vjk2 said:
A number of military leaders, from Douglass MacArthur to Dwight Eisenhower to Curtis LeMay stated that in their opinion it was unnecessary to drop the bomb. That's militarily. Japan was losing the war. That was obvious. Surrender was only a matter of time.
Surrender was only a matter of time? Have you taken into account that even after 2 atomic bombs and the thread of a soviet invasion the Japanese cabinet was still deadlocked in deciding on whether to surrender or not? And when the Emperor himself stepped in and broke the deadlock in favor of surrender there were 3 separate coup attempts to avert the surrender. That doesn't sound like surrender was only a matter of time to me.
Secondly, why drop the bomb on a populated city? Why not drop it on a naval base or in an uninhabited region as a demonstration?
Because this is World War 2. The slaughter of entire cities, by BOTH sides, was effectively commonplace. Japan itself had massacred millions of civilians in China. MILLIONS. World War 2 was the biggest example of "Total War", in which countries mobilize nearly the entirety of their resources and population in order to carry out warfare.
The true tragedy of the war is that it was of such magnitude, of such scale, and prosecuted against foes that were so brutal that otherwise good men were forced to forget about their morals and values in order to win. That they were forced to see entire cities and their populations as numbers on reports about how valuable they were to the enemies war efforts.
Remember that this was a war that lacked precision bombs, jet aircraft, and guided missiles. How do you destroy a factory that produces munitions when they are covered by a massive Flak battery and fighter aircraft? You send 200 bombers all at once and drop thousands of bombs since you have no idea if you'll be able to hit all the targets with any less. There was no other way. You couldn't send a small strike force. Fighters can't carry enough bombs and can't fly far enough, and bombers are too big to avoid being seen well in advance. You can't send a special forces team. You have no way of safely delivering or picking them up and they had little chance of taking out huge factories anyways.
As for why those two cities, see the following link:
Minutes of the second meeting of the Target Committee
Los Alamos, May 10-11, 1945
http://www.dannen.com/decision/targets.html
Some important points from the link are:
6. Status of Targets
A. Dr. Stearns described the work he had done on target selection. He has surveyed possible targets possessing the following qualification: (1) they be important targets in a large urban area of more than three miles in diameter, (2) they be capable of being damaged effectively by a blast, and (3) they are unlikely to be attacked by next August. Dr. Stearns had a list of five targets which the Air Force would be willing to reserve for our use unless unforeseen circumstances arise. These targets are:
(2) Hiroshima - This is an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. It is a good radar target and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focussing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage. Due to rivers it is not a good incendiary target. (Classified as an AA Target)
7. Psychological Factors in Target Selection
A. It was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be internationally recognized when publicity on it is released.
B. In this respect Kyoto has the advantage of the people being more highly intelligent and hence better able to appreciate the significance of the weapon. Hiroshima has the advantage of being such a size and with possible focussing from nearby mountains that a large fraction of the city may be destroyed. The Emperor's palace in Tokyo has a greater fame than any other target but is of least strategic value.
8. Use Against "Military" Objectives
A. It was agreed that for the initial use of the weapon any small and strictly military objective should be located in a much larger area subject to blast damage in order to avoid undue risks of the weapon being lost due to bad placing of the bomb.
vjk2 said:
Partly because taking out two targets is better than just one. And partly because Japan didn't surrender after the 1st was dropped. Realize that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are terrible ordeals, but they were NOT the worst bombings or invasions of the war. The firebombing of tokyo killed more people, and Japan's Nanking Massace killed 300,000 civilians.
As I said, this was a war in which entire cities had already been bombed to husks for years. If you've already been bombed, and taken part in bombings of cities in order to win the war, what real reason do you have to hold back a weapon that takes a single aircraft to accomplish the same thing that 500 did before?
vjk2 said:
Intimidation of the Soviets makes perfect sense.
While that is an obvious benefit, I don't think you can justify that intimidating the Soviets was the primary reason for dropping the bombs.
And just in case you still don't think so, if we weren't so concerned with invading Japan, why did the U.S. government order approximately 500,000 purple hearts in preparation for the extreme number of predicted casualties an invasion would have cost?
http://hnn.us/articles/1801.html
In all, approximately 1,506,000 Purple Hearts were produced for the war effort with production reaching its peak as the Armed Services geared up for the invasion of Japan. Despite wastage, pilfering and items that were simply lost, the number of decorations was approximately 495,000 after the war.
The veterans were heavily criticized in some academic circles for their insistence that the dropping of the atom bomb had ended the war quickly and ultimately saved countless thousands of American -- and Japanese -- lives during an invasion.
When hearing of the new production, Jim Pattillo, then president of the 20th Air Force Association stated that, "detailed information on the kind of casualties expected would have been a big help in demonstrating to modern Americans that those were very different times."
Medical and training information in "arcanely worded military documents can be confusing," said Pattillo, "but everyone understands a half-million Purple Hearts."
Every single purple heart given out to a U.S. Servicemember since 1945 has been one that was originally ordered for the U.S. invasion of Japan.
