Posted on 04/12/2016 3:49:05 PM PDT by Kaslin
Nice summation of ww2 in the Pacific.
The way they mishandle the GWOT there will be no need of an “American apology tour”....
...because there will likely no longer be an America.
We were damn lucky that Hirohito wasn’t offed before he made his broadcast.
I think there were many like us, who had their fathers and otherwise wouldn’t have. My Dad was in an advanced Gunnery school at Quantico, I think, in early 1945 - my mother and I were with him but at 5 years old, I never understood where I was. It was preparation for the invasion and I do know my mother didn’t expect him to survive it. But after VJ Day he came home. He lived to 77, but he was 33 on VJ Day.
Excuse me for “butting in”; I seldom see anyone with a like moment of history.
Bump! Yes, let us thank God.
Term limits bump, oh yeah. 4-6 years is plenty.
Now that the generation that fought WW II is about gone these creatures that luxuriate in their self-created moralities have way too much prominence. However, each year in August I have several letters I send to papers about dropping the bombs and a 2,000 word essay I post to Free Republic. I think this article deserves mention of the Japanese cultural imperative that made dropping the atomic bombs obligatory.
Japanese Intransigence Provoked the Atomic Bombs
The Kokutai principle was critical to surrender. Any influential Japanese lived within a spiritual fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, Bushido, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. In subjection to this spiritual and political authority, commoners forfeited individuality for a collective soul defining Japan. As soldiers or civilian militia they awaited the Empire’s ruling oligarchy decrees. With such national unity committed to waging total war, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
By January 1944 Emperor Hirohito foresaw the probability of defeat and appointed a Peace Faction. However, he and his government conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, fire bombings of over 60 cities, looming starvation, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths.
At impasse the two atomic bombs allowed Hirohito, the Son of Heaven, to speak the Voice of the Crane in the sweltering, underground bunker. The bombs were regarded as a dramatic force of nature; equivalent to an earthquake or typhoon against which human arguments collapsed. Only submission to such a catastrophe could be proportional to the disgrace of surrender following 2,600 years of martial invincibility.
Only Hirohito could submit, because he held the heaven created Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation. The War Faction could now relent and no one would lose face. All remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence the torturous negotiations leading to actual surrender.
Partial bibliography:
Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamni
Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange
The Secret Surrender, Allen Dulles
Hirohito, Edward Behr
A quote by film director Akira Kurosawa illustrates the transformation of that generation of Japanese people, who before were resigned to the slogan “Honorable Death of a Hundred Million”.
“When I walked the same route back to my home (after the Emperor’s broadcast), the scene was entirely different. The people in the shopping street were bustling about with cheerful faces as if preparing for a festival the next day. If the Emperor had made such a call (to follow the above slogan) those people would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self-sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. We were accustomed to this teaching and had never thought to question it….In wartime we were like deaf-mutes.”
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“Honorable Death of a Hundred Million”.
Yup. Everybody knew this and was dreading a Normandy-like assault.
The A-bomb saved millions of lives.
Kerry should commit hari-kari.
I have worked with Japanese, lived with them, learned to speak a bit of their language, and admire many things about them. I half jokingly tell people that the three main East Asian ethnicities can be compared with three classes of Star Trek aliens. The Japanese are Vulcans (except when they’re drunk), the Chinese are Ferengi, and Koreans are Klingons. All three have ways of thinking (”kangai katawa” in Japanese) that are very different from ours. But the Japanese are so different that they almost qualify as a separate species of human. And what’s worse, they know it.
Japanese when they are drunk. I served on a ship homeported in Japan and had to LOL when you mentioned that.
When my little brother married a Taiwanese woman, my Dad apologized to her for bombing her country.
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