Necessity and justification are two different concepts. Few believe it was necessary - the United States' overwhelming industrial capacity was bound to prevail over Japan. The state of the two countries warmaking capacity was totally lopsided by 1945. Thus it was not necessary to achieve victory.

That is brought an end to the war with fewer casualties, both American and Japanese even moreso, is not a difficult claim to support. Japan planned to fight a defensive war against an amphibious invasion in order to negotiate more favorable surrender terms. The Japanese estimated that this would incur 20 million Japanese casualties, and this plan was approved. Even if we assume that Japan's war machine would collapse before this figure of lives lost was reached, it is almost certain that the death toll would be in the millions. Germany, without the advantage of being a mountainous island nation and having a lower population than Japan, fought on its own soil in 1945 to the effect of several million dead. Thus, it's almost certain that the atomic bombings resulted in an order of magnitude fewer Japanese lives lost than an conventional invasion.

Yes, but maybe the bombs would have had the same effect, if dropped on actual military targets (or even unhabitated land, but close enough to demonstrate the power) instead of an civilian city.

(a city with military production, sure sure, but they were choosen not because of military value, but because they were relatively undamaged, so the effect of the bombs could be studied. Concern for loss of japan civilian live was never an issue)

Given that the Japanese military wanted to continue the war even after both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, your conjecture is demonstrably untrue. Remember, the military was the primary power in the Japanese government, second only to the emperor, and were the driving force behind starting the war as well. Also remember that the firebombing campaign across all of the other major cities had already inflicted combined casualties far greater than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined; immense deaths of their own civilians was seen as an unavoidable necessity to defend their homeland.

Remember, it took not one, but two atomic bombs dropped on cities for Japan to surrender. And even after that, there was an attempted coup to continue fighting the war: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

There only existed two bombs at the time. Had the bombs been dropped as a show of force, it is very likely the US and Japan would have to suffer through a costly invasion anyway.

Hmm. I think the US had at least one more core for a fat man type weapon.

Specifically, the demon core[1]. It was the core-in-waiting for a third bomb if needed, and I believe that the uranium and plutonium production lines were ramping up by that time[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

[2] https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/timeline search for 1945 July 23 entry.

40 years ago I wrote a paper on nuclear weapons. My memory isn't perfect and the sources are 40-50 years out of date. But here goes.

The US built a massive manufacturing pipeline to make nuclear weapons. Little boy was a once off. Fat man was basically a functional prototype. And the manufacturing pipeline was running and kept running after the war. How much weapons grade plutonium they had left over after they bombed Nagasaki is kind of a quibble.

The production line was already delivering about 1 bomb per 10 days at that point. The military wanted to keep bombing until surrender was achieved.

Minor elaboration: Nagasaki was not an undamaged city. It had been bombed multiple times by conventional American bombs. But then Nagasaki was just a backup target anyway. Kokura was the primary target for the second bomb but it was obscured by clouds and smoke during the bombing run on August 9 so the plane went to Nagasaki instead. By the time they got there it too was socked in by clouds which is why the Nagasaki bomb fell so far off target.

It was discussed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_a...

Those arguments do not seem convincing at all.

Why would a demonstration need to be told the japanese in advance?

And a dud could have also happened to the one used on hiroshima.

A shock effect could have been achieved by a bomb detonated close to Tokyo. And with papers dropped, saying, this will happen to all your cities, soon.

There is something you seem to forget, that lost Japanese lives counted for anything in American eyes. 4 years of war, reports of war crimes and propaganda effectively demonized them and thus their value as humans deteriorated to wholly expendable in American war plans. The reason there was no invasion, was to save American lives as much as possible.

You misunderstand - the belief is not that the US could have won the war even without the bombs, but that "bombs vs. invasion" was a false dichotomy, and that Japan would have unconditionally surrendered around the same time without the bombs, or perhaps even sooner had the conditional surrender they were already seeking been on the table.

The Japanese offered to surrender if they could continue to control their captured territories, essentially continuing to rape China. That’s a hell of a condition to allow them.

I'm curious where you found this information, because the best I could find was that negotiations regarding those conditions were never finished:

To this end, Stalin and Molotov strung out the negotiations with the Japanese, giving them false hope of a Soviet-mediated peace. [..] The Japanese would have to surrender unconditionally to all the Allies. To prolong the war, the Soviets opposed any attempt to weaken this requirement.[56] This would give the Soviets time to complete the transfer of their troops from the Western Front to the Far East, and conquer Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, northern Korea, South Sakhalin, the Kuriles, and possibly Hokkaidō - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan#Soviet_inte...

However, the Japanese presented no formal terms, because details were to be worked out by negotiation. - https://www.quora.com/When-Japan-offered-conditional-surrend...

Edit as reply due to rate limit:

The article you linked doesn't support the claims you made about Japan's conditional surrender. The closest it comes is "Anami wanted retention of the emperor, self-disarmament, no foreign occupation, and trial of any Japanese war criminals by Japan itself". But that is what Anami wanted, not what was written down in some final, take-it-or-leave-it offer. And that's from before the Soviet declaration of war.

In fact the article basically contradicts your claim about the necessity of the bombs:

> The bomb played a part in Japan’s surrender, but it may not have been necessary, he said. Had the U.S. drawn Stalin into publicly supporting the Potsdam Declaration’s unconditional surrender demand, Japan might not have held out hope for a Soviet-brokered deal. Had it guaranteed the emperor’s position, Japan might have surrendered earlier, Hasegawa said, though this is yet another point that draws endless historical debate.

> “Other alternatives were available, but they were not explored,” Hasegawa said.

Choosing the bombs over merely exploring other options is rather damning, don't you think?

See https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm Document 62:

""Hoshina Memorandum" on the Emperor's "Sacred Decision [go-seidan]," 9-10 August, 1945 Source: Zenshiro Hoshina, Daitoa Senso Hishi: Hoshina Zenshiro Kaiso-roku [Secret History of the Greater East Asia War: Memoir of Zenshiro Hoshina] (Tokyo, Japan: Hara-Shobo, 1975), excerpts from Section 5, "The Emperor made go-seidan [= the sacred decision] – the decision to terminate the war," 139-149 [translation by Hikaru Tajima]

"An overview of the destruction of Hiroshima [undated, circa August-September 1945] (Photo from U.S. National Archives, RG 306-NT) Despite the bombing of Hiroshima, the Soviet declaration of war, and growing worry about domestic instability, the Japanese cabinet (whose decisions required unanimity) could not form a consensus to accept the Potsdam Declaration. Members of the Supreme War Council—“the Big Six”[46]—wanted the reply to Potsdam to include at least four conditions (e.g., no occupation, voluntary disarmament); they were willing to fight to the finish. The peace party, however, deftly maneuvered to break the stalemate by persuading a reluctant emperor to intervene. According to Hasegawa, Hirohito had become convinced that the preservation of the monarchy was at stake. Late in the evening of 9 August, the emperor and his advisers met in the bomb shelter of the Imperial Palace.

"Zenshiro Hoshina, a senior naval official, attended the conference and prepared a detailed account. With Prime Minister Suzuki presiding, each of the ministers had a chance to state his view directly to Hirohito. While Army Minister Anami tacitly threatened a coup (“civil war”), the emperor accepted the majority view that the reply to the Potsdam declaration should include only one condition not the four urged by “Big Six.” Nevertheless, the condition that Hirohito accepted was not the one that foreign minister Togo had brought to the conference. What was at stake was the definition of the kokutai (national policy). Togo’s proposal would have been generally consistent with a constitutional monarchy because it defined the kokutai narrowly as the emperor and the imperial household. What Hirohito accepted, however, was a proposal by the extreme nationalist Kiichiro Hiranuma which drew upon prevailing understandings of the kokutai: the “mythical notion” that the emperor was a living god. “This was the affirmation of the emperor’s theocratic powers, unencumbered by any law, based on Shinto gods in antiquity, and totally incompatible with a constitutional monarchy.” Thus, the Japanese response to the Potsdam declaration opposed “any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of his Majesty as a sovereign ruler.” This proved to be unacceptable to the Truman administration."

That is a reference to what the Russians wanted, and this is after the nuclear bombs. Once the bombs were dropped terms acceptable to some of the Japanese changed. Japan wasn’t a monolithic government, you had competing leadership, the empowered, the military, the politicians, etc.

The military fervently wanted a US invasion, believing it could inflict millions of casualties and then negotiate better terms. And many Japanese didn’t feel like they had even lost yet, they were willing to endure bombings feeling their fortress island was unassailable.

https://www.stripes.com/news/special-reports/world-war-ii-th...

> Japan wasn’t a monolithic government, you had competing leadership, the empowered, the military, the politicians, etc.

Many of who resumed as they did during the War in the re-construction phase, I highly recommend the book: A Nazi in Exile. Its about Martin Bormann, a high ranking SS lieutenant close to Hitler who was already making deals in what seemed like the inevitable defeat of Germany, Italy and Japan by 1943-44 or so and starting to ensure it funneled its funds out of Germany into Switzerland and helped the biggest corporations (on both sides) continue to thrive in the post-war economy.

Many of whom still remain as monoliths to this day.

I think all this does is re-enforce General Butler's claim that: War is a racket. Everything else is just footnotes that often contradict and conflict with one another to obscure the obvious fact that no one 'wins' in War except a very small collective few in Banks, Industry that shape war policy for other Poor people to fight.

Japan had actually repeatedly offered conditional surrenders. Specifically, surrenders on the condition that it keep some of its colonies (Korea and Taiwan), that the Japanese military government remain intact, and that nobody be charged for war crimes. This is as if Germany offered a surrender on the condition that it keep western Poland and Czechoslovakia, that the Nazi party remain in power, and that nobody be tried for war crimes. This is not remotely close to an acceptable surrender.

And the US ultimately did accept a surrender on the condition that the imperial family not be tried for war crimes (a particularly contentious point for China, since a royal family member was the commanding officer in charge of the forces that perpetrated the crimes at Nanking).

It’s worth noting that many in Japan sincerely believed it was the best way to end to the war.

I’ve changed my opinion on this topic many times over the years. Today I think it’s just arrogant to say it was obviously wrong or obviously right. Reality is too complicated. Counterfactuals abound.

One dimension that people haven’t discussed in this thread, is that ending the war with atomic bombs and napalm prevented a bilateral invasion of Japan, which would have led to a Korea or Germany-like partitioning of postwar Japan.

Instead of a speedy recovery and track to self determination, there would have been 50 years of Cold War tensions, perhaps proxy wars.

But maybe not! It’s very complicated.

As someone who grew up outside of the US, I have found that Americans have a unique view on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. American schoolchildren are raised to believe that it was morally justified because it won - and therefore ended - the war. This attitude is so deeply and fundamentally ingrained into most Americans (including many who would self-identify as liberals) that it is very hard for them to see it as a war crime despite obviously meeting the criteria for such.

In a sense, the quibbling over whether or not it was a war crime is meaningless. If atomic weapons hadn't been available, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki would've undergone ordinary firebombing, likely resulting in immediate casualties just as high. See, for example: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/world/tokyo-journal-10000... for a description of the effects of firebombing elsewhere in Japan.

One might argue that the lingering radiation effects made atomic weapons worse but, on the other hand, the firebombing would've been done more than once. Really six of one, half a dozen of the other, except you don't see that many people bringing up firebombings as a war crime.

Honest question: can it not be both a less fatal end to the war and a war crime? This classification of something as a war crime, even if appropriate, isn't the ending of a discussion.

A lot of people are uncomfortable with the concept that the best possible outcome should be considered a crime.

(And I'm not limiting this to the circumstances under discussion -- I'm talking about the view that, no matter what situation you're in, there should be a way out that isn't a crime. Such people will, for example, object violently if somewhat incoherently to the fact that, under Qing Chinese law, a man ordered by his father to commit a crime had no way to get out of that situation while following the law: following the order is illegal, but so is disobeying the command.)

Note that people who object to committing war crimes are not a kind of legalistic automata that require following the letter of the law no matter what. We do not always decide something is a crime because there's a law that says so. For example, the Holocaust would have been a crime even if the powers at the time had decided that it wasn't.

Complicated Chinese (and Japanese) laws about legal and familiar duty are really not the subject under discussion here, but a red herring. Murdering innocent people is an entirely different matter.

Finally, consider there are many people in this world who won't commit some crimes -- such as genocide -- even if there is no way out and refusing will cost them their own lives.

> Finally, consider there are many people in this world who won't commit some crimes -- such as genocide -- even if there is no way out and refusing will cost them their own lives.

Yes, this viewpoint is more or less the opposite of the viewpoint I describe above, and it is also common. But so is the other one.

It is hard to overstate how many civilians suffered and died in war crimes perpetrated by Japan before and during the war. The number vastly exceeds the number who died as a result of the American atomic bombs. Breaking Japan's will and ability to make war was the entire world's highest priority in late 1945. Any discussion of "American war crimes against Japan" is meaningless without discussing Japan's crimes against half the world, together with the very real possibility that the nation of Japan continues to exist today solely because those two bombs were dropped.

> "It is hard to overstate how many civilians suffered and died in war crimes perpetrated by Japan before and during the war"

I'll take a stab at it.

If one sums together the estimated deaths in Asia caused by Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties), both military and civilian, one gets totals in excess of 15-22 million. This compares to about 5 million dead in the Holocaust. So basically, Japan effectively committed 3 to 4 Holocausts, a fact not often remarked upon in these discussions. If we compare that to the roughly 0.25 million estimated dead from Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined, the US would have had to drop 40 more atomic bombs to catch up to the Germans and another 120-176 atomic bombs to catch up to the Japanese. (If one likes, they can subtract out military casualties or otherwise adjust the numbers but the ratios are still high.)

One should also factor in that the Nazis simply executed the majority of the victims of the Holocaust as efficiently as they could in concentration camps. The deaths inflicted during the IJA occupation, on the other hand was accompanied by rape and by torture, including on children, across significant parts of a continent. It's notable that even a diehard Nazi who was in China was so revolted by what he was witnessing that he intervened to protect civilians from the IJA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Rabe. Given the option, it doesn't seem unlikely that many of the IJA's victims would have preferred a death by nuclear blast; at least it would have been impersonal.

So, were Hiroshima and Nagasaki war crimes? I think it's not unreasonable to say that even if they were, they were negligible in the grand scheme of things.

You're comparing unrelated numbers.

I don't subscribe to the moral calculus that has war crimes cancel each other. When one starts justifying a war crime against civilians because the enemy committed war crimes themselves, one is on very shaky ground.

For example, rape and murder against German civilians is not morally justifiable just because the Nazis were horrendous monsters.

There were 4 alternatives. Nuclear weapons were one.

2. Invade. The Japanese had 900,000 troops in Kyushu, plus militia forces. Japanese estimates were for 20 million deaths. Look up the battle for Okinawa some time.

3. Let the Soviets invade. Same deaths, just not US soldiers. Plus Stalin didn't like to give up territory the Soviets conquered.

4. Continue the blockade, with or without conventional bombing. Likely, the Japanese government would have surrendered or collapsed by mid-1946. Again, millions of deaths due to starvation. And civil war.

On #3, it would not have been the same deaths. Russia hated Japan and would have genocided the Japanese by the millions, torturing, starving, brutalizing, slaughtering them. Russia would have conquered and enslaved Japan for the next half century.

Instead the US occupied Japan and forced cultural changes upon them, which resulted in Japan becoming a democratic, peaceful economic power and tremendous contributor to the global economy and both global and regional stability.

The nuclear bombings saved at least a million Japanese lives. It can easily be argued it would be a war crime not to drop them.

No it cannot. That is not what war crime means.