The A-Bomb as lifesaver

Boston.com ^ | August 7, 2005 | Jeff Jacoby

[Boston Blackie]

THE 60TH anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has arrived with little of the fury that accompanied the 50th. A decade ago, a bruising battle broke out over the Smithsonian Institution's plan for an exhibit suggesting that the American use of atomic weapons had been a racist war crime and served no legitimate military aim.

With a restored Enola Gay -- the B-29 that delivered the first bomb on Aug. 6, 1945 -- as a centerpiece, the Smithsonian's curators had intended to tell a story of American brutality and Japanese victimhood. ''For most Americans," their original script declared, ''this war was fundamentally different from the one waged against Germany and Italy -- it was a war of vengeance. For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism." Such slanted revisionism pervaded the text, which The Washington Post rightly summed up as ''incredibly propagandistic and intellectually shabby."

[jordan8]

American use of atomic weapons had been a racist war crime and served no legitimate military aim

The real subtext to the Hiroshima criticism is the racial politics of the modern left. The Japanese aren't white, and the country that dropped the bomb was. I've been trying to dig up a quote, maybe by David Horowitz, on a protest against a nuclear submarine years ago in the Northwest in which some of the protesters hung Japanese Imperial flags from their small boats. The quote was something like in the leftist hatred of the West any ally will do "even Japanese Fascists." We're seeing the same thing in regards to Islam in the West today. The same leftists who have railed against the Boy Scouts, Baptists, and Catholics welcome with open arms Muslims who make the above groups look like Alan Aldas, simply because they're not white and they're anti-Western, and in the war to destroy the West any ally will do, even Islamic fascists.

and trots out the old canard that their real purpose was to intimidate the Soviet Union.

I watched a scurrilous British documentary (from the same establishment that brought you Kim Philby) on the History Channel last night entitled Hiroshima: The Decision To Drop The Bomb that made this very point among others. I remember this film from when it came out 10 years ago, it provoked a fire storm then. Rank anti-American propaganda.

[Christopher Lincoln]

The left of today is not happy about it. The left of 1945 had no objection, as far as I know. It was when it became possible that nuclear weapons might be used against the Soviet Union that the leftists called for disarmament - our disarmament, of course.

[elbucko]

The left is unhappy about it, because it thwarted Soviet expansion.

I second your opinion.

[OldFriend]

Spies gave the A bomb info to Russia because they didn't trust America. Doesn't that say it all. Otto Fuchs comes to mind.

I have heard Madame Halfbright, also known as the cleaning lady, lamenting that it's not good for America to be the only super power.

Too bad the sheeple don't realize how dangerous the left is to our national security.

[elbucko]

Weakness and mercy in war is for fools.

Something that Churchill knew in his bones. All of his speeches are essentially telling the British public that in order to save their civilization, they must become savages or perish. It was his secret weapon.

[Paleo Conservative]

I do not think the bombs should have been dropped on cities except as a last resort.

At the time, there were only two atomic bombs in existence in the world. There was no guarantee that they would actually work when dropped on a city. The Little Boy had not actually been tested with a uranium masses. There was only enough weapons grade uranium to make one bomb. The scientists at Alamagordo had very high confidence that it would work, but unfortunately the massive isotope separation plant in Oakridge, Tennessee had not separated enough weapons grade uranium to make another 64.1 Kg needed for a second bomb. The dropping of Little Boy on Hiroshima was actually a weapons test that could not be repeated. It would have been disasterous to stage a demonstration and have a dud.

The Fat Man that was dropped on Nagasaki three days later was a plutonium implosion core device like the bomb exploded at the Trinity test site in New Mexico except that it had the additional hardware necessary to attach it to the bomb bay of a B-29 and an aerodymanic casing. It had been static tested on a tower on July 16, 1945, but no one was sure it would actually work correctly when dropped from from a plane. It too would have been disastrous if it had been used for a demonstration that turned out to be a dud.

After Nagasaki, it would have taken several days to manufacture additional cores for more Fat Man bombs. If the US had warned that we would demonstrate what a nuclear explosion over a designated point what would have prevented the Japanese from sending hundreds of Kamikaze pilots to intercept the bomber carrying the bomb to try to destroy it? Considering all that was at stake and the 400,000 Asians in who were dying every month the war continued in countries occupied by the Japanese, our best option was to use these weapons on actual target cities rather than to stage demonstrations of nuclear weapons.

[The Red Zone]

For most Japanese, it was a war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism."

Well when that culture entails trying to conquer everything in sight, don't complain when a real superpower stomps you flat.

[visitor]

Tour the museum in Andersonville, GA http://www.nps.gov/ande/ to see how the Japanese treated POWs...rto

[HiTech RedNeck]

And, it got the POWs there out, sooner

[HiTech RedNeck]

If we had exercised the same degree of brutality in Iraq, there would be no insurgency troubling us and perhaps we would have been out of there by now.

Japan was lucky to have an Emperor that was almost universally revered there. The surrender didn't have him step down, it only reformed their government system. What kind of leader would announce an Iraq surrender, and have it be able to stick like that? It's like herding cats over there.

[Wicket]

To get a notion of the brutality of the Japanese in WWII, I would highly recommend Ghost Soldiers. It's a very interesting, moving, and true story about the Bataan death march and the rescue of a large group of soldiers in the Phillipines prior to the reinvasion.

Here in the People's Republic of Oregon, the Oregonian ran an article by Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin today. It says we did it because we didn't want the Soviets involved in Japan, and Japan surrendered for fear of the Soviets.

I happened to be at the Smithsonian while they were working on the Enola Gay exhibit - 15-20 years ago, as I recall. At that time, the curators working on the exhibit had decided not to have any description of the bondings (and there was none) because they didn't want to describe them as anything but wholesale, racist murder. The original signs describing them that way had been taken down after a lot of protest from veterans and others.

Some things don't change much, huh.