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.
Absolutely true.
In the aftermath of the war (or so it seems to these humble eyes), Nazi military-technological (is that a word?) achievements looked much bigger than what they were. Of course, invented stories and speculations gave quite some fuel to a lot of these impressions.
I’ll be glad to read “the Japanese records.” Any particular records that are relevant, or just “the records”?
And then I recommend you read this:
https://djvu.online/file/KtnX8nIBruuA2
Many of them, tragically, yes. Although a few of them actually joined the Resistance later on.
But the Nazis, alas, did manage to rally the political Right to its cause.
I think the Nazis were not left nor right, but both. This ideology was an infernal dualism of Nationalism (i.e. here: anti-Semitic hatred and imperialism, not a moderate Nationalism) and Socialism.
Unfortunately, just before the elections in 1932 and 1933 they had toned down their Anti-Semitism significantly - in public, as they knew that would not be a big vote-winner.
The wolves had been eating chalk, as we say in German (an allusion to the fairytale of “The wolf and the seven little kids”, where the wolf eats chalk to get a sweet voice, in order to trick the little kids into opening the door for him).
P.S.: Hmmm...devious politicians? Unfortunately, deception in politics, especially before elections, didn’t simply disappear with the fall of Nazism. It is still fiercely clinging, alas, to life.
Much like the people you quoted.
Truman's Ultimatum Regarding Hiroshima
It is short.
I am fine with written Japanese, so yes please do link the documents.
YouTube clips are always welcome too, but they would be better if they didn’t ignore the most important clauses of the documents they purport to interpret.
https://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/etc/c06.html
See clause 6.
The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.
— Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command, September 1945
I’ve actually read his autobiography, and as I recall his opinion on whether the war could have been ended without those two bombs, perhaps via blockade, was that it “might” have been possible.
With emphasis on the “might”.
The air raids that his B-29 command did on Japan actually caused more destruction than the 2 atomic bombs. The incendiary bombs dropped caused more widespread damage and death.
Read Richard Frank’s book “Downfall” on the final months of the Pacific War, very well researched and he gets into a great deal of detail on the the dropping of the Bombs.
Assassinating Hitler, alone, would not have completely decapitated the Nazi leadership - i.e., the "whole, rotten edifice" would not have collapsed. Rather, Himmler, Goebbels, et al. would have been able to "step up" and - with some legitimacy - assume control. National-Socialism could thus have remained in power - perhaps even with a more-capable Führer.
Even if some sort of "cascade" phenomenon had been triggered, the entire Nazi leadership swept away, and the Nazi Party removed from power, we have no reason to believe that the members of the assassination conspiracy (incl. my frat-brothers, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and his brothers) would have necessarily been able to assert control.
Further, even if it had been possible to replace the Nazis with some sort of "cabal" of non-Nazi generals and the like, this may have ultimately resulted merely in an armistice - with a highly militarized, armed, and expansionistic Germany still in power, possibly for decades. This might have divided the Soviet Union and the Western Allies.
We have no way of knowing if, in the long run, this would have saved American lives.
Regards,
All of these men, General MacArthur, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Major General Curtis LeMay, and Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr. had pieces of information in common, plus pieces of information by their own findings, plus tactical and strategic ideas - some being in common and others not in common.
In addition, they all had a lot of post-war ideas about occupied territories and what to do about those, plus technical and strategic planning, plus development of the U.S. Air Force and how the Army and the Navy would relate thereto - including how much power each military branch should have, and use when necessary. The Navy in particular, being a bit envious, wanting to be able to deliver atomic bombs to targets.
All the above, going into the last half of World War II and what might follow.
These are examples of what would be on their minds, when they spoke - in public and in private. Their thoughts went back and forth, sometimes mildly, sometimes with a bit of vigor.
Going into the summer of 1945, all these men viewed the atomic bomb as a tactical weapon - a way to deliver tonnage of bombardment more efficiently: A handful of B-29’s versus a wing of many B-29’s carrying several bombs, each.
Effectiveness and efficiency of bombardment delivery was on the minds of the command structure, given the daunting problem of ground invasion of Japan combined with efforts to interrupt Japan’s.
Regarding the matter of the right thing to do: It was simply, finish the war as soon as possible with lower numbers of casualties. That, was what convinced President Truman to give the order.
The world was blessed, that the demonstration of what would happen by using the atomic bomb, occurred at the end of the war - a lesson for all to not start nor engage in “an atomic war.”
“given the daunting problem of ground invasion of Japan combined with efforts to interrupt Japan’s”
Corrected:
given the daunting problem of ground invasion of Japan combined with efforts to interrupt Japan’s ability to support itself.
Its been proven germany and japan were also working on nukes. We made ours first. Imagine the world if we hadn’t. It staved off the totalitarian new world order for 80 years, it would have happened right there instead under a german/japan (and then probably just german after awhile) new world order.
There were three choices:
1. Blockade only. Millions starve. Russia enters the war and takes a chunk of China, all of Korea and half of Japan. Not a good outcome.
2. Invade. Millions die on both sides. America goes bankrupt. Russia enters and the result is worse than #1.
3. Nuke those cities. End the war. Lose North Korea. Millions live. America doesnt go bankrupt.
And people getting their panties in a bunch about nukes need to read about the Tokyo firebombing (and all of the other fire bombing) and some of the night bombing of Germany.
War sucks. Total War is a bad thing. Sitting around 80 years later and passing judgement is pretty easy.
Or as Archie Bunker would have put it, "Would you feel better if they was pushed out of windows?"
“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.”
Only ignorant and anti American people think like this.
I am quite sure all of the damned system would have collapsed. After all, it was ready for destruction, no matter how terrible the terror became in the last phase. The ideology was already dying, now it was just the defence of Germany from the enemies. After all, soldiers always fight harder when their own countries’ and the lives of their loved ones are at stake (old hat, just don’t tell people like Ralph Peters or V.D. Hanson, who could or would not understand it - they have never been in a similar situation. Nor have they, probably, fired, or had to fire, one single live shot in their lives).
And, by that time, there would have been no way around a surrender. Of course, as much as Goerdeler et al. would have tried to avoid it, there would have been “no dice”, I am sure.
But at least the final bloodbaths could have been avoided. A world with the brave people of the Warsaw Rising, with Anne Frank and her family still alive, with Viktor Ullmann and Joey Kennedy still there, and millions more and more...
And the punishment of the Nazi criminals (by ourselves) would have been much harsher, since there would have been more German survivors. Many of the criminals only escaped because there were simply not enough qualified people around anymore to fill many vacant jobs in administration and elsewhere, so you couldn’t hire anyone who had not compromised himself.
Patton caught hell for saying this.
AP news wire, September 20, 1945. You can get access to historic newspapers from EBSCO through your library.
Here’s an editorial from a couple weeks later:
AS TO WHETHER military necessity compelled the
use of the atomic bomb against Japan, perhaps the
testimony of Major General Curtis E. Le May is
worth considering. General Le May commanded the B-29
strikes against Japan. He reached Washington on September 1و after a one-stop flight from Japan, and in company
with Lieutenant General Giles and Brigadier General O’Donnell, gave a press interview. According to the Associated Fress, General Le May said that “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all. The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians coming in and without the atomic bomb.”
The other generals who shared in the interview took no exception to that judgment. To be sure,the traditional rivalry between branches of the service may
have had something to do with the positiveness of General
May’s assertion. Nevertheless, such words are not to be
lightly dismissed. Major generals do not speak under such
circumstances without taking careful account of what they
are saying. The country is entitled to believe that there
is at least one general who was in a high post of command
at the actual scene of the fighting who does not contend
that there was any need to have dropped the atomic bombs
on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
The Christian Century, October 3, 1945
Add to that the complete dulling of any moral sense caused by the decision to deliberately target the residential sector of Tokyo because houses would burn faster and more surely than factories. In fact they tested the incendiary bombs on mock-ups of Japanese homes.
https://djvu.online/file/KtnX8nIBruuA2
Oh and there were, in addition to the one million plus civilians, also a handful of small factories. And maybe some of the civilians worked from home.
Don’t worry, that could never have happened.Nazism was far too criminal, and too exclusive, for that.
There wasno way someone who was not a member of the “Aryan race” could have been in good standing in the Nazi system. In communism, everyone could play, if he was willing to follow the tenets of the Communist ideology - no matter what his or her background, racial, national, social etc., might have been.
There was simply no good will for any “racial outsider” in Nazi ideology, not even in personal relationships.
I think no true Nazi could ever have honestly said to his Eastern European manservant: “You are a better man than I am, Gunga Dinsky.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.