"I am become death"

I know exactly what you mean. I made a post 'M1 Garnad or M1 carbine', now people are arguing over if 7.62x25 is better than .30.

 

That's how this forum goes. And in all fairness, discussing the differences between .30 Mauser and 7.62x25mm is a more productive conversation than discussing which weapon you'd carry.

 

Another quote after the bomb

Kenneth Tompkins Bainbridge (July 27, 1904 – July 14, 1996). His precise measurements of mass differences between nuclear isotopes allowed him to confirm Albert Einstein's mass-energy equivalence concept. He was the Director of the Manhattan Project's Trinity nuclear test, which took place July 16, 1945

After Trinity nuclear bomb test:
"Now we are all sons of bitches."

 

“The reasons for my statement were complex but two predominated. I was saying in effect that we had all worked hard to complete a weapon which would shorten the war but posterity would not consider that phase of it and would judge the effort as the creation of an unspeakable weapon by unfeeling people. I was also saying that the weapon was terrible and those who contributed to its development must share in any condemnation of it. Those who object to the language certainly could not have lived at Trinity for any length of time.”

Letter from Bainbridge to Oppenheimer.

 

Thank you an interesting read but just shows how hit and miss the evaluation process was and then as today how individuals wish to interpret them. Seems the US was not in the mind to consider the possibility that not all opponents have to be killed or that there may have been a surrender at some point.

Have spent many years looking at decision making and would love to see a team crawl over this, there are holes, quite literally, big enough to drop an A bomb through. Iraq but not quite that sexy.

 

Then you have been either very selective or very unfortunate in your choice of reading material. Japan clearly was not ready to surrender unconditionally or they would have. There probably was consensus that Japan would surrender if their empire and government were left intact but that wasn't acceptable to the allies, nor should it have been.

I thought you claimed to have read the earlier discussions. They pointed to documented studies of the potential casualties of a number of alternatives. Is it what you've read or your abiltity understand and/or acknowledge it that is the problem.

*** edit for ***
It's been pointed out to me that some actual data would improve this post a bit so in regards to the casualty estimates for an invasion of Japan PLS see (my apologies if these have been already linked):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall#Estimated_casualties
http://www.endusmilitarism.org/casualty_projections_Giangreco.html

 

But it would not happen. Apart from slaughter verging on genocide where have the number of people we are talking of here being killed en bloc just because they were where an advancing army wanted to go.

It is that thinking by the then US military and government which makes the numbers likely to have been killed questionable.

 

Well the U.S wasn't exactly the type of white knight you'd imagine them as. Peace wasn't always the vision. If they didn't surrender at all a lot of their country would be filled with radioactive waste. We just got lucky at the last second that somebody decided not to kill Tojo so relations between the U.S. and Japan wouldn't be so shaky. We even forced them by their own hand to become democratic, which it is true that it worked out well for them but they could have ended up like the democratic republic of Congo (and I'm sure you all know what it's like their). No matter how you look at it any mass kill of civilians for no matter what cause is a war crime.

 

Since we are wandering pretty far off the reservation perhaps a little nudge will get us on track.

I can understand the dilemma Oppenheimer endured some years after the war. He was a brilliant man, a scientist and genius in his field. He was asked to do that which was the point of his life, push back the darkness and illuminate the unknown to the known. His home and people faced the gravest threat it had known since the Civil War. The government offered him all the money and resources he needed to make giant stride's, but they wanted something in return. A weapon.

He could have declined and been left behind, or worse lived in a world where far less scrupulous men built such a weapon and turned it upon his people. I'm sure he would have preferred that it was done for the science alone, that only it's positive aspects were exploited like energy, medicine and transportation. Unfortunately you can not open Pandora's box just a little bit. As a intelligent scientific mind he knew every discovery can be used for good or ill.

Every advance has the potential to harm as much as it helps. Pesticides that increase crop yield poison as well. Anti-biotics that saves lives, makes viruses stronger. His work helped end the most destructive war in humanities history and it gave humanity the ability to utterly destroy not only itself but the world as well.

Most of us lead quiet lives, some people we encounter profit by our acts, some suffer, but we ourselves do not make epic changes in the path of humanities destiny. Oppenheimer is one of the few who did.

 

I think he has confused Emperor Hirohito with Hideki Tojo...

While we did "save" Tojo when he tried to commit suicide, we did then try and find him guilty of war crimes. his sentence was death by hanging, which was duly carried out on December 23, 1948.

 

And many of those killed were under the age of 17 or above the age of 45. So it was still a war crime.

 

AS pertaining to the Japanese...They put had many schoolchildren doing war work. Who do you think helped make the balloons for the Fu-Go balloon bombs.

When your back is against the wall, age has relatively little meaning, for instance the German Volkssturm, or the Japanese 28 million civilians issued bamboo poles & other rudimentary weapons to defend against the expected American invasion of Japan.

Unfortunately, in modern "total" war, civilians are just another strategic resource.