Atomic attacks side-discussion (split from OBL thread)

[Bakustra]

They did extrapolate, and

Can you provide links to your sources or a way to check them? I tend to trust Sea Skimmer's reading of the situation more. Can you show something he is missing or a reason he is wrong?

His reading and mine don't conflict- he is referring to the military estimates, not the million killed estimate that I was arguing against. The reason I brought them up is that Broomstick declared that it was obviously reasonable to use the million dead estimate because the military had developed it, but I pointed out that the military did not develop it and they instead developed a wide range of estimates. I do not consider those estimates to be any more trustworthy, because they lack data like the actual dispositions of Japanese troops or the extent to which the civilian populace would fight. Such data is not likely to be available or easy to get, but that speaks against speaking authoritatively on the issue more than just accepting a million dead.

That they were not seen as practical or desirable at the time does not mean that they were not practical in fact.

We could have asked for a white peace after Midway for Japan. It would have saved a ton of lives. War is about achieving objectives that your opponent does not want you to achieve and is willing to kill in order to prevent you from getting what you want.

I'm not sure how this is an indictment of the atomic bombings over war in general.

The point is that there were more than just two alternatives available, even if the US did not consider them. Some of them may well have been more effective than the bombings, and it is difficult to really reduce things down to a single decision and declare that these were the only two effective options.

If they had wanted to spare the civilians, they could have told them this to make evacuations more effective, had they been heeded.

However, if we mentioned it, the Japanese would know which city were attacking next and could have defended it better.

Of course, since it was illegal to read the leaflets in the first place, it is unknown how effective they would be. The people most likely to read them are the people most likely to already be planning to leave.

I already mentioned that- my main argument with this is that strategic bombing is not something that really can be done morally, because doing it in a way to minimize casualties means that you minimize effectiveness.

Leaflets and other psy-ops in Southeast Asia caused the largest number of Japanese surrenders before the end of WWII, but I doubt that the military would necessarily have heeded this and devoted resources to evacuation.

Because they didn't, heeding the warnings would have resulted in a splintered and ineffectual distribution of evacuations and medical supplies, possibly doing more damage because supplies would have to be rushed to Hiroshima from where they had been brought across Japan.

We were firebombing the whole country. I think no matter where they were, the medical supplies would have been needed.

The atomic bombs were more destructive than anything except the Tokyo firebombing, so I think that they would have demanded more medical supplies proportionally, which would have been split between thirty-three or so cities if distributed.

PS: The English did evacuate a number of people from London during the Blitz, particularly children considered non-essential to industry, and a number of people left on their own.

People left cities in Japan as well. The difference was there were no other cities to hide in- you could go to the countryside, but everything else was a target.

So the US didn't care about the civilian casualties then (although the US did not bomb Kyoto during the war, Kyoto wouldn't have been able to handle all the refugees).

Edit- on the 9/11 tangent, the atomic bombings are not comparable. Nuking the cities destroyed military targets that were in them. By contrast, destroying the World Trade Center did not destroy military targets. In fact, from a military point of view it was counter productive- it would have been more intelligent to have those two planes back up to hit the White House or Congress and the Pentagon. As it is, the didn't get the former and did slight damage to the latter.

If you can hit actual political and military leadership and you pass it up to hit office workers, you are just aiming to cause as much carnage as possible.

Total war is a-ok with attacking the whole of enemy economic apparatus, which the World Trade Center counted as part of. Not to mention that that still applies to the atomic bomb, since they didn't target political and military leadership, but rather office and factory workers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Japanese might have known they couldn't win, but they still believed the US could loose. Make the fight bloody enough and the Allies have to stop fighting. The nuclear bombs demonstrated that a single bomber can flatten an entire city. Now what happens when 300 bombers fly? The nuclear bomb meant the US couldn't actually loose. And once the Japanese realized this, that meant resistance to the death only meant death, nothing else.

^ This.

It wasn't just that the US would win - the Japanese couldn't touch them. No going down in a blaze of glory, with a last ditch swing to take as many of the enemy with you as you could.... No, atomic warfare meant the enemy would destroy your nation and kill you without even risking a scratch. No chance to poke the enemy in the eye and spit in his face as he shoots you, no, just death from the sky, and you can't reach him.

Of course, now we know the US simply didn't have enough A-bombs to do that... but the Japanese couldn't know that then. How many did we have? 2? 5? 10? Hey, we'd listed 30 cities on those leaflets, did we have 30 atomic bombs? How fast were we making them?

Actually the Japanese Army and Navy had nuclear programs that guessed correctly that the US probably had single digits of nuclear weapons, which is why we dropped one on Nagasaki just days afterward- to make it look like we had more.

[Broomstick]

His reading and mine don't conflict- he is referring to the military estimates, not the million killed estimate that I was arguing against. The reason I brought them up is that Broomstick declared that it was obviously reasonable to use the million dead estimate because the military had developed it, but I pointed out that the military did not develop it and they instead developed a wide range of estimates. I do not consider those estimates to be any more trustworthy, because they lack data like the actual dispositions of Japanese troops or the extent to which the civilian populace would fight. Such data is not likely to be available or easy to get, but that speaks against speaking authoritatively on the issue more than just accepting a million dead.

By that line of reasoning ALL estimates of future causalities are useless and pointless because you can't obtain 100% reliable data on "troop disposition" and you certainly can't know beforehand if people will fight back or not!

What it comes down to is "I don't like this number, I'll look around and find a different one".

The point is that there were more than just two alternatives available, even if the US did not consider them. Some of them may well have been more effective than the bombings, and it is difficult to really reduce things down to a single decision and declare that these were the only two effective options.

On what basis do you state the US did not consider more than two options? The two obvious ones were invasion or A-bomb (IF you knew that they even existed, which most of even the military did not).

You are mistaking "did not use" for "did not consider". Those are not the same. It's rather like how you earlier conflated "casualty" and "fatality".

Leaflets and other psy-ops in Southeast Asia caused the largest number of Japanese surrenders before the end of WWII, but I doubt that the military would necessarily have heeded this and devoted resources to evacuation.

You are assuming they HAD the resources for evacuation. Did they? Could they have evacuated even one city, much less 30? Did they have a place to put all the people?

The atomic bombs were more destructive than anything except the Tokyo firebombing, so I think that they would have demanded more medical supplies proportionally, which would have been split between thirty-three or so cities if distributed.

Uh... no.

The Tokyo firebombing was hardly the only one of WWII (Dresden, anyone? How about Hamburg?). In regards to proportion of the population killed or injured, or in percentage of buildings destroyed, it might not have been the most destructive. The absolute numbers were high because it's Japan's biggest city, that's all.

So the US didn't care about the civilian casualties then (although the US did not bomb Kyoto during the war, Kyoto wouldn't have been able to handle all the refugees).

The US did care somewhat about civilians, pure military targets were preferred in many ways, but no, they didn't care enough about civilians to stop the war purely for their sake, no.

Actually the Japanese Army and Navy had nuclear programs that guessed correctly that the US probably had single digits of nuclear weapons, which is why we dropped one on Nagasaki just days afterward- to make it look like we had more.

But they couldn't know that for sure, could they? Would you be willing to bet the existence of your nation on such a guess?

[Big Phil]

That however means that it was american pride more so than japanese pride that necessitated the massacre of Hiroshima's and Nagasaki's citizens, not any real strategic concerns. The deal the Japanese got in the end wasn't then all that different from what they could have gotten through skillful negotiation, so the nuclear bombings essentially boil down to a life-fire weapon test and a good amount of dickwaving. In the end the slain citizens of those two cities served no further purpose but to cleanse the remaining Japanese of any feelings of responsibility or guilt they might have potentially developed had the Allies not declared the Tenno to be completely innocent and merely killed a few scapegoats in his stead.

They were already convinced they couldn't win the war, what they weren't convinced of was that they'd had to surrender unconditionally. The invasions or the bombings were therefore never an absolute necessity. You can long gripe about how the US wouldn't have ever accepted this or that term of surrender but that doesn't substract from the fact that a non-violent solution was possible and the US were the ones to spurn it.

Stop artificially limiting the alternatives. The US should just accept that engaging in dirty business does leave stains and move on. There's no reason to perpetually paint oneself as a victim of the circumstances, that's just childish.

Using this logic, it's Britain and Russia's fault that WWII was as bloody as it was and continued as long as it did. Had they surrendered in 1940/1941, like the Nazi's wanted, no more war would have been necessary. Hell, for that matter let's also blame the Poles for actually standing up for themselves and not simply rolling over like the Czech's did.

If your argument is that the US is morally culpable for the decision to drop the atomic bombs, well, no shit. But considering the alternatives (a) Starve the Japanese, (b) Continue to firebomb the Japanese, (c) Invasion with possibly millions of casualties, or (d) just give up and go home, the upside of Truman's decision seems better.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually the Japanese Army and Navy had nuclear programs that guessed correctly that the US probably had single digits of nuclear weapons, which is why we dropped one on Nagasaki just days afterward- to make it look like we had more.

But they couldn't know that for sure, could they? Would you be willing to bet the existence of your nation on such a guess?

Japan could not know the scale of our fissile-material production program, or (far more importantly) how fast we could ramp it up.

Moreover, even if the US had very few atomic bombs in summer 1945, the mere existence of our nuclear program opened up new problems for them, because we'd still have time to produce more bombs before entering the next phase of the war in Japan. US invasion plans were based on taking a chunk of Kyushu as a beachhead in winter 1945, then another beachhead around Tokyo in spring 1946; if Japan didn't capitulate by then (ha!), the process of clearing and occupying the Home Islands would not have been a quick or easy one. The war could easily have dragged on into late 1946 or 1947... and by that time, the Americans would have turned out dozens of atomic bombs anyway.

So the Japanese had to plan on the assumption that the US could now manufacture atomic bombs at a pretty fair clip (say, one or two a month). Which made the whole defensive problem of invasion much harder for the Japanese Army. Instead of the US being forced to take heavy casualties attacking their strongest defensive lines and fortifications, the Army Air Corps could just nuke a hole in anything too tough to handle on the ground. Not good from the IJA's point of view.

Moreover, in theory the US could have simply not invaded at all and just waited a year for more bombs to be produced, maintaining a naval blockade. If Japan didn't surrender because of the blockade*, the US would then have enough atomic bombs to reduce Japan to a state of total paralysis, with every major military hub effectively destroyed, and only then invade to take possession of the irradiated rubble.

Again, not good from the IJA's point of view, because it left them without the option of inflicting massive casualties on American invasion forces in battle on the Home Islands.

So it's totally irrelevant that the US had only a single digit number of bombs in summer 1945- what mattered was that the number of atomic bombs Japan could make and drop on the US was zero, while the number the US could make and drop on Japan was more than zero.

*(very likely; if being cut off from the outside world by naval blockade were enough to make Japan give up they'd have given up in early 1945 instead of fighting it out on Okinawa)

[Bakustra]

Hey, Broomstick, can you justify why the million fatalities estimate is much closer to reality than the others? Then why are you complaining that I brought them up? Because you claimed that there was only one military estimate that nobody could possibly criticize with or without the benefit of hindsight, and I showed you to be wrong?

Second of all, you specifically conflated fatalities and casualties with saying: (bolded for clarity)

Then there was the business in Okinawa - over 100,000 Japanese casualties, 50,000 US, and tends of thousands of dead civilians. That was one battle for one island out of all the many islands of Japan. Over 1400 suicide attacks. Episodes of mass suicide by captured Japanese, and also by Okinawan civilians. Okinawa maintains that over 100,000 civilians died.

In other words, about 1/4 to 1/3 of a million people dead to take Okinawa. That is a fact.

You said, in other words, that between 250,000 and 333,000 people died on Okinawa, which you can only get by adding up the numbers you provided.

Now, the problem with using mass "suicides" by Okinawan citizens to prove that Japanese people are/were culturally willing to fight to the death, as you did, is that those suicides were mostly forced by the Japanese army. There have also been debates about the extent to which kamikaze pilots were coerced- it is known that they were regularly beaten in training, and people like Saburo Sakai have stated that they believe large numbers of the kamikaze were coerced into serving. Of course, it is also well-documented that physical abuse was a regular part of army life in the IJA, but overall the point is that there are clear differences between soldiers and civilians, and larger ones in the case of Japan, that make extrapolating civilian responses from soldier responses or vice versa unpredictable at best.

When I say one island, I'm not referring to Okinawa. The only case in the Okinawa campaign where civilians spontaneously fought (as opposed to being coerced like the Okinawan labor battalions and conscripts) was on the small island of Ie Jima, where "hundreds" of the 5,000 people remaining after a limited evacuation helped fortify the island, and then a number aided in attacks, though my source does not provide a percentage. So depending on whether Ie Jima should be considered on its own, or as part of the Okinawan campaign as a whole, and depending on what percentage of civilians actually fought, this could range from 90+% at the high end to vanishingly small fractions at the low end. So why should the numbers be adjusted towards the 90% range?

[Spoonist]

Just wanted to out that the "unconditional surrender" wasn't a US centric thing like it looks in most of the posts above. Instead it was what was agreed between the allies. To accept a conditional surrender from any of the axis was simply never on the table.

Now why did the US go ahead with invasion plans etc when it was likely to reach a surrender without was because of the red scare. If stalin could strategically move and prepare the eastern front after the settling of the western one they would have been able to take a lot of terrotory, or at least that was what was feared among the americans (and some brits).

The way it played out the USSR was preempted on not only the japanese front but also on the chinese/korean one as well.


Also in lieu of shep sharts of the fire bombings people here are overestimating the effect of the atom bombs in the larger scale of things. It was a convenient excuse for the japanese to save face to surrender vs a new "super" weapon but the fact was that it was the firebombings that were forcing their surrender. Its also a japanese fear of surrendering to the right guys, just like in germany.

[Simon_Jester]

The fire bombings would force any rational nation to surrender.

With Japan, there was always the possibility of madness. The Japanese government, in theory, might decide to take their chances with the near-total annihilation of their cities and say "come and get us!" They'd starve by the millions, maybe the tens of millions, and they'd be horribly, horribly underequipped to fight a land war against the US Army and Marines, but they could in principle have done it.*

But this argument hinged on the US actually having to eventually invade Japan or decide to leave the place alone. The existence of atomic bombs presented, for the first time, a third option: to neutralize any possibility of Japan ever recovering, at relatively low cost in resources, without having to set foot on the island.

That was something Japan could not cope with, and they knew it.

*This is basically the same level of madness we now see in North Korea: the willingness to accept any privations on the general public as long as the central government can say it has not given in or given up.

[Metahive]

What I find great is that "Defiance in the face of overwhelming odds" is lauded as the pinnacle of heroism when done by, say, 300 well-oiled Spartans, Davey Crockett at the Alamo or the British at Rork's Drift, but the Japanese are summarily declared to be insane for trying the same. Even better, it's taken as evidence that this deserves them getting WMDs thrown at.

"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.“

Man, good thing the Nazi's nuclear program was so lackluster, otherwise the Brits would have totally deserved getting nuked after this display of SHEER MADNESS!

[Broomstick]

Hey, Broomstick, can you justify why the million fatalities estimate is much closer to reality than the others? Then why are you complaining that I brought them up? Because you claimed that there was only one military estimate that nobody could possibly criticize with or without the benefit of hindsight, and I showed you to be wrong?

YOU are the one dismissing every estimate but your favored one as incorrect. I have taken some pains to continually point out all figures are estimates and ranges. In facts, estimates of deaths much higher than one million have been given if you start factoring fatalities from the starvation and disease that would inevitably occur with even an invasion or a blockade. YOU are the one insisting only one number is correct and all others exaggerations, not me.

Second of all, you specifically conflated fatalities and casualties with saying:

Only if you are incapable of parsing an English sentence, and incapable of realizing that all such numbers are estimates.

Now, the problem with using mass "suicides" by Okinawan citizens to prove that Japanese people are/were culturally willing to fight to the death, as you did, is that those suicides were mostly forced by the Japanese army.

So... how is someone forced to commit suicide less dead than someone who did it willingly? This distinction you make is pointless and irrelevant. Whether a dead civilian was shot in the head by a Japanese soldier, forced to commit suicide by a Japanese soldier, or willing committed suicide he (or she) is a dead civilian.

There have also been debates about the extent to which kamikaze pilots were coerced- it is known that they were regularly beaten in training, and people like Saburo Sakai have stated that they believe large numbers of the kamikaze were coerced into serving.

Again, from the stand point of the numbers of dead, it doesn't matter if a kamikaze was willing or coerced, he is still dead. If we were arguing morality that distinction would matter but we aren't, we're talking about how many corpses would result from a particular action.

Of course, it is also well-documented that physical abuse was a regular part of army life in the IJA, but overall the point is that there are clear differences between soldiers and civilians, and larger ones in the case of Japan, that make extrapolating civilian responses from soldier responses or vice versa unpredictable at best.

What's your point? That if we can't make "predictable" extrapolations we should make none at all?

Again - what is of concern is that civilians are going to die in massive numbers no matter which alternative is taken. The details of how they wind up dead will vary, but they'll still be dead. I don't understand why you think it matters whether someone was coerced to suicide or did so of their own volition - if there is an agency capable of making people suicide it's a source of fatalities.

When I say one island, I'm not referring to Okinawa. The only case in the Okinawa campaign where civilians spontaneously fought (as opposed to being coerced like the Okinawan labor battalions and conscripts) was on the small island of Ie Jima

So... where those conscripted, those civilians forced to fight, using fake bullets or something? No? They were firing real bullets at real soldiers? Gee, maybe that's why the Allies fired back. You know what? Those conscripts still died.

You see, when invaders are charging the beaches they don't stop before each enemy soldier and say "Excuse me - are you a conscript or a volunteer?" If the Japanese could conscipt the reluctant and put them in the front lines those conscripts are going to take losses. I'm sorry, but that's war. It doesn't give a fuck about right or wrong or what you approve of. It involves people forcing other people to do things they do not want to do, including dying.

You keep arguing for the low end of everything - low end of invasion casualties, low number of days the Japanese would hold out in a blockade, low number of civilians either willing to or forced to fight. WHY? Wishful thinking? You can't run a war on wishful thinking.

[Samuel]

Total war is a-ok with attacking the whole of enemy economic apparatus, which the World Trade Center counted as part of. Not to mention that that still applies to the atomic bomb, since they didn't target political and military leadership, but rather office and factory workers in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

No, total war is concerned with attacking war industries. It would be like bombing a dairy farm so that the German Army wouldn't have sufficient milk supplies. Or attacking Erics, because off duty soldiers might eat there.

Hiroshima had, at the time of the bombing the HQ for the armies defense of Southern Japan.
Nagasaki was a major port facility and the site of several arsenals and factories producing weapons.

The bombings were not targeted at the people who lived in the cities. If they had fled the city, we still would have bombed it.

What I find great is that "Defiance in the face of overwhelming odds" is lauded as the pinnacle of heroism when done by, say, 300 well-oiled Spartans, Davey Crockett at the Alamo or the British at Rork's Drift, but the Japanese are summarily declared to be insane for trying the same. Even better, it's taken as evidence that this deserves them getting WMDs thrown at.

Because they didn't use civilians as human shields when doing so?

Man, good thing the Nazi's nuclear program was so lackluster, otherwise the Brits would have totally deserved getting nuked after this display of SHEER MADNESS!

It was just talk. As long as the Royal Navy existed, there was no chance the Germans could invade.

[Sarevok]

What kind of proof would convince Bakustra that Japan would have resisted as fiercly as invasion plans projected ?

[Metahive]

Because they didn't use civilians as human shields when doing so?

How inconsiderate of Japan to be filled with all those Japanese civilians, it's like they consider it their homecountry or something.

It was just talk. As long as the Royal Navy existed, there was no chance the Germans could invade.

Yeah, and it would have been bad form for the Germans to put a nuclear warhead on top of their V2 cruise missiles and launch that at the British Isles since the RN could have done dick all against that and everybody knows that Nazis were big on fairness.

Also, that's totally besides the point anyway. Westerners babbling about fighting till death are considered courageous. Non-westerners using such rhetoric are written off as insane. Double-standard much?

[Samuel]

How inconsiderate of Japan to be filled with all those Japanese civilians, it's like they consider it their homecountry or something.

The same thing could be said of every country in Europe. None of them recruited their entire population to throw at an invader.

Also, that's totally besides the point anyway. Westerners babbling about fighting till death are considered courageous. Non-westerners using such rhetoric are written off as insane. Double-standard much?

Ever heard of Waco, Texas? You won't find anyone who considers them courageous. It isn't because they were criminals- in the Seige of Sydney Street you had a gang of robbers who had murdered three police officers faced off against 200 police for 6 hours. They were considered courageous.

The difference is one used innocent people as human shields and the other didn't.

[Metahive]

The same thing could be said of every country in Europe. None of them recruited their entire population to throw at an invader.

Poland and Russia did and Germany had the Volkssturm, so wrong there, unless you plan to nitpick that they didn't throw their babys at the invaders too.

Ever heard of Waco, Texas? You won't find anyone who considers them courageous. It isn't because they were criminals- in the Seige of Sydney Street you had a gang of robbers who had murdered three police officers faced off against 200 police for 6 hours. They were considered courageous.

That's a confused and contradictory muddle. I brought up concrete examples of the Western fetishisn for Heroic Last Stands, I await you to counter with something better than that.

[Big Phil]

Also, that's totally besides the point anyway. Westerners babbling about fighting till death are considered courageous. Non-westerners using such rhetoric are written off as insane. Double-standard much?

No, this bullshit tangent about double-standards is beside the point. What the fuck does it have to do with anything?

[Samuel]

Poland and Russia did and Germany had the Volkssturm, so wrong there, unless you plan to nitpick that they didn't throw their babys at the invaders too.

Polish resistence used everyone they could when it was clear the German plan was to exterminate them. This was after the country was occupied and is not a comparable situation. They did not throw women and children at the invaders in 39.

The USSR did not conscript women and neither did Nazi Germany.

That's a confused and contradictory muddle. I brought up concrete examples of the Western fetishisn for Heroic Last Stands, I await you to counter with something better than that.

Behold! If you can't respond to your opponents points, claim that it doesn't count.

Your claim
Westerners fetishize last stands except those made by dirty foreigners
My claim
Westerners fetishize last stands except those made by people using human shields.

To disprove you claim I need
Westerners disapproving of a last stand made by civilized people using human shields (Waco)
Westerners approving of a last stand made by non-civilized people

For point b, the Seige of Sydney Street works if you don't consider slavs westerners. If you do, than a non-western last stands that was approved of was Tipu Sultan's last stand against the British.

So I have shown your position is false. Do you retract it?

[Big Phil]

Hey, Broomstick, can you justify why the million fatalities estimate is much closer to reality than the others? Then why are you complaining that I brought them up? Because you claimed that there was only one military estimate that nobody could possibly criticize with or without the benefit of hindsight, and I showed you to be wrong?

Allied Ground Combat Strength @ Okinawa 183,000
Casualties ~50,000, that's 27% casualties

Japanese Ground Combat Strength @ Okinawa 113,000
Casualties ~113,000, or roughly 100% casualties + 42k-150k civilians dead

In other words, at Okinawa every two Japanese soldiers caused not quite a single Allied casualty.

During Operation Downfall, a similar casualty rate based on estimated Japanese troops (roughly half a million) could easily cause 250,000 Allied casualties. In reality the Japanese had nearly a million soldiers throughout the home islands, meaning perhaps half a million casualties based on the Okinawa ratio.


Here's a relevant snip from Wikipedia:

Casualty estimates were based on the experience of the preceding campaigns, drawing different lessons:

* In a letter sent to Gen. Curtis LeMay from Gen. Lauris Norstad, when LeMay assumed command of the B-29 force on Guam, Norstad told LeMay that if an invasion took place, it would cost the U.S. "half a million" dead.[42]

* In a study done by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April, the figures of 7.45 casualties/1,000 man-days and 1.78 fatalities/1,000 man-days were developed. This implied that a 90-day Olympic campaign would cost 456,000 casualties, including 109,000 dead or missing. If Coronet took another 90 days, the combined cost would be 1,200,000 casualties, with 267,000 fatalities.[43]
* A study done by Adm. Nimitz's staff in May estimated 49,000 U.S casualties in the first 30 days, including 5,000 at sea.[44] A study done by General MacArthur's staff in June estimated 23,000 U.S. casualties in the first 30 days and 125,000 after 120 days.[45] When these figures were questioned by General Marshall, MacArthur submitted a revised estimate of 105,000, in part by deducting wounded men able to return to duty.[46]
* In a conference with President Truman on June 18, Marshall, taking the Battle of Luzon as the best model for Olympic, thought the Americans would suffer 31,000 casualties in the first 30 days (and ultimately 20% of Japanese casualties, which implied a total of 70,000 casualties).[47] Adm. Leahy, more impressed by the Battle of Okinawa, thought the American forces would suffer a 35% casualty rate (implying an ultimate toll of 268,000).[48] Admiral King thought that casualties in the first 30 days would fall between Luzon and Okinawa, i.e., between 31,000 and 41,000.[48]

Of these estimates, only Nimitz's included losses of the forces at sea, though kamikazes had inflicted 1.78 fatalities per kamikaze pilot in the Battle of Okinawa,[49] and troop transports off Kyūshū would have been much more exposed.

* A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff by William Shockley estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7 to 4 million American casualties, including 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities. The key assumption was large-scale participation by civilians in the defense of Japan.[1]

Outside the government, well-informed civilians were also making guesses. Kyle Palmer, war correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, said half a million to a million Americans would die by the end of the war. Herbert Hoover, in memorandums submitted to Truman and Stimson, also estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 fatalities, and were believed to be conservative estimates; but it is not known if Hoover discussed these specific figures in his meetings with Truman. The chief of the Army Operations division thought them "entirely too high" under "our present plan of campaign."[50]

The Battle of Okinawa ran up 72,000 U.S casualties in 82 days, of whom 12,510 were killed or missing. (This is conservative, because it excludes several thousand U.S. soldiers who died after the battle indirectly from their wounds.) The entire island of Okinawa is 464 square miles (1,200 km2). If the U.S. casualty rate during the invasion of Japan had only been 5 percent as high per unit area as it was at Okinawa, the United States would still have lost 297,000 soldiers (killed or missing).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall

[Metahive]

Polish resistence conscripted everyone when it was clear the German plan was to exterminate them. This was after the country was occupied. They did not throw women and children at the invaders in 39.

Irrelevant nitpicking. Once they saw what was coming they threw everything and the kitchen sink at the occupiers, MADNESS!

The USSR did not conscript women and neither did Nazi Germany.

In regards to the USSR I'm talking about the partisans, you know, the same use the Japanese planned for their civilians. The Volkssturm didn't conscript women, but they took children and old people which is just as good, so you're just nitpicking again.

You are not honestly going to argue that anyone is calling the Polish and Russians mad for taking this approach, no?

Your claim
Westerners fetishize last stands except those made by dirty foreigners
My claim
Westerners fetishize last stands except those made by people using human shields.

Only if you dishonestly claim every civilian presence on the battlefield to count as "human shield". In that case you have to consider that the 300 Spartans were accompanied by their slaves who perished together with them at Thermopyle and that the Alamo contained civlians and civilian volunteers at the time of battle. So "human shields" are no obstacle to western fetishization.

[Metahive]

I don't plan to further pursue this debate, I therefore concede my argument and retreat from this thread.

[Simon_Jester]

Concession is noted, but I cannot help mentioning the following, because of the truly impressive gems in some of your most recent posts...

What I find great is that "Defiance in the face of overwhelming odds" is lauded as the pinnacle of heroism when done by, say, 300 well-oiled Spartans, Davey Crockett at the Alamo or the British at Rork's Drift, but the Japanese are summarily declared to be insane for trying the same. Even better, it's taken as evidence that this deserves them getting WMDs thrown at.

"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.“

Man, good thing the Nazi's nuclear program was so lackluster, otherwise the Brits would have totally deserved getting nuked after this display of SHEER MADNESS!

Have you made a study of British home defense plans during 1940- oh, no wait, never mind. I can guess the answer.

Basically, the British:
-Did not issue fucking spears to fucking children with the plan of using them as fucking shock troops.
-Did not seriously entertain the notion of the entire population, even the entire adult male population, fighting to the death.
-Did not have generals agitating against ever ever surrendering no matter what even when everything was occupied and "Great Britain" was down to six guys in a cave somewhere; believe it or not, this was not in the cards.
-Did not continue bellowing defiance after their air and naval defenses were stripped away and the invasion troops were massing to attack their island, because that never happened to them unlike with Japan where the Japanese home islands were totally defenseless against air and naval attack and the Japanese still kept bellowing defiance.

In short, the British were a ton less serious about 'never surrender' than the Japanese, no matter what you may cherrypick from a political speech that was specifically intended to inspire confidence at a time when Britain faced the alarming (but not unmanageable) prospect of having to fight the Germans after the French were conquered.

The Germans no doubt knew all this at the time- which is why they did call on the British to give up. Certainly Churchill knew all this. For example, in late 1940 the Americans were worried: what if the Germans conquer Britain and take over the British fleet? That would give the Germans a large and powerful navy, comparable in size to the existing US Navy, which would place American security against Germany in a bad position. So the Americans asked Churchill "uh, hey, will you promise to send the British fleet over here for us to control if the Germans conquer your island?"

He did not say "Britain will never surrender!" Nor did he promise to continue resisting (by sending the British fleet to America) even if Britain itself were destroyed.

Instead, he said "No, I cannot make a guarantee that would be binding on the post-surrender government of Great Britain, because while I won't surrender some successor of mine might, and if so the British fleet would be one of their big bargaining chips. So no, I can't promise to send you the fleet in the event that we are forced to give up, even though it would make the Germans much less of a threat to America."

Churchill and the British of that era had no intention of surrendering under the circumstances, while they could still fight back effectively, with many powerful weapons and resources still at their command. But they knew damn well that Britain would surrender if placed in a position where they could not continue to fight effectively- if the fleet were destroyed and the island invaded and largely occupied, if the Germans were able to put a tight enough naval blockade around Britain to starve the islands out, something like that.

In that situation, the British government would realistically collapse and be replaced by a pro-surrender government- Churchill's signature wouldn't be on the surrender treaty, but some other Prime Minister's would be. Because they were not willing to throw away millions of civilian lives to prolong the inevitable.

In short, the British were bold, but they weren't crazy.


Now, if you were a person familiar with the history of warfare, the context in which Churchill made that speech, things like that, you would already know this.

But you are not such a person. Instead, you're Metahive.

Thus, you do not know the history except what selected fragments you choose to look up on Wikipedia, and you do not know the context of the quote you cite. And you don't know the difference between bold and crazy because you have no clear picture in your mind of which is which: no frame of reference to figure out what kinds of actions are typical of a bold person, and what kinds are typical of a crazy person.

So hit the books and come back in a few years, and maybe we can have this conversation again. Except it won't be the same conversation, because you'll know what the hell you're talking about, and will say and do different things accordingly.

Polish resistence conscripted everyone when it was clear the German plan was to exterminate them. This was after the country was occupied. They did not throw women and children at the invaders in 39.

Irrelevant nitpicking. Once they saw what was coming they threw everything and the kitchen sink at the occupiers, MADNESS!

...Irrelevant nitpicking.

So. The difference between an army that is invading your country with the specific intention of killing all people living in your country and replacing them with people from their country... and an army that is invading your country with no such intention... is irrelevant nitpicking.

[Metahive]

You just wrote all this despite me conceding fully knowing that I can't now defend myself, right? You couldn't have put that in a PM instead to sort out your issues, huh? Tell you what, that's low, Simon, really low. Hope you're now proud of yourself.

[Simon_Jester]

Actually, I wrote it all before seeing your final concession post. I was in a heated and foolish mood because I found your comment about "irrelevant nitpicking" to be totally ridiculous. Remember that you were comparing the Nazi policy of ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe toward the American policy regarding the occupation of Japan, and calling the difference "irrelevant nitpicking."

Because I was in such a heated and foolish mood, due to irritation with what struck me as such an absurd claim on your part, I posted the material I'd already written, regardless of the concession post- the paragraph at the top of my post about "I can't resist" was written last, not first. If I'd seen your posts an hour earlier I would have written exactly the same things, before the concession post.

If you still disagree with what I'm saying, no one would question your right to respond to it. If you do not still disagree with what I'm saying, then I'm just as happy to hear that.

[Metahive]

I did not compare US policy towards Japan with Nazi policy towards Eastern Europe and if it sounded that way I have to apologize for poor communication skills. I pointed out that contrary to Samuel's assertion European nations were capable and willing to mobilize greater parts of their citizenry to resist invaders if there was a call for it. Japanese propaganda portrayed Americans as savages that regularly burned entire populations alive to justify their planned mass employment of civilians as auxiliaries for the defense of the mainland which had not happened on Iwo Jima and Okinawa in that form.

I feel my other arguments don't worthy of any further defense, that's why I surrendered them. From my position I consider the issue settled.

[TC Pilot]

Just to give a little insight into the overall thought-process behind some of the Japanese leadership, consider this quote I've taken from Herbert Bix's Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, which, really, is a quite wonderful piece of work:

"Even if the entire nation is sacrificed to the war, we must preserve both the kokutai and the security of the imperial house." - Hiranuma Kiichiro, President of the Privy Council

[Master of Ossus]

I don't understand why everyone is fixated on what the casualties actually would have been. The issue is only whether or not American military planners had a good faith belief in the figures that they presented, and whether or not those figures (given that good faith belief) supported their use of the atomic weapon.

I'll also point out that Bakustra's comparison between the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the 9/11 attacks is pretty dicey even then. He's fixated on the fact that the US did not rank order targets to assist in the evacuation. Al Qaeda did not give any warning at all that was comparable to the pamphlet/radio campaign.

Bakustra fixates on the fact that the US was trying to instill "terror" in Japan. If this is true, then why did the pamphlets dropped as part of the "terror" campaign talk about the peace that would come about after the War?

Bakustra fixates on the fact that civilians lived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as if this eliminates the fact that they also had factories and ports and a Japanese military HQ and other military targets. Comparing this to the WTC is really tortured, because the WTC had nothing like these things.

Only by trumping up what the US did "wrong," ignoring things that they did right, and minimizing Al Qaeda's faults can comparisons between the two incidents seem remotely fair.