Regards,
Posted on 05/04/2024 7:00:50 PM PDT by DoodleBob
During a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Tucker Carlson made a bold claim about the August 1945 decision by the United States to bomb the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—a move that effectively put an end World War II. He said:
My ‘side’ has spent the last 80 years defending the dropping of nuclear bombs on civilians… like, are you joking? If you find yourself arguing that it’s a good thing to drop nuclear weapons on people, then you are evil.
I like Tucker Carlson and find myself in agreement with him on many topics. I am especially heartened by his recent rediscovery of faith and a robustly Christian worldview. But on the nuclear bombing of Japan, I believe he vastly overstates his case.
It’s not surprising that Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson spoke on this issue. Atomic warfare has recently been a subject of burgeoning cultural interest, first with last year’s award-winning biopic Oppenheimer and more recently with the release of Amazon Prime’s TV series adaptation of the post-apocalyptic video game Fallout.
In fact, Westerners have been bombarded with apocalyptic messaging more generally for years—whether on COVID-19, or the so-called “race reckoning,” or climate alarmism.
It would not be surprising if our existential fears for the future are blurring our vision of the past.
With that said, is it true—not only that America was evil to bomb Japan in 1945—but that those who defend that decision are evil themselves?
Reaching this conclusion requires a rewrite of the historical context surrounding World War II: a wishful-thinking reprise of events that assumes diplomacy with Japan was a viable path to end the war. It was not.
In the months leading up to Enola Gay’s fateful flight over Hiroshima, Japan was in retreat all across the Pacific and still had no appetite for surrender. The capital, Tokyo, was already in ruins thanks to a U.S. firebombing raid. Okinawa had been overrun by American troops, and a mainland invasion was now within reach. Astoundingly, even after Little Boy fell on Hiroshima on August 6th and flattened the city, the Japanese leadership refused to countenance surrender.
It was only after Fat Boy annihilated Nagasaki three days later that, resisting a palace coup by hardliners still hoping to fight on, Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers.
It was Japan’s deeply embedded cultural ideology—its honor culture–that necessitated such dire action by the U.S. As Mike Coté has explained at Rational Policy:
This intense honor culture was a part of Japanese society going back centuries. It was prominently represented in the samurai way of the warrior—bushido—and was a key aspect of the Japanese desire to fight to the death. Capture was seen as a moral stain on the honor not only of the individual who was captured, but to his entire family tree: past, present, and future. Combine this with the insidious propaganda of the Imperial Japanese government—claims that American troops would massacre and defile civilians, celebrations of kamikaze pilots as heroic sacrifices, and exhortations of suicidal mass resistance to any invading force—and you had a potent brew militating against surrender.
The United States had other options, of course, but they would have been far deadlier. Yielding the entire Pacific region to a bloodthirsty and cruel Japanese regime could hardly pass as compassionate.
Likewise, Operation Downfall, a proposed mainland invasion of Japan, would have required 1.7 million American servicemen fighting up to 2.3 million Japanese troops—and possibly to the death, if Japanese resistance elsewhere was anything to go on.
As President Truman and his war cabinet weighed the decision of atomic warfare, also hanging in the balance were 100,000 prisoners of war whom the Japanese planned to execute the moment a ground invasion began. And with warfare continuing on multiple battlefronts across the Pacific theater, daily deaths on each side of the conflict were reaching into the tens of thousands.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki caused well over 200,000 casualties with over 100,000 more injured.
The U.S. bombing of Japan was horrific. I have visited ground zero at Hiroshima and pondered long on the horror of that day.
It is true that American imperialism has a mixed legacy. And as the United States slides into spreading moral chaos at home, the nation’s involvement in conflicts abroad appears increasingly dubious. No doubt this consideration was central in Tucker’s rigid remarks.
Still, it is wrong to read today’s headlines into last century’s dilemmas. The decision of the United States to drop atomic bombs on Japan was eminently defensible, and we would be foolish to forget this.
Uncle Sam is going to give me a Thunderbolt;
He wants me to fly way above the clouds
Uncle Sam is going to give me a Thunderbolt;
He wants me to fly way above the clouds.
He wants me to drop a bomb on the Japanese,
I've really got to make my baby proud...
I want to drop a bomb and set a Japanese city on fire;
I want to drop a bomb and set a Japanese city on fire.
Not because they're so rotten; I just love to see them die.
Such errors damage credibility.
Regards,
It was entirely coincidental that the Soviets waiting for two days after the bombing of Hiroshima to finally declare war on Japan - when it became clear that Japan was going to lose anyway!
Yeah, sure!
Regards,
Regards,
At the cost of surrendering territory to the Soviets (half of Sakhalin; the Kurile Islands).
At the close of WWII, the Soviets grabbed territory from virtually every combatant nation - whether friend or foe - which it bordered.
Regards,
Regards,
It would have been evil if we nuked them after they surrendered.
Too bad there isn't some sort of online information repository where we could fact-check simple, uncontroversial statements like that, before we open our traps!
Regards,
Please provide supporting evidence for this assertion!
Regards,
“but plenty of American lives were saved too.”
If there had been an invasion and battle for Japan in late ‘45 - early ‘46, my then 18-year-old father likely would have been part of the infantry force. And he’d have had about 50% chance of not making it home, and thus me never existing. Truman and Co. did what they had to do. If you can win the war with two lousy bombs and save a half a million (or more) American lives, you do it. Truman would have deserved to be impeached, tried and executed for treason if he hadn’t dropped the damned things.
Please clearly state the "logical conclusion" of this argument.
1. Several countries have developed A bombs. (Statement of fact)
2. Only the U.S. has used A bombs. (Statement of fact)
3. Therefore... ?
You seem to be implying something - maybe a moral assertion? Please state it explicitly!
Don't be coy! Spit it out!
Regards,
Soviet forces already in the Far East were poised to invade Manchuria and capture and disarm Japanese soldiers.
Two days after Hiroshima was bombed, and it was clear to even a blind man that Japan could be A-bombed to smithereens, the Soviets finally declared war on Japan.
They then promptly invaded Manchuria and captured millions of Japanese soldiers.
As a consequence of two days of fighting, the Soviets were rewarded with the southern half of Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands.
Regards,
They should have considered the consequences before bombing Pearl Harbor.
After the horrors of Nanking, the Japs are damn lucky the Chinese didn't invade and extract revenge like the Russians did to Germany.
MV=PY: I've never heard that, and can't find anything about it with a casual internet search. Do you have a reference? Genuinely curious...
By the time of the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese didn't have even the rudiments of an atomic bomb.
It is ludicrous to make such a claim, and it is insulting that such a claim should be made without supporting evidence.
Regards,
No
Japan had legit grievances before WWII
but they behaved horribly in pursuit of those claims primarily for more natural resources access from Nanking on
Hence they got what they deserved
Ring a bell with today?
Your statement is so false and jumbled that it isn't even wrong. Nevertheless, let me try to untangle and debunk it:
Truman was sworn in as president on April 12, 1945. At that time, America was still at war with Germany (the Atlantic side) and still at war with Japan (the Pacific side). Germany surrendered roughly a month later. Meaning that Germany had already been knocked out of the war by the time (thank goodness!) the A bombs were dropped.
(Most of WWII was fought by the U.S. under the leadership of Roosevelt, not Truman - and it was fought mercilessly on both sides of our country - though the European theatre was given priority.)
So I don't understand what the hell you are trying to say.
Regards,
By the war's end, Tojo had already been sent away in disgrace / sidelined for more than a year (prompted by the fall of Saipan - but not only because of that).
Two days after Tojo resigned, the Emperor gave him an imperial rescript offering him unusually lavish praise for his "meritorious services and hard work" and declaring "Hereafter we expect you to live up to our trust and make even greater contributions to military affairs". - Wikipedia
In other words: He was removed from power and likely expected to go and raise cucumbers in his garden for the remainder of his life.
Regards,
We wouldn't have had the necessary guts to have done that three years prior.
We needed the cold-blooded resolve that comes with fighting a terrible, merciless enemy for three years.
The American public would not have been able to stomach such an act, at that point in the course of the war.
Regards,
The Nazis had also developed plans for Moon rockets.
The stuff of science fiction.
Not worth debating!
Regards,
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