Posted on 08/03/2005 1:18:32 PM PDT by 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.
BTTT
I can think of a couple of other places that could use a good nuking right now...
bump
Speaking of stats....Does anybody have WWII U.S. casualty figures broken down between the Pacific and European Theatres?
My Dad was a dive bomber pilot who went out to the Pacific in early '44 and fought in most of the major campaigns that year as a member of VB15 aboard the Essex. VB15 was rotated back to the States at the end of '44, and its (now) veteran pilots were scattered throughout new squadrons gearing up for the invasion of Japan. You would never have been able to convince Dad or any of his fellow pilots that there was anything the slightest bit wrong about dropping the Atomic Bomb. A lot of them got to live long lives as a result.
We lost more than 300000 soldiers in both scenes and Atomic Bomb saved thousands of lives though
Gen. Lemay would have continued to incinerate most of Japan. Millions of Japanese, weakened by starvation from war sanctions, were dying of dysentary/cholera. Last but not least, the Russians would have occupied and partitioned the northern half of Japan.
Russian invasion would have drastically altered their future for the worse and would have likely doomed the S Koreans.
The atom bomb was a blessing for all.
If the Japs hadn't bombed us at Pearl Harbor, we wouldn't have bombed them at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sow the whirlwind, reap the whirlwind.
(By Japs I don't mean any aspersion on the loyal Japanese Americans who were wrongly interned, nor especially those who fought and bled for their (our) country.)
The atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved hundreds of thousands of lives, mostly Japanese civilian lives, although our own casualties would have been staggering in an invasion of the Home Islands. Whenever anyone tells me we should never have used these weapons, I laugh! Over one hundred thousand Japanese were killed in fire-bombing of Tokyo in one night. Another month of that would make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like picnics. The intent was to end the war as quickly as possible, and Fat Man and Little Boy certainly achieved that. Truman may have done some htings wrong, but his decision here was right and maybe the most difficult any American President ever had to make.
Happy Birthday to you!!!
Good question. I tried to find a breakdown, but all the casualty numbers I found were lump sums.
And since the Atomic Bomb no industrialized nation has gone to war with another.
It is interesting to note that only the US could have created the atomic bomb. Only the US could afford to spend $2 billion 1942 dollars on it. Britain was broke. As for the Soviet Union they needed T-34's and Shturmoviks in the here and now more than an atomic bomb three years down the road. And who would have undertaken such a colossally expensive project in Stalin's Russia in any case ? Who would have dared suggest the idea to Stalin and make himself responsible for its success with his life ?
>>Declaring that "Hiroshima was a war crime" has become an anti-American academic racket.
Really? I think it was, and I'm proud to be an American.
(Army brat, Former Army Reservist).
Given the history surrounding it's use, and I'm quite sure know it very well, why do you think it's use should be constituted a war crime?
Indiscriminate genocide is a crime against humanity. The A bombs were not the only incidents, and the US was not alone in commiting them.
There were alternatives, including laying siege to Japan via Naval blockade, but I guess the idea was to get it over with...
The A bomb is not something to thank God for.
It should also be remembered that the Japanese populace was on the brink of starvation. If the US had been force to invade, the Japanese population would have begun to implode. It would not have mattered if our landings had been successful since the USAAC and the USN could have maintained the bombardment & distant blockade (out of range of Kamikaze attacks) indefinately. And the Japanese Manchurian Army would have been rounded up by the gentle Soviet forces, who I am sure would have shown them great tenderness.
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