Hiroshima (1946)
32 comments
·August 2, 2025defrost
A surprising number of the people of Hiroshima remained more or less indifferent about the ethics of using the bomb.
While people far from Japan made much of the uniqueness and power of a single bomb destroying a single city for those on the ground it was just another single city destroyed overnight by bombing .. the 73rd such city destroyed in a relatively short duration of time.
The destruction and death in Hiroshima was on par with the destruction and death in Tokyo when that was firebombed.
prmph
Yes, I understand that Japan gave up, not so much because of the bomb, but mostly because of the Soviet invasion and capture of Manchuria (and the implied threat of an invasion of the mainland), after the war in Europe had been won.
But I still struggle to understand the Japanese mentality. Were they OK with the prospect of city after city being atom- or fire-bombed, so long as no ground invasion occurred?
InTheArena
Additionally, the Japanese leadership was welcoming a land invasion. They believed that a land invasion would result in unacceptable casualties, forcing the United States into a peace that would allow Japan to continue occupying China and many of the sized territories. That's how disconnected from reality the leadership was.
The sad thing is that there is a non-zero chance they where right. There was considerable concern about that from the war leadership at this point. The allies _dramatically_ underestimated the forces that the Japanese had marshalled at the two invasion sites, and it would have been not very good. The alternative that the Navy was pushing was a starvation blockade of Japan. This probably would have been succesful but led to millions more lives lost in Japan, and a almost inevitable civil war in Japan.
InTheArena
This is mostly untrue. Most of this narrative comes from Soviet propaganda that was later propagated by anti-Western and anti-war groups in the United States. More recently, it's gotten more attention as Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Rudolfovich Solovyov use it as a useful tool to build their narrative that only Russia was responsible for World War II's victory and to justify their constant threats of nuclear warfare.
The historical record is very clear, as is Hirohito's own statement at the time:
"Furthermore, the enemy has begun to employ a new and cruel bomb, causing immense and indiscriminate destruction, the extent of which is beyond all estimation. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in the ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but it would also lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
How, then, are We to protect the millions of Our subjects and atone before the spirits of my Imperial ancestors?
This is why We have ordered the Empire to accept the terms of the Joint Declaration. "
prmph
What came before the "Furthermore, ..."?
null
makeitdouble
The war was dictated by a religious leader, to some (most?) there was just no stopping it until it tells them to.
InTheArena
Which religious leader? Hirohito? Hirohito rarely took any direction of the war - at best he enthusiastically endorsed what the ruling militarists wanted. As critical as one could (and should) be about this support, there is plenty of documentation that he tried to tap the brakes on the militarists, but didn't try all that hard. It wasn't until the very end of the war that he directly made a decision, and that was only enabled by a literal tie in the cabinet that allowed him to cast the deciding vote (sorta - more or less, gave him cover to break his role).
He was a war criminal, but not the leader of the war by any means. That was reserved for the militarists - Tojo and Suzuki and others.
slibhb
There was no nuclear taboo in 1945. Looking back, people forget that.
eschulz
This piece made a big impact on me when I read it like five years ago, and if I recall correctly there was a young doctor there who was one of the few interviewed who stated that the bomb's use was possibly a war crime. He did like 48 hours in the hospital as thousands upon thousands of burned and dying walked from afar to the completely overrun clinic.
_rm
Interesting to see the difference in writing style back then. Lots of long sentences. Kind of the opposite to the LinkedIn-style writing we see today, spitting out as many sentences and paragraphs as possible. Like you can see the generations' attention spans in their form of writing.
makeitdouble
Long sentences are fine if your value form over communication.
Marking it on attention span makes it sound like convoluted and rambling sentences were universally good in the first place. I'd argue the contrary for a magazine or news outlet.
asdff
A whole generation reared on cigarettes and black coffee with no tech addiction. Yeah, these were pretty focused times.
mixmastamyk
Been watching some old movies lately and its amazing to watch simple scenes stretch on for five minutes or more. Its almost like there was nothing else to do.
avhception
At first I'm irritated by this, but once I adapt I actually like the time it gives me as a viewer to appreciate the subtleties of what's the characters and what they're up to.
mixmastamyk
Agreed, though I feel they went overboard during the seventies. On the other hand, modern movies make me desperate for a breather.
makeitdouble
> Its almost like there was nothing else to do.
Until now I forgot that people saw theaters as social venues, would eat buckets of popcorn, go the toilet etc.
From that lens, viewers fully focused and digesting every second of the movie was definitely not the average target.
Synaesthesia
The singular horror of this event really is so difficult to describe, definitely one of the low points of human history which we must vow to never again repeat, under any circumstances.
ricksunny
Any global consensus on avoiding repeating this low point in human history needs to acknowledge the prime movers behind birthing the bomb into existence in the first place. Much ink has been spilt debating morality, but on the raw mechanics the historians are in alignment with each other - doesn't matter if you ask Richard Rhodes, Robert S Norris, or Alex Wellerstein:
Vannevar Bush, more than any single individual, scientist or non-scientist, stands at the center of the bureaucratic decision to feasibility-test the fission chain reaction.
(compsci & s/w engineers can love VB all they want for As We May Think, but the man had some serious and arguably unnecessary blood on his hands. The silence of his legacy has been far too effective at ducking popular criticism of his role in history)
If humanity ever chooses to avoid creating yet-to-be-developed doomsday devices in humanity's future, while _still_ harvesting benefits of new R&D (viz. nuclear power plant energy), it needs to 'debug' the social epistemology around the Advisory Committee on Uranium / Uranium Committee (leading to S-1 under the NDRC).
InTheArena
In any moral framework that does not include perfect knowledge of the future, the nuclear bomb is morally defensible at worst, and morally required at best. Sheer number of lives saved? The Nuclear Bomb ended the war. Number of Japanese lives saved? Nuclear bomb wins. The "non-violent" option of a blockade? It would have resulted in millions dead. The Japanese farming system completely collapsed in 1944. Many still starved even after the surrender, as the allies rushed to get food and aid to Japan.
What about a pure Soviet entry into the war? You have to look at what happened to Poland and Eastern Europe when the Soviet army invaded. Once again, by any metric, this was the best possible outcome at the time.
But it was unquestionably a local maximum - the best solution at the time, with horrific consequences afterward.
ricksunny
That's the epistemological pitfall these discussions invariably fall into - debating the morality of deploying rather than the wisdom of developing a capacity in the first place. The primary justification for secretly studying the feasibility of the fission chain reaction was the fear that Germany (not Japan) might be developing an atomic bomb of their own (an early form of the subsequent Cold War's 'can't prove a negative' about what weapons the Soviets might be developing).
prmph
Man, the whole war was horrific.
The Japanese did things that were arguably even more horrific than the bomb; read up on unit 731 and the rape of Nanjing. I'm sure those who experienced those things would have far preferred dying in a flash.
The German did the holocaust, Babi Yar, etc.
The Allies did various fire-bombings.
The current singular taboo around nuclear weapons kind of misses how destructive and horrific the whole war was. This was total war on a scale that is hard to imagine today. To be fair modern nuclear weapons pack a punch that far exceed those atoms bombs.
OgsyedIE
I totally disagree about the difficulty of describing horror, since the linked article is one of many to have received critical acclaim for providing quality descriptions of WW2 experiences (my recommendation is 1952's The Naked Island).
Agree about the necessity of the never again stuff though, even though we've been failing at that continuously.
jwilber
Well, op may be making the point that even the best description of horror is little compared to experiencing it. Watching a video of the horror itself (e.g. combat footage, a beheading, open-heart surgery) pales in comparison to experiencing it firsthand.
cypherpunks01
"The work was originally published in The New Yorker, which had planned to run it over four issues but instead dedicated the entire edition of August 31, 1946, to a single article"
TO OUR READER: The New Yorker this week devotes its entire editorial space to an article on the almost complete obliteration of a city by one atomic bomb, and what happened to the people of that city. It does so in the conviction that few of us have yet comprehended the all but incredible destructive power of this weapon, and that everyone might well take time to consider the terrible implications of its use.
The Editors
zzzbra
I just bought this paperback.
jmclnx
Verg good read
Linked there is also a related article from 1985
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1985/07/15/hiroshima-the-...
The atrocities that the Japanese military committed, consistently and repeatedly and combined with their attack on pearl harbor, meant that Americans of the time on the front lines had few qualms or issues with dropping the bomb.
Truman famously called Oppenheimer a "cry baby" when Oppenheimer expressed doubt. Truman had spent the past decade dealing with the war in his capacity as senator and vice president - seeing the effects it was having first (or second) hand.
Now, this isn't to say that America was right or not right to drop one or both bombs. It may "feel" like I'm saying "the Japanese deserved it for their behavior" - that's not a belief I hold, either.
I just want to provide color for why American leadership seemed so relatively unconcerned with the lives of Japanese civilians in 1945.