Hiroshima had industrial targets, this much is true. It was not however, a "military base". Pretty much any city in a wartime nation has some targets of military value, that does not make the city itself a military base. Would you call Chicago a military base in and of itself? Would you call an attack or a bombing of Chicago to be an attack against a military base?
"Truman specifically avoided targeting purely civilian locations, including an order that Tokyo and Kyoto not be on the list."
Tokyo was pretty much decimated because of the fire-bombings. If it had not been for that it too would not have been "purely civilian". I don't know how much more of a pure civilian target you can get than dropping a nuclear warhead in the center of a large populated city consisting mostly of civilians.
Let's take a look at more of the radio adress by Truman.
"The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost."
This seems almost to suggest that the attack on Hiroshima was almost purely against a military target, and "thousands" of lives hadn't already been lost. Certainly seems to downplay the attack in my view.
"Nagasaki was the second target of its day, and was a significant military port."
Why not just attack the military targets in these two cities? Nuclear bombing was for the purpose of destroying the military targets? It most certainly was not military targets that the bombs were needed for. It was an attack on civilian populations, (and if the officially stated reasons are the only ones), an attack to frighten and terrorize the Japanese into submission through it's sheer devestation to entire cities, not as an attack on valid military targets to stop the military.
"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare."
So those who do not follow the rules of war, need to have nuclear weapons dropped on their civilians? That is part of the justification? Surely "intentional" killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, for any reason, is against what anyone would consider the rules of war. But it is justified because the other side did bad things? If we care so much about the rules of war, and treating soldiers, as well as civilians decently, we would not have to stoop to such tactics.
"Had Japan been considering a conditional surrender?"
Secretary Togo was talking to the USSR, the only major nation they were still at peace with, in order to act as an intermediary with the USA. The US, having cracked the Japanese codes, was aware of this and learned of it prior to Potsdam. Efforts were being made by the new civilian government of Japan, (Tojo and the power structure had resigned in shame), to end the war and negotiate a settlement with the USA, and to ensure the survival of the Emperor, which was the paramount concern. Negotiations were certainly being considered throughout the entire war. The plan of Japan's attack on the USA was to destroy the Pacific fleet in order to entirely eliminate the US presence in the region, thereby allowing the Japanese to take the Dutch East Indies, and the oil and rubber resources in the region, which they were in need of for their aggression in the rest of the Pacific Theater. After eliminating the US pacific fleet, they would then sue for peace with the US in order to avoid having to go to war with them on a massive scale, which they knew they could not win. This is very well established as being their strategy, and not just among cracy hippie professors. Take a look at "The Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire", for a detailed look at the planning of the Japanese military before Pearl Harbor. The intent was always to try and take the first move against the US, stop them from interferring, and then negotiate a settlement in order to avoid an outright conflict with a nation they did not want to fight a protracted war with, and indeed they knew they could not fight a massive war with the US while engaged throughout the region. So they were very much able to negotiate and consider surrender. Various efforts were also made to negotiate and bring about a truce before things even progressed to the point of outright defeat that they were at prior to Hiroshima.
Also note that the eventual surrender was not "unconditional". Take a look at this URL, from the journal "International Security"
http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/General/atombomb/stra nge_myth/article.html/The USA military was presented with info about how the concept of "unconditional" surrender was foreign to the Japanese people, read more about that and the strange mindset involved in the article.
But here is a relevant point: "Strangulation of Japan without the invasion of Honshu would surely have been tried first. Even more likely, Truman would have acted upon the belief of Grew, Stimson, Forrestal, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff that the unconditional surrender doctrine could and should be tempered enough to negotiate a conditional surrender that would end the war without an extremely costly invasion -- the same conditional surrender that did end the war on August 14."
That's right, even after the bombings, Japan did not offer an unconditional surrender, they asked that the Emperor must remain in order to surrender. Something that was certainly acceptable to the USA.
"After the first bombing, no surrender announcement was made, and even after Nagasaki was hit, it still took four days of internal bickering before the emperor could come out and announce the surrender."
Giving a nation a couple days here and there in order to come to terms is certainly not to much to ask? You seem to be aware of the struggle that Hirihito was undergoing with various elements of his own government in order to end the war. Giving him a few days to make it clear that he was going to not take the military's objections any longer. The new civilian government was just starting to gain full control and end the former military insanity that permeated the country. Certainly as almost all Journals and scholars assert that the bombing was not needed and Japan was on the verge of surrender, other steps besides two bombings could've been taken?
As for the projected losses of an invasion of Japan, your numbers might be closer to the truth than what you hear from defenders of the bombing. The ghost-writer for Stimson admitted later on that he merely took the figures he quoted out of thin air, in order to provide a backup for his position. There is no reliable way to estimate exactly how many casualties it would've taken on either side in any possible invasion. What is clear from the historical record, and the 1946 Strategic Bombing Survey, is that Japan had been literally more than decimated in a military respect. They did not have a capable military in any sense of the word after the bombings of Tokyo and it's utter defeat. As I have said in other posts, Japan was owned, pure and simple. There was no AA fire against the Enola Gay, no fighters, no resistance anymore to the massive air superiority that had eliminated most major targets, and destroyed most of it's forces on the mainland and the islands. From every scholarly study I've read, and all the evidence I've seen, it seems that any possible further military actions against Japan would've been like shooting ducks in a barrel. Japan puts forces in the field? They can be destroyed from above. They rebuild anything? Bombings.
Read "Strategy Number Four" from the link I provided. The most salient point: "7: And finally, that such a devastated and thoroughly beaten nation, whose armies in the Pacific had taken losses of 22 times as many deaths as they had inflicted on General MacArthur's forces during their march toward Japan in 1944 and 1945, could have inflicted some 500,000 deaths -- 70 percent more than the 292,000 the United States armed forces lost in all of World War II -- on the world's best-equipped army, navy, and air force."
"In addition to these assumptions, this scenario asks that we believe that after the conquest of Kyushu, at a cost of under 15,000 deaths and probably no more than 7,000 -- 8,000, and after all of the above conditions had been realized, if President Truman had been presented with a plan for the invasion of Honshu that was estimated to cost half a million American deaths and many more Japanese troops, he would have approved it. It does not seem credible."
I would also ask that you look at this article from "Foreign Policy" that I linked to in another post:
http://www.ncesa.org/html/hiroshima.html/"Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it." (Emphasis added.)"
The view that this was not a needed step is indeed the consensus of scholars and those who have taken a detailed look at the historical record.
"It is also obvious that if assurances for the Emperor were put forward together with the Soviet attack, the likelihood of an early Japanese surrender would be even greater. The JIC recognized this in its April 29, 1945, report, observing that there first had to be a realization of the "inevitability of defeat," which the JIC judged a Soviet declaration of war would produce. Once "the Japanese people, as well as their leaders, were persuaded that absolute defeat was inevitable and that unconditional surrender did not imply national annihilation, surrender might follow fairly quickly."
