Posted on 05/04/2018 9:37:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In the decades immediately following World War II, American public opinion generally supported President Truman's historic decision to unleash nuclear weapons on Japan. Everyone accepted that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an unfortunate necessity brought on by the unwillingness of Japan to surrender. Those two bombs, which killed over 140,000 civilians, were viewed as a way to avoid the obscene costs in men and materiel associated with invading the Japanese homeland.
Nowadays, many question whether those bombs were necessary. Given that they killed almost exclusively civilians and that the second of the two was dropped only two days after the first, many people have concluded that the attack was immoral. Today, the typical American is likely to react to the words "Hiroshima" and "Nagasaki" with a vague sense that our country did something wrong.
But the nuking of Japan was a moral act: war is hell for those who do the actual fighting, so those two bombs put an end to their suffering. This was true for the soldiers on both sides (even a Japanese soldier must have felt relieved to know he was going to survive unscathed). A purely theoretical model for explaining why dropping nukes was bad appeals only to those who have no skin in the game.
The Japanese war had already killed millions, most of whom were civilians. The two nukes killed 140,000. Do the math. It is a distasteful application of arithmetic, but it is an application that soldiers have to do all the time in their struggle to win a war.
For those who favor elegant ideas over ugly realism, I strongly recommend as a corrective the work of an ordinary Marine who, in 1981, published a book narrating his experience as a hand-to-hand combat soldier in the Pacific theater
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Had the two atomic bombs not been dropped, this bestseller would not have been written because the author and his fellow POW's would not have been alive. At the time Enola Gay and Bock's Car appeared over Japan, they were starving and would not have survived another winter.
I remember seeing an interview of a Japanese woman who had been a 16 year old on Okinawa during the battle.
She was forced into a cave where she was then forced to aid the Japanese Army. They had been told of how horrible the Americans treated captured Japanese.
She said after the battle was over, she was surprised that the Americans treated her better than her own people did.
secret Japanese jets, rockets and missiles stored in preparation for the believed invasion.
That’s a bit of an overstatement. Japan’s first jet aircraft was developed late in World War II and the first prototype had only flown once before the end of the war.
Tokyo & the imperial city of Kyoto were specifically removed from the target list.
The battle for Okinawa probably removed any real doubt Truman may have had about using “the gadget”
Erratum: My post referred to Louis Zamperini, the subject of the book, not the author.
“You may feel good about yourself with an attitude of this sort, but can you honestly expect to win a war for your own survival?”
A liberal is so open-minded that he can’t take his own side in a quarrel.
I believe the original sources were estimating 1 million allied “casualties” which is killed and wounded. Still bad, but not quite the same.
I deplore that it had to be done.
If the US had needed to invade Japan to win that war, at least 5 million Japanese would have died - many from burns and starvation. So just from their perspective, it was merciful to end it with a short and sharp action. That doesn’t even speak to the millions of US servicemen that would have been killed, maimed or “just” wounded.
War is Hell - best to get it over with very quickly. Besides, our use of nukes then and there made it far less likely that we’d end up fighting the Russkies, and that hypothetical war would have killed tens of millions even without nukes, and a couple hundred million with them. Yeah, this was a good decision; grisly, but good.
A demostration was recommended by the scientists in New Mexico. It would not have had the desired effect (Japan’s surrender). Exhibit A: Japan did not surrender after Hiroshima was bombed. Their cabinet was 4-3 against. If 70,000 dead won’t pursuade, making a big temporary splash in the Pacific Ocean would not have either. In fact, it would have been considered a trick.
The Purple Heart I received in 1969 is from WWII.
Manufactured in preparation for the Japanese invasion.
IIRC they are still using the same batch.
Or ask his son. My dad, a Marine, barely survived the fighting on Okinawa. I didn't know how close he came to death until his funeral when my uncle, also a Marine, told me the story. After Okinawa was over Dad and his unit were training for the invasion of Japan. He was to be in the first wave. He told me he and his friends knew they would die. Not worried, not feared, knew. He had fought the Japanese and knew what to expect. MacArthur estimated 100% casualties in the first wave.
“It took a second bomb for them to surrender.”
Barely... the emperor had to step-in to break the deadlock after Nagisaki. That was unprecedented. Even then there was a coup attempt by some Army officers that nearly succeeded.
And how many people in the lands that Japan had conquered were dying each month in slave labor camps?
What happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a thing of mercy and grace compared to the incomprehensible horror had the Japanese not been compelled to promptly surrender.
The United States President is elected to serve the interest of Americans.
He is not elected to serve the interests of Upper Volta. Or Japan. Or anywhere else.
The Japanese did not surrender even after we dropped the first bomb. They were given an opportunity to do so. In fact they almost didn’t surrender after we dropped the second bomb. The Emperor had to break a tie among his ministers on the vote to surrender. And because there was no precedent for the Emperor to break a tie, the military tried to stop it.
> Barely... the emperor had to step-in to break the deadlock after Nagisaki. That was unprecedented. Even then there was a coup attempt by some Army officers that nearly succeeded.
True. The generals did not want to surrender.
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