( Actually, the subject who was about to die was an Aussie, but the concept was applied to GI's in Japannes hands should a invasion took place.)
Posted on 07/28/2006 8:20:58 AM PDT by mjp
On August 6, 1945 the American Air Force incinerated Hiroshima, Japan with an atomic bomb. On August 9 Nagasaki was obliterated. The fireballs killed some 175,000 people. They followed months of horror, when American airplanes firebombed civilians and reduced cities to rubble. Facing extermination, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. The invasion of Japan was cancelled, and countless American lives were saved. The Japanese accepted military occupation, embraced a constitutional government, and renounced war permanently. The effects were so beneficent, so wide-ranging and so long-term, that the bombings must be ranked among the most moral acts ever committed.
The bombings have been called many things-but moral? The purpose of morality, wrote Ayn Rand, is not to suffer and die, but to prosper and live.
How can death on such a scale be considered moral?
The answer begins with Japanese culture. World War II in the Pacific was launched by a nation that esteemed everything hostile to human life.
Japan's religious-political philosophy held the emperor as a god, subordinated the individual to the state, elevated ritual over rational thought, and adopted suicide as a path to honor. This was truly a Morality of Death. It had gripped Japanese society for three generations. Japan's war with Russia had ended in 1905 with a negotiated treaty, which left Japan's militaristic culture intact. The motivations for war were emboldened, and the next generation broke the treaty by attacking Manchuria in 1931 (which was not caused by the oil embargo of 1941).
It was after Japan attacked America that America waged war against Japan-a proper moral response to the violence Japan had initiated. Despite three and a half years of slaughter, surrender was not at hand in mid-1945. Over six million Japanese were still in Asia. Some 12,000 Americans had died on Okinawa alone. Many Japanese leaders hoped to kill enough Americans during an invasion to convince them that the cost was too high. A relentless "Die for the Emperor" propaganda campaign had motivated many Japanese civilians to fight to the death. Volunteers lined up for kamikaze "Divine Wind" suicide missions. Hope of victory kept the Japanese cause alive, until hopeless prostration before American air attacks made the abject renunciation of all war the only alternative to suicide. The Japanese had to choose between the morality of death, and the morality of life.
The bombings marked America's total victory over a militaristic culture that had murdered millions. To return an entire nation to morality, the Japanese had to be shown the literal meaning of the war they had waged against others. The abstraction "war," the propaganda of their leaders, their twisted samurai "honor," their desire to die for the emperor-all of it had to be given concrete form, and thrown in their faces. This is what firebombing Japanese cities accomplished. It showed the Japanese that "this"-point to burning buildings, screaming children scarred unmercifully, piles of corpses, the promise of starvation-"this is what you have done to others. Now it has come for you. Give it up, or die." This was the only way to show them the true nature of their philosophy, and to beat the truth of the defeat into them.
Yes, Japan was beaten in July of 1945-but had not surrendered. A defeat is a fact; an aggressor's ability to fight effectively is destroyed.
Surrender is a decision, by the political leadership and the dominant voices in the culture, to recognize the fact of defeat. Surrender is an admission of impotence, the collapse of all hope for victory, and the permanent renunciation of aggression. Such recognition of reality is the first step towards a return to morality. Under the shock of defeat, a stunned silence results. Military officers no longer plan for victory; women no longer bear children for the Reich; young boys no longer play samurai and dream of dying for the emperor-children no longer memorize sword verses from the Koran and pledge themselves to jihad.
To achieve this, the victor must be intransigent. He does not accept terms; he demands prostrate surrender, or death, for everyone if necessary.
Had the United States negotiated in 1945, Japanese troops would have returned to a homeland free of foreign control, met by civilians who had not confronted defeat, under the same leaders who had taken them to war. A negotiated peace would have failed to discredit the ideology of war, and would have left the motivations for the next war intact. We might have fought the Japanese Empire again, twenty years later. Fortunately, the Americans were in no mind to compromise.
President Truman demonstrated his willingness to bomb the Japanese out of existence if they did not surrender. The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945 is stark: "The result of the futile and senseless German resistance to the might of the aroused free peoples of the world stands forth in awful clarity as an example to the people of Japan . . . Following are our terms.
We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay . . . We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces . . . The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."
The approach worked brilliantly. After the bombs, the Japanese chose wisely.
The method was brutally violent, as it had to be-because the war unleashed by Japan was brutally violent, and only a brutal action could demonstrate its nature. To have shielded Japanese citizens from the meaning of their own actions-the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March-would have been a massive act of dishonesty. It would have left the Japanese unable to reject military aggression the next time it was offered as an elixir of glory.
After the war, many returning Japanese troops were welcomed by their countrymen not as heroes, but with derision. The imperial cause was recognized as bankrupt, and the actions of its soldiers worthy of contempt.
Forced to confront the reality of what they had done, a sense of morality had returned to Japan.
There can be no higher moral action by a nation than to destroy an aggressive dictatorship, to permanently discredit the enemy's ideology, to stand guard while a replacement is crafted, and then to greet new friends on proper terms. Let those who today march for peace in Germany and Japan admit that their grandparents once marched as passionately for war, and that only total defeat could force them to re-think their place in the world and offer their children something better. Let them thank heaven-the United States-for the bomb.
Some did just that. Hisatsune Sakomizu, chief cabinet secretary of Japan, said after the war: "The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by Heaven for Japan to end the war." He wanted to look like a peaceful man-which became a sensible position only after the Americans had won.
Okura Kimmochi, president of the Technological Research Mobilization Office, wrote before the surrender: "I think it is better for our country to suffer a total defeat than to win total victory . . . in the case of Japan's total defeat, the armed forces would be abolished, but the Japanese people will rise to the occasion during the next several decades to reform themselves into a truly splendid people . . . the great humiliation [the bomb] is nothing but an admonition administered by Heaven to our country." But let him thank the American people-not heaven-for it was they who made the choice between the morality of life and the morality of death inescapable.
Americans should be immensely proud of the bomb. It ended a war that had enslaved a continent to a religious-military ideology of slavery and death.
There is no room on earth for this system, its ideas and its advocates.
It took a country that values this world to bomb this system into extinction.
For the Americans to do so while refusing to sacrifice their own troops to save the lives of enemy civilians was a sublimely moral action. This destroyed the foundations of the war, and allowed the Japanese to rebuild their culture along with their cities, as prosperous inhabitants of the earth. Were it true that total victory today creates new attackers tomorrow, we would now be fighting Japanese suicide bombers, while North Korea-where the American army did not impose its will-would be peaceful and prosperous. The facts are otherwise. The need for total victory over the morality of death has never been clearer.
Another condition that is always overlooked: while the Japanese MILITARY surrendered to the Allies, the Japanese GOVERNMENT did not. That is an important distinction to make.
No truer words were ever spoken!!
Questions to contemplate: How did we get to this concept of fight antiseptic, politically correct wars and WHY do our leaders continue to be blind to the futility of fighting wars in that manner?
Superb - thank you.
AND...kill the attacker when attacked. Do it by the most self-preserving way.
( Actually, the subject who was about to die was an Aussie, but the concept was applied to GI's in Japannes hands should a invasion took place.)
world, that is a politically-correct fallacy in many, many ways.
There are important distinctions to make, especially within the context of the Second World War, in this regard. The Germans and Japanese, infected with a brand of fascism which was heavily impregnated by racial bigotry and antiquated notions of national greatness. But the Allied side also had it's share of questionable cultural traits, prime amongst them the idea that Empires created by force should last forever see DeGaulle, Halifax, Stalin, et. al.).
Never heard that before! Didn't even know that they had a bomb program.
Whoops, let me finish the thought (posted too soon)!
The point I'm trying to make is that the (mental and intellectual) validity of one's culture is directly proportionate to the extent to which one's mind and heart are dedicated to his cause.
So, while a Japanese of the Second World War would see nothing wrong with executing prisoners under the cultural influence Bushido code, a Westerner would have no problem justifing the same action in the light of the Malmedy massacre. Your justification always depends on your point of view to the exclusion of all others.
I'd say neither response (in the example above) is moral, or culturally superior. They are just differents sides of human nature, which can usually be depended upon to be wholly disgusting.
The simple fact is they were mean little bast*rds with a high sense of invulnerability and it required extreme measures to bring them back to earth. Like everyone else, I don't approve of making war on women and children but .....
Hogwash.
1. In the entire war, not one single Japanese officer had surrendered the troops under his command. Surrender was not and never would have been an option. Furthermore, the home island was no more outmanned that Iwo Jima. How many Japanese surrendered there?
2. We had broken their code, and were listening to them. No Japanese official was discussing surrender, despite whatever fairy tale you have bought into. And, finally, Sherman deliberately avoided military targets and attacked civilians. Give me an example of one MILITARY target that he attacked.
"President Truman demonstrated his willingness to the Japanese out of existence if they did not surrender. The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945 is stark: "The result of the futile and senseless German resistance to the might of the aroused free peoples of the world stands forth in awful clarity as an example to the people of Japan . . . Following are our terms.
We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay . . . We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces . . . The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."
Harry, we could sure use ya' now. This speech should be made to the Islamic regimes, before thousands of lives are wasted in the meatgrinder.
Just about all the major combatants of the Second World war (with the exception of the Italians) had atomic bomb programs, in some form. The "secret" of the bomb was not the science (the foundations of which had been laid out decades before) but in the creation of a stable bomb, and the methods of mass production, of same.
The Germans are usually thought ot have "missed" getting thebomb because of a mistake in process or proceedure, or because their scientists were starved of resources, etc. The real problem is that German scientists were aioming higher than the relatively puny A-bombs, and shooting straight for an "H-bomb" with few or no intermediate steps.
The Japanese handicaps were simply that the Japanese economy could not support the effort required for the basic research and infrastructure and that the Japanese mentality believed that victory in war came from spiritual, not material, means. That does not mean the Japanese did not make efforts to produce or acquire better weapons, but that once they had reached a certain level of technical proficiency, the will and means to carry it to it's next logical step often fell by the wayside. The Japanese were innovative, but certainly not INVENTIVE enough. That sort of mentality was almost-foreign to Japanese culture which prized conformity to originality(those who often were inventive were treated as one would treat nails that are sticking up: you hammer them down).
My contention, and I'll admit it's wholly academic, is that another way could have been found.
Your comments are chillingly arrogant. US invasion casualties were forecast to be over one million men.
Donning flamesuit
Easy arguments to counter;
1. While no Japanese officer of note ever surrendered his troops, starving, ill-equipped Japanese troops with inadequate weapons may have stayed in their foxholes to die valiant deaths,their defeat was a foregone conclusion. If you measure war simplitically in terms of how many of the enemy you kill, you would be inclined (as you are) to build the Japanese of 1945 up into a major power.
I remind you that at the time of surrender, 2/3 of the Japanese army was still in the field,totally unengaged by any Allied force of consequence and cut off from the Home Islands, unable ot come to their defense, and incapable of offensive action. You cannot fight wars defensively, so the Japanese were done. Through and through.
Starvation was an even more critical factor. It was known (form the same code intercepts that you cite) that Japanese food shortages were crippling the country. SO were shortages of critical materials (iron ore, brass, oil, bauxite, aluminum, etc, etc). The capacity to continue to feed the population, supply the military, and continue war production were approachiing nil. Once the ready-to-hand stockpiles of materials were used up, Japan would be defenseless. The question in this reagrd was how long the US Navy (which had Japan completey bloackaded) could continue out against the Kamikazes, while waiting for the Japanese to finally run out of the means to continue fighting.
2. No fewer than THREE Japanese surrender offers were tendered from May to July, 1945. One through Moscow (which never passed it on), one through Switzerland and another through Sweden (and the Magic intercepts show all of these, in minute detail, as well). The reason why they were not entertained (or entertained seriously in the case of the negotiations in Bern with Allen Dulles) was because the terms under which these surrenders would be effected would make a shambles of the united Allied front and the concept of "Unconditional Surrender".
If anyone was really interested in ending the war free of political constraints (that is, just for the sake of ending the conflict), a Japanese surrender was possible months before Hiroshima.
Going back to Sherman, if you don't consider rail lines and hubs, ports, bridges, shipyards, armories, farms and factories to be legitimate military targets, then I'd be interested in just you think are legitimate military targets. The point is that while Sherman inflicted devestation, there was no policy of deliberately killing civilians in order to "degrade the enemy's war effort" or "break his morale".
Don't bring up the WTC, SFC. I walked out of 1 WTC on September 11. You may think you're making a valid point, but not to one who was actually there and survived.
While nuking Mecca or Tehran may be satisfying, it does nothing to mitigate the cause of Islamofascism, which is a mindset incapable of dealing with the modern world. So,what is your ultimate goal here; destroying people because they happen to Muslim or destroying a culture which produced a poisonous ideology? I'd opt for #2, and while that does involve military action, it does not require that we slaughter a billion people.
My contention, and I'll admit it's wholly academic
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