View 634 August 2 - 8, 2010 (original) (raw)

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Sunday, August 8, 2010

Anniversary of the Nagasaki bomb

The Atomic Bomb

On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped the first nuclear weapon used in war (the second ever detonated) on Hiroshima. There have been commemorative ceremonies in Hiroshima held on August 6 since the end of the American occupation of Japan.

On April 5, 1945, the USSR Commissar for Foreign Affairs informed the Ambassador of Japan that the Soviet Union was denouncing the Japan--USSR neutrality pact.

On April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died. Harry Truman became President.

From April to mid June, 1945, the United States fought the battle of Okinawa, otherwise known as the Typhoon of Steel. Over 12,000 US troops were killed in that ten weeks. It was the first invasion of a Japanese home island, and the invading forces reported that although the defenders understood that the fight was hopeless, not only did the Japanese armed forces fight fiercely -- in some cases literally to the last man -- but so did the civilians, again in some cases to the last woman. About a quarter of the civilian population, along with over 100,000 Japanese troops, were killed during or as a direct result of the invasion.

In June, 1945, a commission of University of Chicago scientists recommended that the first atomic test be conducted on a desert island as a public demonstration with the world press and representatives of all the United Nations be invited as witnesses.

On July 3, 1945 James Byrne, formerly Senator Byrnes, formerly Mr. Justice Byrnes, formerly Roosevelt Advisor "Assistant President" Byrnes, became Secretary of State. He would subsequently accompany Truman to the Potsdam Conference.

On 16 July, 1945, the Trinity test was held in secret. It proved the atomic bomb concept, although by that time there was little doubt that it would work; the debates were in the expected yield. It worked, with a yield of about 20 kilotons (about what Fermi had expected).

On 17 July, 1945, Leo Szilard and 69 atomic scientists, engineers, and technicians who had been involved in some way with the creation of nuclear weapons sent a petition to President Truman urging him not to use the weapon against Japan until the Japanese people had been told the conditions of their surrender and had been warned that the alternative was obliteration. The petition was not signed by Oppenheimer or indeed, except for Szilard, by anyone Truman or his immediate advisors had ever heard of. It is not clear that Truman ever read the petition.

On 17 July (to 2 August) 1945 the Potsdam Conference held in occupied Germany decided the fate of Germany including the mass forced migration of Germans from Silesia and Pomerania, drastic revisions of the German border, and partition of Germany into a Western and an Eastern Zone.

Sometime before 25 July, 1945, according to his diary, Truman ordered the Secretary of War to choose a Japanese military target. His diary entry says"

This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.

He [Secretary of War] and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful...

On July 25, 2010, a military top secret order was issued. It reads in part:

The 509 Composite Group, 20th Air Force will deliver its first special bomb as soon as weather will permit visual bombing after about 3 August 1945 on one of the targets: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and Nagasaki. To carry military and civilian scientific personnel from the War Department to observe and record the effects of the explosion of the bomb, additional aircraft will accompany the airplane carrying the bomb. The observing planes will stay several miles distant from the point of impact of the bomb.

The order restricted discussion of atomic bombs to the President, Secretary of War, Secretary of State, and the chiefs of staff. It is not clear that Truman knew in advance what target was the first selected. It is probable that Secretary of State Byrnes, an anti-communist New Dealer, was involved in the decisions. James Byrnes, the man who everyone had expected Roosevelt to name as Vice President for the 1944 ticket, became Truman's chief foreign policy advisor, and the key decision maker in the atom bomb decisions. Byrnes had been at Yalta, and was at Potsdam.

On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima, a city on the Japanese main island, was obliterated by "Little Boy", a U-235 bomb with an explosive blast of about 20,000 tons of TNT. (Yield calculations vary depending on the formula used.) Nagasaki followed two days later, hit by Fat Man, the plutonium atom bomb. They were the only two atom bombs in the inventory. It is difficult to establish how long it took to refine enough plutonium for weapon four, but several weeks is a reasonable estimate.

On August 8, 1945, the USSR declared war on the Empire of Japan, and began to insist on some of the spoils from the defeat of Japan.

One subsequent US concession was the partition of Korea into North and South occupation zones. USSR demanded a role in the occupation of the Japanese home islands.

On August 6, 2010, for the first time in history an official United States delegation attended the Hiroshima commemoration ceremony. This is widely taken as a US apology for the use of nuclear weapons in 1945.

The morality, practicality, tactical and strategic necessity, effects on future US and Japanese casualties, and nearly every other aspect of the decision to use the bomb have been debated endlessly ever since. A reasonable and very brief summary of the arguments for and against use of the bomb can be found here.

The key decision was to use the first bomb against a city target, rather than in Tokyo Harbor as a demonstration. The key decision factor was time: could the war be ended before the Soviet Union could insist on joint occupation of Japan and in other ways become more heavily involved in the Far East? Given the result of the partition of Korea between the US and USSR, and of Germany between the US/France/Britain and the USSR, it is easy to imagine the changes in world history that would have resulted had Stalin been given a larger role in the reconstruction of Japan.

We may await an official statement of what the United States is apologizing for in its attendance at the Hiroshima commemoration. So far I have seen no official statement as to what the United States is apologizing for.

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Musings on Afghanistan

In 1979 the USSR invaded Afghanistan. The intent was to establish a people's republic.

The Soviet playbooks for Afghanistan.

1. Get them to like us

That didn't work

2. Get them to move

At one time the largest single category of refugees in the world was Afghans. They moved a lot.

3. Make them fear us. Be merciless.

This was applied with a vengeance, to the extent that booby-trapped Teddy Bears were dropped into Afghan villages. Terror was applied.

4. Seize the cities and valleys, and wait; we will convert the next generation.

In 1988-89 the USSR withdrew from Afghanistan when it was decided that the only possible way to win would be to carry the war into Pakistan, and this was beyond the ability of the USSR. (This is of course a gross oversimplification, but it was the military's position, and became accepted by the KGB and then the Party. In those days the USSR was ruled by those three groups, with the military being the most popular and potentially the most powerful bloc, but in many ways the least organized as well as least ambitious.

US policy in Pakistan is to prop up the Pakistani government. It has the tacit consent of India and China, in that neither is actively interfering. It is fairly clear that the Pakistani Intelligence Service is giving massive aid and comfort to the Taliban.

The obvious goal of the US is to prevent Pakistan and Afghanistan from being used as sanctuary areas which give aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States, and particularly to prevent their territories from being used as centers for planning and launching attacks against the United States and her friends and allies.

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