Posted on 08/02/2014 8:08:59 AM PDT by Kaslin
This week Major Theodore Van Kirk, the last surviving Veteran of the Enola Gay that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan, joined the rest of his comrades. His passing is a reminder of why using the atomic bomb was the right thing.
In August 1945 the Allied Powers, led by the United States, were at war with Imperial Japan in the latter days of World War II. Japan would not give up. For every ten thousand Japanese soldiers that were killed by the Allies only a minuscule amount gave up; usually in the single digits.
We were at war because Japan launched war, first against China in 1931, then with another sneak attack against China in 1937, and finally in December 1941 with sneak Japanese attacks against the US at Pearl Harbor and sneak attacks against the United Kingdom and the Netherlands in other areas of the Pacific.
It was during the war that the United States began to develop an atomic bomb, largely in response to the urging of Albert Einstein who warned President Roosevelt, in 1939, about Germany’s attempts to make an atomic weapon.
Japan was a tough enemy. Surrender was seen as more than even disgrace; it was a dishonor to the Japanese Emperor, who was the Japanese God. The Japanese were allies of the Nazis. Comparing the two, the Nazis were evil but also methodical. The Nazis were fanatical about only one thing; the elimination of the Jews, a practice they kept up to the literal ending of the war in Europe in May of 1945. The Germans were a tough enemy but they were, by World War II standards, in their military operations, somewhat practical especially when Hitler was ignored. Germans did surrender by the hundreds of thousands years before the war ended. This was not the case of Imperial Japan and in fact Japanese non surrender got worse the closer we got to the shores of Japan. The Japanese soldier was fighting not just for their buddy, their family, or their homeland; they were fighting for their God.
The United States was inching closer to Japan in early and mid-1945. The island campaigns of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, the latter an island of mere miles, resulted in tens of thousands of casualties. The Japanese began going beyond even fanatical resistance to suicidal resistance by crashing their planes into American ships. Even then there was no hope for Japan. American submarines had nearly run out of targets, having surrounded Japan, and were reduced to shelling fishing boats and even targets on land. American planes were firebombing Japanese cities into oblivion. Japan was alone and starvation was a realistic possibility but they would not give up. Japan would have to be invaded.
Operation Downfall was the code name for the invasion of Japan. It was to be the largest and deadliest military operation of all time. If you saw Saving Private Ryan, the first stage of the invasion of Japan, Operation Olympic, was projected to be twice as large and twice as bloody as the invasion of Europe on D Day. The second stage of the invasion of Japan, Operation Coronet, was to be almost three times as large as D day and with even greater casualties than the first phase of the invasion of Japan.
Unlike D Day, the topographic composition of Japan made the landing locations obvious. Japan knew where we were going to land and they were ready for this last stand. Even children were taught in the ways of the sword and the spear so they could kill at least one American before they too would die for their Emperor. This happened with Japanese children in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and throughout Japan.
To save American and Japanese lives and end the war, President Truman ordered the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Tens of thousands were instantly killed by the bomb dropped from the Enola Gay, the plane navigated by Maj. Van Kirk. The Japanese still did not surrender. Their military council was divided on surrendering. Three days later another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki also killing tens of thousands. More would die of radiation poisoning in years ahead.
The war council still was divided on surrendering but some Japanese officers looked to end the war and asked the Emperor to use his divine authority to stop the killing. The Soviet Union had entered the war against Japan, American planes were destroying what little was left of other Japanese cities, and an American POW told his captors that the next atomic bomb would be dropped on Tokyo.
It took the personal intervention of the Emperor to end the war. Even after their God had intervened and said to the Army that the war must end, some Japanese were not ready to give up. A group of Army officers launched a failed coup against the Emperor, ostensibly to save their God from shame. After the coup failed the Emperor spoke on radio to tell his people to surrender. It was the first time the Japanese people had ever heard his voice. Many of the Japanese soldiers who did not get the word from the Emperor continued to fight in isolated Pacific pockets until the mid-1970’s, almost 30 years after the end of the war.
Any argument from leftist leadership that we should not have used the bombs, against this fanatical an enemy, shows why leftist leadership is not fit to teach our students.
The leftists are fools when it comes to the atomic bomb debate. They argue that the bomb was dropped because of Soviet entry into the war on Japan on August 9, the day Nagasaki was bombed. What the leftists conveniently leave out is that the bomb was shipped to the Pacific before the Soviet Union entered the war against Japan and that the United States asked the Soviet Union to enter the war against Japan.
Another common leftist argument is the bombs were dropped in quick succession in order to stop the Soviet Union from invading Northern Japan. This argument is laughable because the bombs were dropped three days apart and then Truman put a halt on further usage after August 9, leaving five days between the dropping of the second bomb and the end of the war.
Finally, leftists say how could you kill so many people? This is a typical argument from those who have never had to make such a decision as Truman did or other decisions of life and death. Truman was faced with kill now and hopefully end the war or have even more killed on both sides by not using the bomb. (Leftists apparently forget that even their beloved Soviet Union entered the war against Japan. Soviet lives were saved too by Truman.)
This is what leftism does; it plants seeds in people leading them to believe that America is somehow responsible for all the evils in the world, even when America has achieved victory and done well. They will even do it even with World War II, which no sane person can argue with our participation in. They are shameful and are a disgrace to the generation that made it through the Depression and fought, and won, World War II.
Knowing leftist emotion, if the bomb had not been used on Japan, and millions of American casualties occurred, along with tens of millions of Japanese casualties, the leftists would say that we should have used the bomb to alleviate the suffering of the war. Such as the argument of those who were protected by the Enola Gay.
Ask any living soldier from the Pacific, and those were ready to be shipped there from Europe and the USA, who is still alive whether they were happy the bomb was dropped they will respond with “Thank God the bomb was dropped.”
President Truman was an independent thinker and not a man to be pushed around. His desegregation of the armed forces and recognition of the new State of Israel were evidence of that. He was also a combat veteran. He knew the carnage of war and understood that hard decisions need to be made in war.
It will be interesting to see where the history books, backed by their common core allies and government employee teachers, go with teaching the atomic bomb in years ahead. Before all the Veterans of World War II had even begun to die in large numbers, the leftist jargon against usage of the bomb began. They have spared not even Truman, though Truman was a democrat, for their blind rage knows no bounds. It will get worse once all of the generation that made it through the Depression, and won the war, have passed away.
This is why we should, loudly and boldly, teach that it was right to drop the bomb and why. This is why we should honor the military service of Theodore Van Kirk and those who dropped the atomic bombs. They saved the lives of many of our readers, in America, Japan, and elsewhere.
To Major Theodore Van Kirk we say thank you. It was a tough mission, but you can rest well. You saved countless lives. Welcome home from your final mission. Your comrades are waiting.
Mass firebombing of civilian areas is not justified by the possibility that if their nation does not surrender they might starve.
Mass firebombing of civilian areas in both Pacific and European theatres is simply not justifiable for any reason.
That is to say, I’m not only talking about the atomic bombs, but also indiscriminate civilian bombing.
Here is Lemay's quote:
Lemay was certainly wrong about being tried, at least in this sense: after the war, many Axis leaders were tried for war crimes, but none for the "crime" of ordering Air Force bombing of civilian targets.
All such bombing, by both sides, was then considered military necessity.
Here again is Lemay on the subject:
Today "international law" may be different -- I don't know for sure -- such that most WWII style bombing would be considered "war crimes", but this would certainly invite the question: if our enemies attack us with nukes, is it still "legal" to nuke them back?
That’s nonsense just based on how Johnson had so much personal micromanagement of the war.
I’m simply stating what our current doctrine is, massive overwhelming force directed against combatant targets only, gain air and naval supremacy before engaging combatant targets only on the ground.
Non-combatants and civilians have always been very dismayed at the idea of indiscriminate military attacks on them, and it was (and is ?) typically considered to be barbaric by American and European standards.
The massive firebombings of civilians by the Allies in WWII stand in shocking contrast to our principles.
The Germans and Japanese did it first. Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry, London, Nanking, etc....
LeMay is wrong that all war is immoral. Defensive war is a moral obligation of a just government and a just nation.
Saying there are no innocent civilians is a particularly reprehensible comment.
His words would have been found to be morally repugnant to I would think most of America’s founders.
What happened at the top of the nations leadership in WWII was simple: keep removing generals for not “achieving results” until you find one that will do whatever it takes, morality be damned. This is how our elite masters could “order” firebombing without directly ordering it.
From what I read, LeMay actually began the campaign without waiting for specific orders from his superior so that LeMay saved him from having to take responsibility.
Alberta’s Child has an understandable moral position. Moral positions are very nice until you start a shooting war. At that point, you win or you lose. And if you have any decency, you try to win by having as few of your own people killed as possible.
But when it comes to the enemy and their people, in order to win you have to kill them. The equation is that killing more of them means you have fewer of your own killed. So that is what you do. Moral positions take a back seat. Period.
War is a nasty, ugly and brutal business. It always has been and will always be so. The idea that we can control, contain or manage the violence is a modern fallacy, and is simply unrealistic.
Sheesh, finally your stupid tactics book has been tossed, and your true objection revealed. War production facilities would have been solely targeted had they been segregated from civilian ares. But they weren't. Starvation < than firebombing deaths. Even when both are the fault of the dead. Got it! What a dope.
xone responding: "The Japanese soldier certainly wouldn't, for the civilian population wouldn't want to be them."
Japan's civilian population then included about 1.3 million non-Japanese -- mostly Koreans.
They would surely have suffered first and worst.
And Japan's military leaders were prepared to lose 10% of their population, if that was necessary to make the Allies stop fighting.
Again, my point is: a mere blockade would not force them to give up.
A big “What If”....What if Tojo and crew succeeded in offing Hirohito before his surrender speech, and convinced the Japanese that he was martyred.
The Germans and Japanese did it first. Warsaw, Rotterdam, Coventry, London, Nanking, etc....
The moral response should be to destroy their air forces, which coincidentally also stops the attacks and protects the citizens who were first attacked.
Instead, the tit-for-tat starts, and soon all the war machinery is slaughtering civilians by the hundreds of thousands.
So you think the Germans and Japanese merely stopped at terror bombing?
First off, those small islands were necessary stepping stones to the main island of Japan which Japan recognized and why they were heavily fortified.
Shelling from ships and bombs from aircraft couldn't have destroyed the Japs because of the tunnels and heavy fortifications. Marines were required to rid these islands of the japs......
Once seized, these islands then became our own fueling depots for our planes on the march towards Japan.......
Have you ever tried to locate and ID a seven meter or less object on the ground while at 1500' agl and 175kts using only a Mark I eyeball. Thought not. Had you been the Air component commander during this phase, after a couple of cycles of your nonsense, the one target that would have been surely hit would've been your hootch.
Now that you have run out of implausible ways to force the Japanese surrender without invasion or the bomb your true heretofore unvoiced objection comes to light. Many posts back you were offered a way out. Then we could just say you are FOS, war is hell and we that live in the world of no unicorns so we say we disagree.
#30 posts to finally ferret out the truth; you have /had no concept of how the war was conducted, how anything military works, your 'ideas' on how to force the surrender of the Japanese were childish at best, you didn't have the courage of your conviction to argue from an absolutist moralist stance.
The good news is that any who read your twaddle this weekend will know better that to pay attention in the future to your posts on anything military.
Whether or not the Japanse civilians starved is not primarily our responsibility.
If the Japanese leadership surrendered because of the massive loss of live from civilian bombing, if there was no civilian bombing but the even more people died from starvation, they’d undoubtedly feel the same about the even greater loss of life of their own citizens.
If not, that is their choice.
If we don’t invade, but wait until 1946 with an ever-tightening blockade, we’d lose virtually no one and their situation would still be ever more hopeless.
The blockade would be the least amount of American lives lost.
Yeah, that would have handled the V-forces. Please, never get in a position of authority over anything to do with the military. Your stances are however, perfect for the current admin's DOD.
And as a side note, the Japs weren't very friendly to our POW's either.....
You can't even get what happened right, the bombs were the way the least American (and Japanese) lives were lost. Of course now that we have established that Japanese lives had no value if they were starved, only if they were killed directly by the US, a blockade would have cost many more lives, American, British, Chinese and may be even Russians than the bombs. A small trade for the satisfaction of not having to kill the enemy at the time with the Atomic bombs. Because under your blockade plan we would still be bombing, just not firebombing.
And how many did we lose in the Korean War.
A Japanese Civil War, would have made the Korean War look like nothing.
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