Posted on 08/01/2025 6:34:57 PM PDT by DoodleBob
I don’t believe there was any reasonable way to invade Japan using conventional means without a large number of military and civilian casualties. The of nuclear weapons was horrific but necessary given the circumstances.
Well, this American does not have any mixed views about nuking the Japs.
As Rush said. “It ended a war, and we won.”
Nobody’s opinion on this matters. Especially those who question whether it was the right thing to do. They need a hobby.
I was around at the time and I can say that it had wide public approval and support.
My father was fighting in the South Pacific at the time, so I am glad we dropped it. I doubt I would be here if they didn’t, nor many of my generation.
The Kokutai principle played a decisive role for Japanese surrender in 1945. The Japanese lived within a spiritual/political fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, Bushido, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. Subjected to this authority, average citizens forfeited individuality to a collective soul defining Japan and awaited the Empire’s decrees. With such national unity committed to Total War beneath the slogan of the “honorable sacrifice of 20 million Japanese lives”, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
By January 1944 Hirohito foresaw inevitable defeat. However, his government of peace and war factions conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, firebombing of over 60 cities, looming starvation, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths.
When they reached impasse after the two atomic bombs Hirohito assumed an unprecedented roll to speak the “Voice of the Crane” in the palace bunker. The bombs became a force of nature; equivalent to earthquakes or typhoons against which even a god/king was impotent. Only Imperial submission to such a catastrophe could match the disgrace of surrender following 2,600 years of martial invincibility.
Only Hirohito could submit because he held the heavenly Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable and conclude the war. The war and peace factions relented and no one lost face, but importantly Kokutai, the spiritual essence of Japan, was preserved. All remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence the negotiations.
Partial bibliography:
Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamni
Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange
The Secret Surrender, Allen Dulles
Hirohito, Edward Behr
A quote by film director Akira Kurosawa illustrates the transformation of that generation of Japanese people, who before were resigned to the slogan “Honorable Death of a Hundred Million”.
“When I walked the same route back to my home (after the Emperor’s broadcast), the scene was entirely different. The people in the shopping street were bustling about with cheerful faces as if preparing for a festival the next day. If the Emperor had made such a call (to follow the above slogan) those people would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self-sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. We were accustomed to this teaching and had never thought to question it….In wartime we were like deaf-mutes.”
Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Herbert P. Bix
Every year around this time we get this crap. My father was in the Battle of Manila. He saw what they did there. They were not some innocent victims. The ones that massacred all those innocent people deserved everything they got.
And I wonder how many of those who question it now even know what the Baton death March was, or of the countless tens of thousands and more chinese women raped and brutally murdered at the hands of Japanese supremacy during that war.
You’ll rate get the more tired I get of so many ignorant people.
I don’t think people can appreciate the loss of life on both sides if a ground war was to take place vs. the bomb. My dad was a Korean War veteran and one of his co-workers survived the Bataan Death March & he hated the Japanese to point where if they were going out to eat and the driver had a Japanese car, he refused to go.
Pure, unadulterated propaganda BS!
Who cares what present-day Americans think about the use of the bomb?
The real Americans were those who labored, died, or suffered through the war...
Their approval was huge and is the only relevant historical fact...
I was 12 when the bombs ended the war and remember the celebrations and joy of all Americans (not the pathetic whiney wimps of those who claim to be Americans today)...
I’d gladly use a wood shredder on anyone who badmouths those heroic true Americans...
I probably would never have been born IF they hadn’t dropped em.
My father was BAR rifleman in the 1st Marine Division. After finishing up on Okinawa, they started the preparation for the dreaded invasion of Japan which more than likely would have cost him his life...and, of course, mine.
He said that the first B29 he ever saw was the most beautiful plane he’d ever seen...and the biggest to that date. Every serviceman in the Pacific was glad to see em dropped. And, obviously, I have NO qualms about dropping em either...
Unfortunately most of those with questions have no idea what happened to our servicemen who were taken prisoner. They have no idea how many of our (primarily) men would have died trying to end the war and invade Japan. It was a miserable dirty war in the Pacific. Unlike the war with Germany.
1944 - "Thousand Yard Stare", by Thomas Lea, Battle of Peleliu
Extremely important: The nuclear bomb was used at the end of the war. Thereby motivating people to never use the nuclear bomb, again.
My Dad would have been part of that invasion force so I may have never been born.
History shows we, US made the right move in dropping the 2 A-bombs, ending that war.
Atomic bombing of Japan was NOT necessary to end WWII. US gov’t documents admit it .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vMEgneKF10
Eisenhower wrote in a book that it was unneccesary .
Ask my mom and dad. They chose to get married on Aug 6 1947.
My father’s life or several hundred thousand Japanese war supporters?
My dad and all the other troops that had suffered through the miserable Pacific campaign.
No equivocation whatsoever.
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