Thank God for the Atom Bomb

realclearpolitics.com ^ | August 3, 2005 | By Austin Bay

[F14 Pilot]

The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima (Aug. 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9) didn't end World War II -- at least not quite. The six days between Nagasaki and Japan's surrender on Aug. 15 were six more hideous days of war for U.S. and allied forces. Combat -- and Japanese atrocities -- continued in China, the Philippines and Southeast Asia.

They were also six days of vicious political intrigue and turmoil in Tokyo, as the so-called "peace" and "war" factions in Japan's high command struggled for control of the state.

In his classic essay "Thank God for the Atom Bomb," Paul Fussell (World War II vet and National Book Award-winner) observes, "Allied (Pacific) casualties were running to over 7,000 per week." After Nagasaki, "captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off); the U.S. submarine Bonefish was sunk (all aboard drowned); the destroyer Callaghan went down ... and the Destroyer Escort Underhill was lost."

Fussell scorns Harvard prof and insistent anti-nuclear-nit John Kenneth Galbraith's twaddle that the A-bombs accelerated Japan's surrender by (quoth Galbraith) "at most, two or three weeks."

Galbraith's estimate of Japan's resiliency is a typical figment of ivory tower fevers -- military calculations at the time suggested Japan would fight for another year. But even accepting Galbraith's breezy guess, three more weeks of war with Japan meant another 21,000 Allied killed and wounded. Fussell, a combat vet wounded while fighting the Nazis in Europe, was re-assigned to a division slated to assault the Japanese island of Honshu. Galbraith, Fussell says, "worked in the Office of Price Administration in Washington. I don't demand that he experience having his ass shot off. I merely note that he didn't."

Apparently, the moral facility to condemn the bomb is directly related to one's distance, in space and time, from actual combat.

Declaring that "Hiroshima was a war crime" has become an anti-American academic racket. One clique maintains Truman A-bombed "yellows" in order to impress Stalin. Truman was a calculating "racist-fascist." Such "opinions" deserve special damnation. They libel a genuine democratic populist and the president who desegregated the American armed forces.

Another clique absorbs itself in a debate over how "few" additional casualties the Allies would have borne had they invaded Japan sans A-bomb.

Many veterans find this argument morally repugnant. Assume, as the academic revisionists callously do, that there is some "X" number of additional GI and Japanese military and civilian deaths from "non-atom" warfare which is a "more morally acceptable loss" than 220,000 Japanese civilian and military killed by atom bombs. Who, 60 years on, can name that figure?

The critics' make much of a vague June 1945 estimate that the Kyushu assault would cost "only" 31,000 Allied casualties. This "best case" assumed the Japanese had 350,000 troops on Kyushu. In July 1945, the Imperial Army deployed 560,000 troops on the island. At least 5,000 kamikazes were available.

Okinawa, where 101,000 Japanese and 24,000 Americans died, confirmed in the minds of responsible Allied leaders the "worst case." Fanatic Japanese resistance was a battlefield fact. Truman speculated that atomic weapons may have saved the Allies another 500,000 dead and the Japanese at least twice that many.

A case can be made that nuclear weapons, since they represent a quantum boost in devastation, are different from "conventional" weapons. "Disproportionate destruction" suggests nukes are beyond the moral pale of Just War. This is a proposition worth debating, relevant during the Cold War, even more relevant in an era when religious terrorists seek weapons of mass destruction.

Truman's context, however, was World War II. Truman, like fellow veterans Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy, knew that for the front-line soldier, "better them than us" is life and death immediacy, not a matter of academic rumination -- and Truman valued American lives over an enemy's.

The shock effect of the atom super-weapon on all but the most hardened of Japan's high command allowed Tokyo's "peace" faction to finesse the militarist, suicidal zealots and surrender. To heck with conjecture. This Japanese decision, goaded by The Bomb, put an end to the mutual slaughter.

[YOUGOTIT]

You are correct. However, as I stated the ESTIMATE was for over 1,000,000 American casualties and over 11,000,000 Japanese if we were to have invaded Japan.

[gandalftb]

In fact the Russians began the occupation of Japan over our objections. The islands of Etorofu, Kunashiri, and Shikotan, and the Habomai group, known in Japan as the "Northern Territories" and in Russia as the "Southern Kuril Islands" are still occupied and administered by Russia and claimed by Japan. It is a little known fact that both countries have still not signed a peace treaty to end their World War II hostilities because of this occupation.

Our navy was not about to attack any Russian ships given the tenuous hold that we had in Germany. Russia simply occupied what they want while we stood by in the Balkans, Poland, Germany, Japan and elsewhere. The shock and awe of the A-bomb was essential in stopping the Russian advance everywhere and is likely what kept Russia out of Austria also.

[BaBaStooey]

The subject of the atom bomb is an interesting one...like many people in the US I have a personal interest.

The two atom bombs prevented the need for an invasion of mainland Japan, one in which my grandfather would have most certainly participated. My grandfather was an US Army infantryman and scout in the 41st Division (Sunset) in the Phillipines at the time of the Japanese surrender, prior to that he was part of the liberation of New Guinea.

The 41st was definitely going to take part in the invasion of mainland Japan, and Japan would have fought to the very last man. My grandfather may have never come back from Japan alive. Instead, he went to Japan with the 41st as an occupying force, after a month or two he was on a boat sailing back to San Francisco, then a train back to Michigan, and out of the Army.

So basically, what I'm saying is that without the atom bombs, I may have never existed. Its an interesting thought.

The subject of the atom bomb is the cover story for this week's Weekly Standard. Its a terrific story. Japanese decoded radio transmissions intercepted by the United States were recently declassified. Before the dropping of the first atom bomb, Japan were piling up a tremendous amount of infantry and firepower on their shores in preparation for the invasion that was to come. They were exploring a diplomatic end to the conflict, but one in which the ruler of Japan and his military government remained in power. (For a modern example, please see Hussein, Saddam, 1991.) This was not unconditional surrender. In fact, it was conditional surrender. Everyone knows that leaving the Emperor and his military men in power would have caused another war in the near future, this was not an option.

After the first bomb dropped, the Japanese continued to build up on their shores for the invasion, and their position on post-war rule of Japan remained unchanged. That's why the second bomb was dropped.

Even after the second bomb was dropped, many hard liners in Japan wanted to remain firm. But after about a week they stepped aside. Finally, an acceptable offer. Ninety-nine percent unconditional surrender with one little condition: that the emperor remain as a powerless figurehead. Meanwhile, freedom and democracy took hold in Japan, and thrives to this very day.

[1stFreedom]

>>I thank God for the A bomb--my father was in training to be a naval aviator at the time.

Why not thank him for Jack the Ripper? Abortion? The hillside strangler? Jeffery Dahmer?

Go ahead, be thankful for wholesale murder all you want..

>>The bombing of the Jap

Hmmm... Do you call all hispanic/latino people spics? What do you refer to black people as?

>> Nuking the Japs did not constitute genocide
--once they surrendered the war ceased and the defeated enemy was treated by McArthur with kid gloves.

Sure it was a regional genocide, surrender stoped it from going from becoming a much larger genocide.

>>it made good Japs out of barbaric and butcherous bad Japs. The world, especially Japan, is far better for it.

I think it made potentially good people into blithering idiots who thank God for the Bomb.

>>Allow me to wish you an early Happy Hiroshima Day!

Are you gonna wish me a happy Roe v Wade day also? What about a happy birthday Dahmer day while you are at it? Let's not forget Stalin's birthday.....