Posted on 07/29/2005 3:53:38 PM PDT by 45Auto
The sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima seems to be shaping up as a subdued affair--though not for any lack of significance. A survey of news editors in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, first among the top one hundred stories of the twentieth century. And any thoughtful list of controversies in American history would place it near the top again. It was not always so. In 1945, an overwhelming majority of Americans regarded as a matter of course that the United States had used atomic bombs to end the Pacific war. They further believed that those bombs had actually ended the war and saved countless lives. This set of beliefs is now sometimes labeled by academic historians the "traditionalist" view. One unkindly dubbed it the "patriotic orthodoxy."
But in the 1960s, what were previously modest and scattered challenges of the decision to use the bombs began to crystallize into a rival canon. The challengers were branded "revisionists," but this is inapt. Any historian who gains possession of significant new evidence has a duty to revise his appreciation of the relevant events. These challengers are better termed critics.
The critics share three fundamental premises. The first is that Japan's situation in 1945 was catastrophically hopeless. The second is that Japan's leaders recognized that fact and were seeking to surrender in the summer of 1945. The third is that thanks to decoded Japanese diplomatic messages, American leaders knew that Japan was about to surrender when they unleashed needless nuclear devastation. The critics divide over what prompted the decision to drop the bombs in spite of the impending surrender, with the most provocative arguments focusing on Washington's desire to intimidate the Kremlin. Among an important stratum of American society--and still more perhaps abroad--the critics' interpretation displaced the traditionalist view.
These rival narratives clashed in a major battle over the exhibition of the Enola Gay, the airplane from which the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, at the Smithsonian Institution in 1995. That confrontation froze many people's understanding of the competing views. Since then, however, a sheaf of new archival discoveries and publications has expanded our understanding of the events of August 1945. This new evidence requires serious revision of the terms of the debate. What is perhaps the most interesting feature of the new findings is that they make a case President Harry S. Truman deliberately chose not to make publicly in defense of his decision to use the bomb.
When scholars began to examine the archival records in the 1960s, some intuited quite correctly that the accounts of their decision-making that Truman and members of his administration had offered in 1945 were at least incomplete. And if Truman had refused to disclose fully his thinking, these scholars reasoned, it must be because the real basis for his choices would undermine or even delegitimize his decisions. It scarcely seemed plausible to such critics--or to almost anyone else--that there could be any legitimate reason that the U.S. government would have concealed at the time, and would continue to conceal, powerful evidence that supported and explained the president's decisions.
"But it is clear that all three of the critics' central premises are wrong. The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood--as one analytical piece in the "Magic" Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts--that "until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies." This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945."
but we never did that because we are really nice folks. :-)
Yes we are. A friend of mine who was a young boy in Germany during WWII remembers being told the that the American soldiers would "eat him for dinner" if they made it to his town. The Americans arrived, and the first thing that "Rudy" remembers is that the GI's gave him a Hershey bar instead of "eating him". "Rudy" made it to America in the 50's, became a citizen in the 60's and now has a son in Iraq. "Rudy knows his son will "give children Hershey bars", because he knows his son is an American. Rudy knows its more than a nationality.
"Got Blesss America", says "Rudy", in his German accent.
See 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' by Richard Rhodes. Yes, they were working on it, but they were very far from realizing it.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1452335/posts?page=22#22
"... as Japanese Imperial General Headquarters issued orders a month later, provided to us courtesy of code-breaking (MAGIC), to murder all Allied prisoners of war, all interned Allied civilians, and all other Allied civilians Japanese forces could catch in occupied China, the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), Malaya, etc., starting with the impending British invasion of Malaya in late September 1945. The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal. They'd probably have killed at least an additional 50 million people, more than had died in all of World War Two to that point, before Allied armies could eliminate Japanese forces overseas.
The horror would not have stopped there. An estimated ONE THIRD of the Japanese people (25-30 million) would have died of starvation, disease, poison gas and conventional weapons during a prolonged ground conquest of Japan. The Japanese Army planned on locking up the Emperor, seizing power and fighting to the bitter end once the US invasion started. Thank God for the atom bomb - killing 150,000 - 200,000 Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved 75-80 million lives. One of whom would have been the writer's father, an infantry lieutenant who survived Okinawa ..."
The numbers Harry Truman was given as an estimate of casualties for an invasion were:
2 million American
4 Million Japanese
Possibly an additional 2 million Japanese through starvation.
It was one of the more compassionate decisions in our history.
Various bedwetters have bemoaned our use of the atomic bomb ad infinitum now for lo these many years and of course it is a prime weapon in the arsenal of the hate America first crowd.
Gues what you gaggle of whimps? We did it. We're glad we did it and we'd do it again given the same circumstances. The message was to all mankind. Attack America and die miserably ... you and your children with you if necessary.
Too bad that sentiment is waning in these latter days.
If you want to get a fairly clear picture of what kind of people we were up against when we went to war with Japan read:
The Rape of Nanking.
It will leave you numb.
So we fired the first shot and the last shot. The Japs were right we did start the war with them.
See the title chapter in Paul Fussell's book "Thank God for the Atomic Bomb." A professor of English literature who was an infantry officer in WWII.
The "blame America" crowd has always been on the wrong side of this debate.
Imagine if Truman had not dropped the bombs and the country found out, after the fact, that a bloody invasion of Japan could have been avoided. He would have been impeached--easily.
Bottom line:
1.It is neither moral nor just to target civilian population for mass murder. To argue contrary give credence to the islomafacists.
2. I can understand the "save a million Allied troops" by giving Japan no choice.
3. But, why did we not drop the nuke on Mount Fuji? Blow the top off that beautiful mountain. If I recall correctly, that mountain has special importance to the Japanese nation.
You oughta be. The rest of the article proves conclusively that Truman was absolutely correct, and "Should Have Dropped the Bomb", and the the "revisionist historians" are full of bovine emissions.
We only had two bombs and weren't even sure both would function. Why not drop a bomb on Mount Fuji? The Japanese didn't surrender after we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. It took the second bomb being dropped on Nagasaki to convince them.
Something else folks should remember: Fat Man and Little Boy were, relatively speaking, pipsqueaks compared to the ones being tested very shortly after.
Far better we knew what atomic weapons could do in 1945 than finding out in Korea in 1950, or Vietnam in 1965...
My dad was on Guadalcanal, Truman did the right thing.
Boxcar = Bock's Car
'cuz mailing it would have been stupid?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.