Dropping Atomic Bombs on Japan Was Imperative

We now mark the 69th anniversary of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end WW II. The generations which made the decisions for World War II have passed away. The generation which faced the tragic violence required for carrying out those decisions is rapidly leaving us.

As this personal knowledge becomes ever rarer, we must increasingly listen without response to revisionist contra-factual analyses expounding about what a needless, tragic and profoundly immoral decision the United States had made. The arguments advanced display a pleasing, deliberate ignorance which burnishes this peculiar new morality. However, these views can be countered by presenting the history that the Greatest Generation, and their parents and grandparents lived into and through.

In support of dropping the atomic bombs, historians often cite the inevitability of horrifying casualties if troops had landed on the home islands. They extrapolate from 48,000 American and 230,000 Japanese losses on Okinawa to estimates of 500,000 American and millions of Japanese casualties for mainland invasions. However, these figures arise from studies preceding the unfolding recognition by planning staffs of the American experiences on Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Even these estimates are over seven times the dead and wounded suffered by Americans during The Battle of the Bulge; casualties that shocked the American public.

However, such estimates could have greatly understated casualties. Kyushu and Honshu at over 100,000 rugged square miles mathematically enable at least 500 vast redoubts; complex fortifications comparable to that General Ushijima constructed to inflict most losses on Okinawa. This rapid increase in killing efficiency extended to planning stubborn defense of major cities just as the Germans carried out in Berlin. The feeble response to B-29 bombing missions caused U.S. planners to vastly underestimate the thousands of kamikaze airplanes with aviation fuel concealed for invasion. The American “island hopping” strategy had ended, because the Japanese had determined the few regions within their mountainous country that could accommodate the huge armies and air forces needed to subdue the main islands. Harry Truman contemplated increasingly dire estimates causing him to reflect on the possibility of “an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other”.

The Japanese War Faction maintained the standard of 20 million Japanese deaths for planning final mainland battles; battles intended to inflict millions of casualties, and to convince America to abandon the Potsdam Declaration. They had redeployed veteran Kwantung divisions from China, mobilized home defense armies, and distributed suicide bombs and bamboo spears to civilians transformed into soldiers.

Americans also faced biological warfare. Occupation searchers uncovered large stockpiles of viruses, spirochetes, and fungus spores throughout rural Japan. These biological pathogens had already been tested on Chinese civilians. For the Japanese one delivery system directed citizen soldiers to infect themselves and stay behind the advancing troops.

The Greatest Generation and their parents would have been enraged to discover a cabal had ignored the nuclear option for ending the war simply to indulge some incestuous moral orthodoxy. If there was any alternative, Harry Truman, Henry Stimson, and George Marshall were not about to procure the deaths of countless Americans in protracted ground campaigns following amphibious assaults matching the D-Day landings.

Revisionists claim Japan was seeking surrender, but history reveals Japanese negotiation initiatives proved too vacuous to make dropping the bombs unnecessary. These supposed negotiations cite proposals Foreign Minister Togo directed Ambassador Sato to offer to Molotov. In those proposals, Japan intended bribing the Russians into neutrality with conquered Chinese territory. The Soviets would then mediate settlement terms preserving Imperial visions of peace with honor. The first June 29 contacts ignored attributes of surrender with proposals the Russians considered too vague to answer. The August 2 proposals accepted the Potsdam Declaration as only one basis for further study.

When Ambassador Sato finally saw Molotov on August 8, two days after Hiroshima, he received a war declaration instead of answers to his latest proposals. U.S. cryptologists reading “Magic” confirmed Togo’s Russian contacts were ineffectual. American intelligence also knew those involving Allen Dulles in Switzerland lacked any Japanese Cabinet knowledge or interest.

The pattern of Japanese contacts demonstrated an unwillingness to accept any responsibility for understanding Western expectations for negotiation strategies. The fact America had destroyed its navy, massacred its island garrisons, and bombed its cities into cinders should have prompted Japanese proposals embracing a Western style of clarity.

Instead the Japanese Privy Council debated the Final Battles arguments into utter physical and mental exhaustion for eleven hours following the Nagasaki bomb on August 9. For the final meeting, Hirohito reluctantly invited Baron Hiranuma, who had always fiercely disapproved of the war strategy. He reproved Foreign Minister Togo for never making concrete proposals to the Russians and Minister Anami for accepting limitless nuclear warfare deaths without any opportunity to retaliate. Hiranuma also maintained the Emperor’s spiritual essence, as the foundation of Japan’s future, endured independent of any government imposed by surrender. The ministers made no answer to his arguments, but remained unyielding.

At impasse Hirohito, the god-king, spoke the “Voice of the Crane” in the sweltering, underground bunker. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence negotiations with allied belligerents.

Here was illuminated the critical role Kokutai played in surrender. Any prominent Japanese lived within an intimate spiritual three dimensional fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. Emperor Hirohito foresaw the probability of defeat by January 1944 and appointed a Peace Faction. However, he and his advisors conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, fire bombings of over 60 cities, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths. The atomic bombs removed the Final Battles argument allowing the War Faction to relent, allowing Hirohito to assume his unprecedented roll, and requiring no one to lose face. Their cabal remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. In their first meeting, when MacArthur praised Hirohito for ending the war, the Emperor replied others also deserved praise. Yet the Peace Faction could not prevail until the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki so dramatized Japan’s situation that Hirohito could intervene and elevate it into dominance at that final meeting.

Another point says the bombs accomplished little. Supposedly Roosevelt’s decree of unconditional surrender was compromised away by allowing Japan to keep their Emperor. However by accepting the Potsdam Declaration, Japan abandoned the militarism that had committed the country to Asian conquest. The Emperor’s and the government’s authority became subject to the Supreme Allied Commander. Their authority was later subject to the Japanese people’s free expression for determining a post war government that eradicated multi-millennial martial and imperial characteristics.

The moral failure of a negotiated peace requiring anything less than total submission was unacceptable. Allowing a blockade to operate interminably, while deferring to the War Faction any decision about whether Japanese and allied prisoner deaths met their 20 million standards was intolerable. Allowing months of diplomatic dithering to accompany additional hundreds of thousands of civilian and military deaths throughout Asia was intolerable. An imperial, militarist Japan could not be allowed to intimidate future generations when they were on the cusp of producing nuclear weapons.

Allowing the premeditated ignorance of revisionists center stage as the institutional knowledge of the Greatest Generation and their parents and grandparents dies away must remain intolerable.

Japanese Biomedical Experimentation During the WW II Era, Sheldon H. Harris, PhD

Japan geography: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/geography/Indonesia-to-Mongolia/Japan.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html Okinawa redoubt was about 100 sq mi

Allied POWS Under the Japanese http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/rg331-box%201321-jap%20pow%20camps.htm Military prisoners were 34,000 in Japan, 70,000 outside Japan, and 112,000 civilians. There were already 142,000 Anglos and Pilipino victims of criminal killings.

Statistics of Japanese Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources* http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM As a tactic of administering conquered lands, the Japanese had murdered 6 million Asians from 1937 to 1945.

In retirement I am always motivated to study WW II history by the men I grew up around and admired. At about nine my father began taking me out golfing with him on the weekends and most everyone we played with was a veteran. I remember there was a man who used the first golf cart I ever saw, because as a brigade commander in New Guinea he was permanently debilitated by sickness. One fairly good golfer had a weird back swing, because he was crippled while serving with the Big Red One in Sicily. Later I often ended up as a dishwasher at our club. The chef noticed my puzzled look as he limped around the kitchen. He said he got the limp from a wound received when he was with the Rangers at Pointe De Hoc.

There are many other stories I overheard and could relate, but one consistently repeated theme was how their unit or ship was scheduled for the Japan invasion. They always thanked God they didn’t have to become fodder for that killing machine. Therefore I developed and now rework from suggestions I receive and from additional sources this narrative about dropping the atomic bombs. I also break it into four letters I send to papers.

Based of feedback so far this time I need to add a discussion about the increasing fragility our leaders were noting concerning support for continuing the war. The casualties beginning in June 1944 into summer of 1945 were much greater than the experience of this country in the previous two and half years. I remember the story told by one man who was too young to serve, but as an adolescent delivered telegrams part-time for the local Western Union office. He eventually quit, because every day he had to deliver the death notices and people began looking at him as a death angel with some combination of anxiety and hatred.

The partial biography of the sources I used contains a lot of helpful insights and perspectives I didn’t emphasize. The recently published book Hell to Pay by D. M. Giangreco is especially valuable. I was able to find confirmation of so many of my other sources in his book. About 30% of the book is bibliography, appendices, and notes.

Potsdam required the Soviets to aid in the defeat of Japan after Germany’s fall. It was getting clearer and clearer that had a longer war permitted Stalin to really, really contribute that a very stark division of Japan would be required, much as we saw Europe and Korea carved up.

Dropping the bomb would provide a quick way to keep Uncle Joe’s greedy mitts off of Japan.

The only really “Japanese” land Japan lost was not lost to America, nor to Britain, nor to Holland —they were AND ARE NOW lost to the Soviets, now Russia.

Japan wanted to keep it’s bureaucracy intact, and she knew if the Emperor system were preserved then she’d have that.

The American side knew if they dropped the bomb not only would countless American and Japanese lives be saved but the Soviets could also be cut out of the deal.

Japan’s overtures to Russia as a peace-deal broker fell on Stalin’s ears because Stalin DID want the type of longer war that would give a big part of Japan, or at least bigger than what he got (two small islands north of Hokkaido).

The Soviets pretended to be seriously considering this measured role of mediation but actually did nothing of the sort.

One good book missing from your bib is “Japan’s Longest Day”; lots and lots has been written about the causes of the war but comparatively little has been written about the causes of the peace:

After the Emperor’s recording in fact there were all kinds of hi-jinks that ensued in the effort to prevent the broadcast of that recording:

There was a full-fledged fire-fight on the grounds of the Imperial Palace (where you can go, sort of, on most days) and they tried to kidnap the Emperor “who was being used and tricked and LIED TO…!!”

These guys were nutty radicals but they had pretty clear political goals.

I believe there were two copies of the recording and being anywhere near the records before the broadcast was…..extremely dangerous, physically.

Exactly. It’s not super long, nor super abstract —it’s narrated very well and at most points it’s like you’re there, too, on the ground in Tokyo.

A good deal of it is angry guys driving around like crazy as the broadcast clock counts down, and these guys are trying to either capture and destroy the records, or “rescue” the Emperor.

It’s a good book and not boring at all.

By never mentioning the Soviets my source “Hell to Pay” implies that beyond destroying the Kwantung army in China the Japanese believed there wasn't much the Russians could do, because they had no amphibious navy. I have not found a source that mentioned Japanese concern about what the Russians might do.

The Japanese also knew the Soviet army in East Asia was at the far end of the longest logistic train in all history, and believed the Americans had all they could do to supply their own forces.

However I am with you in believing the Russians would have played a significant roll in main island battles. As the battles became ever more brutal surely Stalin's legions would have been invited to be ground up in battle.

My father was a Corpsman on the front lines saving Marine lives on Okinawa.

He saw close up how the Japanese were fighting. he was always deadly serious when he told me as a kid that I would not have been born if the bombs had not been dropped.

You will not find a Pacific War vet that ever thought the nuclear strikes were inhumane or unnecessary. That is purely an invention of latter day leftists.

My dad served w/ 511PIR 11th Airborne Div. He received a serious
head wound during the liberation of Manila so he was out of the
fighting by the end of Jan ‘45. However, the 11th AB led by the
511 PIR were the very first of the occupying forces in Japan (no,
it was not the Marines). Among the first jobs of the paratroopers
was the confiscation of weapons from the civilian population.
The task proved monumental according to my dad’s army pals
who made it that far.

In ‘02 I had the honor of interviewing Brg General Henry Muller
USA Ret at his home in Monticedo, CA. As a Major in WWII
Muller was G2 for the 11th AB. He was a key planner for the
Los Banos Raid, the most successful rescue operation in US
military history. By the end of the war Muller had been promoted
to asst G2 of the 8th Army. I asked him what had been his
assignment when the war ended. He explained to me that he
was in the process of gathering info to determine the likely
casualty numbers of the 8th Army should the Allies invade
Japan. I then asked him if he recalled the number of 8th Army
casualties his G2 unit predicted. He indicated 90,000 soldiers.
Mind you, that was just among several divisions of many
dozens of divisions that would be utilized in an invasion of
Japan.

When the war ended in Europe many outfits were placed in camps named as follows.
Camp Camel
Camp Lucky Strikes
“” Chesterfield
“” Pall Mall
“” Phillip Morris, etc.
These camps were set up to get these veterans of the European ready for the battle in Japan. A few Regiments boarded troops ships. I understand that some troop ships made it through the Panama Canal and riots broke out on several ships. I don’t know how true this is. Have you read or heard anything related?

No, I haven’t. The closest I come is from an unpublished memoir by a Marine Naval artillery spotter on Iwo Jima. He saw one battalion after another get chewed up as they took the island. In this one case he saw a battalion commander walk up and down the line ordering his Marines to charge and they refused. Eventually the Japanese shot him. He didn’t say whether the battalion eventually attacked.

You post was well written and accurate. However, it could be easily distilled into two paragraphs as follows:

We obliterated Hiroshima and the Japanese did not surrender. A few days later we obliterated Nagasaki and the Japanese did surrender. The atomic bomb killed many. A conventional invasion of Japan would have killed far more. The Japanese thought we had an ample supply of atomic bombs. We did not. We did have a very amply and robust supply in the technological pipeline and we did have the ability to drop many atomic bombs on Japan in the near future.

The atomic bomb "gave face" to the warlords of Japan when the Emperor demanded of them to surrender. Thus the atomic bomb saved Japan from total annihilation that they would have suffered in a conventional invasion of their homeland.

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