Nagasaki, Mon Amour

Front Page Magazine | August 8, 200l | Lowell Ponte

[Angelique]

Here is another national disgrace at the hands of FDR and Truman

[Angelique]

This is a great article about the decision to drop the Plutonium Bomb on Nagasaki.

[Bush2000]

Here is another national disgrace at the hands of FDR and Truman

I have no love for Democrats but the fact of the matter is that Truman had more balls than most politicians alive today. I support his decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If he hadn't done it, there would have been millions more casualties on both sides. His act was more humane than you can possibly realize.

[flying Elvis]

Actually there was a third alternative--blockade. General Lemay and the Navy would have welcomed this alternative as a means of bolstering the value or their respective branches of service. Most of the casualty estimates provided to Truman including that by Douglas MacArthur predicted around 30k American deaths and around 100k wounded in the conquest of Japan. No one predicted hundreds of thousands of American deaths in the event of an invastion. That figure was raised after the war partly to justify the bombing in the face of revisionists. Kokura was the primary target for the second bomb. The pilots decided to move on to the the secondary target, Nagasaki, after heavy haze hindered their appoach to Kokura. If this author's thesis is correct then the fire bombings of German cities were also intended to kill a maximum number of Christians. His thesis also neglects to explain why Tokyo was fire bombed to such great effect. Truman had no hidden agenda. His intention was to end the war at the earliest possible date.

My source for this information is Samuel J. Walker's Prompt and Utter Destruction. University of North Carolina Press, 1997

[Joe Boucher]

Read the book WARS END, written by the American that flew the photography chase plane over Hiroshima and flew the drop plane over Nagasaki.

Unless the Japaneese were willing to unconditionally surrender the bombs should have been used rather than a mainland invasion that would have killed possibly hundreds of thousands of American troops.

America didn't start this war but was willing to end it on our terms.

the Japaneese were ruthless in their pursuit of war. They had commited many many violations of international norm, The rape of nanking, the sneak attack on Pearl, the Bataan death march, the using of prisoners for medical experiments, the using of prisoneers for slave labor,etc etc etc. Hand wringers are trying to rewrite history. Should we have dropped the two bombs? HELL YES, and more if we had any more,which we didn't.If that is what it would have taken.

[struggle]

nice post. you know, the reason for bombing nagasaki is probably because kokura was inland, niigata is too far away, and bombing kyoto is reasonable but ill advised because of its history. nagasaki was a nowhere town with little importance, so occupation of it is not necessary. i think any town but kyoto would be a good place to have bombed. after all, before the Perry showed up, the japanese were constantly destroying their own history in civil war except in kyoto. also, I LOVE KYOTO!!!!!

[Angelique]

That still does not explain why one of the orginal more strategic targets was not selected.

[flying Elvis]

The first test was conducted during the Potsdam Conference. The results bolstered Truman's resolve; he became much more outspoken and confident in his dealings with Uncle Joe.. He even took Stalin aside and told him the U.S. had an atomic bomb. Stalin was unmoved, however, for he already knew of the Manhtatten Project. Truman was a battery commander during WWI who cried over the loss of men under his command. It is in character that he would drop the bomb in order to prevent the loss of more American lives. Nothing in his character suggests that he would kill hundreds of thousands of people to prove a point to the Soviets.

[flying Elvis]

Stimson in particular was responsible for taking Kyoto off of the target list due to its cultural and historical significance.

[Angelique]

I do not know the logistics as described by you, but if that were the case, why didn't they drop the bomb on the nearby Mitsubishi ship building town.

[Angelique]

I absolutely agree that the bombs were the only humane alternative as pointed out in the leading paragraph. The question is why Nagasaki as a target?

[flying Elvis]

My take on the second bomb is that the militarist still had enough influence to prevent a surrender. They believed the U.S. only had one bomb and rejected peace feelers sent out by the U.S. Furthermore, some of them doubted it was even an atomic bomb. The second underscored Truman's bluff that the Japanese would, "see a rain of destruction" as we did not have any more bombs. It was only after Nagasaki that the Emperor decided to surrender thus swaying the balance of power away from the militarist who were subsequently outvoted. One of the great what if's of this debate is, what if the Japanese had not surrendered after Nagasaki. Would a negotiated peace ensued? After all we had thrown everything in our arsenal at them.

[Angelique]

I do understand the rationale for the bombings, but it still does not preclude other more strategic targets.

[Angelique]

The point of the article is not about dropping the bombs, but why Nagasaki as a target. A poster has suggested that weather precluded the original target, but it would seem to me there would be alternative targets already in place should weather become a factor.

[flying Elvis]

See my post #5. Kokura was the primary target. Nagasaki was on the list because 90% of its population worked for Mitsubishi. The bombs were not intended to destroy military installations but industrial centers and the surrounding labor force. Japanese industry as such was very much decentralized in such that much of the production was carried out in small shops difficult to target with conventional bombs.

[struggle]

kyoto was protected during the whole war by stimpson. the kinkakuji, ginkakuji, gosho, etc are important parts of japanese history, kyoto is lndlocked, and it would make japanese considerably more resistant during occupation if it were bombed. niigata is on the china side of japan, and from the pacific is difficult to bomb. kokura is landbound, and if america had to invade, would be a useless bombing. i hate to be a blatent apologist against this anti-christian conspiracy theory, but my suggestion is that hiroshima and nagasaki were not bombed for present effect but a future one. with the rabid shinto nationalism at that time, if the japanese were not broken by the two bombs, the invasion of japan would be improved by bombing good harbors and then sending masses of ships to land in them. hiroshima is far enough from kobe and osaka to entrench, but close enough to be convenient. nagasaki is the same with kitakyushu and a natural choice; inconvienient for the japanese to attack, as it is a seperate island from honshu, and once america was entrenched, impossible to stop their attack. if hiroshima was lost, the railroad lines do not extend to kyushu, and therefore nagasaki is a good choice. with this in mind, one can understand that nagasaki was bombed as a softening measure for imminent invasion if hirohito did not break. im sure there were a lot of anti-nazis in dresden too....

[flying Elvis]

Truman vs Clinton:

Truman saved both Japanese and American lives with his decision. The firebombings would have continued and countless Japanese would have been incinerated in the long term. He saved countless American lives, the estimates are debatable. After Okinawa the death rate of American servicemen in the Pacific Theater dropped to less than 1,000 a month. After Nagasaki it all ended. Patriotic Americans would have crucified Truman if they had known he had the means to end the war in such a quick manner and had not used it.

Now to the recent past. How is Clinton being judged for the Somalia fiasco given it could have been prevented by providing our brave men with the equipment and support they needed to carry out their tasks? He is lauded by the same revisionist leftist crowd that castigates Truman.