Name: Downfall
ISBN: 9780141001463

Downfall

"These pages present the untold story of how American leaders learned in the summer of 1945 that their compromise strategy to end the war by blockade and bombardment, followed by invasion, had been shattered; radio intelligence had unmasked a massive Japanese buildup on Kyushu designed to turn the initial invasion into a bloody shambles. Meanwhile, the text and analysis of diplomatic intercepts depicted sterile prospects for negotiation before a final clash of arms. Here also, for the first time, is a full and balanced account of how Japan's leaders risked annihilation by gambling on a military strategy aimed at securing political bargaining leverage to preserve the old order in Japan."--BOOK JACKET. "Downfall replaces the myths that now surround the end of the war and the use of the bomb with the stark realities of this great historical controversy."--BOOK JACKET.

What Hacker News says

jpamataMay 2023

I was born in Southeast Asia, lived in China for a while, everyone I've met views it as some kind of karmic justice. It's the idea you get from school (we were living peacefully, then we got attacked and they did all these brutal crimes) and from our grandparents.

I've only seen the contrarian opinion coming from westerners. Perhaps because there's barely any media from Hollywood about the pacific theater, and if there was (eg. HBO's The Pacific), it does not show the horrors of it.

If one is more interested in an objective take on history, especially those using the argument that the Japanese were already "defeated" before the bombs came, then the book Downfall by Richard B Frank is a good book to start with for those who hold a firm anti-nuke stance.

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leftytedFeb 2019

> It isn't debatable because we know hiroshima and nagasaki had no bearing on the japanese decision to surrender.

Not only is this debatable but it is often debated.

Your post is absurd. In your mind the Holocaust is morally equivalent to the nuclear bombings of Japan. That's crazy: Japan and the US were engaged in a war (that Japan started) whereas the Jews (and other victims of the Nazis) were not at war with Germany.

If you want a more nuanced perspective on the bombings and the surrender of Japan, read Downfall by Richard B. Frank. Even if you disagree with Frank, acting like there's no debate on this subject is dishonest. There's plenty of debate. In my opinion, people who talk about issues like this in absolute terms are unwilling or unable to grapple with the complexity that necessarily exists in wartime.

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ben_wOct 2023

I could've phrased it better, it sounds like you're criticising something other than what I meant.

One single plane flies over Hiroshima, ignored because "that can't possibly be a threat". The air raid warning had been cleared at 07:31, and many people were outside, going about their activities.

> it had its own atomic bomb program

Two programs; it was because they were not good enough that they thought the US couldn't have had the weapons:

The Japanese Army and Navy had their own independent atomic-bomb programs and therefore the Japanese understood enough to know how very difficult building it would be. Therefore, many Japanese and in particular the military members of the government refused to believe the United States had built an atomic bomb, and the Japanese military ordered their own independent tests to determine the cause of Hiroshima's destruction.[0] Admiral Soemu Toyoda, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, argued that even if the United States had made one, they could not have many more.[86] American strategists, having anticipated a reaction like Toyoda's, planned to drop a second bomb shortly after the first, to convince the Japanese that the U.S. had a large supply.[1]

[0] Frank, Richard B. (1999). Downfall: the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire. New York: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-100146-3

[1] Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi (2005). Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-01693-4

> AGI

You personally are a General Intelligence; we have Artificial Intelligence. Is GPT-4 a "general" "intelligence"? That depends on the standards for the words "general" and "intelligence". (Someone is probably arguing that anything trained by an evolutionary algorithm isn't necessarily "artificial", not that I know how it was trained, nor even care given I don't use that standard).

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mannykannotFeb 2022

> Ground invasion vs. atomic bombings is a false dichotomy.

I think you are right for a reason other than the one you are giving here. At the time, there were considerable and growing doubts that invasion was at all feasible at any cost.

The bombing survey was only, and could only have been, conducted after the surrender and during the subsequent occupation. The information available at the time, such as the all-out defense of Okinawa and Japan's preparations for doing the same throughout the main islands, was making invasion untenable. Earlier assumptions about the ability of the allies to bring to bear superior force no longer seemed realistic. [1]

What about a negotiations? Japan was showing no interest in negotiations, and intercepted diplomatic communications confirmed this. Equally importantly, the allies were opposed to anything less than unconditional surrender because the armistice of 1918 had set the stage for WWII. In addition, there were considerable and realistic doubts that the Japanese military, still occupying a wide swath of Asia, would accept the outcome of such negotiations.

There was a fourth option - a naval blockade, promoted by Admiral King - and that was apparently expected to kill far more Japanese than either an invasion (insofar as it was feasible at all) or a nuclear attack with the two bombs then available.

As for a demonstration of nuclear weapons: with only two available, if their use failed to bring about a surrender, it would be back to square one for several months. It was not beyond every ethical principle to think that, if these bombs were used, it should be done in a way that maximized their likelihood of ending the war. As it happens, even the bombing of Hiroshima did not seem to bring about meaningful change in the Japanese leadership's position.

As we are discussing the ethics of the decision, we should put aside ex post facto judgement such as that from the bombing survey, but also ask whether the cost in Japanese lives was given much consideration in Washington. I have not seen anything definitive either way, and I am sure Japanese lives did not count as equal to allied ones, but it seems clear that, out of what seemed to be the feasible alternatives available, the use of nuclear bombs did not stand out in terms of civilian casualties and human suffering.

[1] Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire.

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JoeDaDudeJun 2021

Coincidentally, I just started reading Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank [1]. The very first chapter details survivor accounts of the March 45 fire bombing of Tokyo. Later chapters go into the difficulties LeMay had when trying to precision bomb industrial facilities and how ineffective the bombing was.

[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Downfall/cJXtAAAAMAAJ?h...

For a general; history of bombing as a tactic, I recommend A History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist [2]. A short and unusual book in that the author gives instructions on how to read the book in two ways, either chronologically as a history book, or thematically, following the themes and ideas of bombing strategies.

[2]. https://books.google.com/books?id=Wws_HAAACAAJ&newbks=0&hl=e...

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