Reddit reviews Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire

> Are the motives behind the bombings beyond inquiry?

Not at all; but it's been pretty well analyzed by historians over the past couple of decades. In Downfall Richard B. Frank concludes that the U.S. nuked Japan because it was the shortest route to ending the war. Invading the Japanese homeland could have cost up to one million lives.

If you want ammunition for your side of the argument, you might want to read Downfall by Richard B. Frank. It pretty thoroughly demolishes the "Japan was on the verge of surrender" thesis.

Nah. The historical record: research it. One guy on the Big Six (and not one of the guys in charge of the armies) was feeling out Russia. They weren't attempting to surrender.

Check out Frank's Downfall. It's a fantastically well-researched book, probably the definitive account of the Japanese surrender. http://www.amazon.com/Downfall-End-Imperial-Japanese-Empire/dp/0141001461.

Your statements are clearly false. Causality estimates on the low end ran into tens of thousands for US troops alone. The thought at the time was the the emperor of Japan (a self proclaimed god) would rally civilians to defense of the state and that Allied troops would be forced to kill at least tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands or even millions of them. One might think that's a rediculous belief, but it was entirely reasonable considering the beliefs espoused by leaders of imperial Japanese forces:

"Let us formulate a plan for certain victory, obtain the Emperor's sanction, and throw ourselves into bringing the plans to realization. If we are prepared to sacrifice 20,000,000 Japanese lives in a special effort, victory will be ours!" -Takijirō Ōnishi

It's worth noting that Takijirō Ōnishi was an advocate of suicide. He killed himself on August 16th shortly after the imperial Japan's unconditional surrender.

It comes from a study done for the US Secretary of War. I'm taking it from this, which cites this book as the source. While it was just an estimate, we learned throughout the entire Pacific campaign that the Japanese could and would hold out far longer than even our worst estimates (for example, the Battle of Peleliu was expected to be won in 4 days but lasted over 2 months).

Other numbers and information came from this article, which has many respectable sources.

Again, read Richard Frank's Downfall, not globalresearch.ca bullshit. It's the definitive account.

It's not an apologia for dropping the atomic bombs - Frank questions whether dropping the atomic bomb was necessary and skeptical of the extremely high estimates of US casualties (as if they're the only ones that should matter) - but his analysis drives a stake through the revisionist Soviet narrative using declassified Japanese sources.

Downfall is a very interesting look at the events that led up to dropping the atom bomb on Japan.

Oh really? "Obviously"?

Dresden was an operation run by RAF Bomber Command, and I totally agree that it was intended to kill as many people as possible. The RAF even stated that it was intended to "destroy workers domiciles". But it was a RAF Bomber command-run mission, even if American bombers participated.

The bombing campaign by 20th Air Force(the B-29s), however was absolutely not intended to "kill people on an industrial scale". It was purely for the purposes of industrial targets. All stop. Once they ran out of big targets(the major factories being leveled) they downshifted to area bombings because they knew that the Japanese had switched to cottage industry in order to avoid their industry being reduced by the B-29s(which could bomb targets reasonably accurately and with impunity).

Guess what? Once you've ordered the populace to make small arms and ammo in their households, and their doing it, those households become legitimate targets.

A great book to read about this, by the way, would be Downfall by Richard Frank. It covers the whole rhyme and reasoning behind it pretty thoroughly.

But keep up with your faux-righteous outrage. Those 80 million screaming fanatics need their fat internet defenders.

That's a discredited theory that's not supported by the evidence. Gar Alperovitz is a crank - he wants the history to support his clear moral vision re: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and he twists whatever facts he needs to, and ignore every source he can, to do so. His theory was at best speculative in 1964, and disproven since.

(Psst, if Japan was "going to surrender anyway," why did the Big Six dead lock on a *conditional* surrender after the nukes dropped? Why was unprecedented intervention of Hirohito necessary?)

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A much better, and much more comprehensive, account of the end of the Pacific War, based on American, Russian, and Japanese sources (the latter two virtually ignored by Alperovitz) is Downfall by Frank.

https://www.amazon.com/Downfall-End-Imperial-Japanese-Empire/dp/0141001461

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If you only trust "revisionist" historians, they've also concluded that Gar Alperovitz's thesis is wrong. I believe this is the standard text for contemporary revisionists: https://www.amazon.com/Racing-Enemy-Stalin-Truman-Surrender/dp/0674022416

No. Please read more.

You can start with Ask Historians, but I recommend reading Downfall

1. The Manhattan project was kept under wraps until late. Even allied leaders were kept in the dark. Stalin was officially notified that the bomb was being developed at Potsdam (after the successful test of a plutonium-based, implosion-triggered device in New Mexico. However, he probably already knew what was going on as a result of his intelligence apparatus.
   
   
2. Japanese scientists had informed their government that such a bomb was impossible to build. No warning that the bomb had been constructed was given to Japan. The Potsdam declaration warned that Japan must surrender or face destruction. The nature of this destruction was never given, and the Japanese government perceived the warning as a sign of weakness. Additionally, a number of American scientists felt that the bomb ought to have been used against an uninhabited island or some other possible point of demonstration. These scientists were outmaneuvered by Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan project (who was quite obsessed with making sure that the bomb made the biggest impact possible). Their proposal never reached Harry Truman.
   
   
3. As implied above, Japan did not know that the United States had such a weapon. The warnings given by the United States were circumscribed and not particularly specific.
   
   For a good history of the atomic bombings from the traditional American perspective I'd recommend Richard Frank's book on the subject. For an alternative look, I'd recommend Hasegawa's Racing the Enemy. They serve pretty well to show the debate on the subject.

I've already presented where to get the evidence you seek. We have the memoirs and diaries of Truman, Marshall and Stimson and other decision makers at the highest levels. We have the minutes of the numerous meetings related to the use of the bomb including those of the White House and other meetings amongst military personnel. We have the numerous meetings related to the invasion of Japan and the consensus that invasion was going to be extremely costly in lives and materials.

The problem here is that because the data doesn't fit your preconceived notion, you don't want to do the research. Get Operation Downfall if for nothing else the bibliography and go find and read the original research material for yourself.

You keep contradicting that the US dropped the bomb on Japan to end the war but haven't presented one shred of evidence to support an alternate theory that would support your hypothesis and explain all of the existing historical evidence that point towards ending the war.

Allow me to provide citation then.
>it is not clear that the atomic bombs were what caused the Japanese to surrender nor that two were "necessary,

I would like to cite Richard Frank's book "Downfall: The end of the Japanese Empire". Frank cited the actual minutes of the final days of the Imperial cabinet and made it quite clear that there was cabinet level resistance to surrender. In this book on pages 91-93 he shows that only one cabinet member favored peace. On page 288 he cites that even after the second bomb the military was still in favor of martial law. I would like to direct as a source the US army reports on the surrender
As for Truman and his intentions on ending the war he stated
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The British, Chinese, and United States Governments have given the Japanese people adequate warning of what is in store for them. We have laid down the general terms on which they can surrender. Our warning went unheeded; our terms were rejected. Since then the Japanese have seen what our atomic bomb can do. They can foresee what it will do in the future.
The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost. I urge Japanese civilians to leave industrial cities immediately, and save themselves from destruction.
I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb.
Its production and its use were not lightly undertaken by this Government. But we knew that our enemies were on the search for it. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster which would come to this Nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first.
That is why we felt compelled to undertake the long and uncertain and costly labor of discovery and production.
We won the race of discovery against the Germans.
Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.
We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us.


What else do you require?