Posted on 07/17/2020 11:10:00 AM PDT by Retain Mike
Best thing we could have done to end things quickly with least lives lost on both sides.
Greatest humanitarian act in history.
Yep!!!!
And thank God that Truman was our President, not Wallace!!!!
There were also plans already underway to move something like 12,000 B-17s and B-24s of the 8th air force to Okinawa to conduct a bombing campaign of every inch of Japan.
It’s childish not to see that it shortened the war. Also the USSR got into the war in a big way in Manchuria. Had it dragged on 6 more months, they would have been in on a settlement and today we would probably have a North and South Japan.
But most of all Truman said he would not like to explain to the families of any US Soldier who died in the invasion why he had a devastating weapon and refused to use it.
Besides, the brutal Japanese became the nicest people on earth after that.
If anything Hiroshima and Nagasaki are fine arguments for dropping the bomb on Mecca, Medina some Monday. If the Iranians and Pakistanis say a single word about it, Islamabad and Tehran can be Tuesday.
Islam has been a pain in the western ass for 1000 years. They are asking for it bad.
Excellent!
Thank you!
What were the alternatives? A negotiated settlement with Japan? I guess a few (one?) of the more naive Japanese strategists entertained that fantasy, but that was never considered by the American side for a nanosecond. An invasion on the Japanese mainland would have killed hundreds of thousands of American military and, almost certainly, many more Japanese than were killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Truman was right.
Great article. Thank you. Wish there was more on a Japanese atom bomb. It’s the first I heard of it.
Funny thing is, after he left politics, Wallace became a staunch anti-Communist.
Also saved Japan from being divided, like Korea, and with it, most likely a Civil War.
Ok, time for my every 5 year post from experience. While stationed in South Korea in 1972 and talking with an elderly Korean man that had been held as a laborer in Japan, I asked about the war and the discussion led to the two atomic bombs. He asked me “why did you stop at two?” Not my position but an interesting perspective.
IIRC, Tojo was hatching a plan to kill Hirohito and blame it on the Americans, which most likely would have kept the war going.
Excellent!
This topic is of personal interest to me as my dad worked on the Manhattan Project.
Thank you for posting.
Even to this day, no love lost between Koreans and Japanese.
My friend, who is half Korean, has mentioned this a number of times.
well i am sure you get where he was coming from. :)
While stationed on Okinawa in the 1970’s, I visited a local shop and there purchased a most interesting relic of the war.
In the waning days of the war, steel was in short supply. The ever inventive Japanese turned to an ancient technology and began making hand grenade bodies from a very, very hard porcelain. These would be filled with explosive and a detonator and primer/fuse inserted. My grenade was, of course, empty.
Any invasion of the Home Islands would have been a long, protracted blood-bath. All the worst elements of WWI trench warfare and the caves of Mount Suribachi combined..., but fought by not only Japanese soldiers but also against women, children and old men. Nightmares for all concerned for a lifetime.
Let all the peace-niks go and lay commemorative wreaths at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Dropping the Bombs was the compassionate thing to do.
I just learned a couple years ago, that my uncle was a medic with the first wave of SeaBees to go into Hiroshima
After that he spent his life doing x-rays, owning his own lab
He lived well into his 70’s, but had 5 different cancers going when he died, but none of them likely came from his military service
To the left everyday is May Day a time for riots and violence.
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