Posted on 08/08/2013 11:15:14 PM PDT by neverdem
In a time when America lacks the strength of will to force an active-duty Army officer (and admitted terrorist) to shave his jihadist beard before appearing at a court-martial, when we wring our hands in guilt over the use of the most precise weapons ever devised against an enemy of unquestioned cruelty and malice, and when we respond to threats with weakness that merely encourages greater violence, it’s worth remembering a time when this nation understood the necessity — the moral necessity — of decisive force.
By July 26, 1945, Imperial Japan was well on its way to defeat, yet it was still capable of great harm. Our navy (with the able and courageous British assistance) had swept the once-fearsome Japanese navy from the seas, and we were slowly destroying Japan’s capacity to wage war. Allied forces were on the move in Southeast Asia, the Soviet Union was poised to enter the conflict with overwhelming force (1.5 million men massed on the border of Japanese-held mainland territory), and the American army was barely a month removed from a decisive victory in the months-long battle for Okinawa. Japan was going to lose the war. It was inevitable.
That was the good news. But that good news was more than tempered by the bad news of the cost of that ultimate victory. It’s tough for us to understand now, as many Americans have spent time in the new Japan, buy Japanese products, and rightly regard Japan as an indispensable ally, but in World War II the Japanese military fought with a ferocity that made al-Qaeda look casual and uncommitted. In Okinawa, the Japanese hurled more than 1,000 kamikaze suicide bombers at the American fleet, and tens of thousands more kamikazes readied to defend the Japanese home islands. Japan still held huge swathes of Chinese territory, where unrelenting war and mass-scale atrocities had already cost more than 10 million Chinese lives.
Just as disturbing, recent American experience in Saipan and Okinawa had illustrated the extent to which the Japanese civilian population would suffer in any further close combat. By some counts, up to one-third of the total civilian population of Okinawa died during the American invasion, many by suicide as parents killed children, then themselves, rather than fall into allied hands. At Saipan, Japanese civilians committed suicide by the hundreds — sometimes cutting their own children’s throats — persuaded by Japanese propaganda that Americans would commit unspeakable atrocities against civilians. Assuming similar behavior during an invasion, estimates of additional Japanese casualties ran into the millions — with American casualty estimates wildly varying but certainly no less than hundreds of thousands.
Faced with the twin realities of inevitable Japanese defeat and staggering civilian and military casualties, the allies did the right thing: On July 26, they issued a surrender demand, the Potsdam Declaration(PDF).
The Japanese rejected it, the atomic bombs followed roughly two weeks later, and the war ended.
It’s difficult to estimate the millions of lives those bombs saved, and the uncounted millions of descendants that live today as a result of America’s decisive application of force. But the benefits go beyond a mere calculus of lives saved, American total war didn’t just defeat Japanese militarism on the battlefield, it destroyed it as a credible world view, as a credible moral force in Japanese life. This rejection of aggressive militarism has yielded incalculable benefits not just for generations of Japanese but also for generations of Koreans and Chinese — nations that had suffered under Japanese oppression.
As we confront once again the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and as America’s critics decry our alleged barbarism, it’s worth remembering that weakness has terrible costs, and moral critics of decisive force should wrestle with that cost rather than utter platitudes like the U.N. did this week:
True security is based on people’s welfare and not on military annihilation, senior United Nations officials said today, marking the 68th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and later Nagasaki, and honouring the survivors of the bombings known as ‘hibakusha.’
“We are united in countering the erroneous view that security is achieved through the pursuit of military dominance and threats of mutual annihilation,”Secretary-GeneralBan Ki-moon said in his message to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony.
He added that security is based on a thriving economy, strong public health and education programmes, and on fundamental respect for our common humanity, and not on military prowess.
Japan and Germany were, of course, industrially advanced countries — among the richest in the world — when they launched their wars of aggression. Today’s terrorists, though not nearly as formidable as Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan, hardly conform to the stereotype of the disenfranchised poor lashing out in desperation. Food stamps and single-payer health care aren’t firewalls against evil, and we’re fools if we entertain that belief.
As the horror of World War II begins to fade into distant memory, it’s imperative that we not let the Left control the narrative. Already in pacifist Christian circles, I’ve seen historically illiterate professors and pundits condemn the Hiroshima bombing with greater ferocity than they condemn the rape of Nanking, much less Japan’s years-long reign of terror in China. Our nation dialogues with (and funds) Holocaust-denying jihadists and displays little more than worried impotence as a hostile and hateful Iranian regime races towards an atomic bomb.
As a result, this generation or a generation to come may once again confront a series of terrible choices (I pray not involving nuclear weapons), but as they consider those choices, they should remember not just the Enola Gay, but the entire strength of this nation — fully at war — in 1945. Remember the lives we saved, and remember the far better societies that rose from the ashes.
In the fight against evil, there are times when the strong response is the right response.
If the Germans hadn’t surrendered first, I believe we would have used it on them. Remember the first test of an atomic weapon @ Trinity wasn’t until mid July of ‘45....
He’s just reversed the superior and inferior positions....
Some of our clueless military leaders also made the same suggestion before and after the atomic bombings. There are numerous reasons why doing so would have sacrificed many more lives, not less. One of the foremost reasons were the Japanese plans to murder the Allied prisoners of war en-masse.
On Wake Island, the Japanese commander ordered the beheadings of all of the American civilian construction workers to prevent their recapture when an American naval task force conducted a naval bombardment of Wake. The Japanese commander wrongly assumed the bombardment indicated an iminent amphibious invasion of Wake Island.
In Indonesia and elsewhere the Japanese herded Anglo-American prisoners of war into air raid trenches and other such confined spaces, poured in aviation fuel or other gasolines, and burned the men alive to prevent rescue or for revenge.
Some of japan’s highest ranking military officers ordered preparations to be made for the murder of all Allied prisoners of war, military and civilian along with millions of other people in the Japanese occupied zones. Emperor Hirohito found it necessary to dispatch his own brother, a royal prince of the Empire, to China and Indo-China in a dangerously risky attempt to countermand those murderous orders. Even after the atomic bombings of Japan, these murderous Japanese officers conspired to kidnap the Emperor to prevent the surrender, prolong the struggle, and murder the prisoners of war and countless other people at risk of japanese revenge.
In the end, the loss of Japanese lives were a small fraction of the human lives the Japanese were about to destroy in the most barbarous means imaginable just among the prisoners of war, neutrals, and civilians in the occupied zones. These are lives that are seldom even mentioned much less taken into consideration when the number of Japanese and Anglo-American lives were to be lost by a direct invasion of the Japanese Home islands. So, even if there had been no invasion, the surrender was secured by naval blockade, there still would have been a worse loss of life committed by japanese atrocities. These losses were forestalled by the atomic bomb attacks.
“We didn’t drop a bomb on Germany.”
We couldn’t, because the atomic bombs did not come into existence until aft the Germans had already surrendered in may 1945. The first plutonium core did not become available until the end of July 1945, when the TRINITY test detonated the first atomic fission device at the endo f july 1945.
Lincoln seemed to evolve on those issues.
There you have it. That is the problem with our political amd military leadership today. We don’t win wars anymore. We do not have the will to win wars anymore. The only way to defeat the current radical Islamist enemy is to utterly destroy their will to fight. If anything, our half-measures in this pseudo war on terrorism just provoke continued conflict.
As for the atomic bombings of Japan, those two bombs saved millions of Japanese and American lives. If we had to invade Japan, the slaughter would have been horrific. Our leaders back then understood what had to be done to achieve total victory and they did it. I pray that we avoid wars in the future, but if we must fight them, I hope that we have the will to win. If not, we should stay home.
(i knew a Japanese drafted into the imperial (fascist) army, he did not want to go, but was a Christian and did just that, i.e. acts of kindness to individual Allied (US/UK) POWs such as stealthily bringing extra rations at night when his asshole sadistic superiors were not looking. took big risks, but he knew what his Christian Bible said, even if written in Japanese.....
Thanks for your kind reply and the interesting info.
FRegards,
LH
Are you totally ignorant of US history, or just plain stupid? The first bomb wasn't finished until after Germany surrendered in May of 1945. The reason we bombed Japan in August was because that was when the bombs were finally tested and ready to go.
If we had the nukes before Germany surrendered we would have used them, bet on it. As for dropping a bomb on Germany we dropped many tons of conventional bombs on Germany and laid that country, and parts of France and other countries also, to total ruin.
Also, we did far more damage and killed many more Japanese with our fire bombs than we did with the nukes.
Actually one of the reasons they were murdered was because the Japanese high command didn't want to feed or transport the prisoners to Japan.
When the Japanese commander asked for transport and extra food for the prisoners he was told none would be forth coming and for him to remember the code of Bushido.
This code is the one that prevented any soldiers of the Japanese army from surrendering and it also considered any one who surrendered not worthy of life. In other words the high command was telling the commander on Wake to execute the prisoners.
These messages were decoded using the magic devices we had and the few Japanese codes we had broken. A matter of record.
The Average Japanese of WWII was utterly vicious and sadistic. The rape of Nanking and the general treatment of the Chinese, Philippine and other people who came under their control proves it.
not an easy topic, not an easy decision for Truman but what was the option(?), for a full scale invasion would have killed far more Japanese civilians all over the islands and of course massive casulties for Allied troops going in there and subduing, I also imagine the scores of mass suicide people would have been forced into (brainwashed by their criminal Tojo govt). people have to remember many war criminals got the long rope at Sugamo Prison afterwards and justice was served in many an instance against those lousy fascists and Class-A types (war crimes). and just leave it at that. it is a new Japan and they are a great ally to the United States against bigger fish to fry out here, such as Red China and batty North Korea now.
...remembering also the Dutch POWs in the SW Pacific...
Yes, that is true as far as it goes, however, one of those superior officers responsible for such orders was Terauchi, Field Marshal Count Terauchi, if I remember the name, rank, and spelling at the moment (forgive my error otherwise). He was in particular responsible for much of the atrocities committed throughout the vast regions under his command. He ordered the dismissal and sometimes disgrace of general officers who failed to carry out some of the war crimes he ordered. He was one of the officers the Emperor was most concerned about in addition to those in China when the safety of Allied POWs, neutrals, and civilians became a prime issue as the surrender developed.
A Japanese cargo or Hell ship was being used to transport some of the last walking and emaciated American POW survivors of the Cabanatuan POW camp to japan as slave laborers, when an American submarine sank the Japanese Hell ship. the torpedo tore a large hole in the side of the cargo ship. Some few of the nearly dead Americans were swept out of this hole alongside of the sinking ship. One of these survivors watched as the japanese lowered soldiers in a lifeboat equipped with a machinegun and manned by soldiers with rifles. They began gleefully shooting the American survivors in the water as their own cargo ship sank behind them. As the ship slipped beneath the surface of the sea, it created a large whirlpool and vortex of water into the dark depths of the sea. The lifeboat and the Japanese aboard it still shooting and slaughtering helpless Americans in the water continued even as the vortex sucked them underwater too.
The American submarine surfaced and rescued the survivor who witnessed these events.
An uncle who served two tours of duty in Japan told the story of a Japanese manager who befriended him. This man was a high school student when the atomic bombs took place. He told my uncle those bombs saved his life, because his school class had been assigned to attack the American troops on the beachhead with sharpened bamboo sticks.
There was no hope of avoiding defeat after the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria. Surrender was rational to save their Asian forces and the home island from certain destruction. Truman (as recorded in his diary and by others) was well aware that the Japanese were hopelessly defeated and seeking terms of surrender.
The bombings were the first shot in the Cold War that simultaneously allowed the Japanese to claim victim status and dismiss their own barbarity. The international perspective is definitely a credible argument.
Germany surrendered before the bomb was ready....
The U.S. has had a completely different approach to warfare since 1950 because we wage military campaigns for completely different reasons now. We are now an empire in every sense of the term, and it makes no sense to destroy cities and civilizations when our primary goal is to occupy them and do business with them. In our current position, destroying an "enemy" is a pointless exercise.
The U.S. government had no problem dropping atomic bombs on Japan because as a nation we weren't terribly interested in the Japanese mainland. Our primary interest in the Pacific was the possession and control of Japan's colonies and their resources.
I don’t think there is any doubt the US saw Japan as the key to the balance of power in Asia. The primary American objective may have been not to make Japan a part of our offensive capability as much as keep them out of the Soviet sphere but there was still extreme concern that a politically unstable, economically weak Japan would increase the influence of the domestic communist movement.
How come we didn’t use the bomb on Richmond or Atlanta? Again, proof that we are racist against Asians.
//sarcasm off
The statistics on lives saved by the bombs is obvious, yet they ignore it.
As far as it being an ethnic choice...bombing Japan vs. Germany..well, look at the stats from the firebombings of Dresden and Hamburg. The death totals were also staggering. And MORE Japanese probably died in the multiple bombings of Tokyo than from the two nukes combined.
The two greatest examples of nation building success..Germany and Japan post WW II..both occurred after we'd totally vanquished them..and killed most of their military and political leadership. Compare that to Iraq..where we tried our best to be careful...how's that working out?..More Americans were killed there AFTER Bagdad fell, and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi have been killed in terrorist bombings since the war supposedly ended.
But even if everything they say about killing supposedly innocent Japanese civilians was to suddenly be deemed 100% true, the use of the bombs was still justified by the lives of American troops it saved.
They attacked us...they massacred our troops, and civilians..they started it..
After Pearl Harbor..Adm. Halsey was quoted as saying that "before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell."
The same needs to be said of Arabic.
He would have been at the forefront of an invasion of Japan, so I'm glad the Atomic Bombs were used.
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.