this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024

387 points (97.3% liked)

HistoryPorn

4108 readers

143 users here now

`If you would like to become a mod in this community, kindly PM the mod.`

Relive the Past in Jaw-Dropping Detail!

HistoryPorn is for photographs of the past, recent or distant! Give us a little snapshot of history!

Rules

Be respectful and inclusive.
No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
Engage in constructive discussions.
Share relevant content.
Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
Use appropriate language and tone.
Report violations.
Foster a continuous learning environment.
No genocide or atrocity denialism.

Pictures of old artifacts and museum pieces should go to History Artifacts

Illustrations and paintings should go to History Drawings

Related Communities:

Forgotten Weapons

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

387

Japanese schoolgirls training with a machinegun for the anticipated American invasion of Japan, WW2, 1945 (media.kbin.social)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/historyporn

80 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 97 points 3 months ago (10 children)

In 9th grade US history we held a mock trial about the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I was assigned the role of Harry Truman, one of the defendants. I did a ton of research about the plans for invasion of Japan on both sides, and it was terrifying. The Japanese were teaching children to fight with garden tools, and US casualty estimates were over a million soldiers.

However, in the end I came to the conclusion that the nuclear strikes weren't necessary, and I wouldn't have ordered them simply because a the war was already incredibly one-sided, and an invasion wouldn't have been necessary in the first place since Japan was already on its last legs.

The class ended up convicting me of a war crime, which was nice.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 3 months ago (6 children)

However, in the end I came to the conclusion that the nuclear strikes weren't necessary, and I wouldn't have ordered them simply because a the war was already incredibly one-sided, and an invasion wouldn't have been necessary in the first place since Japan was already on its last legs.

Then how does the war end, in your scenario?

[–] [email protected] 52 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (9 children)

If I'd have been president I'd continue the (not very) strategic bombing and implement a blockade. Japan has very few natural resources and relies a lot on imports, so this would have hamstrung their military effectiveness. It would have taken a bit longer but based on my half-remembered research from almost 30 years ago it would have worked without an invasion or nukes.

IMHO the nukes were signals to Stalin that he better stop at Berlin.

[–] [email protected] 58 points 3 months ago (1 children)

There were studies done on the loss of human life that a blockade without an invasion would incur.

It was horrific. Literal millions of deaths were projected.

The terror bombing (and that's what it was, by 1945) was considerably bloodier than the atomic bombings.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 3 months ago (3 children)

War is weird.

Firebombing wooden cities night after night? All good carry on.

Poison gas? Whoa WTF are you some kind of monster.

There was a weird little side note in a debate about using nuclear weapons in Vietnam. Someone in the Pentagon on the pro side said, more or less: War is total. People die. If you're killed in a war, it makes absolutely no difference whether it was from being shot, or stabbed, or blown up by a nuclear bomb. People die and that's the end for them. That's war, that's what we're talking about, don't get all squeamish about it now.

I don't agree with bombing Vietnam obviously, but I do feel like there's an essential point about war there that is often papered over; people become horrified by some things about war while remaining fine with other things.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 months ago (2 children)

War is weird, but ultimately the concern is generally escalation/normalization of weapons. If nukes get normalized, then every military worth its salt needs one, and can use them, and that means suddenly warfare becomes much, much more bloody as a matter of averages, not just as a matter of a bomb or two vaporizing a few hundred thousand people in the occasional high-intensity war.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

Yeah, agreed. I think it's by far a good thing that we've been lucky enough so far that they haven't been used beyond that one time.

I actually think there's an unspoken factor that is why people actually treat nuclear weapons so differently: There is no way in the modern day that any leader anywhere in the world can start a nuclear war and be sure it won't come back and impact them and their family. Unlike other war things, it's never safely insulated in some faraway place happening to other people.

It would be nice to think that the taboo is because of the horrible consequences, but we're doing things with horrible consequences every day. I think it's because of the pure calculus of what might happen to me and people I care about, right away.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I feel that reaching your conclusion on that basis would have been all but impossible without the benefits of hindsight.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] Sylvartas 14 points 3 months ago

I mean, the problem with nuclear weapons are for the survivors. I assume getting turned into physics by a nuclear bomb isn't really painful. Then there's dying from the shockwave which is probably considerably worse already.

And then there's the radiations...

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

I think the non-use of nuclear weapons was a bigger deal in the Korean War. For various reasons, both sides chose to not use nuclear weapons. This included the one President that chose to deploy nuclear weapons in World War II.

The Korean peninsula could have easily become an irradiated wasteland.

[–] dual_sport_dork 16 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That would've worked, but "working" would involve a large portion of the civilian population of Japan starving to death.

The use of the nukes was dual purpose, and yes, one of the purposes was to show to the Soviets that we not only had nukes but were willing to use them.

The other purpose was to demonstrate to Japan that continuing the war was hopeless, regardless of the number of schoolgirls with machine guns they had. It was to show that we didn't need to invade to flatten their cities. One plane, one bomb, one parking lot. Perhaps luckily for all involved they did not know we did not have the capability readily available to make any more atomic bombs just yet.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

One minor point: We had already flattened their cities with firebombs, so they knew we could do it without invading.

[–] partial_accumen 11 points 3 months ago

The difference was scale. It would have likely taken nearly all of the air assets the Allies had around Japan at the time to flatten one city with firebombs, and the Allies would have taken some losses in aircraft.

Now project out the idea that each of the dozens of planes used in a firebombing a city each only carried one bomb with the same flattened city as a result. It was projecting the idea that all cities in Japan could have literally been flattened in one day.

Now, we didn't have the bombs or the air force assets to do that at the time, but that wasn't known to the Japanese. Hiroshima was hit, then three days later Nagasaki. It would appear at the time as though the Americans were going to keep going every three days with a new city flattened with nothing the Japanese could do to prevent it except surrender.

[–] someguy3 14 points 3 months ago

That would result in millions starving to death. There were no good options.

[–] breckenedge 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I really don’t get Truman’s calculus to use the bomb except to inflict massive casualties, which may have been what he wanted to show the Soviets after all — Truman was willing to obliterate entire populations.

Since there were plenty of other examples of this (ex Dresden) with conventional explosives and fire bombing, I’m pretty sure he just wanted to test his new toy.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

But either you'd be strategically weakening the country to give invading forces an easier time, at which point you're throwing civilians into the meat grinder anyway, or you're starving the country until it devolves into literal anarchy, because the only people in the position to surrender were entrenched enough that they'd be the last one to see their power structure fall apart.

[–] blahsay 6 points 3 months ago

The Japanese weren't exactly known for surrender. It's easy to arm chair judge but I'm doubtful anything less than terrifying overwhelming force would have been enough. Sometimes there's only bad options.

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] Rolando 2 points 3 months ago

Then how does the war end, in your scenario?

Not comment-OP, but here's a credible scenario: https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Japan as another USSR satellite to be stripped for parts

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] ChickenLadyLovesLife 32 points 3 months ago (4 children)

US casualty estimates were over a million soldiers

Those estimates have actually grown enormously as the years have passed, not surprisingly in parallel with the growth in criticism of the US for using the atomic bombs on Japanese cities. Estimates at the time were in the neighborhood of 50,000 allied casualties (where "casualties" include wounded and captured as well as killed); Truman at one point started throwing out 500,000 dead as a round number, and now in modern times we have "over a million" as a common estimate. In reality, who knows? One of the options being considered at the time as an alternative to invasion was just to continue the conventional firebombing as well as the submarine-based blockade of all of Japan's shipping, and starving Japan into eventual surrender without incurring a very high number of allied casualties in the process.

It's worth noting that a three-day firebombing campaign against Tokyo in March 1943 (using conventional ordinance) produced more Japanese casualties than did the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings combined.

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago

The class ended up convicting me of a war crime, which was nice.

Children are more competent than our international institutions, that's reassuring.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (2 children)

In 9th grade US history we held a mock trial about the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Holy shit. That's a hell of an assignment for 14 year olds. Military historians and experts today debate the efficacy of the nuclear strikes and the jury is still out on if they were better than not.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

I had a really great teacher. She was very much about us learning from original sources and thinking critically about the historical context of them.

My 11th grade history teacher, on the other hand, showed us Monty Python and the Holy Grail as part of our study of the medieval period.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

im not too suprised, had the same topic for debate back in highschool in 11th grade. Thuradays were debate days which was always themed on what part of history the class was on. the debates werent about what what you believed in, but was used as a tool to get students to study the reasoning on both sides.

ill put a disclaimer that it was a very demanding and difficult class (id argue harder than half of my college classes), but people went into it because of two things, it prepared any student for college, and it had the highest AP passing score at the school, so it was a tried and true method.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

You came to the conclusion that it was better to kill 1,000,000 people bare minimum than 226,000 people upper estimate?

I feel like when presented with those options you're directly responsible for every life you didn't save.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Even though I am an American, my primary school education is from a school for British expats so my WWII knowledge is mostly European focused. What was the beef between the US and Japan that led to the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] samus12345 86 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Japan's modern history is unlike any other country. 80 years before this they were an insular feudal society and 40 years after this they were the envy of the Western world technologically.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] someguy3 27 points 3 months ago (4 children)

People don't seem to understand how fucking hard if would have been to do a land invasion. It would have made D-Day look like a Kindergarten Macaroni project.

[–] Buddahriffic 14 points 3 months ago

Probably would have resulted in nukes being used anyways, but only after millions of deaths on both sides.

load more comments (3 replies)

[–] WoahWoah 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That girl on the left has some cool-ass cyberpunky hair.

[–] Zefjor 14 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's most likely the result of a lot of dust/dirt and wind I think.

[–] feedum_sneedson 2 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Do you think? I couldn't figure out why she had dreadlocks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

My hair gets that way after a night's sleep or when taking it down sometimes. That expression on her face makes it seem like she just doesn't care any more and let it go.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Japan was really desperate huh

[–] Rakonat 4 points 3 months ago

The level they were willing to go would have made insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan seem tame. even the elderly in some cases were being given sharp sticks and expected to train on how to defend their given area.

I know a lot of people in the modern age abhor nuclear weapons and consider their existence crimes against humanity and their use in WW2 the greatest atrocities ever committed, but their use in 1945 factually saved the lives of hundreds of thousands on both sides, Japanese commitment to defending the home islands that intense it's entirely likely literal millions would have died in their defense, despite knowing it was inevitable a US force would eventually successfully gain control of most if not all the population centers and resources.

As a matter of fact, more people died in Tokyo from daily bombing raids in a single day than both atomic bombings.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments