The atomic bombs dropped in WW2 were unecessary.

My apologies. I was mistaking you for another member here.

 

Lots of things in war can be seen as unnecessary, when viewed in hindsight.

Japan had our claim that we had destroyed the city with an A-bomb.

The very next day after the bombing, Japan had reports from their own officials that the entire city had been destroyed with a single bomb.

That gave them two whole days to communicate their surrender to us, but they chose not to surrender.

Later, when they did decide to surrender, they were able to have their surrender offer in our hands the very next morning.

That is incorrect. Japan asked that Hirohito be allowed to retain unlimited dictatorial power.

We made Hirohito subordinate to MacArthur.

 

Actually Japan didn't offer even a surrender with conditions until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

 

They were ready to surrender everything except their Emporer. The fact that we let them keep their Emporer afterwards anyway strongly suggests we had other motives. The two most notable:
-we wanted to demonstrate our new power to the whole world in no uncertain terms. One bomb could have been seen as a 'one time thing', allowing the doubt that we couldn't reproduce it. Two bombs assured everyone we could make as many as we wanted
-we wanted to know what exactly the effects on a population and society were. We wanted to know exactly what we had discovered

I agree with Eisenhower (and presumably you) that nuking the Japanese was entirely unnecessary, and thus atrocious. However, its important to remember for context: we did no less to many cities in Europe fighting the Germans, example- Dresden. The only difference was that we accomplished it with hundreds of conventional bombers instead of just one. We even bombed Nazi-occupied French cities, causing far more casualties to French civilians than German occupiers, and the French cheered us all the way through it because they knew it was necessary for their liberation and a Nazi defeat.

War is hell.

 

Japan did not make any offer to surrender with a guarantee for their Emperor (or with any other conditions) until after both A-bombs had already been dropped.

Our motive was to make them surrender, something that they were steadfastly refusing to do when the A-bombs were dropped.

The fact that it can be seen as unnecessary in hindsight doesn't make it atrocious.

 

“The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan…” ---Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet

“The use of this barbarous weapon…was of no material assistance in our war against Japan.” —Adm. William Leahy, Truman's Chief of Staff

“The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment…. It was a mistake to ever drop it…. [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it…” —Adm. William “Bull” Halsey, Commander of the US Third Fleet

“The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.” ---Maj. Gen. Curtis “Hawk” LeMay, head of the Twenty-First Bomber Command

 

If we could have just gotten the B-36 operational the USA could have fire bombed all of Tokyo with impunity from 40,000 ft. plus, starting at the perimeter and systematically working inward until surrender was achieved or until the entire city was burned.

That would have avoided any nuke tears.

 

So what? Lots of things in war can be seen as unnecessary, when viewed in hindsight.

 

Quotes from four people at the time who would know vs 75 years of re-re-re-revised history...

 

What "vs"??

Are you alleging some sort of conflict between those quotes and a modern claim that the bombs were not necessary?

 

That sounds like an excuse for military incompetence to me.

 

It is unreasonable to expect our soldiers to have known ahead of time the precise moment that Japan was going to surrender.

They stopped attacking when Japan notified us of their surrender. That is all that the laws of war require, and that is what is reasonable.

 

I wasn't referring to the guys on the ground, I was referring to their leaders.

 

Same thing. It is unreasonable to expect our leaders to have somehow known ahead of time when Japan was going to surrender.

They stopped the war when Japan surrendered. That is all that any reasonable person expected of them.

 

I don't dispute any of that, I was only commenting on your post, which implicitly seems to mitigate wrong decision-making at command level.

 

Im saying they had a more intimate perspective into it than we do.

 

There was no wrong decision making. They kept attacking until the enemy surrendered, then they stopped attacking. That was the correct decision.

 

I'm sure you're right but I wasn't connecting my comment to the topic per se, only to your post 58.

 

I agree completely.

 

It is natural to feel a slight bit of remorse when a lot of people have to be killed to win a war, but it should be gotten over quickly -- because winning is the only thing.

 

It ended the war and more importantly using them demonstrated to the Soviets and China we had the weapon and it was viable and deployable as our ultimate deterrent.

 

We did not

The war was already over

 

We did not what?

That is incorrect. When we dropped the A-bombs, we were still at war.

 

Actually, we never demanded "unconditional surrender". We (and the other Allied nations at Potsdam) only demanded the "unconditional surrender" of it's armed forces:

No such demand was ever made upon the government itself.

 

Exactly. What Japan was trying to arrange was an armistice. Which is something very different.

Japan wanted a pro quo ante bellum, with all military forces returning to their pre-war borders. There be no occupation, there be no war crime trials, there be no restrictions on the future of their military. Basically return to December 1941 like nothing had ever happened.

There was no way that was ever acceptable to the Allied Powers, they had learned their lesson the first time when they basically did that with Germany after the World War. This time they had to make sure that none of the Axis Powers would ever again be a threat, even if it meant decades of occupation.

Japan may have accepted Potsdam earlier, but much of the language was vague in regards to Emperor Showa. Several of the key paragraphs could have been interpreted that either he must be removed from power and possibly tried, or that he would be allowed to remain as Emperor.

This seemed to imply that the Allies were willing to allow the Emperor to remain in office, but the phrase "eliminated for all time" worried them, because it might mean the elimination of the Imperial Throne if they thought the Emperor was responsible. But at the same time, talking about "Japanese sovereignty" also implied that they were not intending on removing the Emperor.

But it was not until after the second bomb was dropped and Russia invaded Manchuko that they finally wired their preliminary acceptance, on the main condition that the Emperor remain in power.