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.
Russian army was several thousand miles away. Would have been months before they could have had any effect.
Stupid, perverse old liberal talking point.
Farm labor was increasingly scarce, but getting food to the cities was becoming impossible, because of American bombing.
Tough start….father died when I was 5……….wonderful mother who raised us …….I married and had five kids who are so good to me today . I have been blessed by God .
….
The bombs saved half a million American lives.
Death rate of American pows were astounding.
Even left wing Time says so.
The American POWs Still Waiting for an Apology From Japan 70 Years Later
https://time.com/3334677/pow-world-war-two-usa-japan/
40% death rate.
We also have nothing to apologize for the internment camps. Japanese’s believed in Shintoism and that their Emperor was godson Earth.
A better question is do we have what it takes to win any war today? Judging by our tuck rail and run exit from Afghanistan and China owner our current Resident in Thief …. I doubt it.
Today’s world, “we should ask about their concerns and feelings and ask them, with fervor, to be nicer to us and not go bombing and destroying our boats.”
In a perfect world Japan would have seen the error of their ways and not spend 60 year rampaging over the east killing around sixteen million civilians. Or we could have worked things out with hugs. We do not live in a perfect world.
We live in a world where the Japanese solders had contests to see who could chop off the most civilian heads in a certain time span.
We had a world where of the millions of Chinese POWs captured only 56 survived the war. Not 56 thousand. Not 56 hundred. 56.
We had a world where the Japanese forced civilian females into brothels.
We had a world where the Japanese soldiers would pour liquid nitrogen on living POWs and civilians and break their limbs off. And that was the least nightmarish of the medical torture.
I will not mention the cannibalism because that was not the official government policy. The rest of what I listed was approved by the Japanese government.
Imperial Japan was a horror show that refused to stop.
When we had offered terms earlier in 1945 they took it as a sign of weakness and doubled down.
I have lived in Japan, I like the Japanese people and culture, but from the 1880s through 1945 they went stark staring bonkers. They shocked and horrified the Nazis.
They had to be stopped and honestly I do not think anything less would have worked. They thought that they could hold out until they could unleash on the world their weaponize version of the Yersinia pestis on the world. That was planned for fall of 1945. They figured they could hold out until that point. Until they lost two cities in a week.
Even some of the college students wanted to kill Hirohito in a coup before the surrender..It’s on yutube
Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura (primary target for Fat Man) were legitimate military targets.
You win the thread! Excellent argument
Another reason Japan surrendered- the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. The Japanese were terrified of the Soviets and didn’t want them as an occupying force on Japan.
I think this, instead of the A Bombs, prompted Japan to surrender
It was necessary to take the war to the civilians in Japan as they were the ones providing the support, and fueling their country to fight on. We did that by dropping the bombs.
its the same with Islamist’s today but they wont quit till Allah tells them too.
Is Carlson actually saying it was evil?
:)
They made the decision to ignore our threat and to take their chances. As conquers, we were also very lenient in the aftermath as well. That's one of the reasons they has very good relations with us in the post war period.
I've never heard that, and can't find anything about it with a casual internet search. Do you have a reference? Genuinely curious...
Soviet Stalin Russia was ready to step in and seize Sakahlin Islands and others in so called dispute since the days of the invasion of Port Arthur by Japan.
They waited to the last days when Sorge their spy in Japan let them know they were going to capitulate (even so, there are some who have speculated the military coup that failed to prevent Hirohito from directly surrendering, had suspicious backing. Most do not and think it was Tojo’s last gasp). Either way the country was preparing for complete national suicide to fight an invasion— that would have cost them 2 million civilian lives and nearly a million Allied lives (UK,US,ANZACS,etc.). The bombs 2 of them was almost not enough— but prevented these losses. The Jap Navy knew it was over long before- but the Army fanatics would not let go.
Russia was marching toward Japan.
I’m alive because of the way events played out. No bomb and my father is sent to either blockade or invade Japan. The course of his future family is changed forever. I’m sorry that it happened the way it happened but I’m happy I was born.
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