Posted on 08/18/2015 9:47:06 PM PDT by Brad from Tennessee
Should the United States apologize for the nuclear bombing of Japan at the end of World War II? The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 70 years ago this month, killed as many as 250,000 people, most of them civilians. For many of the victims, it was a horrible, excruciating death, and for many others, the effects of burns and radiation, although not immediately lethal, produced years of agony. Should we say were sorry?
My answer is no, but I do not dismiss the question out of hand. It is, after all, naggingly relevant, raising issues of proportion, race and culture. A recent article on the Web site of the decidedly liberal magazine the Nation makes three points. The bombings were animated by racial animus, they were disproportionate to the number of U.S. deaths that might have resulted from an invasion of the Japanese mainland and the bombs amounted to wretched excess: Japan was ready to surrender anyway.
Maybe so. But an imminent Japanese surrender was hardly apparent at the time. Instead, even as the war was ending, the Japanese fought nearly to the last man on Iwo Jima, a month-long battle in which almost 7,000 U.S. Marines were killed. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers on the island, only about 200 were taken prisoner. Some held out for weeks in caves. Still later in 1945, the Japanese fought tenaciously until mid-June to hold Okinawa. That battle cost 14,000 American lives.
There was reason to believe that Japan would never surrender and that an invasion of the main Japanese islands would result in staggering U.S. casualties. . .
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
He saved a lot of American lives. That’s all that matters.
Obama tried to apologize a few years back, but the Japanese told him not to.
The Japanese were forewarned of the bombs and did not surrender so how the claim can be made that they were about to surrender is a mystery.
If Truman had been a Republican the WAPO would not publish an article approving his actions.
Obama tried to apologize to the Japanese:
Truman succeeded in keeping Stalins hands off of Japan, which if defeated just a month or two later would have been divided into a US controlled, South Japan and a USSR controlled, North Japan, as with Germany until recently and Korea to this very day.
Truman was right to use the bomb on Japan...
The battle for Okinawa was a clue as to how hard the Japanese would defend their Home Islands.
Surrender was disgrace in the Bushido code, and the only way they would surrender, civilians included, is if the Emperor told them to. Which he did when he concluded we were liable to blast all of Japan apart.
Really??? I have never heard that.
I’ve read that is one of the main reasons we dropped the Fat Man. The message was clear: This was not a “one off” thing.
If we’d conducted WWII the way we currently execute war, we’d be speaking German and Japanese.
The Yalta Agreement required Stalin within a short time after Hitlers defeat to be in on the fall of Japan and early signs were Stalin would never leave ANYTHING he laid hands on.
The only islands Japan screams about having lost (two north of Hokkaido) are STILL occupied by Russia.
Also the main reason the Japanese gave up when they did is because they knew a Russian requirement would be, like the Tsar, the execution of the Emperor and probably much of his family.
Yes. And it would be worse than that. The USSR would have controlled a large portion of China, all of Korea as well as much of Japan. Dropping the atom bomb on Japan stopped the USSR in its tracks at the 38th parallel in Korea. They were all set to invade Japan but settled on taking Japanese held territory they already controlled at the time the bomb was dropped. Long ago I worked with an elderly Russian man who lived in China and was taken prisoner by the Japanese. There were lots of Russian enclaves in north China, and they suffered in prison camps. The Russians would have exacted revenge on Japan if they invaded Japan at the end of WWII, far in excess of what could be imagined.
“The Japanese were forewarned of the bombs and did not surrender”
exactly. It was their emperor and their rotten War Council who were still gung-ho. Heck, after the first mushroom cloud, they STILL didn’t say uncle.
Not to liberals, all things are as they feel or imagine them to be. Reality and facts do not matter.
My brain saw Trump instead of Truman. I thought, “What did he do now?” Heh. It’s late.
Yes, I have read in several histories that the US government gave warning before any bomb was dropped. After the first bomb they were warned there would be another and still they did not surrender. The Japanese were very tough. (See Pelham’s response also on this thread.)
Yep. Everyone knew even then that it was better to surrender to the US than to the USSR. ;-)
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