Posted on 08/06/2023 7:01:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Even if that quote is accurate, Ike was mistaken in his opinion that Japan was defeated before the bomb.
They weren’t.
The IJA had over one million men and the entire country was being developed for a defense in depth - trenches stretching from coast to coast peppered with heavily fortified pillboxes and bunkers, all manned with army troops and millions of hastily trained civilians.
And behind that defensive line was another one, then another, then another, then another.
The Japanese were prepared to sacrifice every man, woman and child in defense of their homeland.
Until Hirohito chose surrender — after the Nagasaki bomb, saving tens of millions of Japanese lives.
The atomic bombs certainly saved the lives of tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war and civilian internees. One of them, Louis Zamperini, the Olympic athlete who was held in a Japanese prison camp after being shot down, wrote that he and his colleagues would not have survived another winter in Japan if the war had continued.
The people who write this tripe are 78 years removed from stepping off a Higgins boat under fire…
How people felt at the time about a weapon that was inconceivable to the minds of people living in the 40’s was different than how those same people felt some years later.
President Eisenhower was born in the late 1800’s. It’s very possible these quotes - so close to the time the weapon was used - are correct. And meaningless...
My Dad went ashore in Luzon the same time as MacArthur, and was transferred to a Seabee unit. They were building repair depots, pontoon bridges, and dry docks as fast as possible - they all expected to be going to Japan within the next 9-12 months.
I was a vey smart little girl then. Actually told my parents on Dec 7, 1941 that war had been declared. I was in the living room with the radio on while parents and friends finished Sunday dinner.
The next day, almost every man in America went down to the draft board to sign up.
We lost so very many sons, husbands and fathers in that war—I can’t stand this bullschtein. Please tell these idiots to STFU.
He was training to invade Japan when the first A-bomb was dropped.
He was completely thrilled about the atomic bomb!
My own impression is that US military and political leaders feared that Japan and/or Germany might have built several nuclear weapons and would use them against the USA mainland via submarine or other secret methods.
Then why did it take two bombs for them to surrender?
Yes. I visited the website from which this piece is extracted.
That website seems to be dedicated to the proposition that America sucks and is the locus of all evil in the world.
There were some hot spots in Europe as well. Salerno, Monte Cassino and the Hürtgen Forest saw fighting that was about as fierce as that on Peleliu.
Some say “the Japanese knew they were defeated” - some of them did, but many did not.
There was a large faction that was prepared to fight to the death. Everyone ignores the fact this group attempted a coup in early August.
the Atomic Bomb actually gave the “peace faction” the upper hand over the “fight-to-the-death-faction.”
Which proves nothing, but leads me to assign it low credibility.
YMMV.
Bill Whittle did the best rebuttal on POS websites like "Stark Realities" and people like Brian McGlinchey, and the execrable and non-funny Jon Stewart (whose asinine commentary led Bill Whittle to make this rebuttal) both birds of a Leftist feather.
Bill Whittle made this 15 minute "FireWall" video which definitively rebuts these jackasses who pop up every single year on August 6th.
Everyone I know who has seen this regards it as the last word in defense of dropping the nuclear weapons on the Japanese.
LINK: Bill Whittle Jon Stewart, War Criminals & The True Story of the Atomic Bombs
There is nothing to be 'proud' of that we had to use those weapons on a vicious enemy, but in Bill Whittle's brilliantly done defense, there is a grim acceptance that it was war, and what needed to be done.
And it also rebuts the "Oh, they were going to surrender anyway" douchebags.
I am no longer a fan of Harry Truman, but he made absolutely the correct decision to use these weapons.
As for the quotes in the stupid revisionist opinion piece, I suggest people shouldn't get too hung up on them.
Regarding those quotes in the article from "Stark Realities" from the military leaders, it is known that many of them, after the fact, did not embrace using it because it wholly changed the character of war from a 1945 perspective (their perspective at the time). I have read good deal on many of these military men, and in the biographies, it is not hard to find statements where they distance themselves from the use of nuclear weapons. In light of this, I fully expect people cherry picking these kinds of quotes from nearly all of them.
Watch the video. It is well constructed, gives point-by-point rebuttals to all the Leftist clap-trap we have heard since 1945 regarding the use of these weapons, and is entertaining in his disembowelment of them to boot.
Well, you’re wrong.
“...The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all...”
The battle for Japan would have been house to house and it would have taken a terrible toll of American lives. They had been fed lies about Americans killing women and children, raping their women as a means of defeating the nation. They were ready to fight to the bitter end.
My cousin was a marine in one of the divisions waiting for the order to invade. He and the others had already met with the chaplain and written wills.
Hiroshima, I believe, was the center of the Japanese atomic bomb program.
Unbelievable. Literally.
Tomorrow was gone over a year by this time. He was forced to step aside from the prime minister office after the fall of Saipan in July 44.
“Because it is.
These quotes are fake and the entire article is a lie.”
Can you substantiate those assertions?
A citation? Reference?
Unconditional Surrender was the only acceptable way for that war to end & that was not likely to happen without Japan being totally defeated.
The bombings could have been easily avoided... by a Japanese surrender.
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