A surprising number of the people of Hiroshima remained more or less indifferent about the ethics of using the bomb.
Unsurprising for the time given the context.
While people far from Japan made much of the uniqueness and power of a single bomb destroying a single city for those on the ground it was just another single city destroyed overnight by bombing .. the 73rd such city destroyed in a relatively short duration of time.
The destruction and death in Hiroshima was on par with the destruction and death in Tokyo when that was firebombed.
Yes, I understand that Japan gave up, not so much because of the bomb, but mostly because of the Soviet invasion and capture of Manchuria (and the implied threat of an invasion of the mainland), after the war in Europe had been won.
But I still struggle to understand the Japanese mentality. Were they OK with the prospect of city after city being atom- or fire-bombed, so long as no ground invasion occurred?
Additionally, the Japanese leadership was welcoming a land invasion. They believed that a land invasion would result in unacceptable casualties, forcing the United States into a peace that would allow Japan to continue occupying China and many of the sized territories. That's how disconnected from reality the leadership was.
The sad thing is that there is a non-zero chance they where right. There was considerable concern about that from the war leadership at this point. The allies _dramatically_ underestimated the forces that the Japanese had marshalled at the two invasion sites, and it would have been not very good. The alternative that the Navy was pushing was a starvation blockade of Japan. This probably would have been succesful but led to millions more lives lost in Japan, and a almost inevitable civil war in Japan.
> The allies _dramatically_ underestimated the forces that the Japanese had marshalled at the two invasion sites, and it would have been not very good.
They did not underestimate the Japanese forces.
They did an assessment in early 1945 and did calculations and the needed invasion force. But the Japanese could read a map just as well as the Americans, and could guess where Olympic would happen and redeployed, which the Americans detected:
The question I addressed was about the specific ethics of the specific case of "using the (atomic) bomb".
For survivors of a city destroyed overnight, with a great many friends and relatives dead, others injured or suffering the follow on results of malnutrition, disease, etc. there's little to separate the ethics of the use of an atomic weapon from the ethics of the use of tonnes of HE and incendiary weapons.
The most famous comparison, Tokyo Vs Hiroshima, has little to distinguish them from the PoV of a survivor.
Again, for context, 72 Japanese cities, including Tokyo, were each leveled in single bombing raids before Hiroshima.
Any debate about the killing of civilians to "save US soldiers" from invaders predated the use of atomic weapons by a number of months when the policy to flatten all of Japan from the air first started.
Atomic weapons were developed for use against Germany, with the German surrender prior to a field testable weapon being built, with the imminent collapse of Japan on the horizon, it was a race by those military at the head of the Manhattan project to have clean field targets before the conventional bombers worked through their list.
Hiroshima was to be destroyed by US forces either way.
The question should be less about the ethics of spending an ungodly amount of money to destroy a city with a single bomb, and more about the ethics of destroying a city for considerably less cost with multiple bombs in a mass raid.
I very much suspect a great many regular people in Japan were very much not okay with seeing their fellow citizens destroyed in a war being pursued by other elements of Japanese society.
This is mostly untrue. Most of this narrative comes from Soviet propaganda that was later propagated by anti-Western and anti-war groups in the United States. More recently, it's gotten more attention as Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov use it as a useful tool to build their narrative that only Russia was responsible for World War II's victory and to justify their constant threats of nuclear warfare.
The historical record is very clear, as is Hirohito's own statement at the time:
"Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
How, then, are We to protect the millions of Our subjects and atone before the spirits of my Imperial ancestors?
This is why We have ordered the Empire to accept the terms of the Joint Declaration. "
The other thing that gets glossed over in the "it was the soviets, not the bomb that caused the surrender" is that the USSR knew the US had the atomic bomb and realized it might end the war. They had territorial objectives of their own and wanted to join the conflict with (understandably) minimal casualties. If they had thought the war was going to last another year they might waited a bit longer to join.
I really strongly recommend Ian Toll's histories of the Pacific war, because there is information that is not in the early histories (at least the ones I read a while back) that is because things in the US and former USSR are more declassified. In particular, the US had a pretty good understanding of what is going on in the Japanese government. They knew a lot of civilian leaders wanted to surrender before Hiroshima, but were afraid they would be associated by a coup, as had happened in the 1930s. That's also what the Japanese leaders who wanted to surrender were worried about as well.
Hirohito's surrender speech to the army pointed to the entry of the Soviet Union into the war as the main reason for surrender:
"Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war against us, to continue the war under the present internal and external conditions would be only to increase needlessly the ravages of war finally to the point of endangering the very foundation of the Empire's existence."
Hirohito said different things to different audiences.
The Soviets could never have done a large invasion of Japan. They had a few ships that the USA had given them as part of Project Hula, but that is nothing compared to what would be needed for a full scale invasion of Japan.
In comparison, the proposed allied invasion was planned to have 42 aircraft carriers, 24 battleships, and 400 destroyers and destroyer escorts.
But now the war has lasted for nearly four years. Despite the best that has been done by everyone — the gallant fighting of the military and naval forces, the diligence and assiduity of our servants of the state, and the devoted service of our one hundred million people — the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest.
Hirohito spoke in a very very rare way that very few humans speak. It took years of a friend who got a masters in 'Peace and conflict studies' to get me to understand, and in the decade since, and after reading Hirohito's book it still takes a significant intellectual effort to distinguish the listening.
It's not useful to paint Hirohito as a religious leader. Yes, he was technically the head of State Shinto, but he was not the one issuing orders.
Depending on how you look at it (and reams of paper have been expended on this topic), he was somewhere between a puppet and a symbol. Certainly not innocent, but also not the instigator.
I'm not arguing about how much blame he should get as a person, I'm stressing out that the country's god was in favor of the war, which puts the population in a completely different mindset than otherwise.
Which religious leader? Hirohito? Hirohito rarely took any direction of the war - at best he enthusiastically endorsed what the ruling militarists wanted. As critical as one could (and should) be about this support, there is plenty of documentation that he tried to tap the brakes on the militarists, but didn't try all that hard. It wasn't until the very end of the war that he directly made a decision, and that was only enabled by a literal tie in the cabinet that allowed him to cast the deciding vote (sorta - more or less, gave him cover to break his role).
He was a war criminal, but not the leader of the war by any means. That was reserved for the militarists - Tojo and Suzuki and others.
I think we were very lucky with the timing such that atomic bombs could be used in warfare just twice.
Imagine if development had been delayed a little while and the war ended without any atomic bombs. The bomb would still be built and improved. The falling out of the USSR with the other Allies would still happen. The Soviets would still get the bomb and there would still be an arms race. But would the Cold War have stayed cold without an object lesson in what nuclear warfare actually looks like? I suspect not. Even with those object lessons, it took a while for the consensus to emerge that nuclear war must be averted no matter what. That bit in Dr. Strangelove where the general said we’d only “get our hair mussed” in a war with just 10-20 million dead was pretty much the real attitude of the Air Force leadership at the time.
people seem to forget that LeMay was advocating many times for a decapitating nuke strike against to soviets before they can have their own bomb. thats how hawkish they were.
I think the other thing to keep in mind is the cultural differences in how the West vs East think about government and the individual.
After living in Asia for a while, having political discussions with the people who live there, and exploring the differences in governance there, it’s not surprising there was indifference. You see this spectrum of though across many Asian countries from the authoritarian ones like China to the more democratic like Singapore.
Unlike the West which has a history of the relationship of the individual with the government and its leadership, Asia is much more influenced by Confucianism.
While people like to describe it as “what is good for the group versus what is good for the individual” I think that’s not an accurate description. It’s much more of a belief that governance happens “up there” and isn’t relevant to a commoners life.
The Eastern view of government is much more hierarchical and detached from the individual than in the West. There is strong sense that any one individual is not that important overall and that governance is a realm of the upper class, with the lower class on the receiving end rather than where power originates.
So for someone in Japan, the decisions during the war and the consequences thereafter are not theirs to judge or influence, only theirs to endure. There is a sense of fate and inability to change what happens, so it’s not really worth spending time thinking about.
This piece made a big impact on me when I read it like five years ago, and if I recall correctly there was a young doctor there who was one of the few interviewed who stated that the bomb's use was possibly a war crime. He did like 48 hours in the hospital as thousands upon thousands of burned and dying walked from afar to the completely overrun clinic.
> […] and if I recall correctly there was a young doctor there who was one of the few interviewed who stated that the bomb's use was possibly a war crime.
Was the dropping of the bombs any worse than the fire bombings that had been taking places for months? LeMay didn't seem to think so.
While people far from Japan made much of the uniqueness and power of a single bomb destroying a single city for those on the ground it was just another single city destroyed overnight by bombing .. the 73rd such city destroyed in a relatively short duration of time.
The destruction and death in Hiroshima was on par with the destruction and death in Tokyo when that was firebombed.