While we were enjoying our "negi", (eel) my host shared with me that, as a young lieutenant, he was one of the very first Japanese Army officers to actually enter and observe Hiroshima after the nuclear blast. His recollection was,
"The city was gone, and the suburbs were totally devastated -- and dazed, injured people were wandering about, everywhere..."
He then recounted how he had to hike several miles back along a rail line to finally find a working telegraph to send his report to Tokyo.
But his report (coming from a junior officer) was disbelieved and discounted by "Tojo Hediki, Ri Ku Gun", and his staff. It was the dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki that finally forced them to face the stark, inescapable reality of defeat.
When I explained that I was only seven years old when the bomb was first used, he confided that, in his opinion, the two atomic bombs were the best things that could have happened to Japan at that time! His logic:
"If the US had not used those Atomic Bombs, we would not be having this congenial lunch together, today!""Otherwise, my grandchildren and your children would still be fighting senselessly in the mountains and hills of Nippon..."
I knew (in theory) that convincing Generalissimo Tojo and Emperor Hirohito of the inevitability of devastating defeat had prevented us from having to make a murderous (on both sides) invasion of the Japanese home islands.
But, it was that frank, honest, "first person" assessment by Takagi Sensei that suddenly made the historical fact personally real to me.
Thank you, HST and General Groves!
And thank you, sir, for an excellent post.
"Tojo Hediki, Ri Ku Gun" s/b "Tojo Hideki, Ri Ku Gun"...