Posted on 07/29/2005 3:53:38 PM PDT by 45Auto
The sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima seems to be shaping up as a subdued affair--though not for any lack of significance. A survey of news editors in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, first among the top one hundred stories of the twentieth century. And any thoughtful list of controversies in American history would place it near the top again. It was not always so. In 1945, an overwhelming majority of Americans regarded as a matter of course that the United States had used atomic bombs to end the Pacific war. They further believed that those bombs had actually ended the war and saved countless lives. This set of beliefs is now sometimes labeled by academic historians the "traditionalist" view. One unkindly dubbed it the "patriotic orthodoxy."
But in the 1960s, what were previously modest and scattered challenges of the decision to use the bombs began to crystallize into a rival canon. The challengers were branded "revisionists," but this is inapt. Any historian who gains possession of significant new evidence has a duty to revise his appreciation of the relevant events. These challengers are better termed critics.
The critics share three fundamental premises. The first is that Japan's situation in 1945 was catastrophically hopeless. The second is that Japan's leaders recognized that fact and were seeking to surrender in the summer of 1945. The third is that thanks to decoded Japanese diplomatic messages, American leaders knew that Japan was about to surrender when they unleashed needless nuclear devastation. The critics divide over what prompted the decision to drop the bombs in spite of the impending surrender, with the most provocative arguments focusing on Washington's desire to intimidate the Kremlin. Among an important stratum of American society--and still more perhaps abroad--the critics' interpretation displaced the traditionalist view.
These rival narratives clashed in a major battle over the exhibition of the Enola Gay, the airplane from which the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, at the Smithsonian Institution in 1995. That confrontation froze many people's understanding of the competing views. Since then, however, a sheaf of new archival discoveries and publications has expanded our understanding of the events of August 1945. This new evidence requires serious revision of the terms of the debate. What is perhaps the most interesting feature of the new findings is that they make a case President Harry S. Truman deliberately chose not to make publicly in defense of his decision to use the bomb.
When scholars began to examine the archival records in the 1960s, some intuited quite correctly that the accounts of their decision-making that Truman and members of his administration had offered in 1945 were at least incomplete. And if Truman had refused to disclose fully his thinking, these scholars reasoned, it must be because the real basis for his choices would undermine or even delegitimize his decisions. It scarcely seemed plausible to such critics--or to almost anyone else--that there could be any legitimate reason that the U.S. government would have concealed at the time, and would continue to conceal, powerful evidence that supported and explained the president's decisions.
I forgot to check the excerpt box; see link for the whole thing.
That and the fact that Japan was working on an atomic bomb itself.
I and many whose fathers were in the Asian theatre around that time are grateful. And I may not have been born if Enola Gay and Boxcar hadn't had some good bombing runs over Japan.
If someone wants to morph the question into a permutation of "Should Truman Have Dropped the Bomb?", I'm not interested.
THe dropping of that bomb saved some 100,000 to 150,000 American lives.
Anyone can play Monday morning quarterback on this issue and second guess history. It saved a LOT of American AND Japanese lives and no matter what spin is now being applied to this decision, it was the right thing to do at that time.
Ah, good catch!!
The Japanese were another group at that time going for world dominance.
The nice thing about us (AMERICANS) is we were in the strongest position to take over parts of the world in an international attempt of Manifest Destiny, but we never did that because we are really nice folks. :-)
His son does not regret our decision to use the bomb. Neither did his dad.
Yes, and Germany. There is some evidence that Germany had already tested a primitive atomic bomb. Does anyone doubt that Japan would have used their atomic bombs if they had them ready?
Bump!
After all, the Iraq Campaign in the War on Terror was not simply to rid Iraq of WMDs.
We couldn't know that for sure in 1945.
The second is that Japan's leaders recognized that fact and were seeking to surrender in the summer of 1945.
But with unacceptable concessions or the concept was only rumor.
The third is that thanks to decoded Japanese diplomatic messages, American leaders knew that Japan was about to surrender
Or the Japanese were sending propaganda through the code channels to lure America into a false sense of superiority in order to promote an invasion
There is not enough proof in these highly speculative claims, at the time, that Japan was going to surrender without a fight or unacceptable "concessions". If these "facts" were accounts receivable, no bank would loan a dime on them at the time. The wager as to the intentions of the Japanese were not worth one more Americans life.
We called the note on this Japanese speculation and collected our debt for four years of terrible war that Japan put America through by dropping the bomb. It was the correct and moral act to do.
I've wondered what this world would be like today if Patton had been "unleashed", with the direct threat of atomic weapon use backing him up.
Big Doug, too.
LVM
Had Japan not surrendured the Allied invasion of Japan would have began in Nov. 1945.
One plan called for dropping atomic bombs on Japanese defenses just beyond the beach, then landing troops and advancing inland through the breech.
No telling how many American troops would have perished from radiation sickness had that come to fruition.
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