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The Horrors of Hiroshima in Context
Townhall.com ^ | April 21, 2016 | Victor Davis Hanson

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Japan
KEYWORDS: apologytour; hiroshima; invasionofjapan; johnkerry; nuclearweapons; resident0bama; vdh; victordavishanson; worldwarii
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To: Kaslin

Karma worked in this case. Nagasaki was the city where the torpedo’s used at Pearl Harbor were manufactured.


61 posted on 04/21/2016 6:46:28 AM PDT by SkyDancer ("Nobody Said I Was Perfect But Yet Here I Am")
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To: HChampagne

Or Pearl Harbor?


62 posted on 04/21/2016 6:48:10 AM PDT by Bigg Red (Keep calm and Pray on.)
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To: jmacusa
I detest the Japanese for this reason, the bastards.

And this is why a lot of Americans are going to be surprised when - after a military conflict finally starts between China and Japan - all of Asia is going to back China.

63 posted on 04/21/2016 6:52:38 AM PDT by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: Netz

On a very personal level.

My Dad was scheduled to support Operation OLYMAPIC. That was two years before my birth.

Also, I had two uncles from different branches of my family scheduled to go ashore.

My readings from that era, 1935 - 1945, from original source documents, not the very heavily censored public text books, says the initial costs of a Japanese invasion was in the tens of millions plus a very strong possibly of genocide when the rest of the surviving Japanese population followed their Emperor-God in death.

The brutal calculus of combat says that the Atomic Bomb induced deaths of August 1945 was the optimum course. Very much the lesser of two evils.


64 posted on 04/21/2016 6:53:33 AM PDT by Nip (BOHEICA and TANSTAAFL - both seem very appropriate today.)
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To: Harmless Teddy Bear
They were planning in the fall of 45 to start spreading weaponized plague to the US and Australia.

Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night was scheduled to begin September 22, 1945. It was to spread plague through southern California. Japan surrendered before the plan happened.

65 posted on 04/21/2016 6:53:39 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (Big government is attractive to those who think that THEY will be in control of it.)
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To: Mr. Jeeves

The Chinese will never forget the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.


66 posted on 04/21/2016 6:54:51 AM PDT by DuncanWaring (The Lord uses the good ones; the bad ones use the Lord.)
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To: Kaslin

67 posted on 04/21/2016 7:10:25 AM PDT by Servant of the Cross (the Truth will set you free)
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To: PapaBear3625
At the "1 million US dead" mark, the US sentiment would have been for the complete extermination of the Japanese race. Carthage writ large.

Very true.

Many US families received telegrams and the dreaded visit by uniformed personnel in 1945 alone, probably more than any other year in the war.

On August 5, 1945,before the first bomb fell,the Japanese were not going to surrender, and we were going to give them no quarter.

The atomic bombs,even though destructive, saved millions of lives on both sides.

No one could have foreseen such a quick end to the War in the Pacific, with a surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, less than a month later.

68 posted on 04/21/2016 7:10:48 AM PDT by exit82 (Road Runner sez:" Let's Make America Meeping Great Again! Meep! Meep!")
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To: Diogenesis

Obama, the syphilitic chancre on the body politic.


69 posted on 04/21/2016 7:17:37 AM PDT by Pelham (Trump/Tsoukalos 2016 - vote the great hair ticket)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

Weather did impact thefinal choice of one of the cities, but there wasn’t much left of most major industrial cities of any consequence.

http://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/2414/article.html

“Overall, bombing strikes destroyed 40 percent of the 66 Japanese cities targeted, with total tonnage dropped on Japan increasing from 13,800 tons in March to 42,700 tons in July. [31] ...

Overall, by one calculation, the US firebombing campaign destroyed 180 square miles of 67 cities, killed more than 300,000 people and injured an additional 400,000, figures that exclude the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. [32]

Between January and July 1945, the US firebombed and destroyed all but five Japanese cities, deliberately sparing Kyoto, the ancient imperial capital, and four others. The extent of the destruction was impressive ranging from 50 to 60% of the urban area destroyed in cities including Kobe, Yokohama and Tokyo, to 60 to 88% in seventeen cities, to 98.6% in the case of Toyama. [33] In the end, the Atomic Bomb Selection Committee chose Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, and Nagasaki as the pristine targets to display the awesome power of the atomic bomb to Japan and the world in the event that would both bring to a spectacular end the costliest war in human history and send a powerful message to the Soviet Union”


70 posted on 04/21/2016 7:22:18 AM PDT by zek157
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To: Kaslin

IIRC Harry Truman was handed the following estimates of invasion combatant casualties before making the decision to drop the bombs:

US: 2,000,000
Japan: 6,000,000

I suspect the civilian casualties would have exceeded 20,000,000 due to starvation and disease. He saved a lot of Japanese from death.


71 posted on 04/21/2016 7:30:07 AM PDT by buffaloguy
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To: Kaslin

IIRC Harry Truman was handed the following estimates of invasion combatant casualties before making the decision to drop the bombs:

US: 2,000,000
Japan: 6,000,000

I suspect the civilian casualties would have exceeded 20,000,000 due to starvation and disease. He saved a lot of Japanese from death.


72 posted on 04/21/2016 7:30:10 AM PDT by buffaloguy
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To: Kaslin

I figured if we drop a few more it might help everyone else grasp the proper ‘context’ of the current state of affairs.


73 posted on 04/21/2016 7:35:11 AM PDT by Delta 21 (Patiently waiting for the jack booted kick at my door.)
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To: Kaslin

Too late to consider now, but a third A-bomb should have been used on Mecca, saving millions more.


74 posted on 04/21/2016 7:38:46 AM PDT by Does so (Vote for Hillary...Stay Home...==8-O)
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To: Kaslin

I’d like for Obama to address these lessons of WWII, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in lieu of the intended apology:
Civilians pay a heavy price for supporting bad governments.
Don’t start what you can’t finish.
If you do start, finish and move on.

I’d wager that Obama and Kerry despise the US as the only country to have used atomic/nuclear weapons. Their apology tour is designed to emphasize how the US has lost its will to resist aggression, under the lib logic that our aggression is what causes Iran, NK, etc. to pursue WMD.


75 posted on 04/21/2016 7:49:44 AM PDT by Chewbarkah
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To: riverdawg; zek157

Let’s not forget that the day AFTER Nagasaki was bombed the USA again mounted a conventional raid using 1000 bombers each loaded with twenty thousand pounds of high explosive and incendiary bombs. The again killed tens of thousands of Japanese.

What gets the Libs panties in a wad was we used two planes with one bomb each to destroy two cities.
If we had mounted a 100 plane raid and killed the same nothing would have been said.

Here is a link to the very last raid on Japan.

http://b-29s-over-korea.com/Last-Raid-On-Nakita/JAPANSDaysAfterAtomicBombDrop1.html


76 posted on 04/21/2016 7:57:40 AM PDT by Ruy Dias de Bivar
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

The Left still whine about Dresden though.


77 posted on 04/21/2016 7:58:31 AM PDT by dfwgator
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

Thanks for the link. I knew about the attempted coup at the Palace, following the bombing of Nagasaki, but I had not read about the raid on Akita.


78 posted on 04/21/2016 8:07:12 AM PDT by riverdawg
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To: Kaslin

My dad was 17 in 1945. He served in the army in occupied Japan. If it wasn’t for the atomic bombs, I would most likely not have been born.


79 posted on 04/21/2016 8:35:40 AM PDT by jroehl22
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To: jroehl22

Also, the Soviets would have entered the war, and most likely we would have seen a divided Japan, just like Germany and Korea. And a Civil War that would have made the Korean Conflict look like child’s play.


80 posted on 04/21/2016 8:36:42 AM PDT by dfwgator
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