Malcolm Gladwell: The strange tale of the Norden bombsight

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by binky9

If by "right thing to do", you mean the saving of thousands of soldiers and civilians from injury or death caused by an invasion of Japan, I agree. Or, we could have continued fire bombing, and killed more innocents than the two atomic bombs did while waiting for the Japanese military to admit defeat.

What were we supposed to do? Just stop fighting, and hope the Japanese generals suddenly had an epiphany and gave up?

binky9

well, thousands of innocent civilians and soldiers died anyway, I think that other than the Allied soldiers that were getting ready for an armed invasion, we didn't save anybody's life with the atomic bombs (ironically enough at least one British POW perished in the Nagasaki blast).

Truth is that things could have been handled in a different manner, but as said in the video, 3 billion dollars are no joke, such an investment needed an adequate output..

There have been many efforts and even letters from the scientists behind the Manhattan Project on alternative demonstrations that wouldn't cause the death of so many people (like inviting an international committee to assist the bombing of a desert island with one of the bombs), besides the two different kinds of atomic bombs were dropped so closely together that Japan had little or no time to understand what happened, let alone surrender. There is evidence that Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been selected for the orography around them, which would have channelled and amplified the blast better, so it was all planned to be the dramatic end scene of a bloody conflict, where it was time to raise the game to another level. Truth is that they needed to show the world (and above all the Russians) who had the stick of command, and the Cold War wouldn't have been the same without this horrible example.

But even if the ghost of Cold War was about to start, things could have been handled differently.

[Bewolf]

AFAIK the japanese were willing to surrender anyways, with the sole demand of their emperor staying in power. Irony, he stayed in power after the war, though reduced to a representative role.

About the atomic bomb drops, everybody has to deal with his/her own concsiousness in this regard. Nationalists certainly will prefer the death of the enemy over their own, humanists consider the deaths of children and women rather worse then those of solidiers, but to each their own.

As we are at it, what made the Norden stand out so much compared to, for example, the Lofte?

[louisv]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

well, thousands of innocent civilians and soldiers died anyway, I think that other than the Allied soldiers that were getting ready for an armed invasion, we didn't save anybody's life with the atomic bombs (ironically enough at least one British POW perished in the Nagasaki blast).

Truth is that things could have been handled in a different manner, but as said in the video, 3 billion dollars are no joke, such an investment needed an adequate output..

There have been many efforts and even letters from the scientists behind the Manhattan Project on alternative demonstrations that wouldn't cause the death of so many people (like inviting an international committee to assist the bombing of a desert island with one of the bombs), besides the two different kinds of atomic bombs were dropped so closely together that Japan had little or no time to understand what happened, let alone surrender. There is evidence that Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been selected for the orography around them, which would have channelled and amplified the blast better, so it was all planned to be the dramatic end scene of a bloody conflict, where it was time to raise the game to another level. Truth is that they needed to show the world (and above all the Russians) who had the stick of command, and the Cold War wouldn't have been the same without this horrible example.

But even if the ghost of Cold War was about to start, things could have been handled differently.

After the first blast, the emperor recorded a surrender speech on a disk to be played the next day. A group of officers stole and destroyed the disk and that left enough time for the second one. After Nagasaki, Hirohito fired all the top officers and surrendered live...(from a Japanese film)

When the bombs were dropped the Russians were massing soldiers and equipment in the islands just north of Japan. What was shapping up was evaluated at 10 million deaths, hundreds of thousands of american included. And probably a 'Northern Japan' like East Germany, controlled by the Soviets.

Japanese civilians were killing themselves by the thousands in the pacific islands near Japan as the Americans were moving in, no reason to think they would have stopped on the mainland.

Other options were considered, like showing off the bomb at a safe distance etc...But Stalin forced the play...

[badfinger]

I guess the U.S. should also take the blame for starting the Pacific war by cutting off Japan's oil supplies as a way of denouncing the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China.

We Americans just can't ever seem to do it right.

binky9

[Bewolf]

Originally Posted by binky9

I guess the U.S. should also take the blame for starting the Pacific war by cutting off Japan's oil supplies as a way of denouncing the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China.

We Americans just can't ever seem to do it right.

binky9

oh you do lots of stuff right, many americans just have the problem of seeing everything in extreme black and white and overly simplified, never multi layered.

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by Bewolf

oh you do lots of stuff right, many americans just have the problem of seeing everything in extreme black and white and overly simplified, never multi layered.

bingo

[badfinger]

Originally Posted by Sternjaeger II

bingo

Having read several books on the use of the bomb, what went on in the Japanese government at that time, and the end of the war in the Pacific, I'm pretty multi-layered on this subject. I only hope everyone else is as open, rather than having made up their minds that all other opinions must be wrong because of some national myopia.

Having been built in the U.S., the Norden must be the best.

binky9

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by binky9

Having read several books on the use of the bomb, what went on in the Japanese government at that time, and the end of the war in the Pacific, I'm pretty multi-layered on this subject. I only hope everyone else is as open, rather than having made up their minds that all other opinions must be wrong because of some national myopia.

Having been built in the U.S., the Norden must be the best.

binky9

ah believe me, us Europeans have a well structured multi-layered view of the thing, we were all at the receiving end of the Norden bombsights here, or the Lofte or the others..

I have American friends and I'm happy they're all fellows that believe and stand for the same values that we have here, but sometimes one wonders whether we've pushed things too far with this idea of "exporting democracy by means of suppressive fire". The expression "Economy of war" springs to mind more and more often unfortunately

[Sternjaeger II]

Originally Posted by binky9

I guess the U.S. should also take the blame for starting the Pacific war by cutting off Japan's oil supplies as a way of denouncing the atrocities committed by the Japanese in China.

We Americans just can't ever seem to do it right.

binky9

well it surely didn't help calming things down. We know that historically an embargo is a declaration of war in disguise (2012 will probably be the year of Iran). I wonder if the average American ever wonders how comes that every single generation after the Secession War has been involved at least in one conflict, and all of them outside their territory.. isn't it a bit weird?