Posted on 05/04/2024 7:00:50 PM PDT by DoodleBob
During a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Tucker Carlson made a bold claim about the August 1945 decision by the United States to bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—a move that effectively put an end World War II. He said:
My ‘side’ has spent the last 80 years defending the dropping of nuclear bombs on civilians… like, are you joking? If you find yourself arguing that it’s a good thing to drop nuclear weapons on people, then you are evil.
I like Tucker Carlson and find myself in agreement with him on many topics. I am especially heartened by his recent rediscovery of faith and a robustly Christian worldview. But on the nuclear bombing of Japan, I believe he vastly overstates his case.
It’s not surprising that Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson spoke on this issue. Atomic warfare has recently been a subject of burgeoning cultural interest, first with last year’s award-winning biopic Oppenheimer and more recently with the release of Amazon Prime’s TV series adaptation of the post-apocalyptic video game Fallout.
In fact, Westerners have been bombarded with apocalyptic messaging more generally for years—whether on COVID-19, or the so-called “race reckoning,” or climate alarmism.
It would not be surprising if our existential fears for the future are blurring our vision of the past.
With that said, is it true—not only that America was evil to bomb Japan in 1945—but that those who defend that decision are evil themselves?
Reaching this conclusion requires a rewrite of the historical context surrounding World War II: a wishful-thinking reprise of events that assumes diplomacy with Japan was a viable path to end the war. It was not.
In the months leading up to Enola Gay’s fateful flight over Hiroshima, Japan was in retreat all across the Pacific and still had no appetite for surrender. The capital, Tokyo, was already in ruins thanks to a U.S. firebombing raid. Okinawa had been overrun by American troops, and a mainland invasion was now within reach. Astoundingly, even after Little Boy fell on Hiroshima on August 6th and flattened the city, the Japanese leadership refused to countenance surrender.
It was only after Fat Boy annihilated Nagasaki three days later that, resisting a palace coup by hardliners still hoping to fight on, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers.
It was Japan’s deeply embedded cultural ideology—its honor culture–that necessitated such dire action by the U.S. As Mike Coté has explained at Rational Policy:
This intense honor culture was a part of Japanese society going back centuries. It was prominently represented in the samurai way of the warrior—bushido—and was a key aspect of the Japanese desire to fight to the death. Capture was seen as a moral stain on the honor not only of the individual who was captured, but to his entire family tree: past, present, and future. Combine this with the insidious propaganda of the Imperial Japanese government—claims that American troops would massacre and defile civilians, celebrations of kamikaze pilots as heroic sacrifices, and exhortations of suicidal mass resistance to any invading force—and you had a potent brew militating against surrender.
The United States had other options, of course, but they would have been far deadlier. Yielding the entire Pacific region to a bloodthirsty and cruel Japanese regime could hardly pass as compassionate.
Likewise, Operation Downfall, a proposed mainland invasion of Japan, would have required 1.7 million American servicemen fighting up to 2.3 million Japanese troops—and possibly to the death, if Japanese resistance elsewhere was anything to go on.
As President Truman and his war cabinet weighed the decision of atomic warfare, also hanging in the balance were 100,000 prisoners of war whom the Japanese planned to execute the moment a ground invasion began. And with warfare continuing on multiple battlefronts across the Pacific theater, daily deaths on each side of the conflict were reaching into the tens of thousands.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused well over 200,000 casualties with over 100,000 more injured.
The U.S. bombing of Japan was horrific. I have visited ground zero at Hiroshima and pondered long on the horror of that day.
It is true that American imperialism has a mixed legacy. And as the United States slides into spreading moral chaos at home, the nation’s involvement in conflicts abroad appears increasingly dubious. No doubt this consideration was central in Tucker’s rigid remarks.
Still, it is wrong to read today’s headlines into last century’s dilemmas. The decision of the United States to drop atomic bombs on Japan was eminently defensible, and we would be foolish to forget this.
Ask all the US soldiers scheduled for the invasion of Japan but did no have to go.
See the lower cartoon “Plans”. this happened to my dad. “The Bomb” prevented his having to go.
***like, are you joking? If you find yourself arguing that it’s a good thing to drop nuclear weapons on people, then you are evil.***
Stick him in a landing craft heading into a highly fortified Japan in late 1945 and he will be singing a different tune.
Ask that of the families of the men who were headed on transport ships for the land invasion of Japan.
The ships turned around and headed for home after the bombs were dropped, saving most, if not all of their lives, and the ensuing, never ending grief of their loved ones.
It may be that some people cannot handle fame or popularity, and it may also be that they simply connot face evil (and some cannot even acknowledge the existance of evil) and accept that evil must be destroyed. Among decent people, this is an understandable, although not a moral position to take.
I believe dropping the nucs was evil. But it did probably display to the world how really terrible it is, and would be, if nucs were used. It was a definitely a type of deterrent.
It happened and no country has used one on another since then.
The actual everyday citizens of most countries don’t deserve what their governments do out of aggression and greed.
We can always say “they voted for it” or “they chose that person”. We know that just isn’t true. Just look at what kind of evil POS was installed as the leader of America.
I sure would not want to die by nuke for the actions of that slimeball and his regime. But they are rotten and aggressive enough to invite an enemy to want to nuke us.
It goes both ways.
Agonizing over the atomic bombing is something left over from Cold War era Soviet propaganda.
Agree more people died by incendiary bombing then the atomic bomb it ended their desire for waring.
Thank you Pelham for posting this brilliant essay by Paul Fussel. Reminding of the imbecility of “Canting”, which we experience now from complete morons of so called academia, as the behest and pay of relics like Soros et al. The self righteousness of them all is as Fussel described an abominable conceit. Many thanks, again.
I guess one could argue that we could have had a peaceful end to the war and that bombing people is always bad. I just don’t see why a nuclear bomb is somehow significantly worse than a regular bomb. Getting blown up is bad no matter what.
The 100,000 killed at Hiroshima are at least 10X more dead than the 100,000 killed in Tokyo during that incendiary attack.
Appreciate your reply. The planners of the anti-Hirohito military coup were visited by the neutered Tojo, and emboldened by his lunatic urging they destroy the monarch and carry on the war. War Minister (Gen.) Anami was caught between the reality of defeat and ingrained “honor” repelling invasion, and trying to keep the coup forces red-taped, he eventually slit his belly. Hirohito’s recording was played by NHK to a stunned japanese public who had never heard the voice of the Emperor/god. A much better outcome than continuing a massive invasion which would have wiped Japan away.
Untimely death is EVIL.
Nuking Japan minimized untimely death.
Therefore, GOOD.
Israel is currently failing to learn and implement the moral success of nuking Japan.
The Japanese have not gone about murdering anyone since they were nuked. Unlike the many conflicts since, in which total defeat of the will if the populace to ever wage war again was not achieved. In essentially every conflict since, the putative loser has gone home to lick their wounds, harbor their grievances, and attack again, costing many more lives than total defeat would have caused.
This is not an argument for nuking any given opponent. It is an argument for using just enough force to defeat the will of the population to ever start wars again.
That strategy saves the most lives in the long run.
Total Victory is MORAL.
And I think Hiroshima was Army HQ if I recall.
Rush had a pronounced dislike for conspiracy nuttism. He said that he once got duped by some crackpot group while in Kansas City and the experience made him very careful afterwards.
Beck, and now Tucker, haven’t got the same finely tuned bulls#it detector that Rush had developed.
Heck no!
It was named Fat Man, not Fat Boy.
All you have to do is read the Japanese records and you find that they had no idea what they were talking about. And not for the first time.
One problem though is the very real possibility that Germany fell to a Bolshevik Revolution, it probably would have happened if not for The Freikorps. Unfortunately The Freikorps were the seed that eventually grew into the Nazi Party.
Yes, definitely the war would have ended in Europe, Mr. Busek. General Beck and C. F. Goerdeler were under no illusions what the military situation was like :-)
And yes, the Nazi system would have collapsed. You see, it really was totally centered around the person of the accursed “leader”, unlike the Soviet system.
With it, and most importantly, there would have been peace in Europe, saving millions of lives and untold amounts of material assets. Certainly even the postwar population movings and ethnic cleansings would have been less bloody.
and please: Think about the American soldiers who fell after July 1944, including the dead in the Ardennes, or even somebody like Joseph P. Kennedy, jr., the eldest of the four Kennedy brothers.
Furthermore, I am quite sure that the postwar famines wouldn’t have been as harsh as they were. Thus, more survivors, less tragedy.
Hitler survived no less that 42 assassination attempts (the first as early as 1931), and I often ask God why He let not one of them succeed.
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