Posted on 12/18/2016 11:53:38 AM PST by Retain Mike
Yes, my father spent two years in the Pacific with the 31st Infantry “Dixie” Division during WWII. He was reluctant to say much of anything about his wartime experiences. I didn’t know until a few years before his death that he had been awarded two Bronze Stars...and I learned that from reading his division battle book.
I am no FDR supporter, but I take issue with your statement that he was intentionally provoking Japan in order to get America into the war. Nothing in my study of military history as a Naval officer reveals this. FDR did want US involvement, but he was looking at fighting the Germans and Italians, not the Japanese.
I was Navy and visited the PI many times during multiple deployments to the Western Pacific. I too have a warm spot in my heart for the Filipino people. Received jungle survival training from tough-as-nails Negritos who fought against the Japanese (Naval aviator). My father was with the 31st Infantry “Dixie” Division and was on Mindanao keeping the Sons of Nippon bottled up & starving in the interior and preparing for the invasion of Japan when the war ended.
That was a day for heroes.
I addressed all of this in my earlier posts. A lot of this is conjecture, but reasonable conjecture based on the evidence. By Dec 7 1941 the question was not if Japan would strike, only where. And boy they did surprise us with the answer to that question.
That may be overstated by the use of the words "trying to provoke". It may be splitting hairs but I would say he expected japanese aggression against some western power, the US, British or Dutch.
The Dutch East Indies was most attractive because of the oilfields and rubber plantations desperately needed by Japan and blocked by the US led embargo.
In the larger sense there was a feeling in Roosevelt's administration that US involvement in the european war was inevitable and he was already involving the US in defacto war there with convoy escorts and lend-lease.
Your other assessments are right on the mark. The war with Japan was a second front taking a backseat to defeating Germany. Accordingly the resources were proportionate until the battles of Iwo Jima and then Okinawa. Okinawa in particular was less of an Island assault and more like a classic seige in the european style of fighting.
If the Pacific war progressed to the invasion of Japan, the resources would have more evenly matched those expended in europe against hitler.
Oh, that’s a great Story.
You are quite right about the need to invade Japan - it would have been a bloodbath, and the A-bomb saved countless millions of lives, 90% of them Japanese.
The other option would have been to simply blockade Japan while conventionally bombing them into the Stone Age, which would also have led to the deaths of uncounted millions of Japanese from starvation.
But the invasion was set, it was going to happen in 1946 if the A-bombs didn’t force surrender, and the Japanese of all people ought to be the ones most grateful that they did so.
Because their own searing combat memories penetrated current realities, Harry Truman, Henry Stimson, and George Marshall would pursue any alternatives rather than procure countless American deaths in protracted ground campaigns following amphibious assaults matching the D-Day landings.
IMO, the Japanese decision to "Make America bleed" (no more Banzai attacks, just dig in and fight to the last - Okinawa, Iwo Jima) played a large part in the decision to drop the bomb. Western enemies, when all was lost, sensibly surrendered.
The Greatest Generation and their parents would have been enraged to discover a cabal had ignored the nuclear option for ending the war simply to indulge some incestuous moral orthodoxy.
My thoughts also, and I posit that question to the "Bad America" types, i.e. The Democratic Party would have been destroyed if it became know that the U.S. suffered tremendous casualties because we didn't drop the bomb. I dared them to get up in front of an auditorium of people whose relatives were fighting the war and tell them that a lot of them were going to die "because it is inhuman to use this bomb." No takers.
All able Japanese citizens served as soldiers or as civilian militia (17-60) and awaited the decision of the Empire’s ruling oligarchy. With such a national unity committed to waging a savage total war, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
The Internet if full of sources as to that - arming women with bamboo spears, teaching children how to roll under a tank and detonate their suicide bomb, ad nauseum.
A great sidebar I often use with these people contains this (gleaned from books I have read):
1) A U.S. State guy was talking with his Japanese counterpart after the war, who said "We surrendered because we didn't know how many more bombs you were going to drop." The U.S. guy said, "We dropped the only two we had." The Japanese guy replied, "If we had known you had only two . . . " and then changed the subject.
2) A Japanese General was giving a pep talk to his troops, along the line of "Yes, things look really bad now, but if we redouble our efforts, we will win." This was AFTER the Nagasaki bomb.
One quote I use from Truman who contemplated increasingly dire estimates caused him to reflect on the possibility of “an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other”.
Here are most of the references I have so far for the essay. Hell to Pay is probably the best book about what American losses could have been. A better understanding of Hirohito and Japan can be found in Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, and Hirohito.
Partial bibliography:
Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco
The Atomic Bomb and the End of WW II, The National Security Archive
Japanese Biomedical Experimentation During the WW II Era, Sheldon H. Harris, PhD
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamni
Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange
The Secret Surrender, Allen Dulles
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Herbert P. Bix
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.”
Japan’s Secret War: Japan’s Race Against Time to Build Its Own Atomic Bomb,
Robert K Wilcox
“Thank God for the Atom Bomb”
http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS1300MET/v12/undervisningsmateriale/Fussel%20-%20thank%20god%20for%20the%20atom%20bomb.pdf
Potsdam Declaration
http://pwencycl.kgbudge.com/P/o/Potsdam_Declaration.htm
Battle of Okinawa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa
Cornerstone of Peace (Okinawa)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_of_Peace
Over 240,000 names recorded including 14,000 from the U.S.A.
Battle of Saipan
http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/battle-of-saipan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan
Battle of Iwo Jima
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Iwo_Jima
Normandy landings
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_Landings
The Battle of the Bulge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge
Battle of Berlin Facts
http://www.worldwar2facts.org/battle-of-berlin-facts.html
Japan geography: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/geography/Indonesia-to-Mongolia/Japan.html
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html
Okinawa redoubt was about 100 sq mi
Allied POWS Under the Japanese
http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/rg331-box%201321-jap%20pow%20camps.htm
Military prisoners were 34,000 in Japan, 70,000 outside Japan, and 112,000 civilians. There were already 142,000 Anglos and Pilipino victims of criminal killings.
Statistics of Japanese Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources*
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM
As a tactic of administering conquered lands, the Japanese had murdered 6 million Asians from 1937 to 1945.
A GREAT phrase that encapsulates the dilemma - one I plan to use later on.
Thanks for the links, will check 'em out.
Dale Dye (General Kreuger) starred as Col. Mucci’s (Benjamin Bratt) boss that gave the green light to the raid. I thought the movie was very well done. It was very non-PC because the Japanese are shown as the murdering butchers they really were and not some Hollyweid version.
There was a small group of Negritos who had been living for some time, just off base. They used to hunt just outside the wire. These little guys supported themselves by bow hunting small game and earned small change from the Air Police by patrolling their AOs. These people are prehistoric. I assume they’re still outside the wire, keeping the world safe for democracy.
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