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America planned to bomb Mt. Fuji

Orionvortex

先輩
17 Apr 2006
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A while back I was told by a friend that when America was planning to test its nuclear weapons on Japan that one of the plans was to level Mt. Fuji. However, this plan was eventually scrapped because the American government came to the conclusion that if they leveled Mt. Fuji the Japanese would fight to the very end and never surrender.
Can anyone speak on the validity of this??
 
Sounded like one of the stupidest thing to do in WWII. Why would they want to destroy a natural wonder of the world to win a war ?
 
Maciamo said:
Sounded like one of the stupidest thing to do in WWII. Why would they want to destroy a natural wonder of the world to win a war ?

Sounds far-fetched to me as well. Somebody has to be pulling someone's leg.
 
I don't know if an atomic bomb would have "leveled" Mt Fuji anyway. At most it would have damaged a few meters at the surface and scarred the mountain.
 
I doubt that they halted the plan due to the conclusion that the Japanese would fight to the last man if they destroyed Mt. Fuji, as that is the very reason that the USA decided to use the nuclear weapons in the first place. The Japanese were VERY determined fighters, and they trained almost every element of the populace to fight and kill as many American soldiers as they could. With the condition of the civilan populace being as such, a conventional invasion and naval blockade, even combined with extensive bombing campaigns, would have been cost-prohibitive in terms of manpower and resources.

The dropping of nuclear weapons on civilan targets was a gargantuan show of force to the Japanese. The message intended was that resistance would be dealt with swiftly, and that fighting would only result in their total annihilation.
 
well I did hear that the Japanese were furious when pictures were taken of American bombers with Mt. Fuji on the background. So I understand it would hurt the Japanese , but will indeed give them more power to never surrender.

For the rest I have no idea about this, first time I hear this story.
 
Sounds like BS, America was using the bombs as quickly as they could make them, and they weren't being tested - they were weapons to be used.
 
Hummm???

I GOOGLED the topic and read things for about an hour without finding any historic evidence of such a plan. There were a lot of recent "what if" discussions on the topic of bombing Fuji. Anyone have evidence of Truman or the military actually planning such a thing back in the 40's? It seems we had a policy about avoiding destruction of historical sites if I remember right. Anyway, all the Fuji destruction stories I found were recent conjecture, not historic fact.

Frank

:?
 
Kyoto was rejected as a target for the atomic bombs as one of the planners/commanders had visited Kyoto years earlier and didn't want to see all the temples and shrines destroyed.
 
wow, thank you for all the feedback. I'm impressed with this knowledge tank here. My friends claim sounded far fetched but I personally lacked the evidence to prove him wrong.

Not anymore!!!

*cynical laughing*
 
All of the targets chosen to be bomber were cities - the original target of the second bombing was a place called Kokura, but due to clouds over Kokura they bombed the secondary target which was Nagasaki.
 
I seriously doubt even a 150 megaton nuclear blast would level such a mountain, although it would seriously reshape it. If I'm correct, Mt. Fuji is a shield volcano? So it's relatively low with a very wide base.

They might have dropped one atomic bomb just to piss the Japanese off, but what real purpose would that have served? Besides, Fat Man and Little Boy were the only bombs we had at the time.

Sounded like one of the stupidest thing to do in WWII. Why would they want to destroy a natural wonder of the world to win a war ?
I'm not sure as many people outside of Japan would have cared all that much back in the 1940s. Hell, the English bombed Dresden for the hell of it (and as revenge for Coventry), destroying hundreds of ancient historical buildings that were irreplaceable.
 
Ewok85 said:
Kyoto was rejected as a target for the atomic bombs as one of the planners/commanders had visited Kyoto years earlier and didn't want to see all the temples and shrines destroyed.

This guy:
http://epgy.stanford.edu/courses/spice/reischauerbio.html

A man who was highly regarded in Japan.

And it wasn't just atomic bombings. He was the reason behind them being spared conventional bombing as well.
 
Ewok85 said:
Sounds like BS, America was using the bombs as quickly as they could make them, and they weren't being tested - they were weapons to be used.

Do you seriously mean to say that the atomic bombs detonated in Japan were the first atomic bombs detonated, period?
 
Sorry, I mean the use of the bombs in Japan wasn't a test, they had already done test detonations. They were using them here knowing the potential and using them as weapons.
 
Ewok85 said:
Sorry, I mean the use of the bombs in Japan wasn't a test, they had already done test detonations. They were using them here knowing the potential and using them as weapons.

Thanks, that's much more clear. I didn't really think it was possible a fellow as bright as yourself didn't know about the test detonations.
 
Actually one of the bombs dropped wasn't tested.

Little Boy which was dropped on Hiroshima was only the second nuclear detonation achieved my mankind and was a gun method nuclear detonation bomb (ram two bits of sub critical uranium together at high speed to form a critical mass) and was never tested. The scientists were so sure this method would work that the Hiroshima bombing was actually the first test of it.

Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki was a plutonium implosion bomb and it was this type that was tested as the "Trinity" explosion. Fat Man was only the third man made nuclear explosion.

The Trinity bomb was only tested because the designers thought it was so complex it may not work, the Little Boy bomb didn't need any testing.
 
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