Posted on 04/21/2016 4:41:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
The dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remains the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history.
No one knows exactly how many Japanese citizens were killed by the two American bombs. A macabre guess is around 140,000. The atomic attacks finally shocked Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese militarists into surrendering.
John Kerry recently visited Hiroshima. He became the first Secretary of State to do so -- purportedly as a precursor to a planned visit next month by President Obama, who is rumored to be considering an apology to Japan for America's dropping of the bombs 71 years ago.
The horrific bombings are inexplicable without examining the context in which they occurred.
In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on the unconditional surrender of Axis aggressors. The bomb was originally envisioned as a way to force the Axis leader, Nazi Germany, to cease fighting. But the Third Reich had already collapsed by July 1945 when the bomb was ready for use, leaving Imperial Japan as the sole surviving Axis target.
Japan had just demonstrated with its nihilistic defense of Okinawa -- where more than 12,000 Americans died and more than 50,000 were wounded, along with perhaps 200,000 Japanese military and civilian casualties -- that it could make the Americans pay so high a price for victory that they might negotiate an armistice rather than demand surrender.
(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...
Making America the enemy, our schools are instructed not to teach the truth so our children believe we are the aggressor and the evil instead of the evil itself. Today it’s islam
Obama is the evil that has transformed America
into its own enemy ... until the undocumented
Indonesian is removed.
Before president weenie apologizes to anyone, let him get an apology for Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Peleliu, Guam, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.
For a start.
What an *sshole.
Has Japan apologized for Nanking?
If the fighting had continued into 1946 or ‘47, and had the American public found out we had a weapon that would have ended the war, I believe President Truman would have faced impeachment.
The use of the bombs is nothing the United States should apologize for. It is regrettable that we had to take that step. But in all likelihood we would have regretted NOT using them far more so.
And these bombs were tame popgun affairs compared to modern thermonuclear bombs. They were dropped upon what was documented to be military support operations, which nestled among dense urban population centers. The actual damage zone was less than the extent of our modern L. A. International Airport.
“purportedly as a precursor to a planned visit next month by President Obama, who is rumored to be considering an apology to Japan for America’s dropping of the bombs 71 years ago. “
Trump 2016
I could see a meeting intended to facilitate statements of mutual regret of both lands and a renewed resolution for peace, but this one sided treatment, of the defensive side in the war no less, is silly.
Not to justify it, but more people died firebombing Tokyo. Many cities were equally destroyed conventionally to the extent that it was somewhat difficult to find target cities for Fat Man & Little Boy. European firebombing was minor compared to the extent Japanese cities burned. Exponentially more sq miles.
Had the war not ended in August 45, most of Japan would have been starving in winter 46. No transportation was left to move the summer rice harvest to remaining population centers.
It saved both GIs and Japanese. Also probably saved South Korea from Kim Jung Il and the Soviets.
If Japan had had such a weapon it would have used without haste or regret. Dropping those bombs saved my late father-in-laws life. He was in the Fourth Marine Division and had survived being wounded on Iwo Jima.
Japan had the will to fight by means of brute manpower, but not this kind of technology.
It was weather that made the targets hard to locate.
And privately, a lot of Japanese were glad in retrospect that they weren’t pressed into a suicide effort. They probably had little idea of a “gracious conqueror.” The USA with Judeo-Christianity was familiar with the idea. Shinto did not support that.
Lacking apologies for Nanjing, Bataan, Manila (’45), and a thousand other atrocities committed by the Emperor’s troops, the Japanese are owed exactly dick.
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