80 Years Ago Today in the far Pacific
- Thread starter CyValley2
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I just ordered Bob Leckies book yesterday, Sledges is next
My father was also a medic and in the Battle of the Bulge. He told me he was pissed about being assigned as a medic because he had no training and felt "unqualified" but the docs told him he did a good job. Shortly before the Normandy invasion he was given some booklets to read and told he was now a medic. He had been doing ambulance driving and some clerk work related to the battalion medical unit before that (he could type which was good stateside but less so heading into combat). Most of his letters home were actually typed up until June 1944. After they landed at Utah Beach letters were all pencil and ink except for a couple of quiet periods where he could get his hands on a typewriter.
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According to Richard B. Frank, author of Downfall, Soviet intervention was significant but not the crucial factor. The Japanese had already written off Manchuria and according to Frank the Soviet declaration "did not invalidate the Ketsu-Go military strategy" in defending the home islands against an invasion. Hirohito really emphasized the "science" (atomic bomb) and "domestic situation" during the Imperial conference where he made the decision. Soviet intervention was mentioned, but the emphasis was placed on the atomic bombs and civil unrest. The Japanese up to the Nagasaki and Hiroshima, were convinced that the U.S. would have to invade, that they couldn't bomb their way to victory. Nagasaki destroyed that belief, especially to Hirohito. Plus, Hirohito knew that there almost certainly would be a severe famine in the fall of 1945 due the destruction of the rail lines that brought rice to the cities.
Edit: the first mention we hear of Hirohito wanting surrender was after Hiroshima before the Soviet declaration. He made that request to Togo, the only non military member of the Big 6.
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I just found out about this place. Has anyone been to this museum?
My dad was in the Navy during WW2 and served over in Guam, Okinawa and the Philippines.
I still have the diary he kept during the War.
My dad was in the Navy during WW2 and served over in Guam, Okinawa and the Philippines.
I still have the diary he kept during the War.
National Museum of the Pacific War | Admiral Nimitz Gallery
Fredericksburg, TX is home to the National Museum of the Pacific War, named one of the top 5 history museums in the US. Find tips, pricing, hours and more.
www.visitfredericksburgtx.com
Never been to that place. That's probably on my bucket list now. Thanks for your father's service and glad you still have the priceless gift he left you.I just found out about this place. Has anyone been to this museum?
My dad was in the Navy during WW2 and served over in Guam, Okinawa and the Philippines.
I still have the diary he kept during the War.
National Museum of the Pacific War | Admiral Nimitz Gallery
Fredericksburg, TX is home to the National Museum of the Pacific War, named one of the top 5 history museums in the US. Find tips, pricing, hours and more.www.visitfredericksburgtx.com
If you all like Museums with war stuff. Come see me sometime at the Gold Star Museum at Camp Dodge. It's really a good museum and they did it really well. It concentrates on Iowans in battle. Lots of really good stuff. Ill be there saturday from 10:00-2:00. We also have a really cool fighter pilot flight sim that is fun. The whole thing is free.
I don't want to make this thread into some lengthy discussion about the atomic bombs versus the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria. The answer is at some level "both."
I will make this point, though --
I think Truman made the right call with the bombs even if the Soviet declaration of war was ultimately the definitive factor. Truman didn't know what exactly would drive the Japanese to surrender. But he did know what Iwo Jima was like and what Okinawa was like. Imagining the former x1,000 or the latter x100 in the Home Islands with hundreds of thousands of American boys dead and millions of Japanese (most of them civilians... woman, children, the elderly, etc.) dead was unpleasant and unfortunately very real if Downfall proceeded.
If dropping the bombs provided any boost to the probability of avoiding that Armageddon, and Truman and his cabinet and the senior military brass had no reason to say it wouldn't move the needle at least a little, then it was obviously his obligation as the commander-in-chief to order Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
They'd spent all this money on the Manhattan Project... and it wasn't cheap... and were starring fighting in the face that would have been just as bad as the Eastern Front. Truman did a terrible but correct thing.
See post #71I just found out about this place. Has anyone been to this museum?
My dad was in the Navy during WW2 and served over in Guam, Okinawa and the Philippines.
I still have the diary he kept during the War.
National Museum of the Pacific War | Admiral Nimitz Gallery
Fredericksburg, TX is home to the National Museum of the Pacific War, named one of the top 5 history museums in the US. Find tips, pricing, hours and more.www.visitfredericksburgtx.com
This is a great museum. Would highly recommend.
If Truman needed any convincing the July 26 intelligence report that placed triple the amount Japanese soldiers on Kyushu sealed Japans fate.
Yeah. Even if it wasn't necessary... again, assume for a moment the Soviet declaration finally knocked Japan out... Truman had no idea if that would do it. He had the obligation to try absolutely anything at his disposal that was less terrible than what Olympic and Coronet would do to the whole of humanity.
The bomb was one option. So he did it. The war ended. Might have been more correlation than causation depending on which book you believe but his process was completely understandable.
A tough, terrible call that Truman got right even if not strictly necessary. One can argue that notion in hindsight, but it wouldn't change the known facts Truman had when he ordered Hiroshima.
Can you imagine the outcry Truman would have faced if he didn’t use it and the American people learned that he had it at his disposal?
Not to be only the accountant (and I'm not one) but the Manhattan Project cost about $2 billion in 1945 dollars, which is around $40 billion now. That amount doesn't seem like much for modern standards when it comes to major defense programs (e.g., the cost of the F-35 R&D, development, and builds).
But U.S. GDP in 1945 was about $225 billion (in nominal dollars).
So, at the time, the Manhattan Project cost around 1% of GDP.
Roughly $300 billion in today dollars... roughly 1/3 the current defense budget.
Hard to spend that amount of money (and Truman was a budget nerd considering he came to prominence leading the eponymous Truman Commission) and not use it for its intended purpose (the Manhattan Project was "aimed" at the Germans originally but Japan was close enough) when an opportunity presents itself that could at least plausibly shorten the war and save hundreds of thousands of American lives.
From Truman's perspective, he had to do it. No way to argue around it historically. It might not have been necessary in reality to force the surrender... but Truman had to take all measures.
Just a side note. Speaking most generally, U.S. WWII spending wasn't highly constricted (maybe that's not the correct phrasing, let me know). We spent a lot of bucks, often (if not mostly?) on top-quality equipment.
As I do (far too often here, I'll admit, but I've read something about them), I cite the Iowa Class battleship program - the world's last-built big gun ships. (Four commissioned in 1943 and 1944.)
"The construction of the Iowa-class battleships was one of the most complex endeavors in the history of shipbuillding. . . . Each vessel cost more than $130 million fully equipped, making them the most expensive weapons platforms built in World War II. . . .
"Their design alone took two million man hours. To build one, 3,500 workers toiled for almost three million man hours. . . . an aggregate 212,000 shaft horsepower, the most powerful . . . engine ever installed in an American warship (ed: up to that time). . . .
"The Iowa design provided for duplicate and triplicate backup systems. 'The redundancy was unbelievable,' one engineer later recalled. 'Something could break down, which was rare, and no one would ever know the difference.' "
- Warship Builders, Thomas Heinrich, Naval Institute Press, 2020, 360 pages.
What an interesting man Franklin Roosevelt was. Gregarious but oh, so sly. He kept his cards flat against his chest. Seldom did those around him know truly what he was thinking. Roosevelt wielded great presidential power. One example: During the glum days of the depression 1930s, the chief kept the critical USN construction yards afloat with New Deal funding (under the table?) Absolutely a necessity for what would come.
Not long ago I read the Richard Rhodes book, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Simon & Schuster, 896 pages, 2012 anniversary edition. Fascinating read, it really is, even though a good deal of it flew over my head at dizzying speed. So, the point: A project that required massive spending is ok'ed by FDR with a stroke of his pen.
The Man:
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I try to leave the modern politics out of something from 70+ years ago.
I'm generally complimentary of FDR's preparation for and management of the war. Same deal with Truman and the end of the war and the beginning stages of the Cold War in the late 40s.
But there are some bad things about him, too.
A short summary...
The first New Deal was a bit of a disaster
Court packing was a fiasco and he deserves ignominy for it
The internment of Japanese-Americans
All sorts of political compromises with southern Democrats/current or former Klan members
Got played at Yalta... clearly trusted Stalin too much
Clearly thought too highly of the Chinese Nationalists/didn't take the Communists seriously
Didn't groom a successor in '40 or '44 (though Truman as VP as an inspired choice)
Let Henry A. Wallace get WAY too close to the presidency
Didn't retire in '44 when his health was clearly failing and he wasn't up to finishing the job
I could go on, but those ones there are some of the big ones.
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Probably the thing that doesn’t get talked about enough in the management of WW2 was that the Navy started to think about war with Japan in around 1905. They came up with War Plan orange which formed the template for what Nimitz did, espeicially island hopping.
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Militaries like to plan. It's what they do.
I'm sure they've got a plan to invade the New Zealand in the archive somewhere if needed.
I'm one of those who sees history as a stream of past personalities and events transporting people along today.
I agree with almost all your points, not that you're looking for consensus here. FDR was a mere mortal. But, a fascinating mere mortal.
I did mean to question FDR earlier about his willingness to make decisions on major issues on his personal say so, and what that meant in the historical and continuing problem of executive power.
Gotta dig into Yalta, I'm only superficially versed on it. Appreciate the mention.
I left it off the list but yes, FDR was definitely one of the turning points when it came to expanded executive power. Our modern military, defense, and intelligence complex (and all the money flowing into it) simply didn't exist before FDR and the onset of WWII and the Cold War. And nor did the entitlement programs dominating the federal budget nowadays. I'm not saying these changes were necessary good or bad given the situation at the time, but it did fundamentally change the nature of federal government and executive power.
Before Wilson and FDR, the federal government was a medium-sized navy paid for with a tariff.
After FDR, the federal government was the world's largest insurance company with one hell of a security team in the form of the world's most powerful military armed with a growing nuclear arsenal. And instead of taking something like 2% of national income out of the economy, it was taking more like 20% out.
We've had periods in American history where Congress reasserted more authority to legislate, regulate, set the budget, and perform oversight at the diminishment of the executive branch. Something like this change certainly happened after Andrew Jackson, during the rule of the Radicals in the Andrew Johnson and Grant administrations, and post-Watergate (e.g., the Church Commission, the War Power Act, the Budget Control Act, almost kicking Nixon out of office, etc.). Maybe we're due for another one of those periods soon.
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