RE: The Hiroshima shadows.
June 3, 2017 at 7:02 am
(This post was last modified: June 3, 2017 at 7:13 am by Gawdzilla Sama.)
(June 3, 2017 at 2:16 am)downbeatplumb Wrote: Japan was nuked partly as a demonstration to Russia that the US had nukes and would use them. It was a dick swinging thing to do just before Russian troops would have been used against Japan.
http://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/cou/jap...j-sdw.html
I've studied the end game in WWII for decades and haven't found any support for that claim.
(June 3, 2017 at 2:24 am)Minimalist Wrote: It was a cultural failure. We did not understand them. They did not understand us. John Toland's "The Rising Sun" gives an amazing overview of the multiple fuckups that led to WWII in the Pacific.
Japan wanted total control of East Asia. Before Pearl Harbor they were murdering missionaries, burning churches, and demanding that "foreign" companies doing business in China put a Japanese on their boards and pay Japan for the privilege of doing business there. The Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere was their name for the Empire of Japan, Extended Edition. It wasn't all that hard to understand.
Toland's a fun read, but not a serious one.
Some points:
The bombs were considered to be just big explosives. There was no discussion of "fallout" or radiation effects outside the labs. The plan for the invasions of Japan was to drop a bomb on a position that was blocking our advance and send the troops through 30 minutes later. We have pictures of Groves and Oppenheimer at Ground Zero of the Trinity Test Site the day after the test.
We didn't use the bombs to "hurry up and end the war before the Russians got into it." Gen. MacArthur sent at least two demands to Gen. Marshall that the Soviets attack Hokkaido to pull troops away from his beaches.
Also, the bombs were originally intended for use against Germany. Whether or not they would be used against Berlin would have depended on the tactical situation at the time. A more probable target would have been the "mountain redoubt" where Nazi fanatics were rumored to be holed up for a post-war guerilla campaign.
