Alex WellersteinVerified account

Your conflating two issues. One is what objectively would make the Japanese surrender. As you note, no one can predict this. The other is whether there was any real alternative to dropping the bomb. There wasn’t, not in this historical context.

Sure there were. They could have: 1. relented on the unconditional surrender 2. withheld the bomb while the pursued diplomacy given the invasion wasn't to take place for months 3. dropped one bomb and given the Japanese more time to respond etc....

These are all terrific options if you consider them completely out of the historical context.

No, they all fit well within the historical context as many eminent historians have argued- as some in the Truman administration argued.

Many? Fewer. And at least one of them is distinctly dishonest in his approach. I know this because when the Truman papers were opened up in the 90s, and some of his main points were disproven, his exact words to me were: “I don’t care. It was wrong.”

I hate the whole “wpuld Japan have surrendered without the bomb“, because I think it’s a hypothetical that was unknowable to a president who was going to drop bombs until the enemy surrendered unconditionally.

I'm always surprised that Truman's reaction to the Okinawa bloodbath given adequate weight. Truman was an Arty officer in WW1 and he knew what ground combat looked like. He was uniquely placed to make this (fairly easy) decision after Trinity's success.

I reviewed a book in which an author argued that Truman knew, or should have, that an invasion would only have cost 50,000 lives, not 500,000 and so Truman was overreacting. People really still argue this as though it’s a real thing. Revisionism (sorry Alex) is a helluva drug.

I will read both, but the relative impact of Hiroshima vx. Nagasaki here and in the main thread does not jibe with what I remember from reading -- granted, many years ago -- Richard Rhodes' "Making of the Atomic Bomb." 1/

2/ My understanding was that Japanese physicist -- quite logically -- informed the government that the Americans could only have produced one such bomb, at least in the near term. In fact the Americans did not have enough refined uranium for a second “Little Boy” type. ...

3/4 Only the supply of plutonium and the radical — much more efficient — “implosion” detonation method of “Fat Man” allowed them to drop a second bomb using far less fissionable material.

4/fin So I thought it was the second detonation, not the first, that convinced the Japanese of the hopelessness of their situation.

I think the conditions surrounding the use of the second bomb are a lot more arguable.

As I said elsewhere in this ramble, I admit I'm out of my league here. I'm just not as far out, I think, as some I've heard declare surety before.

You’re not. It’s not like Truman had to overcome some internal anti-bomb lobby. The idea that he would take additional US casualties and prolong the war just avoid using a weapon that had been the focus of a gigantic effort is just daft.

Agreed. Thanks. @wellrstein, I think, would argue that domestic political necessity and war-waging and ending necessity are not the same thing, but he has not convinced me the distinction is that simple yet. Will read Hasegawa. 1/2