Interesting, I had somehow missed (or don't remember seeing) the idea before that the use itself might be a major factor in there being no future use to date, but it certainly seems reasonable enough. It's also interesting that the passage of time makes that argument stronger while simultaneously also making it easier for others to criticize the decision from an armchair. I honestly can't imagine being in the shoes of, quite honestly, anyone in the world that whole decade, let alone President of the United States in 1945.
Although on a much smaller scale, we see the same moral dilemma in Gaza today. I find it hypocritical for the US to lecture Israel on civilian deaths when Gaza is their Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It isn't quite true that Japan "refused" to surrender. They were negotiating with the Allies to surrender on the condition they be allowed to keep their emperor in place. Of course, the US and allies remained steadfast on the "unconditional" surrender. In the end, as supreme commander over occupied Japan, McArthur ended up keeping the emperor in place as head of a constitutional monarchy with a constitution McArthur wrote.
It is the "offer" to surrender as well as the fact we did end up letting Japan keep their emperor that some naysayers use as argument to call the dropping of the bombs as a war crime. Others claim it was to intimidate the USSR.
I think it more likely that the allies did simply stick to their unconditional surrender posture as they had with Germany because nobody could foretell the future after the war. By all accounts, military strategists, using data from the battle for Okinawa, Marshall told Truman to expect a quarter million to more than million US soldiers killed if we tried to take mainland Japan. Indeed, the Japanese were training the entire population to fight.
In the end I think it was the right decision. It saved lives. Keeping the emperor is an irrelevant argument to that decision because that is a choice made well after the surrender. It did have the byproduct of demonstration to the USSR.
I did read one account that said when the first US envoys landed in Japan to begin the surrender talks that the Japanese Army stationed men all along the route facing OUTWARD to protect the allied envoys from rogue fanatics who might attack them to derail the surrender.
Interesting, I had somehow missed (or don't remember seeing) the idea before that the use itself might be a major factor in there being no future use to date, but it certainly seems reasonable enough. It's also interesting that the passage of time makes that argument stronger while simultaneously also making it easier for others to criticize the decision from an armchair. I honestly can't imagine being in the shoes of, quite honestly, anyone in the world that whole decade, let alone President of the United States in 1945.
Although on a much smaller scale, we see the same moral dilemma in Gaza today. I find it hypocritical for the US to lecture Israel on civilian deaths when Gaza is their Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
It isn't quite true that Japan "refused" to surrender. They were negotiating with the Allies to surrender on the condition they be allowed to keep their emperor in place. Of course, the US and allies remained steadfast on the "unconditional" surrender. In the end, as supreme commander over occupied Japan, McArthur ended up keeping the emperor in place as head of a constitutional monarchy with a constitution McArthur wrote.
It is the "offer" to surrender as well as the fact we did end up letting Japan keep their emperor that some naysayers use as argument to call the dropping of the bombs as a war crime. Others claim it was to intimidate the USSR.
I think it more likely that the allies did simply stick to their unconditional surrender posture as they had with Germany because nobody could foretell the future after the war. By all accounts, military strategists, using data from the battle for Okinawa, Marshall told Truman to expect a quarter million to more than million US soldiers killed if we tried to take mainland Japan. Indeed, the Japanese were training the entire population to fight.
In the end I think it was the right decision. It saved lives. Keeping the emperor is an irrelevant argument to that decision because that is a choice made well after the surrender. It did have the byproduct of demonstration to the USSR.
I did read one account that said when the first US envoys landed in Japan to begin the surrender talks that the Japanese Army stationed men all along the route facing OUTWARD to protect the allied envoys from rogue fanatics who might attack them to derail the surrender.