8/9/2015, 11:16:30 PM · by 2ndDivisionVet · 31 replies
The National Post ^ | August 9, 2015 | George Jonas
RIP to 2DV.
Posted on 08/06/2023 7:01:59 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Same here. Who knows if they would have surrendered. My fathers PBY squadron had orders to deploy to Okinawa in preparation for the Invasion of Japan.
Why dropping the bomb 70 years ago was necessary, and why we need to be ready to do it again
Not a history buff, but it appears teaching the Chinese hordes a lesson my have been a good thing. Yet here we are and history plays out. No good deed goes unpunished
I, too, would likely never have been born were it not for the Nagasaki bombing. My dad’s POW camp, Fukuoka 17, was just across the bay from that explosion. As the prisoners looked up to see the plume, they imagined the biggest Japanese ammo dump that ever existed had just gotten hit.
It was in the first few days of 1946 that my dad appeared on his parents doorstep (unannounced). At first, they did not recognize the sickly, 44kg frame before them. That was even after a Thanksgiving and five months of having been restored to a reasonable diet, mostly on the Philippines.
If he had had to endure a few more months in the POW camp, he thought it likely he would not have come out alive.
Fully aware of the atomic bomb's destructiveness, Japan also knew that our bomb production capacity was limited and planned on resistance based on deep tunnels and heavily armed forces in reserve. Japan aimed to impose such massive casualties on US invasion forces that a peace would be agreed to on Japanese terms.
The core Japanese terms were the maintenance of the Emperor and the imperial system with no reckoning as to his participation in the war and immense financial benefit from war crimes throughout Asia. Yet, even with that agreed to and Hirohito ready to announce Japan's surrender, the Japanese military attempted a coup to depose him and continue fighting.
As quoted, many US military and civilian leaders correctly saw Japan as defeated but had little understanding of the Japanese warrior code and their military's willingness to continue fighting to the death of themselves and of Japan itself. If not for the use of atomic bombs, the Japanese would have had to be subdued through an extraordinarily destructive invasion.
As it was, the use of atomic bombs on Japan provided a psychological means by which the Japanese could reconcile themselves to defeat. This was anticipated and planned on by Hirohito and his circle.
As US intelligence decrypts revealed, after surrender, Japan began a calculated effort to generate international sympathy by claiming that the A-bomb was a uniquely evil weapon and that Japan was a victim. In effect, critics of the US bombing of Japan are carrying out old Japanese and Soviet propaganda themes against the US.
In the early 1980s I was stationed at our U.S. Navy Base in Sasebo, Japan — a city that was heavily hit with firebombs toward the end of the war — and is merely a 1.5 hour drive to Nagasaki city where the second bomb was dropped.
I befriended a guy by the name of Benny Toda, a 40ish heavy set guy who was competent and smart, though a misfit in Japanese society. He spent a couple years in America and he worked in his family’s business at a pre-Home Depot era hardware store.
He hated his job and told people what he really thought so he was not well-liked by the Japanese people who expected greater adherence to politeness.
But I struck up a little friendship with Toda-san. And he was a very funny guy. He spoke enough English that I was entertained and learned a lot from him.
When it came to discussing World War II one time, he flat out told me: “If you’re going to conquered by a foreign nation, it’s best to get beat by the Americans!”
In terms of lost lives, there were plenty of other bombings in World War 2 that were more costly than the bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The firebombing of Tokyo was one of those.
So I think the shock effect of the devastation just one bomb could do is what shook the Emperor and other military leaders to surrender.
Truman was a democrat partisan hack IMO in domestic affairs, but I’ll never hold the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki against him.
I had three great uncles who fought those homicidal, suicidal, nihilistic nutjobs all over the Pacific, plus my paternal grandfather was on his way there after the defeat of Germany. Everyone of them, plus their family members were glad the war was over.
The bombing worked, it ended the war, which led to peace and eventually led to our current relationship with Japan.
I doubt them also. Especially after Okinawa and Iwo Jima. Japan’s military was actively training women and children to fight to the last one if we invaded them.
the United States had sustained over 49,000 casualties including more than 12,500 men killed or missing. Okinawans caught in the fighting suffered greatly, with an estimate as high as 150,000 civilians killed. Of the Japanese defending the island, an estimated 110,000 died.
Keywords here are 'undermines' and 'deeply unorthodox policy arguments and excavations.'
They are literally admitting they thrive on creating contrary argument and throwing up 'excavations' to support their 'arguments.' My only guess is that they are willingly creating the controversies in order to increase their media footprint and thus, their bottom line.
Bullcrap they were useless. Dont care, I’ve read enough on the subject and talked to enough people who were there. It wasn’t useless. It was dam necessary.
Hirohito’s top officers wanted to keep fighting after the 2 bombs.
Only the Emperor finally deciding not to, had these top men stand down.
To 7 My father-in-law was recovering from his third set of wounds on Iwo and preparing for the invasion of the Japanese mainland.
He told me that he knew he wouldn’t survive it.
My father was a standby ship out status to help supervise chemical weapons readiness in Australia if the Japanese used poison gas (which they had, especially in cyanide grenades, some of which were captured on the Pacific islands - I read the about them in military After Action Reports).
One of my older friends was on a medical ship heading towards Japan when the A Bombs were dropped. The ship turned around and headed back to Pearl Harbor.
A number of fathers of my friends survived Iwo. Some would not have survived the invasion of Japan, and would have deprived America of the next generation of patriotic Americans.
We are still here fighting against our leftist enemies on the Homeland, carrying on what our fathers, relatives and friends did in WW2. Otherwise we would be “Living in the United Soviet States of America”.
MM - S. Vietnam/Cambodia war journalist, on our side. Son-in-law, Kosovo and Desert Storm (combat wounded) and my son, Operation Iraqi Freedom and US Federal Police Officer.
48. The Japanese military refused to believe that one bomb could destroy a city. The next one made believers of them. End of war !!!
Except that it took TWO bombs to convince Japan to surrender and even that barely did the job. The vote to surrender passed by only ONE vote.
If that’s what it took to get them to surrender, then nothing short of annihilation through a long bloody war would have worked.
I heard they were chosen because of they were strategic militarily.
The “bomb” was Made in America, tested in Japan.
Food for thought.........
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