"Stark Realities" (Brian McGlinchey - The Libertarian Institute)
My Dad, the most wonderful man and my hero, (later an eye surgeon and father to me and six siblings) was a young Ensign in 1945, in charge of 4 LCVPs, on a small Destroyer Escort conversion to a landing support ship, APD. He was working up in the Atlantic for the invasion of Japan, while the European troops were repositioning back to invade Japan. They were told to expect, in a main invasion of main islands of Japan to expect 80 % casualties, almost a MILLION US alone, and over a million more Japanese. Battle hardened marines, my Dad said, from Europe joining his group wept when the bombs ended the war.
Is the relief of guilt from the communists and enemies of our country by wringing their hands over the destruction of those two cities, which were a fraction of the Japanese and American casualties from the nukes...why are we even listening to these idiots?
Who gives them any authority? How about the families, like me who would not have been born, where is my say in the collective guilt I must now support for what??? The end of a war??? I want to punch someone.
As General William Tecumseh Sherman said: “War is all hell.” Sherman basically said that you have to take the war to the people who are supporting and supplying the enemy, and you have to make war so horrible that they lose their will to fight.
Every American parent who did not lose a son in an invasion of Japan, every American alive today because one of their grandfathers did not have to participate in an invasion of Japan, begs to differ.
The Japanese had demonstrated that they would fight fanatically and generally fought until annihilated.The US had suffered huge casualties invading Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The Japanese army still had considerable strength within Japan proper. There is no hard evidence that Japan was willing to unconditionally surrender. The atomic bomb offered American leaders the option to annihilate Japan without suffering huge additional casualties. Most veterans idolized Truman for dropping those bombs which made a costly invasion of Japan proper unnecessary.
There were certainly some needless things that happened in WWII. Oh, like the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan death march to name a few.
What do Freepers have to say about the matter?
(C'mon man.)
My Dad who was stationed in the Pacific and was in Hiroshima 6 weeks after the bomb once told me that if they had had to storm the Japanese beach heads we would have lost another 500,000 men.
You post this crap with no comment
My Japanese stepdaughter had the opportunity to talk with both her grandmothers about this. Both wanted the war to end and were thankful when it did. Support for the war seemed to vary for different parts of the country. Both grandmothers lived in rural areas (one in Nambu, one in Inokashira - which are both about 40-45 minutes from Fujinomiya). Relatives in Shizuoka proper were more strident even though that city was badly damaged by Allied bombing.
Larry Schweikart’s post from earlier today, from here:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/chat/4173267/posts?page=5#5
Everything you need to know about the dropping of the atomic bomb can be found in Richard Frank’s book, “Downfall.” He had access to Japanese, as well as American, archives & memoirs as well as the post-war recollections of Emperor Hirohito.
*Casualty projections were all over the map, from 100,000 to 1 million for the US, up to 10 m for the Japanese.
*Ketsu-Go, the Japanese plan for national suicide, was already being put in place and civilians given what equipment there was and training as to how to become bushido jihadist suicide bombers. They were totally down with it, as seen in the suicide bomber #s on Okinawa. The plan for “one man, one ship” exchange was fully in place. Suicide torpedoes were already being built.
*Through Okinawa, the number of Japanese troops who surrendered, despite obvious evidence their units were destroyed and they had no hope of winning, was almost ZERO. On Iwo Jima, fewer than 2,000 prisoners (almost all wounded) were taken out of a garrison of 20,000. There was no evidence, anywhere, that the Japanese civilians on Hokkaido or any other island would actually surrender.
*Here’s the amazing thing about the numbers: everything Truman saw was really, really LOW. He never was briefed on total air, infantry, support, naval casualties, or those of just ordinary but predictable accidents. Thus he decided on the LOWER estimates.
*As late as 2 days after the Hiroshima bomb, Japanese council records show that the council was split on whether to accept the Potsdam Agreement (it took unanimous consent to do anything).
*The government sent Dr. Nishina to Hiroshima to confirm it was an atomic bomb. When he did, he was asked, “How long til we can get one?”
*The Soviets entering the war was important for two reasons: First, it ended the fantasy that Japan could reinforce the home islands with China-based troops, and second, it ended any hope that the Japanese could get the Russkies to pressure us to accept anything less than “unconditional surender.”
*Finally, the decision to retain the emperor ran COUNTER to all US public opinion polls. It was taken because MacArthur and Nimitz thought it would be easier to disarm and control the civilians if the emperor went along with the plan.
*Even after Hirohito decided (following the Nagasaki bomb) to surrender, groups of “dead-enders” tried to assaswinate him and put a harder line guy in.
If I were the CinC, my axiom for all conflicts is to minimize American casualties, no matter the cost to the other nations. If American troops had to invade Japan proper there would be significant U.S. casualties. That did not happen because of the bombs.
Contrast my warmonger side with my inner dove. The peace loving side of me is very strong. It takes egregious actions by another nation to flip the switch from peace to war. Diplomacy is paramount and only when that fails does the switch to war happens. It takes a significant attack and loss of American lives to begin a hot war, and even then diplomacy should continue until peace is obtained. It takes an unconditional surrender to end American attacks. No cease fires, no decrease in operations, attacks continue to the moment a surrender occurs. We get it over as quickly as possible.
That minimizes American loses. I don’t care about the other side since we should never be in the situation where we start a war. We don’t start wars, we end them. Unfortunately, that has not been the case in recent history and I am ashamed because of that.
The Japanese didn’t surrender after Tokyo was firebombed. They didn’t surrender after Hiroshima. The argument for a demonstration of the power on an uninhabited island was floated. But nixed cause if they told the Japanese where and when, the fear was that JApan would move American POW’s there to be obliterated. The article talks about decimating a forest. Yeah...that would work.
Japan had its own research on atomic power...but not too advanced as we found out AFTER the war. In the book HIROSHIMA by Hersey...he recounts that the explanation the JApanese used to explain the bright flash was that Magnesium was dropped on the high power lines to create the flash.
If we invaded Japan, hundreds of thousands of Americans . and millions of Japanese would have been killed.
Seeing the power of the A-bomb helped prevent further war by the doctrine of MAD.(mutually assured destruction)
The article is a lie written by someone who knows that history can be falsified. Complete idiot for trying.
"Stark Realities" (Brian McGlinchey - The Libertarian Institute)
If the Japanese were on the verge of collapse and surrender, then why did it take two? After seeing the damage caused by the first drop, why did they not surrender then? Did the Japanese so disvalue the lives of their citizens, that they dragged their feet untl the second one dropped?
My theory, the US needed to prove to the world that we had a nuclear weapon and it was massively destructive. Without those cities being the test case, many in the world would doubt that the US had nuclear weapons and their power. Nothing says WOW like one plane, one bomb and one destroyed city!
I would think the comments were taken out of context.
There is no such thing as an “innocent civilian”. A soldier is no more culpable for mankind’s evils than any civilian.
My mother’s oldest brother, an enlisted Marine being “worked up” to invade Japan thought the Hiroshima/Nagasaki A bombs were a great idea!
Having made several landings in the Pacific and surviving Guadalcanal, my uncle thought President Truman was a smart, brave President!
He credited President Truman with saving his life!
As I remember there was a half million japanese troops on the mainline of china.
Had the bombs not gone off the troops would have gone on fighting
Quotes (if indeed they are actual quotes) from those not actually fighting the Japs on their own islands. Desk warmers, if able commanders. None with any direct experience fighting the Japs.
Anyone get a veteran of the Okinawa campaign saying the same thing?
Not one single additional American life if we had a way to destroy them.