Dropping Atomic Bombs on Japan was Unavoidable

We now mark the 67th anniversary of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end WW II. Once again we must listen to the contra-factual analysis of revisionists as they expound on what a needless, tragic and profoundly immoral decision the United States had made. In support of dropping the atomic bombs historians often cite the inevitability of horrifying casualties, if troops had landed on the home islands. They extrapolate from 48,000 American and 230,000 Japanese losses on Okinawa to estimates of 500,000 American and millions of Japanese casualties for mainland invasions. However, even these optimistic figures arise from studies preceding the unfolding recognition of American experiences on Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Such estimates could have vastly understated causalities, because Japan at 374,000 mountainous square miles mathematically enables over 500 defensive redoubts; fortifications comparable to that General Ushijima constructed to inflict most losses for the Okinawa invasion. This rapid increase in killing efficiency extended to planned stubborn defenses of their major cities just as the Germans had maintained in Berlin. The American “island hopping” strategy had ended, because the Japanese had determined the few regions within their mountainous country that could accommodate the huge armies and air forces needed. Harry Truman contemplated increasingly dire estimates causing him to reflect on the possibility of “an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other”.

The Japanese War Faction maintained the lavish standard of 20 million Japanese deaths for planning final mainland battles; battles intended to inflict millions of casualties, and to convince America to abandon the Potsdam Declaration. The Japanese had concealed vastly underestimated quantities of kamikazes and aviation fuel, redeployed veteran Kwantung divisions, mobilized home defense armies, and distributed suicide bombs and bamboo spears to civilians become soldiers.

Americans also faced biological warfare. Occupation searchers uncovered large stockpiles of viruses, spirochetes, and fungus spores throughout rural Japan. These biological pathogens had already been tested on Chinese civilians. For Japan one delivery system directed citizen soldiers to infect themselves and stay behind the advancing troops.

The Greatest Generation and their parents would have been enraged to discover a cabal had ignored the nuclear option for ending the war just to indulge some personal moral orthodoxy. If there was any alternative, Harry Truman, Henry Stimson, and George Marshall were not about to procure the deaths of countless Americans in protracted ground campaigns following amphibious assaults exceeding D-Day.

The Japanese Privy Council debated the Final Battles arguments into utter physical and mental exhaustion for eleven hours following the Nagasaki bomb on August 9. For the final meeting of Hirohito and his Cabinet, eighty year old Barron Hiranuma was invited to attend, though he always fiercely disapproved of the war strategy. Among his several censures, he reproved Foreign Minister Togo for never making concrete proposals to the Russians and Minister Anami for accepting limitless nuclear warfare deaths without any opportunity to retaliate. The ministers had no answer.

At impasse Hirohito, the god-king, spoke the “Voice of the Crane” in the 30’ by 18’ sweltering, underground bunker. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence negotiations with allied belligerents.

Here was demonstrated the critical role Kokutai played in surrender. Any prominent Japanese lived within an intimate spiritual three dimensional fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. Emperor Hirohito foresaw the probability of defeat and had appointed a Peace Faction in January 1944. However, he and his advisors conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, fire bombings of over 60 cities, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths. The atomic bombs removed the Final Battles argument, allowing the War Faction to relent, Hirohito to assume his unprecedented roll, and no one to lose face. Their cabal remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire.

Another point says the bombs accomplished little. Supposedly Roosevelt’s decree of unconditional surrender was compromised away by allowing Japan to keep their Emperor. However by accepting the Potsdam Declaration, Japan abandoned the militarism that had committed the country to Asian conquest. The Emperor’s and the government’s authority became subject to the Supreme Allied Commander. Their authority was later subject to the Japanese people’s free expression for determining post war government that eradicated multi-millennial Imperial characteristics.

The moral failure to leave an Imperial Japan undefeated to prosecute a nuclear war generations hence was intolerable. The expectation of continuing 400,000 civilian and military deaths throughout Asia while diplomats dithered was intolerable. Allowing a blockade to operate interminably, while deferring to the War Faction any decision about whether Japanese and allied prisoner deaths met their 20 million standard was intolerable. Allowing the premeditated ignorance of revisionists center stage as the institutional knowledge of the Greatest Generation dies away is intolerable.

The generation which developed the information and made the decisions for World War II, including dropping the atomic bombs on Japan, pretty much died by the time I graduated from high school. The generation which faced the tragic violence required for carrying out those decisions is rapidly passing away. Now we have the opportunity suffer the moral exhibitionism from members of subsequent generations who grew up in unprecedented luxury, and were sheltered from harm not of their own imagination.

As a byproduct of studying WW II history in retirement, I annually rework the above narrative. Below is a partial biography of the sources I used. The recently published book Hell to Pay by D. M. Giangreco is especially valuable. I was able to find confirmation of so many my other sources in his book. About 40% of the book is bibliography, appendices, and notes. The sound bites that generate popular attention are baseless, and if you are interested there is much opportunity for refuting these comfortable fictions.

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 Tokio: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange

This is a story that I love to tell. My late father was a Mud Marine in the Pacific. To this date, I still find it difficult to imagine the hardships and deprivations he and his fellow Marines had faced throughout the length of the war.

When Japan surrendered and it was made known that President Truman made the decision to use these new weapons, my dad was a lifelong admirer of Harry Truman.

Sometime during the late 70’s or early 80’s, I was taking my dad to a baseball Cardinals night game for his birthday. He did indeed love the Cardinals, but felt he couldn't afford tickets, primarily as a result of being raised during the depression.

I was parked away from the park and when we were waiting for the light at Market and Tucker in St. Louis, a young kid asked us if we were registered voters and we said yes. At this point, the kid asked if we'd sign a petition, which demanded the Congress and the U.S. government apologize to the Japanese government and people.

It's interesting to note, that prior to this event, you could always tell how mad dad was by the number of veins pulsating in his neck. The most I had seen was two. Well, dear old dad, went from zero to three in about 0.5 seconds, grabbed the clipboard and ripped the petitions to shreds.

The kid was obviously terrified and all I could say was, “Mud Marine in the Pacific. No sense of rumor.”

In retrospect I want to say, “Thanks, Dad, and thanks to every man and woman who served their country in such a gallant manner.”

When Japan surrendered and it was made known that President Truman made the decision to use these new weapons, my dad was a lifelong admirer of Harry Truman.

The kid was obviously terrified and all I could say was, “Mud Marine in the Pacific. No sense of rumor.”

In retrospect I want to say, “Thanks, Dad, and thanks to every man and woman who served their country in such a gallant manner.”

“Dropping Atomic Bombs on Japan was Unavoidable” I think a better title would be “Dropping Atomic Bombs on Japan was The Best CHOICE”.

Dropping The Bomb was avoidable and let us not try to wish away the fact that we made a deliberate decision to indiscriminately kill the people of Japan. Not having good choices did not mean we were without choices.

I will never question the decision that was made and will defend it to anyone who questions it. I pray that our future leaders will have the same clarity as they did then should we be faced with similar circumstances today.

I would add: “Downfall” by Richard B. Frank, to that list.

The bloodbath would have made the Pacific War, up to that point, pale by comparison. The only sane decision for the Japanese would have been to surrender after the first conventional landings, once the Allies showed their resolve. If the militant faction held sway and fought to the last man, so to speak,......complete carnage. Nothing on the Eastern Front would have equaled it.

My uncle was on Okinawa with the 6th MARDIV. He said that you could “feel” the collective sigh of relief when the announcement of surrender was made. They knew they would live now.

To the leftists, especially the academics, who continue to berate the US over that decision I say: That decision actually saved Japan, as a nation. The civilian casualties, should the assault go full term to conclusion, would have been many times higher than the IJA casualties. To a man and woman, every Japanese National that I ever discussed this subject with, agreed completely. The decision was sound and correct.

It is one of the absurdities of modern Political Leftism. They want to argue that it was some how immoral to use the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombs. That we could of “Besieged” the Japanese.

That utter nonsense. The infrastructure of the Japanese islands was breaking down. Japan could not feed it self and rely ed on food imports. Instead of killing Japanese Civilians in the tens of thousands. The Leftist “Siege” would of killing millions from disease, starvation and malnutrition. EVEN then there is NO indication that would of broke the Japanese will. Japanese soldiers hung on various pacific islands for decades after WW 2 ended. Even after the bombs dropped die hard militarists tried to stop the Emperor from surrendering.

Then their is the question. What response would the Japanese been to an invasion and occupation. The Left screams about the Iraqis “Insurgency” what do you suppose a Japanese Insurgency would of done? Also, who knows if the Japanese would of survived as a people? The Civilian and Military casualties on Siapan and Okinawa were horrific. Give the intensifying tempo of suicide attacks,the fire power brought down on the Japanese Home Island prior to and during an Invasion would of killed tens of thousands if not millions of civilians as well as military forces

I think it was a damn good thing.

My father was scheduled to be a landing craft driver in the invasion of Japan. There is better than a fair chance that he would have been killed.

I got to meet and thank General Chuck Sweeney who flew "Bock's Car" which dropped the second atomic bomb.

Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)

lets forget about the deaths that were avoided when there was no direct assault of ground troops on the Jap main island by America and the allies...think of the people; POWS, innocent civilians, Korean comfort woman, who were saved from death by the dropping of these bombs- people who were being worked to death in slave labor at POW camps around east Asia (McDonnell and others), people being worked to death in places such as the Siam-Burma railway never mind the innocent people who were being tortured and killed by the Japs for amusement...

the 100’s of 1000’s of people basically condemned to death by the Japs is what people forget and that alone was worth the value of dropping the bombs...

The bomb saved lives (period) That war would have gone on for another 10 years at least. There were Japanese still fighting in Guam years later still trying to jump off a cliff with hand grenades kill people at the base.

These people don’t realize that the emperor of Japan was God on earth. These people would do anything for their God.

Think Jim Jones with 100+M followers.

War is requires the ultimate cruelty and cannot be sanitized or made humane if one seeks to win. The most humane thing one can do is to end the war quickly as possible with the means at hand.

What is the difference if the enemy dies by bullets, (nuclear) bombs or fire? The object of war is to impose one’s will upon the enemy and make their lives so insufferable as to break their will to continue further resistance.

Additionally, it should be added that a POW taken at the fall of the Philippines and a survivor of the death march stated flatly that, should the Allies have invaded, all, ALL...the POW’s would have been murdered.

Nobody discounts the Burma prison camps, the Chinese plight, the forced labor or the civilian deaths. Unlike Nazi Germany, most of that was a known before the end of the war. It was the utter and complete brutality that was underestimated.

The Leftist “Siege” would of killing millions from disease, starvation and malnutrition. EVEN then there is NO indication that would of broke the Japanese will

Yes. This is where the leftist argument breaks down completely. They had essentially been besieged since prior to the Okinawa campaign. They were starving. The hardcore Nationalists would have staged a coup, and tried to, if the political will to continue would have been subverted by the “peace faction.”

If we had to invade Japan, the Soviets would have gotten involved as well, and claimed half of Japan, they already got Sakhalin as it was.

Then Japan would have been divided, just like Korea and Germany. And who knows if you would have had another civil war on our hands, just like with Korea.

Not to mention once the Communists seized power in China, they certainly would have staked their claim as well.

Dropping the relatively small nuclear weapons was the right choice.

It saved our boys...it saved their boys as well..and many civilians on their side.

I have a terrible premonition that very soon Israel will be forced to use nuclear weapons. It will begin with small neutron weapons but may escalate from there.

The whole world will condemn them, but they have the same right and obligation to protect their people as we did in 1945.

Wars cannot end unless you utterly defeat the enemy, it is cruel to both parties to continue on endlessly.

Dropping the Atomic Bomb on Japan was AWESOME.

There is no way they would have gotten so entertainingly weird if they hadn't been nuked.

Wars cannot end unless you utterly defeat the enemy, it is cruel to both parties to continue on endlessly.

Just another truism that the left cannot understand.

At. All.

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