My dad wasn't a cruel or heartless man. But he understood that war is war. And if you started it, you better be prepared to defend yourself.
Not to mention Nanking.
I’ve seen political issues play out here in the U.S. between Japanese and Korean business interests over the Korean comfort women issue. U.S. politicians getting involved in that mess may have been a factor in Toyota locating a huge plant in N. Alabama near Huntsville instead of in N. Georgia, as weird as that sounds.
I remember an interview with Victor Davis Hanson from years ago. His father was on a B-29 crew in the Pacific
VDH says when he was a young hippie, he questioned his father about dropping A-bombs on Japan, exactly as people do now
His father told him - “the Japanese were killing 15,000 people EVERY DAY in China, Korea and the Philippines. Tell me, exactly, how we were supposed to get them to stop doing that?”
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Excellent article. (Nanking was mentioned extensively in the article)
Back in 1995, my dad, giving a Memorial Day speech in his hometown during the A-Bomb “anniversary year” said “We should have used it, and if we had them, should have used more of them, and sooner.” (Not his exact words, but much along those lines)
He was pilloried in the local press the next day for saying it. But it didn’t make him lose a moment’s sleep.
He knew right from wrong.
My dad wasn't a cruel or heartless man. But he understood that war is war. And if you started it, you better be prepared to defend yourself.
Considering that the Japs did the same to Americans and other foreigners in Japan with the exception that many were never heard from again.
And, as this article points out, the Japanese would enslave and imprison civilians in the countries they controlled. We did not do that.
I have always found that amazing. The people outraged that 150,000 Japanese died in the two bombings couldn’t be more flippant about the 150,000 Chinese civilians dying every month. No, no, don’t use the atom bombs! Don’t invade! Sit back and let “Operation Starvation” do its job. It is estimated that 6 million Japanese would have starved to death from August ‘45 till the end of the year, even after hostilities ceased, if we hadn’t been there to feed Japan.
The bombs prevented another Holocaust.
I believe Truman’s analysis was right, that taking the ground war from Okinawa to the main Japanese islands would have seen more unacceptable levels of military deaths on both sides as well as more civilian deaths as well. Ending the war sooner was better than ending it later.
Full disclosure: I am not saying the next thing to support what the militaristic Japanese leaders did; not at all.
However, in the context of the times, turn of the century, it is not hard to understand, looking around Asia then, that many Asiana saw that “empires” ruled the world, even in Asia, but none were Asian, until Japan.
Howver again. modern, post WWII Japan, has learned now that an empire was not needed to be prosperous and successful. It could have had a peaceful “Asian commenwealth” instead of an empire, if it had had different leaders.
And then they need to look up how they died.
After a bit your brain goes numb.
When I was stationed in Guam in the 1980’s, every Chamorro over 45 had survived the Japanese occupation, and witnessed the atrocities. I spoke with people whose brothers, fathers and grandfathers were murdered, whose Grandmothers, mothers, and sisters were raped by Japanese soldiers. I had read of the horrific starvation, torture and murder of American POWs, and Japan’s war crimes in China, Korea and the Pacific, but hearing first hand stories was sobering.
Unlike Germany, Japan has never really accepted their evil deeds. Go to the Yūshūkan War Museum in Tokyo and you will see a completely whitewashed story of victim Japan being forced into war, including China and Korea, with not even a hint of wrong doing, misconduct or imperialism. Just poor, heroic, righteous Japan, the victim.
The Japanese had 1000`s of comfort women on all of their occupied Pacific islands. Koreans etc all were left to starve to death when the Japanese retreated. It was a horrible awful barabaric country. They were the Monsters of Asia.
“In 1905, the idea that a non-white power could win a naval victory”
The Japanese look awfully White to me.
As I have often commented on this subject: “Do you think that if Japan had the bomb they would have used it at Pearl Harbor? Me too.”
The Japs got what they deserved and they’re lucky they finally gave up due to bombing
Colonialist Settler ARABS should be forced to return to Arabia from which they invaded the native inhabitants of Jewish Israel, Eastern Orthodox Anatolia, Coptic Christian Egypt, and Lebanon, and Iran, and on and on.