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この印篭が目に入らぬか
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Quote:
Originally posted by Lebell
I can't recall about that.
I'm talking about the implosion type weapons that were being assembled in August. (Which I read about in "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" by Richard Rhodes.)
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Here's what I was thinking about (Thanks to LexisNexis -- all I remembered was that I read this in the summer of 1995):
Quote:
The Washington Post
July 16, 1995
A SECTION; Pg. A01
HEADLINE: Truman Didn't Hesitate to Drop Atomic Bomb on Japan
BYLINE: Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY:
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Blasted by U.S. atomic bombs 50 years ago, the Japanese cities today instantly call to mind images of terrible devastation and the unique horror of history's only nuclear attacks.
In 1945, though, they were merely the first two targets in a series of atomic bombings approved by President Harry S. Truman and his advisers in a calculated effort to use the extraordinary new weapon to drive Tokyo to surrender unconditionally.
On July 24 of that year, Truman enthusiastically approved a schedule drawn up by military and scientific advisers to drop two atomic bombs on Japan in August, three per month in September, October and November, and possibly seven in December.
At the same time, assuming the bombs alone might not be sufficient to end the war, the military was going forward with a plan, approved by Truman in June, for a November invasion of Japan's southernmost island of Kyushu using more than 765,000 U.S. troops. A big concern in Washington was that the new weapons, never tested under wartime conditions, might prove to be duds.
As the 50th anniversary approaches of the atomic bombings, a debate has revived over whether Truman was justified in using the bomb. Some historians have said he erred and set a dangerous precedent because Japan would have surrendered even had the bomb not been dropped.
Others have charged that Truman used the bomb less to end the war with Japan than to intimidate the Soviet Union at the Cold War's outset. Another suggestion is that a "warning" bomb should have been exploded somewhere as a demonstration, to give Japan a chance to surrender. There is a theory that Truman's advisers insisted on using the bombs to justify the $ 2 billion spent to develop them.
But the issues that concerned Truman and his advisers at the time, and the debates within the administration, point to motives and judgments that are very different from some ascribed by subsequent critics, according to a three-month study of archival records and the published literature on the subject.
While historians with benefit of hindsight long will ponder what else besides the bomb might have forced Japan's surrender, the evidence is abundant that Truman used the weapon at the time because his paramount goal was to win World War II as quickly as possible on U.S. terms.
A key factor in White House thinking was that the public was weary of fighting, in the wake of Allied victory in Europe in May 1945 and following more than 3 1/2 years of bloodshed. By early July, total U.S. losses in the Army and Navy were more than 1 million, including 290,000 killed, 630,000 wounded, and the remainder either missing or prisoners of war.
Top officials were worried about growing domestic discontent highlighted by strikes and other labor unrest. At a May 22, 1945, meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Fred M. Vinson, then head of domestic mobilization and later a Supreme Court justice, said he was "afraid of unrest in the country. He never saw the people in their present frame of mind before," according to notes of the session.
Vinson talked of widespread concerns about food rationing and shortages. People were angry that older men were being pulled out of nonmilitary jobs and drafted, and that some soldiers who had already served in Europe were being transferred to the Pacific theater for the expected invasion of Japan.
Truman recorded in his diary, and said in a radio address after Nagasaki, that he hoped the atomic bombings would make the invasion unnecessary. It seemed certain to cost high American casualties, judging by the toll of 18,000 dead in the recent U.S. conquests of the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Against that background, the dropping of the two atomic bombs in three days achieved the goal of a rapid surrender on acceptable terms. In the Aug. 15 announcement in Japan, six days after the Nagasaki bombing, Emperor Hirohito cited America's "outrageous bomb," which "slaughtered untold numbers of innocent people" and created "incalculable" damage.
Critics of Truman, including some at the time, have asked whether the bombings were moral. The blasts killed a total of 100,000 or more civilians in two instants at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Days afterward, thousands of people who appeared to have survived began to fall ill from radiation sickness and later died. While the final figure remains uncertain, the eventual death toll from both blasts is generally believed to exceed 200,000.
However, numbers that seem appalling by today's standards were not disturbing at the time to most Americans. They saw the Japanese as hated, cruel enemies who had brought the United States into the war with a sneak attack on the U.S. naval fleet in Pearl Harbor and slaughtered Chinese, Filipinos and others in their years of conquest.
When the Truman administration was preparing to use nuclear weapons, the United States already had been heavily bombing enemy cities with large civilian populations. On March 9, 1945, for instance, 334 B-29s dropped firebombs over Tokyo, wiping out nearly 16 square miles of the city and killing more than 100,000 Japanese. Army Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Henry A. "Hap" Arnold sent congratulations to Gen. Curtis LeMay, who ordered the raid, and over the next nine days additional B-29 raids burned out an additional 32 square miles in Japan's four largest cities, leaving 150,000 more fatalities.
On April 12, when he became president after Franklin D. Roosevelt died, Truman inherited the bombing policy. Months later, in the speech broadcast to the nation after Nagasaki, Truman provided a typically blunt account of why he used the new nuclear weapons.
"Having found the bomb we have used it . . . ," Truman said. "We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans. We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan's power to make war."
(there's a lot more article but I'll stop here)
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Last edited by lordjeebus; 03-13-2004 at 02:13 PM..
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