Pavel
Posts: 308
Joined: 1/10/2005
From: Washington
Status: offline
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Ok, I'm going to get myself torn a new one here, but all right.
We weren't sure Japan was going to surrender. In hindsight, the writeing was on the wall, but until that point, the forces of Japan has pretty much fought to the death (example, at Tarawa of a garrison of 4500 only 17 surrendered. Also over 1,038 Marines died takeing the island). We had intelligence showing that the Japanese were going to arm their population with the intention of useing them as sucide troops. Also, Allied Intel showed that the Japanese still had a fairly large army in China and the home islands (this was a bit of a mistake, many of these forces had been used to replace or reinforce other units in the south pacific).
So as far as the US Goverment and Military knew, we were going to have to invade the enemy on their home turf, that they were going to fight to the death, and we'd be faceing a large highly trained bit of Japanese army sorts. After some number crunching the casualty estimates for both sides started creeping up into the hundreds of thousands. Given this situation, there were three main plans put forth. 1. Continue the course with bombing and naval blockades (already killing thousands of civilians and starving the country), 2. mount an invasion (costing likely hundreds of thousands of american lives, and likely killing upwards of a million japanese people), or 3. launch and atomic attack.
Again, in hindsight it's easy to talk about how terrible the atomic bomb was. But the truth was it was really a bit of a mystery outside of the scienctific community. Noone really understood the radiological aspects of an atomic blast, pretty much all we knew is it worked, and it was devistateing. Thus that led to the concept of the A-bomb as just once big regular bomb. From the purely econmical aspect it was alot better, one plane carrying one bomb could do the job of 100 planes carrying thousands of bombs. That and it was hoped by giveing the impression that we could destroy the Japanese at will, without them haveing the chance to fight back could lead to the surrender we were looking for (unconditional, we weren't looking for Versilles all over again).
So the choice was made, it'd hopefully end the war faster, and cost less American lives. When the first bomb hit, the Japanese were quick to either claim it was some kind of trick and not a new bomb (lots of planes dropping from really high up, a regular bomb causeing extra havoc through conveluted means, etc). By and large the consensus was that it was a one time deal, and that continueing the fight was the best choice. Then the US dropped a second bomb, making it clear that no, it was a new bomb, and yes, the US can just stand off and nuke japan until there's noone left to fight. Even with this realization a number of Japanese troops still munitanied in an attempt to stop the surrender.
The first bomb was dropped as an alternative to a bloody invasion or a lasting slow starvation. The second bomb was dropped because we faced an enemy still convinced it could win out against the odds and over the bodies of it's own citizens. The peace terms the Japanese were looking for still put them in control of what they still held onto, in addition to keeping thier present goverment intact. We had done that with Germany after the first world war, and that had just led to the illusion that Germany hadn't REALLY lost the war. The US hoped to avoid illusion so that some post war Japanese version of Hitler couldn't use it to bring about the Japanese empire part two.
Firstly, the use of phosporus on human targets is banned. The same way that .50 cal rounds are banned against human targets. The thing is incindary bombs are never used on people just standing around in a nice little cluster. They're used on factories, buildings, etc. The peple just happen to be standing too close, and thusly there's no violation of anything at all. I would hazard to call Dresden excessive, but to forget the RAF and Air Marshal Harris's role would be just idiotic. Tokyo was done for the same reason that the A-bombs were dropped, it was hoped by a huge show of force that a surrender might be encouraged.
Of course you just have to look to the pre-war thinking of Douhet and Mitchell to find the basis for the mass bombing principals, but that's another topic all togther.
And I'm just going to stop now. I'm sure I've typed enough of my gibberish for anyone's taste.
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