Given that American intelligence found out that the japanese were amassing forces for a final showdown in Kyushu, I’ve always wondered why it wasn’t really in the equation, other than morality concerns and Truman’s advisor’s unwillingness to touch a cultural city with rich history within Kyushu (Kyoto). Let’s say, hypothetically, they wanted to end the war as quickly as possible with as minimal American deaths possible. Instead of invading as planned in Operation Olympic, having a nuclear parade where the Japanese were holding out in preparation for their last stand seems pretty logical. It would have crippled both their army’s remaining forces, kamikaze squads, and materials, while devastating millions of civilians– so many birds with just a few stones. What do you think the outcome would have been if Truman gave 0 concern about Japanese lives, just American ones, and nuked the whole Kyushu region? Would it have made the imperial army’s generals and the emperor realise they were fucked, with nowhere to run between nuclear annihilation from America and Russian conquest from Manchuria– forcing them to really do an unconditional surrender? Or would the people in power still dare to push for the emperor to remain on his throne during surrender talks, and their continued rule over Japan?
Before you up and tell me “how many bombs did you think the US had”, well, they had enough didn’t they. Three in total in August, 7 more by October, 10 more by the end of 1945. They had enough to spare to turn a few other cities in Japan into hell on earth, and cleanup forces could clear whatever stragglers that escaped.
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I think the psychological impact would have been less for the Japanese population which was important in getting the emperor to stand down. You have to understand that, to the population, the emperor was truly a god. Their god could throw military into the teeth of the enemy and be accepted much easier than having the population of entire cities wiped out with one bomb.
Could your plan have worked? Quite possibly, but would it have been any “faster”? I doubt it.
The use of the nuclear bombs is still a contested issue. American history generally says that the bombs were used to intimidate the Japanese, but the bombs also coincide with the Soviet Union entering the Pacific theater. So it is also very plausible that the bombs were really to intimidate the Soviets, who Truman distrusted and reneged on FDR’s previous deals with them. Also, the firebombing of Tokyo killed more of the Japanese population than both nuclear bombs combined.
https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/potsdam_decision.htm
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Kyoto is nowhere near kyushu, also Nagasaki is on the Kyushu Island so America did in fact bomb Kyushu
Probably because they were amassing a bunch of people to fight.
Less likely they would have been able to drop the bomb if they met with resistance.
The decisions to select Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets were based on their importance as military/industrial locations. Hiroshima was an industrial city with numerous arms factories, while Nagasaki was a major port. Additionally, Hiroshima hadn’t suffered significant damage from conventional bombing raids, so it was a good target to measure exactly how much damage the atomic bomb could do. Tokyo and other cities had been devastated by firebombs, so there weren’t really any other useful targets.
Nagasaki was actually not the original target for the second atomic bomb. The city of Kokura, which had a major weapons arsenal, was the main target, but when the bomber arrived over Kokura, there was too much cloud cover, and the bombedier couldn’t see the target. They then switched targets to try to bomb the city of Yawata, which was also obscured by smoke from a firebomb raid the previous night, and also couldn’tbe seen. After that, they switched to Nagasaki and managed to find a gap in the clouds where they dropped the bomb.
America intentionally slowed down the conventional bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima to fully demonstrate the destructive power of the bombs.
We didn’t drop those bombs to win WWII, that war was won and everyone knew it.
Truman wanted to demonstrate to Stalin the power of the atomic bomb to discourage him from moving into countries weakened by defeat in the war. Curtis LeMay had his ear and was the officer in charge of targeting bombing raids. Later, LeMay was instrumental in influencing MacArthur to bomb the Chosin reservoir bringing China into the Korean war.
Tens of thousands of children paid the price.
The Japanese didn’t surrender because of the atom bombs. The decision was made to surrender before command knew about Nagasaki. They surrendered because the Soviets were something like a 100 miles from Hokkaido and they knew the Soviets would disembowel Hirohito in the streets–the USSR didn’t like emperors.
All nuking Kyushu would have accomplished was being an even greater humanitarian disaster than Hiroshima and Nagasaki were.
Because you are ignoring the post war plans for Japan that were already in place.
Japan’s number one historical enemy in modern times was not the United States but Russia, then the Soviet Union. The United States was going to turn Japan into their front man for dealing with Communism in Asia. Which we DID during the Korean and Vietnam engagements.
So the very good argument was made that glassing the spiritual center of Japanese culture or in engaging in mass slaughter just to up the kill count, would be rather counterproductive towards that end.
And they were proven right. Japan got two cities nuked, The Soviets join in the war at that point, and start picking off northern islands. (Which they still posess to this day)
When I lived in Japan (in the early 1990s), I remember one of the local papers (on Hiroshima day) reported that, had Japan not surrendered, the US invasion plan called for detonating no fewer than 12 atomic bombs on invasion day. So I do think they did some planning in that direction, and I think you might be right that the invasion was meant to start with Kyushu.
The US was deeply concerned over how US casualties had skyrocketed the closer they got to Japan. Okinawa was really scary. The first two bombs were to give Japan a chance to surrender. Other explanations just reflect a lack of understanding of what was actually happening at the time.
Nagasaki is on Kyushu Island just below Fukuoka.
Then Eiichiro Oda might not be born, thus no One Piece