Posted on 08/10/2015 4:22:03 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
We had these two Irish twins in our neighborhood growing up. Not the kind that were less than a year apart. They were twins, and they were Irish. They were also the biggest and strongest kids in the neighborhood, which meant they had to be on opposite teams when we made teams for football. The game always ended with them getting in a fight with each other. Once I tried to intervene, and learned there was no better way to unite them...in turning on me.
Like I said, I tried to intervene. Once.
Quick learner.
OK, I'm gonna do it...
Here is a post I used in an online class I was teaching two years ago, when we were discussing just war theory, and a student brought up Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
"In the 68 years since the one and only instance of atomic bomb usage (the two bombs dropped over Japan in August 1945), far fewer people in general have been killed in wars than were killed in the wars of the 20th century prior to August 1945, and it is precisely because of the atomic bomb—governments have been scared to death to start a nuclear holocaust because they know what the end result will be, and so wars have been tightly contained with far fewer casualties. Moreover, the deadliest bombings in WWII were not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but Tokyo: on March 11, 1945, Tokyo was firebombed using conventional ordnance, and 100,000 people burned to death.
"Having said that, unlike most people taking this course, I have actually been to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I haven't been to Nagasaki in 44 years, but I was in Hiroshima last in 2006. When I was in Nagasaki in 1968, it had been 23 years since the atomic bomb blast there, and the city was as thriving as any city in Japan in the late 1960s, meaning it was a very thriving city. Hiroshima is very modern, a beautiful place to visit, complete with a modern major league baseball stadium and Shukkei-en, a wonderful garden.
"None of this is to say that a nation should desire to be bombed, either conventionally or with atomic weapons. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, are not so much a testament to the destructive power of human warfare as they are a testament to the creative power to survive and thrive in spite of the destructive power of human warfare. In WWII we saw the same spirit in London and Berlin; we have seen it in the last decades in the rebuilding of the former Saigon since the Vietnam war; and we are seeing it today in the capital of Iraq, as both the Saddamists and Islamofascists have been pushed out, and the people are setting about building a better Baghdad for their children.
"But let's get to the implication: the belief, held by more than a few, that America was clearly unethical in dropping the atomic bombs. For me to support the atomic bombing of Japan is what in legalese is called a statement against penal interests, because I have lived in Japan, have spent my life studying Japanese culture, and love the nation and the culture as much as anyone who is not Japanese.
"So why do I think the atomic bombing was the most ethical action that could have been taken at the time? Let's consider the situation in its own time. In WWII, we did not want to fight the Japanese, but the Japanese wanted to rule the Pacific, and were willing to fight and kill us, in spite of our willingness to negotiate, to obtain the fruits of their aggression. So the only way to convince the Japanese that they should cease their intimidation was to fight back, presenting superior force on the aggressor's terms, until the Japanese concluded that they could not win and no longer wanted to try—and that was when peace occurred, and that is the reason Japan is a peaceful nation and a trusted ally today.
"When the Japanese showed they were willing to kill and die by the thousands for a few lousy islands in Okinawa after we already had complete control of the air over Japan, they showed that a land invasion of Japan would result in deaths, not in the thousands, but in the millions, both Japanese and American (and Soviet, since they would have invaded Hokkaido while we invaded Kyushu). So we had a choice between an evil and a greater evil: we could atomic bomb and kill 150,000 Japanese in two industrial centers that had not yet been bombed and scare the iliatic residue out of the country, or we could continue to firebomb and kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese, then land on their shores and kill and die by the millions.
"It is easy to sit here 68 years later and talk about how horrid the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was, but it saved millions of lives, American, Japanese, and Soviet, and likely saved tens of millions of lives since as our wars have shrunk and become local, from Korea to Vietnam to Grenada to Afghanistan and Iraq, with the world scared by the atomic bomb.
"The irony of the issue is that to live in Hiroshima today is to live, as I said earlier in this message, in a beautiful, clean, affluent city, with the worst pro baseball team in the whole of Japan—yet you can stand where the bomb exploded and hear the cheers from a nearby stadium, watching the double-length busses going by. The world has been a much better place since I was born than it had been before, because of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. May they never have been necessary! But the Japanese flipped a switch at Pearl Harbor and Bataan and Singapore and Wake, and in war, once the switch has been flipped, there's no unflipping it.
"Starting a war, as the South did at Ft. Sumter, as Japan did at Pearl Harbor, as al-Qaeda did in Manhattan and Washington, never brings peace; but being victorious in a war that someone else has started on you always brings peace. If everyone in the world were to cease the use of intimidation to obtain what s/he wanted, then war would become unnecessary; until that day comes, the only way to end a war successfully is to be victorious, by the strongest means necessary."
It's my belief that the complete ban on fighting of any kind in schools has only led to more bullying. There is something to be said for a kid who stands up to someone who has been pushing him around. That usually defused the situation. Now we have generations of adults whose only knowledge of fighting is what they see on TV, which can be really twisted and violent.
And because we don’t let kids fight, kids today don’t know how to fight. Seriously. There was a concept of the “honorable fight” back when I was a kid. You beat the crap out of each other, there was a winner and loser, and the issue was settled.
Today, the kids either don’t know when to quit, by repeatedly kicking someone in the head when they are down and the fight is over, or they go with the nuclear option and use a gun. Neither of those situations were even considered when I was growing up. And the outcomes today are tragic.
I've often wondered how few Soviet tanks were lost to direct Japanese fire?
Would the sight of Japanese Type-95s with commander standing out of the hatch waving his sword wildly have been enough to cause an IS-2 commander to pause and waste a round?
I know exactly what you mean. In the day there were unwritten rules about fighting just like there were unwritten rules how to treat a lady, all of which seems forgotten in our modern “progressive” society.
The Soviet tank commander would have had said to the gunner: “Reminds me of the Romanians with their 37mm ‘door knockers.’ Ah, Stalingrad...the good old days....”
Thanks. Very, very well-reasoned and -stated.
Nah the Soviet tank commander would have just run over a Type-95 while laughing maniacally :-)
Japanese Type-95 weighs in at about 8 tons vs JS-2 at 44 tons. Japanese Type-95 main gun was a 37mm VS JS-2 main gun at 122mm Japanese Type-95 armor was about 28mm vs JS-2 at 60mm vs 110mm.
The Japanese Type-97 tank did not fair much better at about 15 tons, a 47mm anti tank in the best case and armor of 28 mm with 50 mm on the gun mantlet.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
Thank you. One update: as of this moment, the Hiroshima Carp are 4th in the central league of Japanese pro ball, two games under .500; the worst teams this year are the Chunichi Dragons and the Orix Buffaloes, both at .430.
The Carp, by the way, was formed in 1949 as part of the expansion of Japanese pro ball, and one of the reasons was as a statement of Hiroshima’s desire to overcome the A-bomb and become a thriving city once again. To the extent that I follow Jpn ball I am a Hanshin Tigers fan, even though in theory I should root for the Yokohama Baystars, since I went to high school there.
Traitor.
Were the Japanese playing baseball before the US occupation?
They seem to be totally nuts over the game which would be a phenomena if it only started there 70 years ago.
The Japanese have been playing baseball since the time of the samurai; the game was brought to Japan in 1872 by an English professor whose name escapes me, and I’m in the middle of a working shift so I can’t find out :-)
Back to work, slacker.
I think it was the atomic bomb and here’s why. Further down from this posting is a post by EternalVigilance from Truman’s diary-personal papers for this day that says:
“At 10:15 had the scientists, Bush and Conant and Geo. L. Harrison, Gen. Groves, Secs. State, War and Navy in to discuss the Atomic Bomb and how much could be published about it. A very interesting meeting. Ordered a press release for Sunday, covering its main features because so many fake scientists were telling crazy tales about it.”
So even among the United States, there were “fake scientists” telling crazy tales about the bombs.
Think how it was in Japan. There was no one there, really, who understood this weapon as the Americans do, and even among the Americans, a lot of BS was being discussed, said, speculated. Kind of like our news media is now in the first few hours of a breaking story.
So imagine how it is for Hirohito at this point. I’m sure he has his own personal scientists and friends telling him all kinds of stories. He is a marine biologist. Well, I’m not sure he took that role on until after the war, but let’s assume he’s very interested in science, and knows scientists.
Probably from his perspective this terrible weapon is going to kill A LOT of Japanese innocents, and it will be his reign that either must allow it, or, by ending the war now, stop it. And it is apparent to him that the government cannot make up its mind—they offer him a chance, and he takes it.
For the other “pro-surrender” men in the government, I think this is also on their minds. The military men want to fight it out to the death. Their focus is on honor, not the life of the little people. Well, maybe, but they think the people must fight to the end, too, just as they are. So the people aren’t being sacrificed—they themselves are also.
But the Emperor and Suzuki don’t really care about the Soviets. Sure, it’s a calamity, but it’s not here, right now, at home. Atomics bombs ARE.
Looking forward to watching it—but then, I’m retired and will have time to do so, unlike those who are employed.
In Billy Martin’s autobiography, he wrote about a goodwill trip the Yankees made to Japan in the mid-1950s to play exhibition games against some of the Japanese teams. In one game, the home plate umpire particularly infuriated Mickey Mantle, and before he went to the plate he told Martin: “This time I’m going to tell him off.” After being called out looking at strike three, Mantle turned on the ump and figuring the ump didn’t know English proceeded to blast him in a profanity laced tirade.
The ump replied: “Gee, I’m sorry Mickey. I thought it was a strike.”
But there's something else here. Halsey is famous for saying that by the end of the war the only place Japanese would be spoken was in hell. What he didn't understand is that virtually all Japanese would have been quite content with that. There was a significant portion of the leadership that expected an Allied invasion that would have killed off all of the Japanese, who then would have become kami or Japanese spirits, rising up and causing the invaders and occupiers to flee the sacred soil, so that it could once again be filled, not with living Japanese, but with the ancestral spirits of dead Japanese.
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