-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
72 years ago today, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan
- Thread starter GK86
- Start date
How would you have gone about ending the war?
But Japan was still causing harm to the US and its allies at the time so why back off?
Oh, I agree that the Soviet invasion was the most important factor in the Japanese surrender. In fact, I even agree with Hasegawa that it was probably sufficient on its own even if the nuclear bombs were never used. However, there was no way for the Americans to know about what was happening at Japanese high command , and it's doubtful that the Americans knew about the Soviet plans so these factors couldn't be used in their planning.
Trojita
Rapid Response Threadmaker
I'm going to need a citation on that notepad. He kept a diary, which is widely known. His fuckup, perhaps on purpose, of mentioning Hiroshima as a military base was in a public announcement. The rest of the stuff isn't there.
We know Truman received intel on what happened in Hiroshima, pictures and reports provided, on August 10th. That same day Truman decided to stop any further atomic bombs from being used.
It is possible he didn't authorize the specific operation. His Secretary of War and Secretary of State signed for it.
SourCinnamon
Member
Hopefully nuclear weapons are not used again against civilian population.
This is turning into a historiography discussion, which is a much more interesting topic than shameless speculation about what generals/soldiers were thinking at that time.
This is turning into a historiography discussion, which is a much more interesting topic than shameless speculation about what generals/soldiers were thinking at that time.
....... BRB finding that post
There is still no way of knowing what would of happened if the bombs had not been dropped.
I found it! It was from the 70 year thread. It was better than I remembered.
At least those two countries were at War when it happend. How about when countries like France used their imperialistic power to test their bombs on foreign lands and let civiliance suffer because of the radiation.
Horrible wicked weapons. I feel like the nazis where the best thing that coudl've happend to all other countries. Because it doesn't matter how bad you are, at least you're better than the nazis. No wonder why everyone always wants to go back to WW2. Even the Japan's own little Nazi like escapades were basically pardoned by the allies, since it suited them.
Horrible wicked weapons. I feel like the nazis where the best thing that coudl've happend to all other countries. Because it doesn't matter how bad you are, at least you're better than the nazis. No wonder why everyone always wants to go back to WW2. Even the Japan's own little Nazi like escapades were basically pardoned by the allies, since it suited them.
I mean it's not a great argument, as I've said over and over again, because it's insufficient. That's not to say it's irrelevant as you've said.
We keep on going in circles around this, it's really the key issue. We aren't ever really getting at the past in historical discussions we are making better or worse arguments for how to think about the past. One's position in the present clearly affects how one sees the past, and could be pertinent information for someone hearing the argument. You aren't just taking issue with me on this front either. Everyone I've ever met in the profession is in agreement with me on this issue as far as I know.
I'll grant you people used to lean more towards what you're suggesting, but that was ultimately part of a very harmful program of thinking about what history should be.
Right, and I honestly believe that the best move in this argument is simply to suggest that no one here has anything meaningful to say other than putting forward what experts have said. Given two accounts, one from a lay person and one from an expert, I will take the experts account to have more weight regardless of what I can actually gleam from each account. I have decided that even outside of what is actually produced that expert communities have a better claim to truth within their field than non-experts. That is the definition of an appeal to authority.
That's a fallacy because that doesn't directly affect any of the arguments at hand. It's not problematic because the creation of knowledge is happening in a context far broader than this one argument, and there is social meaning behind being an expert.
Footnotes do a lot of different things. In terms of what they add to the legitimacy of a text the idea is that the reader can go back and find what is being referenced and thus see for themselves. But in this matter, the footnote, in theoretically serving that purpose, is really just a mark of the profession, necessary because the profession partially based its ability to claim access to legitimate knowledge through it. Much the same with science and replicability despite the fact that an extremely small number of experiments are ever repeated.
Footnotes are part of the justification for historians claiming legitimacy thanks to Ranke, but in actual practice the legitimacy of the historian is mostly provided by his acceptance within the expert community itself. Which is to say the purpose of footnotes is not to convince lay people that the historian is accurate, though it did theoretically serve that purpose at one point, but to convince other experts that regardless if the claim is accurate that it is somewhat reasonable and fits within the expected methodology of the discipline.
Footnotes have little to do with countering appeals to authority, because they are generally used as a form of communication between parties that essentially have equal authority.
That was all for historical texts and articles. When it comes to normal discussion pretty much all references are clearly just appeals to authority.
Of course, I wouldn't deny that. I mean I am a historian, I think historical methods have a lot of value. What I don't think is that lay people, the few times we actually reach them, are looking at our arguments critically thinking through them and deciding they are sound. They are simply taking us at our word. That's a good thing because most lay people don't have the context or training to actually judge what historians are saying the vast majority of the time. In the same way I don't have the context or training to understand what a physicist is doing.
Actually they do in effect. For that see above. The point of expert communities is that we delegate the creation of truth to them, not that they are really good with coming up with arguments that show lay people the truth. For instance the vast majority of people could not read the documents that I use in my work. They also lack the context to understand what I'm even talking about. Any legitimacy I have comes from the legitimacy of my community and institution. That's not a failing on my part, that's actually my role in society.
I mean sure, if people did something they aren't going to do. That's why it's important that these communities be open. Anyone can try to put in the minimum 9 years it takes to become a historian. Very few will attempt to try, and even fewer will succeed. That being said very very few people will actually get themselves to the point that they can meaningfully access the reasoning of experts. That's the point of the expert community, delegating that work to a specific group of people we then trust to self-regulate and produce good knowledge.
If it's flawed then most lay people aren't going to be in a position to articulate that well, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.
As a social institution it's more useful to grant expert communities a privileged epistemological position for just this reason. There are structures in place ensuring that they will probably be wrong, again not usually the best word for history, significantly less often than the background population. Thus I'm okay having most people blindly trust experts in their field of expertise, despite the fact that they will probably make weak or wrong arguments sometimes.
Having lay people believe that they can meaningfully argue with experts outside of very specific situations is how you get horrible ideas like The Lost Cause.
Because the Japanese capabilities in 1945 and their potential capabilities in 1960 are two different things. That was one of the major blunders of WWI in Europe.
Watch Da Birdie
I buy cakes for myself on my birthday it's not weird lots of people do it I bet
Speaking of Trump, he was born almost nine months after the bombing of Hiroshima.
Hmm...
Hmm...
If you want to disarm and rid the world of nuclear weapons maybe America should be the one to start doing it first.
Anyone can assess reasoning. I don't have to be an expert in cave paintings to point out a logically poor argument about cave paintings. If a person says particle X is heavier than particle Y simply because particle Y was found on a Tuesday, it matters not what a person who calls that foolish studied in school.
To be honest I find attempts to insulate experts from the criticism of laymen by implying some kind of you-just-wouldn't-understand secret club to be kind of gross. Bad methodology or poor reasoning can be identified by anyone, and dismissing that criticism not on its merits but because of the qualifications of the person is absolutely wrong. That's the kind of nonsense fields should try very hard to avoid at all costs. Any understanding of acceptable reasoning that allows for that is very poor.
While that may sound like a good idea to you comrade, unilateral disarmament is a bad idea.
Also both the US and Russia have reduced their nuclear stockpiles significantly.
Anyone can make whatever sounds they can physically create yes. Clearly we are talking about what people can meaningfully do. Most people cannot meaningfully assess logical reasoning from first order principles, even fewer people at this moment can meaningfully assess many of the kinds of reasoning historian use. From anecdotal evidence, my students at a quite good university heavily struggle with gleaming even very straightforward information from primary documents.
I'm sure a lot of people could be trained to do so though. Which is one of the purposes of the expert community.
Right, but are expert communities really producing experts that make claims like that? The vast majority of reasoning that most experts do relies on methodology and training that the vast majority of the population does not have. Even when its significantly less interpretive than history. Look at any thread on GAF involving a quantitative study, you'll find people complaining about the sample size.
Lay people will generally have little context relevant to a particular discussion compared to experts in the fields. This is compounded by the fact that they will generally have absolutely no training in the methodology of the field. Many of the arguments in history are concerned with what sources to use, how to interpret those sources, and how to generalize from those interpretations. Lay people will generally not be able to use or critique reasoning on any of those three points unless the reasoning in question is ridiculous to the point of being absurd. More often people take reasoning that is perfectly fine in the field, say how sample sizes work or the place of historiography in discussion of history, and critique them. Additionally almost anything a lay person could actually identify as being incorrect, unless it was somehow endemic to the field which is a very specific sort of situation, would also have been identified by another expert.
Oh I'm well aware this is an incredibly unpopular opinion. People, especially Americans, are obsessed with an understanding of equality as meaning everyone's opinion should be equally important, instead of everyone should have the equal ability to equip themselves to have meaningful opinions.
But expert communities do essentially function this way, and you benefit from them regardless of if you think it's gross. It's ultimately a good thing for society. In fact one of the most pressing issues for historians is our relative lack of legitimacy because of the looseness with which we have asserted our exclusive claim to the term historian, itself probably more the result of our foolish attempts to make a "scientific history" in the past.
So as much as you think that my views are gross, I think your views are the wellspring from which America's anti intellectualism flows. Personally I think denying climate change and supporting The Lost Cause is significantly grosser than suggesting that we delegate knowledge creation like we delegate many different human activities.
Maybe some kinds could be. I know of plenty of examples where they couldn't be. For instance my field was completely changed by Crafts's revisions to British economic data in the early 80s. I highly doubt any lay person could have identified the methodological errors in previous work that he identified and fixed while generations of historians trained in looking at this sort of data had failed without themselves being trained.
If bad methodology was so easy to spot then why is arguing over methodology such a common topic for historians, and really in every field?
I'm no more equipped to judge my physicist friend's work than he is to judge mine, as neither of us have any training in the other's methodology.
In some abstract world where we have infinite resources sure. In this world we live in we have a finite amount of time. It's not worth society's time to have trained individuals constantly have to work on shooting down every dumb thing someone makes up.
For instance just last week a poster said that most Jacobites transported as a result of the '45 were black. This is an absurd claim. Luckily he didn't even attempt to really back it up, but if he had and we didn't accept that experts should have privileged claims to knowledge within their field, then we would have been stuck with someone putting in effort to find actually find the documents necessary to argue against an obviously nonsensical claim.
If he had said collaborating documents were to be found in the Kinross and Perth Archive NG5/6/87/1-30 do you think it would be worth someone's time to go there and find out if that was true?
Why? You're just asserting this. Try to get published in Past and Present without at least a masters in history and the support of any historian, I'm actually not even sure if they publish ABDs, outside of an issue dedicated to hearing from people outside of the field. It won't happen, and for good reason. You'd struggle to be published in Cell for the same reason.
Again it's not. You're just declaring this because you've axiomatically decided that it's wrong to ever understand an argument someone has made in a way that isn't totally platonic.
I'm going to point out you likely wouldn't be making this argument about other fields, say Physics or Linguistics.
The thing people forget is that WWII was classified as "Total War". As in everything in the economy was mobilized for the war effort. That made everything a valid target, that also includes civilians. If you worked in a factory chance are you were building weapons, therefore you were a valid target. Civilians especially were expected and forced to fight by Japan, Germany, Russia, ect.
The Bombs were the only way to get Japan to surrender unconditionally with the most minimal amount of casualties.
The Bombs were the only way to get Japan to surrender unconditionally with the most minimal amount of casualties.
Megalosaro
Banned
If japan fire bombed steel factories in detroit, would you use that same logic?
I think the question of whether or not it was ethical to use the atomic bombs on japan to be useless. A fat more relevant question is whether or not its ever okay to attack civilians.
In any case I recommend everyone read Embracing Defeat by John Dower. It's far more compelling than reading arguments online by armchair historians
Wether I agree with it or not it was the fact of the times. London and many European cities were bombed by Germany and war crime or not the bombing of cities was one of the least evil things that occured in WWII. The fact of the matter is that the two Atomic Bombs dropped on japan ended the war with the least amount of casualties possible.
I would absolutely make that argument in any scientific field. Intelligent criticism from any and all sources is wonderful, and summarily rejecting it regardless of merit for any reason is unscientific.
Credentials don't guarantee competence. Smart people make dumb mistakes or convince themselves that dumb things are true for dumb reasons. You don't need a degree in their field necessarily to point out these instances.
Your reasoning regarding why this isn't the case is flawed. Laypeople not identifying every flaw or any one particular flaw in the work of experts is not evidence they can't or shouldn't. That makes no logical sense. Suggesting some errors could only be identified by experts also does not provide any evidence that this is true for all or even most errors.
It's a more persuasive argument to suggest climate change denialism benefits from blind reverence toward experts when you consider that individuals simply apply their own definition of what an expert is. If experts are right all I need to do to win the argument is call that guy an expert and that guy a fraud. Your logic allows for that perversion, mine doesn't.
I think lots of people would say that, and maybe even mean it, but I don't think that they'd actually follow through with that understanding of the relationship between lay people and science. That doesn't seem to be the role science is currently occupying in society anyway.
What would this be in practice? Do you have any examples?
Right, I never said it did. Credentials do correlate with competence though.
Sure, and sometimes lots of smart people make the same dumb mistake. That being said both of these are less likely that the average person, especially the average person with totally questionable commitments and without training, making dumb mistakes.
Okay maybe, but I'm saying the social cost of making people feel like they are in a position to critique experts outweighs the benefit of lay people occasionally missing something that the entire expert community missed. There are situations where lay people becoming involved makes sense, frequently with say the personal records of a gentry family, but that's a special situation that doesn't challenge the legitimacy of historians as historians.
You said lay people can notice flaws in methodology in particular. I'm pointing out that flaws in the methodology than aren't incredibly obvious often elude large numbers of people highly trained in that methodology. The argument here is that it's unlikely that these methodological problems are likely to be solved by people without that training. I certainly can't think of any examples.
Well even assuming that people are actually being convinced by climate change arguments, instead of picking a side and then finding conclusions that support your side, I think this actually is an argument for my point. We need more proper respect for the expert communities, random people feeling that they are in a position to determine who the experts are would be the result of a lack of respect for the expert community.
You'll notice I used the word community next to expert many times. That's pretty central to everything I'm saying. Individual experts gain their legitimacy through their connection the the expert community. Non members do not have the authority to point how who is and who is not part of that community.
Sure, my conception of how expert communities works, and how they work in practice, can run into problems with implementation. Your logic allows for people to independently decide that they know more than anyone else on a topic because they just think they are smarter than other people in general.
Also, as you've done a number of times in this thread, you didn't address a number of points in my previous post. This topic is ultimately about the social construction of knowledge, which you keep on ignoring in a fruitless attempt to get at some impossible and, more damningly, useless level of rigorousness.
This isn't THEIR sacrifice. They had no say in it. This was Americans mass killing as a show of force.
Amibguous Cad
Member
I mean, we tried unilateral disarmament to put all nuclear materials under the control of the UN, with inspection of all member states to ensure no one broke faith. The reasons for its failure are myriad, but it mostly boils down to Stalin not agreeing to the inspection protocols, and also felt the UN was in the US' pocket.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Plan
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
"Sacrifice" is a funny word to use, as if those who died in the atomic bomb has a say on the matter and make a deliberate choice to be obliterated by it. Also, that they just had to die to make a world a better place or something.
Well at least now you understand the spiral arithmetic of freedom.
And trust me I'm on your side.
NHarmonic.
Member
I'm at a loss for words here. Seriously.
The Imperial Japanese Army killed 25 million people and Japan gleefully supported them.
Invading mainland Japan would have killed millions upon millions more than the bombs. When the stakes are as high as they were in the 2nd World War - morality does become a numbers game.
stefanneda91
Neo Member
''Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling, it's all the same. Proportions are negotiated, boundaries blurred. I'm not a pious hermit, I haven't done only good in my life. But if I'm to choose between one evil and another, then I prefer not to choose at all.''- Geralt of Rivia
While I understand that WWII was a mess, and that stopping Imperial Japan was very important. I just can't accept, that dropping 2 A-bombs on 2 cities can be justified in any sense. What was then the difference between the Allies and the Axis, except that the Allies were on the winning side, if we targeted cities and innocent citizens and killing them in thousands like the Germans and Japan. We should have found another way. Evil is evil.
While I understand that WWII was a mess, and that stopping Imperial Japan was very important. I just can't accept, that dropping 2 A-bombs on 2 cities can be justified in any sense. What was then the difference between the Allies and the Axis, except that the Allies were on the winning side, if we targeted cities and innocent citizens and killing them in thousands like the Germans and Japan. We should have found another way. Evil is evil.
Dubbedinenglish
Banned
The "other way" was mass starvation of Japan or an invasion they would've had exponentially larger casualties. US made purple heart medals (for combat wounded) in preparation for the invasion...We are still issuing those made for that to soldiers today.
Also if you look at what Operation Downfall called for, nuking landing zones then troops rallying there, it would be far more catastrophic because we didn't understand radiation poisoning at the time.
Edit: I didn't see the damned Witcher quote, lmao
Doctor_Thomas
Member
No one will ever be able to outright say it was the moral or ethical thing to do, but given the alternatives - a Japanese Empire surrending on their own terms or a ground invasion against a very riled up population - it was probably the only decision that made logical sense. Hindsight allows these conversations to be had. At the time I can't imagine anyone in the US wanted to continue ground fighting.
ConfusingJazz
Member
IceBringer
Banned
yanipheonu
Member
Oh you sweet summer child.
if only Truman had played The Witcher
-ImaginaryInsider
Member
If only the Witcher series had existed 70+ years ago, we wouldn't have wars.
Geno Breaker
Banned
Woah where's your avatar from?
MisterFalcon
Member
Living in a country formerly occupied by the Axis I'm glad the Allies did not wait for technology to advance to a point where zero civilian casualties were 100% guaranteed (we're still not there) so the Internet Morality Police could give the liberation of Europe their blessing.
ConfusingJazz
Member
While I am waiting, anyone else think it's ballsy quoting piece of Polish fiction before saying this?
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
Well whether or not you can personally accept it, you should at least be able to understand the arguments being made on all sides. The argument in favor is that the people making the decisions believed it would expedite (or had a chance of expediting) the end of the war. Although the President and senior military figures still expected to need to invade Japan, it was considered worthwhile to try. The primary concern of the American planners was with minimizing American casualties, not saving Japanese lives, but since people are arguing this from a broad ethical standpoint then that usually winds up being the main discussion point. Japan is on the receiving end of near daily mass-bomber raids, is experiencing starvation on account of naval blockade, and the Japanese armies are fighting and killing people (including civilians) in mainland China every day that they are operating. Even by the time of the actual Japanese surrender, Japan is still in control of a large percentage of China.
While you may find the principle of don't start none, won't be none to be unsatisfying from an ethical perspective, it is highly unrealistic to imagine a scenario in which the Axis forces are permitted to use strategic bombing when it pleases them, but where the Allies are unwilling to retaliate. The Japanese were using it as early as 1937 against the Chinese. The Germans leveled Warsaw by air. The brief period of the war in which the Germans and British refrained from using it on one another was for fear of retaliation, not out of a principle of righteousness. The Axis never had qualms about using it against defenseless countries, they just didn't want anyone to do it to them. While people even in the interwar period were aware that the bombing of cities was ethically dubious, wartime realities very quickly overrode moral considerations.
The argument you're presenting - that since both sides did bad things it's not worth considering them to be different - is not going to get much support. Degrees matter.
The opposition to the Atomic Bombings is generally framed in ways that reject one or more of the above premises. Generally this is by denying that it would have saved lives.
yanipheonu
Member
Huh yeah, this is reading more and more as a naive view of morality and history.
Strangelove77
Member
My. Fucking. God.
Blargonaut
Banned
Sounds like you two are essentially having a debate about 'What makes an expert an expert?', at least that's my layperson takeaway from your discussion
Just a couple small things like I don't know.
Literally tens of millions of civilians brutally murdered. Along with millions of soldiers that died since the Axis you know... started the war.
But Japan lost that capability in '42/'43.
In fact, after both the invasion and Hiroshima, they still didn't want to surrender. Sorry but Japan, in no way deserved, to be treated any differently than Germany, perhaps you should explain why it is they deserved to surrender conditionally.
The facts aren't in dispute. They wanted a conditional surrender and we said nope. They knew damn well that was the only offer. I justify that decision based on what was, at the time, the very recent past, in which the aggressor was allowed to sign a peace treaty, which ultimately led to the very war we are talking about now.
So why should they get to cut a deal and the Germans don't?