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.
Japan had no capability to mount an amphibious assault against US military installations or the mainland or even Alaska at the point of Okinawa.
It was all over, but the Japanese war lords would not recommend surrender yet.
There was no urgency to any ground invasion.
Japan could have been blockaded at that point and the rest of its air forces and naval forces destroyed.
The ground forces still on islands could have been starved out by blockade over the years, with selective air attacks as opportunities arose.
It would have been long-term but very inexpensive, especially in terms of American lives.
It's August 2nd of 1945. What facts in place at the time (and I'll give a wide degree of latitude here to include anything from a well-documented historical record as a "fact") made it absolutely imperative for the U.S. to drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities at that point in time?
An analysis based on the presumption that "I must do X to you because the only alternative I have is to accept Y" is a poor line of thought here in a military conflict at that particular juncture.
Funny how that didn't prove to be true in the least in Iwo Jima, Peleliu or Okinawa.
They probably don’t even know about the firebombing of Japan’s cities.
Some of us grew up surrounded by the vets of WWII and we tend to take the events of that war as common knowledge. But someone now in college would have been born around the time of the first Gulf War and they weren’t glued to a black and white television watching Victory at Sea.
We already had battleships offshore shelling factories before we dropped the bomb.
They were like a fox in a hole. Simply minimize ground force exposure, drawing them out when possible, otherwise wait them out.
You can always dig out the old Roman methods of siege, i.e., burn them out from the air, etc., if you want to speed things up a bit.
They have already lost, it’s only a matter of time.
There is no sense at all to wasting lives in the process of clearing them out, seeing as how they have arrived at checkmate. They have no resupply, they have no navy, etc. The fat lady is singing at that point.
“Do a bit of research into how far along Germany AND Japan were in developing their own atomic weapons. Rocketry technology was also a factor, since airplanes would not be needed to deliver atomic weaponry. Evidently, your perspective lacks sufficient data to make the assertions you’ve made.”
That was my thought too. Easy to be a Monday Morning Quarterback. Much harder to know what the Japanese would have come up with if they had a few more years to work on their hardware. They had spies - they knew, for certain, that nukes were possible - it was only a matter of time before they got something going. And then what...nuking naval formations may have been possible...for starters.
Sorry to the (relative) handful of civilians that got nuked (less than 1% of the total civilian casualties of the war...something never mentioned), but war is war, and don’t expect it to be clean and precise.
It’s sad that some people CANNOT FIGURE THAT OUT.
A comparison to a Roman siege is absurd. It wouldn’t have been the siege of an army it would have been the siege of an entire nation. In the meantime, as their population died from mass starvation and rampant disease, they would have continued work on their own atomic bomb.
So is it your contention we didn't want to end WWII? During that war we did kill the Japanese air force from the prospective of force on force. Since their stocks of aircraft remained, they were compelled to switch to asymmetric warfare and use their aircraft in the kamikaze role.
as ground forces without air defenses are easily destroyed by ground forces with overwhelming supporting air power.
'Easily destroyed', like at Peleliu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, where the situation you described existed?
If planes can attack cities, they can attack anti-aircraft positions. They also can attack military air installations.
Which they did btw. The industrial targets that we were after were in cities, or is it your contention that unless one is wearing a uniform, they can't be supporting the war and they can't contribute to the war effort of that country? You really need to take a targeting class. There are many types of legitimate targets. It has only been in the last 20 some years that we could attack individual targets located within civilian populations with a relatively small (2000#) or less payload with any hope of having successful effects on the target and minimizing collateral damage. That is deaths of civilians. The death and destruction of military equipment/personnel is additional damage.
Incorrect.
We’re down to about 1500, courtesy of Obammy.
My only brother was killed in the battle for Okinawa. I was in a line at the quartermaster hut on Leyte getting new equipment for the invasion of Japan expected within a month or so. A lt. came out and told us to go back to our tents because cease fire had been declare after the Japs had the two atomic bombs dropped on them. I knew the invasion was envisioned as very costly in lives especially for the infantry/marine kind of personnel like us. However my brother’s death made me so angry that the chance to kill a few Japs was much on my mind. However the notice of no more fighting took hold and every man at that ‘repo depot’ ,including myself, gave whoops of joy and relief. I did have an interesting encampment on Leyte where we could look across the rice paddies to the mountains and now and then catch sight of a ‘straggler’. One day four of us left our encampment to try and make contact with one. No success but I did come back with a big bunch of so called monkey bananas. I’m glad the bombs were used and paved the way for the war’s end.
“A comparison to a Roman siege is absurd. It wouldn’t have been the siege of an army it would have been the siege of an entire nation. In the meantime, as their population died from mass starvation and rampant disease, they would have continued work on their own atomic bomb.”
I don’t remember much about Canadians fighting in the Pacific. I know that England pulled them into Europe BIG TIME and they fought as bravely as anyone on our side, but I don’t remember much about them in the Pacific - that was our war.
So, perhaps it’s the lack of veterans from the Pacific War up there that gives Canadians a “different perspective” regarding the savagery we were fighting against.
There is plenty to be gained militarily by destroying the factories and workers that produce the bombs,bullets,fuel and equipment,even the food, of the enemy.
Old time navies intercepted and captured or sunk commercial shipping to cripple the enemy economy.Aircraft just extended the reach.
If we must fight then we should fight to win.
And that still didn't convince them.
Agree, good thing that wasn't what this was. Btw between the second bomb and surrender, the USAAF had an 800 plane B-29 raid, the USN was shelling coastal installations and running air ops all over Japan. The history is there, see it with the eyes of the time, not present day ones.
Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were cities with military/industrial targets, only fairly recent advances have allowed us to neutralize those types of targets while minimizing collateral damage. Would it have been more palatable for more airmen to have died salving your conscience? I wonder if your prospective might change if it had been you looking through the bomb/gun sight, trying not to be the last American to get killed while we negotiate with fanatics to end the war that was lost but only one side saw it that way.
Mass murder is never right.
'Mass murder'? Says a man from the safety of distance and history with no prospective of the latter or regard for the men who delivered his present to him.
As a matter of fact I favor the overwhelming “scare the livin’ hell out of ‘em” response to attacks on America.
And target in this order:enemy offensive military forces,enemy politicians,enemy defensive forces,transportation,enemy factories producing military goods, enemy power plants,fuel of all types,civilian communications ,food storage and processing and so on until they surrender unconditionally.Germany and japan surrendered unconditionally and were reborn as decent modern nations.All the other halfway wars just perpetuated rotten systems.
GMTA, I hadn’t read your post before I did mine. Three excellent example that stand in the face of sweeping generalizations.
The hell it wasn’t.
After Germany bombed Pearl, Japan then declared war on us.
WTF were suppose to do? Send 250,000 American men to certain death, over their dinky island, that zero resources?
Or maybe we could’ve just kept our embargo on rubber, steel and fuel up hoping for the best?
Skip that.
Should’ve got em in Nam too.
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