Given the secrecy surrounding the bombs, it is highly likely that not one of them had any idea what it was they were assembling/loading into the plane. All they likely knew was that it was "some kind of new, secret, bomb". It is questionable whether the "high ranking officials" referenced in the plane alignment photo caption even had much knowledge of just what this "new, secret, bomb" really was.
I think most of them had an idea about atomic bombs back then, and what they were doing could end the war. Robert Heinlien was investigated by the FBI in the late 30's due to a description of atomic bombs in a story he'd written. So the idea was out there so to speack.
What they were ignorant of, I'm pretty sure, was the actual magnitude of the destruction caused by the devices. My father was about 10 yrs old at the time, he was deeply effected by news reels at the time. The tragedy was horrific.
The atomic bombs were not more devastating to Hiroshima and Nagasaki than were conventional bomb campaigns to other similar cities in Japan toward the end of World War II. The damage from atomic bombs did not stand out as extraordinary to the Japanese leadership at the time. What forced Japan to surrender was Russia's declaration of war. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/05/29/the_bomb_di...
" ... But if you graph the number of people killed in all 68 cities bombed in the summer of 1945, you find that Hiroshima was second in terms of civilian deaths. If you chart the number of square miles destroyed, you find that Hiroshima was fourth. If you chart the percentage of the city destroyed, Hiroshima was 17th. Hiroshima was clearly within the parameters of the conventional attacks carried out that summer. ..."
Now chart out the number of planes used in the attack and the potential rate of attacks once the production pipeline really got going. That's what made it remarkable. A thousand B-29s fly over your city and leave it a smoking ruin is Tuesday, but two B-29s fly over and do the same and that's something new and scary.
Contrary to your statement that the attack was considered unremarkable, reports of the attack were initially disbelieved by the Japanese government because they knew of nothing that had occurred that could have caused such damage: "It was generally felt at Headquarters that nothing serious had taken place, that it was all a terrible rumor starting from a few sparks of truth."
The ultimate effect of the atomic bombings on the surrender compared to the Soviet intervention is highly debatable, of course, but it wasn't irrelevant just because it wasn't the most devastating attack of the war.
Its more like saying that a single bomb that kills 500 is on par with an attack by an army in which 500 are shot dead.
I agree with that idea. Apart from the fact that they were single-plane attacks, there was little that set the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings apart from what happened to almost every city in Japan. Yes, radiation sickness is awful, but so are napalm burns on half your skin.
One thing that I wonder about whenever this subject comes up is whether it would have been cheaper to deploy use conventional bombs against those targets. It would have been fairly easy to send a thousand bombers with conventional payloads (or just 200 that made 5 sorties each)
We know a few other things too. For example, we know that anyone who confidently and bluntly asserts that "if X had been done Y would have happened" is not contributing to any useful discussion. People rarely know why they are doing what they are doing today, and certainly know almost nothing about why someone else did something half a century ago.
We can point to things people said and did in the past and make informed judgements about the plausibility of various reasons they had for doing what they did, but again: anyone who asserts bluntly and with confidence that "Japan would have surrendered if..." or "Japan did surrender because..." isn't helping.
Japan surrendered after Nagasaki was bombed. Some people think this shows that Hiroshima alone was not enough to convince the Japanese government that the new weapon would turn the tide of war against them.
Russia declared war on Japan after Hiroshima was bombed. Some people think this was important to Japan's surrender, but would it have happened without the bomb?
Japan had a history of fighting for every inch of territory. Some people think a conventional invasion would have resulted in a rapid conquest.
Area bombing in Europe had a relatively small effect on the Axis war effort, and an awareness of this was growing within the Allied command. Within military circles there tends to be a feeling that if something isn't working the best thing is to do more of it. The bomb was more of it. Thus, the ineffectiveness of area bombing in Europe may have contributed to the decision to use the bomb in Japan.
And so on...
It is worth noting that war itself is almost always strongly motivated by counter-factuals. "If we just bomb the enemy they will surrender" (they don't: they become more dogged in defense until they demonstrably face total destruction). "If we engage in horrific acts of terrorism the enemy will run in fear!" (they don't: terrorist organizations that employ violence against civilians have a zero--yes, zero--rate of effectiveness in achieving their goals: http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/publication/792/why_terr...)
All we can say with anything remotely resembling certainty was that the bombs did drop and the war did end. We can make some informed guesses about why both sides decided the way they did. We can say virtually nothing with any certainty at all about what would have happened if any major decision had been different... except maybe one.
What if Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbor? This is a counter-factual that people who are wont to make blunt, confident predictions about "what would have happened" had the Allies never destroyed Hiroshima or Nagasaki are generally surprisingly silent about, yet it is one of the few things that would plausibly (not certainly) have avoided the subsequent destruction of those cities.
I agree with most of your post, but I don't find the idea of Japan not attacking Pearl Harbor very plausible/useful. It had been clear for years that, given Japan's imperial ambitions and the US's desire to maintain their own influence over the region, that the two would come into conflict eventually. Japan at the time would not accept kowtowing to US power and influence without a fight. Exactly how and when that fight would start could have varied any number of ways, but I think the fight was inevitable.
Arguably, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was the best move they could have made, considering their position. They did succeed in limiting US naval power in the Pacific for the 6 months that Yamamoto estimated.
I was thinking more along the lines of the ensuing nuclear arms race, nuclear proliferation, MAD, etc. The fact that the bomb worked, and worked so well (regardless of its effect on the outcome of the war) definitely contributed to this.
Sure, if it hadn't worked, they may have tried again, and the next attempt may have led to all these things, but fact is, it DID work, and everyone in these photos contributed to it (knowingly or unknowingly).
Just a day on the job as far as they were concerned. As with many things you might do, you only realize what you were doing was important (often) long after the fact.
