What If You Were Truman ?

[JDK]

Im secure in my opinons!

Clearly.

[Bill Greenwood]

OK, we got a lot of food for thought, here's my opinion---I'm not sure! This AM I thought, in Truman's shoes, not with 07 hindsight, you would have to use the Bomb. The problem is that this new weapon is not only so powerful, but so broad in it's use that you are signing the death warrant for a hundred thousand civilians, many of them chidren. By any measure the kids are innocent of Japanese agression and barbarity. I'm not so sure about the adults, it is such a closed society their average person may not know much truth about the war, but if they did know would they care? Did our US people care when we massacred the Indians? Anyway from what I read they could not find a good military target, it's the cities or none and they've only got 2 bombs. Truman may deserve some slack in that the full horrors of radiation aren't know yet. So how many Allied lives might they save if the Bomb works and they don't invade? There are estimates from 10,000 to 1 million. Who knows, the pro bomb guys always tout big numbers from battles like Tarawa, Iwo etc. But, they don't mention Normandy or Sicily where our losses were nowhere near that high. We must remember Truman is a US pres, and his lolalty is to the families of our soldiers not Japanese, not even kids. So I thought if those are his only choices, he had to use the Bomb. More later.

[Scott Rose]

Okay people, take it easy on the personal stuff or this thread goes away.

With that said here's my opionion on the subject. We cannot have an objective view on the A-bomb because with a handfull of exceptions we all grew up with the looming threat of Nukes. I grew up not thinking if there will be a nuclear war but when there would be one. We all have this built in sense of horror at the thought of using nukes. This wasn't the case in 1945. Only a handful of people knew the true scope of the ramifications of the bomb and even then it was a new issue that wasn't fully understood. Too the majority of those in charge it was a big bomb, thats it. To put 60 years of of nuclear fear behind an attempt to understand the actions of 1945 era President is relatively useless. To disregard the fact that numerous firebombing raids in Europe and Japan slaughtered far more people and in some cases specifically targeted firefighters and watermains to make it nearly impossible to fight the damage is a clear indicator of what nukes have become in our minds.

Here's a question for you that might convey a sense of what I percieve to be the mindset in 1945.

Would you use an anti-matter bomb on Hanoi in 1972?

[Obergrafeter]

Are you all sure that we didn't have any more bombs. I remember I heard somewhere ( may be gossip) that we had more and more material, specifically the next one was earmarked for Tokyo. Has anyone else heard this or have specific knowledge that we didn't have more?

[Bill Greenwood]

Ob, all the convention info is that we only had those 2, and even with material it would take time to make more. Of course I am not sure.

[tom d. friedman]

i for 1 am thankful for the bomb, if we invaded i might not be here now had my old man had been a casualty. my dad's 31st infantry division was part of the eighth army slated to invade in operation olympic. scott says the topic is getting dicey, so i'll be careful........ by 1945 the japanese were beyond desperate, making crude 1 shot guns & rifles, spears, booby traps etc, in infinite amounts, well beyond the kamakaze doctrine we all know so well. no body thinks of the mobilized japanese civilians who were going to meet the invasion with these crude weapons. the allies at the same time had a snoot full enough of war, & adding it all up between the 2 sides would have equalled 1 on 1 slaughter that can't be imagined, plus the time involved would have probably pushed the end of hostilities well into 1947.

[rwdfresno]

OK, we got a lot of food for thought, here's my opinion---I'm not sure!

I guess you would have just licked your finger stuck it up in the air and determined which way the wind was blowing.

[Bill Greenwood]

RWD, if you are going to quote me, in the interest of accuaracy put the whole relevant quote in. As I said at the end "if those are the only choices he had to use the Bomb".

[Elroy13]

[Glenn]

I think a side reason(s) for this that I read Truman was thinking about at the time of the decision to drop the bomb (other than lives saved/war ending quick) that was not mentioned was the Russians.

1) The Russians needed to be made aware of the destructive power of the joint British/American Atomic Bomb program. With the first Atomic bomb explosion in NM, the world became fully aware when announced. Anglo-American Atomic might was then flexed on the two Japanese cities. Well discussed in literature.

However the 2nd point always seems to be ignored.

2) Russia was preparing to invade the northern islands in August (which they did) and they were intending on taking there share of Homeland Japan as well if the war continued into '46 & '47. In other words Japan would have been divided up into 3rds or 4ths like occupied Germany. MacArthur nipped that in the bud in Tokyo when the Russian delegation tried to move in on Post WW2 Japan. So, in a weird way the bombs dropped saved the Japanese from the totalitarian hegemony of the Communist Eastern Bloc that Poland and Hungary and occupied Germany and Austria experienced in Post WW2 until 1989. Or so the argument goes.


Anybody else heard this argument as well.

[gnome]

The whole issue of the use of "nukes" includes our knowledge of the fact a nuke is a dirty weapon. It creates (very) harmful radiation and this is a real nasty. It kills people for weeks/months afterwards and has all sorts of nasty downstream effects on the children of people exposed etc.

Was this fully appreciated in 1945? By which I mean, not "was this known to the scientific community as a risk or theory" but more clearly "would this have entered into anyone's (read Turman's) knowledge/decision base and judgement?

I suspect not, not in the sense that we see it clearly today as a serious issue related to the use of nukes.

If the view then, and the decison basis, was that this was one helluva big bomb, then I think the decision would have been "relatively" easy. For 5 years plus humankind had been bombing the crap out of each other and the Allies (our team) had the upperhand in that regard. We hammered Europe and then Japan.

Here was the opportunity to demonstrate (to Japan AND Russia, good point) that the US had the hardest hitting big bomb you ever did see. It said essentially "keep fighting us and you are really in for it".

On that basis I can see Truman, any incoming President frankly, saying "Yes, do it".

Don

[rwdfresno]

RWD, if you are going to quote me, in the interest of accuaracy put the whole relevant quote in. As I said at the end "if those are the only choices he had to use the Bomb".

I don't feel that a threaded conversation warrants quoting your entire post when anyone who wants to can read your original post in it's glorious entirety. If their is a decisive opinion in your post, I am afraid I can't see it.

[SaxMan]

Had the bomb not been dropped in 1945, it would not have gone away. It would have sat like a genie in a bottle. When it was released, who knows how much more destruction it would have done. By the 1960s, both the USSR and the United States possessed nukes that would make the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs look like firecrackers. What would have happened had the genie been released in 1962 over the Cuban Missle Crisis and a full nuclear exchange ensued? I know that considering that my parents were in Brooklyn, New York at the time, the odds of me being born five years later would be remote, at best...and all of humanity itself may have become extinct.

As horrible as the bomb was it did 1) end the war and 2) showed us how horrible nuclear warfare could be. Perhaps that is why not a single nuclear device has been detonated in anger since 1945. One only wonders with if the maniacs in the Middle East hell bent on destroying anyone that doesn't adhere to their interpretation of their beliefs are as equally horrified by the prospect of a nuclear detonation.

[Bill Greenwood]

The standard line pro Bomb is either drop it with civilan deaths, or invade with all the troop deaths. But what if we did Neither. I used to be a stock broker, the co. had all sorts of pat slogans to hook a sucker. To get someone to pay an extra 8% comiss for a load fund when he could get just as good free, say "You're buying professional mangement or you get what you pay for". So what if we did not drop the Bomb or invade right away, if we look a little deeper than the slogans. Sure, the pro side is going to say the Japanese would fight to the end, but do we really know that? In the island fighting we hit them hard, they hit back and we never tried to get them to surrender or negotiate any peace. We might(probably not, but maybe) have had a real chance to save a lot of lives, ours and theirs, somewhere like IWO. And it is fact that by Aug. 45, the Japanese really were No Offensive threat, no longer had much navy or air force. Could we wait them out, with conventonal warfare, at least for a short time? The myth is that they would not give up even after the 1st Bomb. The truth is we never gave them a chance, the 2nd bomb was ordered only 24 hours after the 1st. Almost no govt. would surrender that fast, especially a closed society like theirs; it actually took 6 days after the last bomb. If you are open minded enough to look at the book excerpt cited by K5083, you may agree that Truman did not want the Japanese to give up before we used of the bomb and it may have been to warn off the Russians.

[Taylor Stevenson]

I don't think waiting would have been an option. The overall objective of the Commander-in-Chief is to bring America's sons and daughters home as fast as possible. Kids my age and younger were fighting to end tyranny and oppression across the globe. I can't even imagine it, but they answered the call. Whether we wanted to "warn" the USSR or not, the Bomb was the quickest way to get our kids home and it was the right thing to do. The Japanese were taught to fight to the death. Calling it a Normandy type invasion, in my opinion, is entirely incorrect. The average German soldier wanted to survive the war and go home to his family, just like ours. On the Japanese side, the honorable way to fight was to die for the emperor. It would not have been a cakewalk, and would have caused much more death and destruction than the Bomb.
My two-cents
God Bless America,
Taylor