https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/nagasaki-the-last-bomb

Nagasaki: The Last Bomb
The attack that ended the nuclear summer of 1945.





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Interesting claim made that Truman did not give the order to drop either atomic bomb, those plans were already in motion; and that he did give an order to stop dropping atomic bombs unless he ordered it.

Fuck the New Yorker, it would be too truthful to say that the bomb probably saved millions of American lives and even more Japanese.

They make it sound like a bad decision to bomb Nagasaki without mentioning it was selected as a secondary target.
The original drop was supposed to be on Kokura which housed a major military arsenal, but cloud cover caused them to divert to Nagasaki which was not only a port city but also home to several of the Mitsubishi manufacturing plants responsible for torpedo and steel.

Truman, if I recall correctly, convened a panel of experts to form a group opinion on what was the best target and when to hit it. They largely chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki because they had been largely untouched by the fir bombing campaign and because they were big enough to fully measure the width and yield of the bomb blast. They were essentially experimental cities. But Truman told the panel to take care of it while he put others in charge of getting the bomb on location. Tibet was entirely responsible for the new program of dropping the gadget. He didn't just fly it. He was responsible for training all the Airmen involved. Every step of dropping those 2 bombs was an act of expert delegation by Truman.

I along with possibly a million other people are here today thanks to the bombs being dropped.

What were projected allied casualties for Operation Downfall?

You missed it here:

"Used in anger"?
What a stupid phrase.

That’s a pretty common phrase going back a couple of hundred years but ok.

Well into the 6 figures

Would easily have killed over a million Japanese civilians through invasion....would have killed over 100,000 GIs through invasion

The fire bombing of Tokyo killed more than the bombs....

These are apologist shit bags who bring this topic up every few years to remind everyone how....evil...the US is.

Japan FA, Later Japan FO! New Yorker is a shit rag.

I think those are wildly overestimated in light of Soviet participation and the near starvation of the population by the fire bombings and naval blockade.

Who cares what the New Yorker says.

In hindsight perhaps. But planners didn’t know that in 1945. It’s disingenuous at best to look at history through the lens of the information we have today without taking into account the sum of knowledge available at the time.

Do they mention the Japanese military was preparing a coup after Nagasaki?
They were moving against the emperor when an errant US bomber strayed over Tokyo, prompting a total blackout. this gave teh emperor enough time to deliver his surrender.
the Japanese generals all knew they would be executed for war crimes so they really had nothing to lose.

The Japanese Empire FAFO.

Meh, I always tell people who are ass hurt over dropping the atomic bomb to go research how the Japs treated our POWs. They could have dropped one on every village for all I care.

Oops, posted twice, same as when we nuked them twice.

So fuckin true. I'll never have sympathy. It was the best move available at the time for everyone.

All that matters is the war ended and what the mayor of Nagasaki siad when the bomb fell


what the fuck was that?

been brought up numerous times but they made so many Purple Heart Medals for Operation  DownFall that they just recently started striking more.......https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/176762 Estimates of 1.7 million+ casualties for our servicemen were not unheard of for DownFall. I can not blame Truman or any of the planners for DownFall, everyone was just tired and really, really pissed off. Truman said numerous times that had he not dropped the bomb and it ever came out that things could have ended sooner with it he'd been castigated beyond the grave.

Blah-blah-ker-fuckin-blah.

It was possibly more of a technical achievement than Hiroshima, so high fives to the implosion squad.

They probably should have surrender, then.

Oh well, tough shit.

The Japanese would certainly have used nukes on us had they the means to develop and deliver ones.

Widespread "tactical use" of chemicals during any invasion of Japan was also under consideration as the Japanese had previously crossed that bridge along with also using biological weapons on Chinese troops and civilians.

The Japanese were fortunate the war ended with only two of their cities being destroyed by atomic blasts as they had earned having a few dozen more suffer the same fate.

According to historians Yoshiaki Yoshimi and Kentaro Awaya, during the Second Sino - Japanese War, gas weapons, such as tear gas, were used only sporadically in 1937, but in early 1938 the Imperial Japanese Army began full - scale use of phosgene, chlorine, lewisite, and nausea gas (red), and from mid - 1939, mustard gas (yellow) was used against both Kuomintang and Communist Chinese troops

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_war_crimes#Use_of_chemical_weapons

The Imperial Japanese forces committed atrocities that surpassed the Nazis on many occasions.  Beyond the rape of nanjing, there were incidents of cannibalism, torture, and rape.  Many incidents.  Eating the flesh from living prisoners as sushi was one of them.  You can look them up on your own.

Did they deserve mercy at the expense of a million or more of our GI's lives?  No.  The bomb WAS mercy.

And who attacked Pearl Harbor?

Only Soviet participation in the Pacific was when they seized the Kuril islands, which didn't even start until August 18th,  two weeks after Hiroshima was bombed and several days after Japan surrendered to the U.S. on August 15th. Yes, Stalin promised Roosevelt at Yalta that the Soviets would start fighting against Japan after Berlin was captured, but didn't do anything until after Japan was already defeated.

My grandson was entering 4th grade in the fall and I told him  " Today is the anniversary of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima". He replied that " That was a good thing". When I said some people would disagree with him, his reply was "Why? The Japanese would never have stopped fighting" He's 12 now, maybe I can get him to explain it to The New Yorker??

My dad was a Marine in the Pacific.

who gives a shit 1 American life lost was too many, they attacked us and got what they deserved. zero fucks given

My Mom’s older brother died on Tarawa, he was in the 2nd Marines. He turned 20 the day he died 1st day of the invasion.

PFC James f Rice…rip

Dad having been shelled from Suribachi, kamikazed off of Okinawa fully expected to die off of Honshu. He was quite happy both bombs were dropped.

Japan knew they were beat long before the bombs dropped.  It's on them that they continued to fight.

When I was working in Sasebo, I visited the Japanese museum in Nagasaki where they described events leading up to the bombing. Nowhere did they mention the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

There was a thread yesterday about the atomic bombings that included a link to the most excellent description of all the details about it.

It's also totally on them that they started the war with us (and all their neighbors), so they bear 100% responsibility for the consequences.
Same with Germany & things like Dresden firebombing.
I've also read that, despite the differences in publicity, Curtis LeMay's firebombing campaign killed more Japs than the atomic bombs did.
ZFG about all of the consequences.

Don't start no shit, won't be no shit.

to say nothing about their research at unit 731, the use of the plague, Cholera, Typhus, anthrax, flame throwers tested on live humans, and fire balloons used on the Pacific Northwest. I really can't shed a tear for them losing what probably amounts to around 300,000 deaths from both bombs.......Hell, everything considered they got off easy. Too bad the Krauts gave up before the bombs could be used on them.

The Japanese weren’t going to surrender after the first one.  Military dictatorship was still adamant.

Prisoners of the Japanese

Thanks I now have a copy on order from ABE books.

I wouldn't call the bomb merciful, but critics ignore our treatment of them after they conceded, which was extraordinarily merciful. We let Showa live, keep his job, and then proceeded to build them back up into one of the greatest economies in the world. Plus we got some great baseball players out of the deal.

Truman's order was hollow. There were 12 bombs originally planned but only 3 were built before the end of the war. The third bomb was ready but no target had been approved. The 4th bomb was not ready until July 1946. The delay was due to a lack of fissionable material. The refinement was poor at 80%. Of the 140 lb of fissionable material, only about a tablespoon full actually reached a state of fission. The bomb was also an air burst so the radiation was gone in a short time. Neither city records any residual radiation.

Jesus guys.   Just about every year around this time the issue of whether it was necessary to use nukes on Japan comes up.

And invariably, some revisionist version of history comes out to claim it was unneeded.

MULTIPLE ANALYSES of what would have happened, in terms of both American and Japanese lives, were done, and by different groups.   Those analyses are in the national archives, so they are a matter of record.

The use of the two bombs saved lives compared to what would have happened if we invaded, and also saved lives compared to if we had blockaded and starved the Japanese.

All this modern pearl clutching claims of unnecessary use is typical 20/20 hindsight, and is driven by touchy-freely guilt that is easy to have looking back 75 years.

Yeah, "Used in Super Hugs and Kisses Mode"  would be way more appropriate for wiping two entire cities off the map.

More like every year around this time.  

They were trying to rewrite history three decades ago, if not earlier than that, claiming that the two bombs were the entire US nuclear arsenal at the time, and that it would be several months before another would be available, meaning that if Japan called the bluff and didn't surrender, all of those lives (at Hiroshima and Nagasaki) would have been lost for nothing.

Reality was that the claim that the US would not have another bomb for months, originally came from the Japanese military.  After Hiroshima was bombed, the military faction of the Japanese ruling council insisted on getting confirmation of the initial report, because their pride prevented them from accepting that the US had built a successful atomic bomb, when their own atomic bomb development program had failed to produce anything.  Once they had confirmation, they insisted that it would be many months before the US would have another bomb ready for use, referencing the reports from their own atomic bomb program estimating how long it would take to produce the core material, and those months would give them the time needed to turn the war around.  Their large submarines that could surface and launch attack planes were becoming operational, their first jet fighter was ready for flight test with additional airframes already in production, and they were working on developing the Ohka rocket powered suicide bomb (Baka bomb) into a land launched version with longer range.  The Nagasaki bomb destroyed their credibility with the rest of the ruling council, and the council began to consider surrender. The first proposed terms they sent to the US essentially boiled down to them calling their troops back home and surrendering any territory they had taken, and not much else (actually stepping down from controlling the Japanese government was insanity, from their view).

Another 'Fat Man' type bomb was in the process of being shipped to Tinian, when the Japanese emperor ordered his government to surrender unconditionally.  Three more 'Fat Man' bombs were expected to be delivered in the following month, with production expected to reach seven per month by the end of the year.  Resources were shifted from the 'Little Boy' bomb program to the 'Fat Man' bomb program, after the first 'Little Boy' bomb was completed, because refining the necessary material and forming it into a useable 'Little Boy' core was a slow process.  If the US had focused on one bomb development program, instead of running two development programs at the same time, the Japanese ruling council's military faction may have ended up being correct in their claim of how long they would have before the US could drop another atomic bomb.



As I recall, the Japanese government did not allow Japanese history professors to include what happened during WW2 in history textbooks until sometime in the 1990s.  Prior to that, their textbook history was essentially 'a war started, then Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nuked'.  They waited until the last of the politicians that had been involved in WW2 had died off, before allowing the history of WW2 to be included in high school textbooks.  It's my understanding that prior to that, history professors could verbally teach it in college lectures, but publishing it in textbooks, or teaching it in high school, was not allowed.

My dad trained Naval air navigators stateside during WW2. He had orders to report to the Pacific, but those orders were cancelled after the bombs were dropped...

Did anybody actually read the article?

There’s no handwringing over the use of the bomb, no accusations. I swear people here get so defensive about the atom bomb. Wellerstein asks why Nagasaki was hit when it wasn’t on the initial list.

I think they're incorrect, Truman did issue an order authorizing the Trinity test and further planned deployment and use. Everything was carefully planned, but exact dates/times etc were dependent on weather etc so were left to local control. I think they are correct in that there was no specific order to use them on Japan, it was just part of the general release to go ahead with the test and deployment.

Good bomb, showed the importance/usefulness of implosion detonation and required much less material to make it a goer. and of course, a crucial part of the H bomb