World War II’s Atomic Bombs
Musings
I recently saw some comments about the atomic bombs dropped in World War II. I believe those comments lacked some depth and review of the entire picture with regard to the bombs. The bombs were the only nuclear ones that have ever been used in warfare. They caused massive destruction and death and that of course has led to much commentary. However it seems to me that the commentaries and reviews focus on: if they should have been dropped, why they were dropped and particularly how many people were killed and injured by the bombs. There is no doubt that the bombs were the most destructive force that mankind has ever used or experienced and all of the consternation about the fact that they were used is perhaps appropriate. However, as I understand the situation there is much more that everyone should keep in mind as they think about what occurred in those last days of World War II.
Contemplations
The setting for the dropping of the bombs on the two Japanese cities is the end of an extensive and cruelly fought war that began in 1932 with Japan attacking China, then escalated the war with China in 1937, and then attacking the United States and the various European colonial countries in Asia in 1941. In fighting those wars the Japanese demonstrated little or nopropriety or fairness to either their enemies, captives or civilians. Japan executed nurses, medical doctors and othercivilians who were living or working in the areas they seized.The first act of Japanese officers that were sent to fight in China was to take a Chinese prisoner and chop off his head. This wasa brutal war Japan initiated. The allied armies began to respond in kind to Japanese soldiers. There was little quarter given and little expected. However, by 1945 the writing was on the wall.The United States Navy and Marine Corps had driven across the Pacific and seized islands up to and including those the Japanese considered part of their country such as the Marianas, Ryukyusthe and Bornins. In those locations United States began to build airfields for its air forces to bomb Japan and support the invasion of Japan.
Once the United States Navy and Marine Corps captured the Marianas the American bombers were in range of Japan using B29 bombers. The Army Air Force bombers were consistentlydropping bombs on various locations in Japan. However these planes flew quite high, that made their aim poor and they really caused little damage. After analyzing these results the Army Air Force decided to change tactics. They began bombing Japanese cities with incendiary bombs. The logic was simple. The Japanese cities had many buildings that were made of wood and paper. By using incendiary bombs they could start fires that would spread and burn down most, if not all, of the city. This was similar to the firestorms that were created in Hamburg and Dresden in Germany by the British bombing campaign. The Americans made-up a list of Japanese cities by size and importance and began bombing them. At the time of the Japanese surrender they had destroyed most if not all of 64 cities with the fire bombings. There were plenty of these bombs left to continue that effort. The Air Force thought this destructionwould cause Japan to surrender. But it didn't. I believe the statistics show that the fire bombing of Tokyo killed more people than both of the atomic bombs put together.
After capturing the Marianas islands the United States Navy went on to capture the Bonin islands and the Ryukyu islands (Okinawa ). This created staging bases to attack Japan from a very close range. At the same time the Navy sent extremely large fleets with dozens of large air carriers bringing over 1000 planes at a time and its battleships to the Japanese coast where they bombed and shelled whatever targets of opportunity they could find. This was a constant slugging that was going on and the Japanese had very little response except to send kamikaze planes once in a while and hope they hit something.
The Navy also sent a more deadly force to blockade and destroy the Japanese fighting ability. This was the Navy's submarine campaign. As they crossed the Pacific the Navy moved their submarine bases closer and closer to Japan and they now sent dozens of submarines to cover all of the coasts of Japan and sink any ship that was trying to come in or leave the country. In essence the Japanese could not get supplies in or out. This was particularly devastating as Japan did not produce enough food for its population nor have enough raw materials for its war industry to build new weapons and ammunition. The food ration for the Japanese people was cut time and again. There wassimply not enough food to go around. The submarines finally reached a point where they were sinking wooden junks with torpedoes because there were no other targets.
So we now have a situation where the Japanese were having their cities fire bombed and destroyed, their coasts were being bombed and shelled and they could get no food in or supplies to feed their people or make any of the instruments of war. They were being burned to death, starved to death and blown up. In response the only weapon they seem to have was to take barely trained young men and put them in old airplanes and asked them to go try and crash into an American ship. They also tried to train their population to fight the Americans if they landed by giving the population wooden sticks to use for weapons.
Some of the commentators have argued that if the results of the bombs had been sufficiently disclosed to the Japanese they would have surrendered. There is no evidence of that. After the first bomb was dropped the Japanese made no effort to respond to the Americans call for surrender. After the second bomb was dropped the governing cabinet still did not surrender. The emperor interceded and told them to surrender. However, there were still units of Japanese soldiers that opposed the surrender and tried to stage a coup of the government and seize the announcement of surrender after the second bomb was dropped.This attitude of no surrender had not only remained after both bombs but on the date the second bomb was dropped, August 9th, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria, overwhelming the Japanese army there. The diehards in Japan we're still unconvinced. Through an extensive effort the surrender announcement for the radio was delivered and broadcast and undercut the effort of the recalcitrant soldiers.
Thoughts
At the time of the dropping of the bombs the Japanese people were being burned to death, starved to death and bombarded and shelled to death. The two bombs can be debated forever but what's clear is that the decision to drop them did get the surrender to occur and ended the bloodshed. That was a thankful day for the American troops that could quit fighting, the Japanese people that now had a chance to live instead of being slaughtered by this massive attack and devastation of their country, and the Japanese members of the military could also survive. In many oral histories of young Japanese they stated that they were thankful for the surrender because otherwise they knew that they were heading to their death. There are manypeople that the bombs can be said to have saved their life as opposed to just looking at the destruction and deaths. We should acknowledge that the bombs ended a dreadful war.
Obadiah Plainman
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