Whittle, like many supporters, acts as if the invasion was imminent: that the choice was either to try the bombs, or 1,000,000 Americans would die — to say nothing of the Japanese — immediately. Much could have happened between August and November ‘45 that might have made the Japanese surrender; specifically, dropping the fourth bomb or making additional ones.

That said, I side strongly with the apologists because 1) given the tenacity of the Japanese up to that point, one has to give Truman the benefit of the doubt and 2) Americans were dying in combat operations at the time dropping one bomb offshore might not lead to an invasion of the home islands — though it also might, in itself a reasonable justification — it would almost certainly lead to more American’s deaths elsewhere.

Of course, what people often forget in their hindsighted analyses is to look at the whole picture, not just the part of the picture that amuses them. The jaw-dropping level of defeat we inflicted on the Japanese played no small role in how pliant they were during the MacArthur occupation, and thus in creating the free, prosperous, and delightful modern Japan we all know and love. It think it’s very difficult to argue that Japan would be better off today had we let them surrender conditionally, or had they not been so awestruck by our might. Only the atom bomb could have yielded the result we got.

If that’s really the case, then the world’s history departments had better pack up and go home.

For the most part, I agree with you, actually. A lot of the arguments that anti-Truman people make (it was only to impress the Russians, it was only because the Japanese weren’t European) are hard to swallow.

Even the more feasible arguments (that some form of peace short of unconditional surrender might have been reached without nuking or invasion, or that the second bomb was ultimately unnecessary) are based on an understanding of events in Japan that the Americans would not have had access to.

I don’t think there’s very much interesting to say about it, though, if all that we’re interested in is condemning or vindicating people for modern political purposes.

20/20 hindsight and all that.

Hmmmm – we dropped one on a Japanese city and still the Japanese refused to surrender – until we dropped the second one.
Stewart is a loathsome, no nothing, smart alec – which means he can probably get elected as a senator in Minnesota…..

One of my biggest pet peeves is WW2 revisionism, and especially Hiroshima/Nagasaki revisionism. Its so easy to pass judgment on those men from our comfortable and easy lives. A man like Stewart, who believes courage is making funny faces to belittle people more important than himself, doesn’t know the first thing about hard decisions.