The Ship Model Forum

Chuck is ever eager to put words in my mouth.

If you read Richard Rhodes, you can see the amount of communication among the scientists at Los Alamos regarding the "urgent need" for a postwar world-wide authority to regulate the dissemination and use of this new power. Indeed, the last 15-20 pages of The Making of the Atomic Bomb discusses this in detail, as well as the reaction of the Truman government to these overtures.

I was referring in my earlier post to the fact that Stalin had his own program well in hand, and this particular "genie" was already well out of the bottle.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

Referring again to Rhodes, I believe the Japanese had the misfortune of clarifying their position on "unconditional surrender" at a time of relative power vacuum in Washington following Roosevelt's death. I think there were a great many second- and third-tier bureaucrats who wanted to see the weapon used as a source of satisfaction for their efforts.

Earlier, Bohr wrote to Roosevelt about an "extranational authority" for the control of nuclear power, and forwarded a notional charter which Roosevelt passed to Justice Felix Frankfurter who passed it back favorably to Roosevelt. The situation reversed during the "Tube Alloy" discussions when Churchill convinced Roosevelt that Bohr's views were socialist, simplistic and childish.

Oppenheimer (no member of the "Chicago" group) wrote he believed the world needed "very far-reaching changes. They are changes in the relations between nations, not only in spirit, not only in law, but also in conception and feeling. I don't know which of these is prior; they must all work together, and only the gradual interaction of one or the other can make a reality. I don't agree with those who say the first step is to have a structure of international law. I don't agree with those who say the only thing is to have friendly feelings. All of these things will be involved. I think it is true to say that atomic weapons are a peril which affects everyone in the world, and in that sense a completely common problem, as common a problem as it was for the defeat of the Nazis."

Speaking from my personal knowledge of the topic, in Chicago at least, there was a real division between those who felt that if you can research a thing you should, you must, and those who felt constrained from certain lines of work because of the possible, or inevitable, negative consequences for the human race. In any event, making a bomb is a task for engineers working from your calculations. They are, after all, an entirely lower form of mind, with limited vision and more able to deal with the technical consequences of the adaptation of your theories and experiments. In addition, who can say what positive spin offs occur from related activities. Who would have thought sealant K416 for the Uranium Hexafluoride centrifuges would find common use in the house as Teflon?

Gil Elliot wrote in The 20th Century Book of the Dead that the century consumed 1-2 million lives by war between 1900 and 1914, the rate rising to 10/12 million a year by 1945. Since the detonation of the first atom bomb, the rate has fallen below 1 million a year and remained at this level for the next 50 years. This has been accompanied by a gigantic increase in the capacity for killing. In that sense, these horror weapons have finally quelled human blood lust.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

It was a common complaint of the American Left in the 1960's that the nuking of Japan was totally unnecessary. The bombs were dropped on Japan for the benefit of making an object lesson for Stalin.

This was, of course, meant as a criticism of US military policy. According to this thinking, Japan was already beaten and ready to surrender.

Except for the part about Japan being ready to surrender, I think they inadvertently may have been correct. If anyone needed an illustration of what lay in store for him, it was Stalin. I guess you could say they were right for the wrong reason.

The much-maligned History Channel also claimed that the aforementioned yellow cake "donated" by the sub crew was used in the manufacture of the Nagasaki bomb.

Being a member of the "History Channel Club" I guess you could hold me responsible for funding their inaccuracies. But they've never asked my opinion on anything. "Views expressed on this program are not necessarilly those of its sponsors". Especially when such criticism is aimed at the American Confederacy (Arthur Kent likes to tar us with a broad, dripping brush).

It looks to me like the Japanese Government was in danger of toppling to a coup. If Japan had not surrendered, and we had not nuked them, I believe the Emperor would have been killed by his own military leadership.
Allied troops would have been faced with an expanded and more brutal version of the invasions of Saipan and Okinawa.

As has been pointed out in an earlier thread, General LeMay would have continued to burn Japan to the ground. History forgets that his fire bombings were more destructive and killed more people than the A-bombs.

The hypocracy of the anti-nuclear crowd is revealed in that they shed tears for the A-bomb victiums of Japan, while pointedly ignoring the firebomb attacks that killed more persons in Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo. This shows they are motivated not by compassion for dead civilians, but rather by their own fear of nuclear weapons.

If the Japanese did indeed have nuclear weapons, they would have used them in the form of a dirty bomb: radioactive material dispersed by conventional explosive. This "basement bomb" depends on mechanics, not physics, and so would be well within their capability. If they had the material, they would have used it. The fact that they didn't proves they didn't have it.

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Les Foran
On the Oregon Trail

I think the actual deployment of the nuclear weapon in war is a measure of inertia in any government of this size.

We have to remember that most of the upper level scientists signed on to kill Nazis, not Japanese. The end of the war in Europe marked the end their interest in such a weapon. It's racism, pure and simple, but not malevolent racism.

The urge to use atom bombs against Japan was from the upper military echelons to escape a devastating campaign against an implacable enemy which would inflict countless needless deaths. Such details and information were beyond and outside the scope of the scientist's narrow view of the world.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

No, these horror weapons have not quelled human blood lust, as evidenced by the constant wars that have been going on since 1945. Elliot's figures may very well be right, but a million a year is still a million a year and hardly evidence of the 'quelling of human blood lust'. Also, according to your quote Elliot says war consumed '1-2 million lives ...between 1900 and 1914' which even going by the upper figure is around 140,000 per year, substantially less than the post-1945 figure. What secret 'horror weapon' did the world have that reduced war's death toll to such a low figure before 1914? What nuclear weapons may have done is to have prevented another world war, but they haven't stopped every other conceivable type of war from occurring.

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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Seneca, 1st century AD

Frankly, given the enormous risks the human race has run from the possession of nuclear weapons, I would willingly trade non-stick frying pans for a non-nuclear world. Nevertheless, we live in a world where nuclear weapons are a reality, but please let's not try and justify their unfortunate existence by making them out to be the panacea for all the world's ills, whether it be war or eggs sticking to my frying pan.

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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Seneca, 1st century AD

Considering the exponential growth of humanity in this interval, I believe we are witnessing a paradigm shift in the way political disagreements are settled, especially considering the capacity to kill has never been higher.

Based on the growth of humanity, the curve from 1500-1900 would predict 100 million war dead a year by now. What went right?

What was Earth's Human population in 1900? about a billion? What was it in 2000? About 6 billion?

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

What curve from 1500-1900? Where does the '100 million war dead a year' figure come from? You can't just randomly mention odd figures and make vague statements and expect someone to be able to answer them. And you still haven't answered my earlier point: according to your earlier figure, from 1900-1914 the annual death toll from war was a fraction of what it is now. So what went right then that isn't going right now?

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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Seneca, 1st century AD

Nearly 2 billion.

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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Seneca, 1st century AD

The figures are from The 20th Century Book of the Dead.

You know the direction of the argument is accurate. Arguing over one or two billions of dead or alive is just rearranging deck chairs on Titanic.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

Unfortunately I don't have a copy, so there's not much more I can say on the matter.

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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Seneca, 1st century AD

Like I said, quibbling over a billion or two is just rearranging deck chairs on Titanic.

Zbigniew Brzezinski's book The Great Chessboard is also enlightening in this area. He puts the cost of 20th Century war (and Stalinism, Maoism, radical Islam, etc.) at about 200 million.

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If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.

-- "A Nation at Risk" (1983)

And rightly so. It would be prohibitively costly to entirely eradicate humanity using fire bombing methods, yet extermination of the human race is easily accomplished using nuclear weapons. 1 smallish nuclear weapon approximately equals one very large, thousand bomber fire bombing of WWII. How many similar saturation fire bombings attacks can all of the world's bomber fleet that ever existed undertake before they are totally worn out and will fly no more? Yet the 2 superpowers managed 60000 nuclear warheads and attendant delivery methods between them.




- Chuck

See "Japan's Secret War" by Wilcox, published by William Morrow and Company, 1985. The book is loaded with references to official documents.
Read it, you will be very surprised. A good piece of work.
I assume that some on this board have seen the book as well as I?

I have heard of the book but have never read it or owned a copy, can you tell us more?:



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Japans-Secret-War-Robert-Wilcox/dp/0688041884/ref=sr_1_6/026-8822682-2088459?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185902381&sr=1-6

Wilcox's book has been heavily criticised in many reviews for its sensationalism and the author's apparent willingness to accept dramatic accounts uncritically with only the flimisest evidence. Reviews abound with phrases such as "arguably the least reliable [account of wartime Japanese A-bomb research]", "unsubstantiated account [of a post-Hiroshima test]", "Wilcox' failure to discuss the difficulty of translating scientific theory into a workable bomb", etc.

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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Seneca, 1st century AD

Thank you
I won't waste my time then, anyhow more excuse to finish reading Shattered Sword and Dunkirk on the go at the moment.

I would agree with some of the criticisms given. In some places there is a slightly jounalistic feel to the thing. However the sources found and consulted CANNOT be denied and include a truckload of offical documents.
I have the feeling that the main point of contention from the critics is the account of a test that is said to have taken place right after the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Japan. The evidence for this is indeed very thin to the point of being transparent, but even so I would not dismiss it out of hand. The Russians would have data on this aspect somewhere in their archives; maybe in the future?
I have found that several people over the years find it difficult to believe that the Japanese would have the knowledge/ability to conduct such a programme. The documents state otherwise.
Last point; I am no expert on matters atomic, but I know when a person has done real research, and I have actually read the book.
Question; could somebody on this board please respond who has done the same, in order to give a second opiion. Thank you.

Well, now I have the book (from the uni library), I shall doubtless comment in due course...

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"Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." Seneca, 1st century AD

The program is on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdCe2wBeCiw

Lars

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Lars
IJN WWII ships rocks
visit my models at http://www.aeronautic.dk/Warships%201-700.htm