~~
vadman
Massacre from above minimized American losses.

~~~
comrh
Which was traded for Japanese civilians though, no?

~~~
davidjeet
By most approximations, there were about 200,000 causalities from the bombs
and their aftermath.

That said, had the bombs not been dropped, estimates ran into the millions for
Allied casualties and tens of millions for Japanese (civilian + soldiers)
casualties.

Ultimately it boils down to an issue of numbers (achieved by expediency).

~~~
comrh
True, if you assume it was only between dropping the bombs or full scale
invasion though. In the end we'll never know I guess.

~~~
talmand
Exactly. All this "we can predict a future that never happened" bothers me.

------
scottjad
Plenty of US leaders at the time opposed it (some privately). Here are quotes
from Dwight Eisenhower, Admiral William D. Leahy (Chief of Staff to Presidents
Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman), Herbert Hoover, General Douglas
MacArthur, etc:

[http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm](http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm)

------
swehner
I don't think the article makes it too obvious, but he died in 1992.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Beser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Beser)

A person who thinks they know lots, but actually don't. Especially with age
they think they are owed respect, but no

------
dade_
Accepting that a nuclear weapon was the best way to end the war, was it really
necessary to use 2? It's the second one that doesn't sit well with me. Even by
the logic in this account, the first bomb made the threat of subsequent
attacks real. At least it is still being discussed and debated.

~~~
scottjad
What's crazy is that they planned to continue using them as they became
available. So 3, 4, 5 ..., 20, etc. 100? It's hard to know at what point they
would have stopped had the regime not surrendered (which they were already
planning to do).

So it's not really "it's better that 200k Japanese civilians die than x US
soldiers" (which is a despicable view and is based on the false views that
massacring civilians is OK and that unconditional surrender was necessary),
because they didn't know two bombs was the magic number. It could have been
10, or 50. Basically they were probably willing to kill a whole lot more
civilians than they did.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
They were willing to fight until they won. Just like the other side. It had
been reduced to that: fight to survive. Remember, 50 millions dead already. No
time for philosophy.

~~~
scottjad
> They were willing to fight until they won. Just like the other side. It had
> been reduced to that: fight to survive. Remember, 50 millions dead already.
> No time for philosophy.

Where "fight" means massacre civilians by the hundreds of thousands or
millions. Where "won" means received unconditional surrender when they could
already have a very favorable conditional surrender. Where "fight to survive"
means they (the US in general and the US military, not individual soldiers) at
this point (when they dropped the bomb) were in no danger of not surviving.
Where "no time for philosophy" means no time for a conscience or morality.

And plenty of US military leaders at the highest levels did have a conscience
and opposed using the atomic bomb against civilians at that point in the war.
See my link in other comments.

~~~
noskynethere
Is soldier versus civilian really such a different thing? It seems more like a
gradient, to me -- you support your country by building bombs / planes / etc.,
that's very different than just living peacefully on your own farm.

It's important to recall that every nation's entire economy was subsumed in
the war effort. American "civilians" wanted to kill Japanese; Japanese
"civlians" probably hated Americans (there was a lot of racial prejudice in
that era, on both sides).

Civilians may not have been combatants, but they were very much a part of the
war machinery, and as such became a strategic target.

------
stonewhite
Not all statements have to be timeless.

I think the arguments are valid for his paradigm. Some of us may have problems
even entertaining such ideas, but then again we grew up to a docile, friendly
japan. Just to make it more contemporary, swap Japan with Iran.

(Disclosure: I'm not in anyway against Iran or something)

------
fatjokes
I'm curious, for those who oppose the nuking of Japan---would you also oppose
the hypothetical nuking of Germany before Normandy?

------
Asbostos
What most people in the west neglect about Japan was what it was doing to
China and south-east Asia during the war. Their killing of civilians was
greater than what the atomic bombs did. That's where the good came from -
saving the rest of Asia, not saving America.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were industrial cities making the weapons that the
Japanese were using to kill the Chinese civilians. The residents were
civilians but not entirely innocent. They were part of the war machine.

~~~
mkaziz
You could say the same of anyone working in any industry on any side during
the War. The civilian farmers in the US weren't actively killing people, but
their food was sustaining soldiers who sure were.

------
whitenoice
So by this man's logic it would be OK to nuke Iraq?

~~~
verinus
how so?

~~~
rz2k
The cost in Iraqi lives and destruction has probably been a few times greater
than that from the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it would have been
quicker.

Whether it would have lead to functioning government that wasn't expansionist
and that served Iraqis without prejudice is another question entirely. We
never really discussed the aims to be achieved by the use of conventional arms
either though.

One could also weigh the thousands of US soldiers lives lost and >$1T cost
against the cost of a few nuclear warheads.

I don't think it's too difficult to see how the arguments to justify two
specific uses of atomic bombs are entirely dependent on their context, and
making them sound like general rules probably does people a disservice.

~~~
Retra
It wouldn't have been quicker, though. Anyone can see that: if you nuke Iraq,
you'd face a massive, worldwide, prolonged counter-movement.

The fact that this didn't happen during WW2 means that it was one of the only
times you could actually get away with using nuclear weapons, and the people
making that decision knew that they could get away with it. If they couldn't,
they wouldn't have used them. They relied on ignorance that simply doesn't
exist today.

~~~
hga
_They relied on ignorance that simply doesn 't exist today._

I think that goes a little to far. More like they "relied" on the context of a
World War that had butchered 75 million people, 1/3 of that in the Pacific.
And as I've noted elsewhere, was butchering 250,000 people per month in the
Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, and was looking to kill maybe a
million Allied soldiers, with no upper limit for the Japanese population, as
had just been demonstrated in Okinawa.

------
sitkack
tl;dr Man who kills children still not remorseful. Says made correct decision
in light of new information.

