Posted on 04/15/2002 1:11:20 AM PDT by Angelique
Nagasaki, Mon Amour
FrontPageMagazine.com | August 8, 2001
EACH AUGUST THE DEBATE RETURNS, this year won masterfully by my Front Page Magazine brother columnist Ronald Radosh: Should the United States on August 6, 1945, have dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima? Given that the alternative would have required invasion of Japan and the deaths of perhaps a quarter-million Americans, a million or more Japanese, and prolonged suffering on both sides, most moral people answer Yes, we should have dropped the bomb. We had only three bombs, one to test and two to use and none to spare on a demonstration for the Emperor.
But we should also ponder a very different question whose answer reveals much about American politics 56 years after the event: Why did the United States three days later drop a second atom bomb targeted specifically on Nagasaki? The answer might surprise or even horrify you.
Nagasaki reportedly was not on the original target list for nuclear extermination.
By late July 1945 military and Manhattan Project officials had selected four atom bomb targets. One was Hiroshima, an industrial center and staging area for Japan’s army and navy. The second was Kokura, home to one of Japan’s biggest munitions factories. The third was Niigata, a large Sea of Japan port city with a tanker terminal, oil refinery, and iron works. The fourth was the old imperial capital Kyoto, then also a huge industrial city with factories turning out parts for artillery, machinery, and aircraft.
But at the last moment the Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who arguably had knowingly precipitated Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack by instigating an international embargo on its life-or-death oil supplies, removed Kyoto from the list for annihilation and replaced it with Nagasaki.
On the day Nagasaki was bombed, reporter W.H. Lawrence told New York Times readers that it was “more important industrially” than Hiroshima, a “transshipment” port, and “a major shipbuilding and repair center for both naval and merchantmen.”
Nagasaki, indeed, was a port with one of the world’s finest deep harbors, but the beautiful mid-sized city on the far southern island of Kyushu had lost much of its status as a seaport. Hemmed in by mountains and 600 miles southwest of Tokyo, what reached or left there required transshipment, usually by sea.
Near Nagasaki was a huge Mitsubishi shipbuilding facility, but it survived the atomic bombing. Something else in this city, however, was virtually at Ground Zero and was destroyed. Was it the real target that Leftists in the Roosevelt-Truman New Deal government wanted most to obliterate?
Nagasaki was a sleepy fishing village on the day in 1542 when Portuguese sailors first dropped anchor there. Guided by their maps to Japan, on August 15, 1549, Roman Catholic missionary St. Francis Xavier landed at nearby Kagoshima, learned within a year how to speak Japanese, and began spreading the Christian faith.
By 1579, six of the regional military lords called daimyo had become Christian converts and brought 100,000 of their subjects under the sign of the cross with them.
Japan by tradition had been religiously tolerant. The Nagasaki prefecture was home to the nation’s ports nearest China and welcomed Buddhists, Taoists, and other traders and settlers from neighboring lands. But these new Christians were intolerant, and by 1587 the last Buddhist and ancestor-worshipping indigenous Shinto shrines had vanished from the district.
To Japan’s central ruler, the foreign traders and their fast-growing religion began to seem threatening, like a foreign Fifth Column in his midst. In place of the nation’s polytheistic faith, Christianity insisted on only one God. In a society based on submission to feudal and group authority, the new belief taught the value of the individual. In a society of central power, the faith from Europe created new rival centers of power and allegiance.
In 1587 the Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued a decree proscribing Christianity and ordering the Jesuits to depart Japan within 20 days, an edict that as tempers cooled went unenforced.
But nine years later new sparks flared, and in 1597 Hideyoshi had 26 missionaries – six Franciscans, three Jesuits, and 17 Japanese Christians – crucified at Nagasaki. A year later 137 Jesuit churches in the region were razed, along with a college and seminary.
Hideyoshi died in 1598, and with his passing eased the first wave of persecutions. But by 1612 the new Tokugawa Shogunate issued restrictions on Christianity, and a nationwide ban was issued two years later.
In 1622 at least 51 Christians were executed in Nagasaki, and two years later 50 were burned alive for their faith in Edo (now Tokyo). More and more foreigners were excluded from Japan. 30 more Christian missionaries were executed in 1633, and two years later even Japanese residents who had lived overseas were prohibited from returning to Japan, lest they bring back an infection of foreign ideas.
Japan’s rulers had reason to fear. By 1614, up to 300,000 Japanese were Christians, about 10 percent of the nation’s entire population. Unless this contagious foreign religion with its alien values could be stopped, it would soon take over and transform Japan. To fight it, daimyo were prohibited from becoming Christians, and thousands of Christians were executed.
Around Nagasaki hundreds of pieces of silver were offered to anyone who turned in priests, monks, or even ordinary believers. Those suspected were required to step on a crucifix or later on an image of Jesus molded from the metal of desecrated Christian altars. The alien religion was driven deep underground by persecution.
The Shogun directed those in Nagasaki to reject Jesus Christ and embrace a new city guardian god whose home was the local Suwa Shrine. Each year in early October the people of Nagasaki still hold the Kunchi Festival in this pagan god’s honor. It is celebrated nowadays with a dragon dance, Kokkodesho, likely brought by Chinese merchants, and Hurrah dances brought to the trading city centuries ago by Dutch sailors.
Foreign traders were confined to an island near Nagasaki. Then, around 1640, the Japanese Shogun simply slammed and locked the door, cutting his entire nation off from world trade and communication for the next two centuries.
The door was pried open again in the mid-19th Century. Trade resumed with many Western nations, including the United States. Japan’s exotic qualities fascinated Western artists of all kinds. Giacomo Puccini set his tragic opera about a suicidal young Japanese woman left pregnant and abandoned by an American seaman, Madame Butterfly, in Nagasaki.
By 1859, Christian missionaries were permitted to return. In 1873, Christians were again allowed to evangelize in the island kingdom. In 1895, construction began on a Roman Catholic cathedral in Urakami, a suburb of Nagasaki, that would be the largest ecclesiastical building of its type in the Far East.
And, to the missionaries’ surprise, over 30,000 Japanese Kakure Kirishitan, “hidden Christians,” emerged who had risked their lives by secretly holding true to their faith during two centuries of persecution. Now, with tear-filled eyes and rejoicing, they came to worship openly in and around the place Pope Pius IX had blessed in 1867 by canonizing its 26 now-sainted martyrs to the faith, Japan’s most Christian city, Nagasaki.
The plutonium bomb called “Fat Man” dropped from the B-29’s bomb bay at 11:02 A.M. Below in the August heat nuns and old people knelt praying, and summer sunlight danced on Nagasaki Bay.
Christians able to travel had made pilgrimage here. Some came to escape the nationalist war fever and Shinto Cult of the Emperor, descendant of the Sun God, that directed hate against all alien faiths, including Buddhists and especially those loyal to the enemy’s faith, Christians. Surely, these pilgrims thought, the last place a Christian United States would drop its terrible new weapon would be Japan’s home of the Prince of Peace.
The man-made sun, brighter than a million Rising Sun Japanese flags, ignited about 1,600 feet above Ground Zero. Its wind shockwave moving at 1,400 miles per hour pulverized the crowded homes below like a giant fist. Its energy flash burned flesh from bone, then vaporized both before a scream could reach melting human lips.
Scarcely a fifth of a mile from Ground Zero, the Urakami Cathedral, its lovingly-crafted stained glass, and the worshippers inside were smashed into dust and goo and flash-broiled. Heavy carved statues of Jesus and Mary were scorched black in an instant.
The bomb, bigger than Hiroshima’s, with the explosive force of 21,000 tons of TNT, destroyed essentially everything and everyone within 1.2 miles of Ground Zero. Thousands of close-clustered wooden homes and their residents vanished in the glow of a rising mushroom cloud.
In that moment, an estimated 73,884 people died – at least one in 10 of them Christians. Another 75,000 were blinded, had skin burned off, or were injured by the blast or engulfing firestorms or collapsing buildings for miles around. Thousands more would die from radiation or injury over days or months.
As one writer about the Cathedral put it, through this atom bomb blast the Truman Administration was “ironically killing more Christians than had ever been killed in Japan during centuries of persecution.”
So why did Marxocratic policymakers inside Roosevelt’s and Truman’s New Deal alter military targeting decisions, commanding instead that Nagasaki – relatively insignificant as a military target – be moved into the bombardier’s crosshairs and that its Christian people be cremated alive into clicking-hot radioactive ashes by atomic bomb annihilation?
And why today do Marxocrats use every tactic and technicality to politically exterminate each Christian word and symbol in America’s public square? Is their aim to remove all religions, morals, and values that people might prefer to their dogmatic religion, Marxism?
Urakami Cathedral near Nagasaki was rebuilt by 1959, but among the city’s surviving families, scarcely three percent are now Christians. Modern Japanese, shaped by America’s secular occupation, have eclectically incorporated symbols from various religions. Many, it is said, now grow up Shinto, marry like Christians, and die as Buddhists. Brides wear white wedding gowns and even wed in churches. Many families celebrate Valentine’s Day, and some even exchange gifts on Christmas. Several of the founders of Japan’s post-war democracy were raised as Christians.
But the faith that once showed signs of sweeping Japan and thereby changing Asian history is now mostly a matter of style, not religious passion or mass conversion. Scarcely one percent of Japanese now think of themselves as Christians.
French director Alain Resnais in 1959 created the film masterpiece Hiroshima, Mon Amour. It plunges viewers into the fantasies and nightmares of two lovers, a French woman and a Japanese man, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
The world needs a sequel to this film to help people understand the hidden wellsprings of history, love, faith, and the limitless evil of the political Left. Call it Nagasaki, Mon Amour.
The August 9th anniversary of Truman’s deliberate bombing of the Christian city of Japan is a moment for prayer and contemplation. It is also a night to look heavenward, as from then through August 12th each year our planet splashes through a river of stardust left in space by an ancient “earth crossing” comet. These nights bring the Perseid meteor showers as tiny fragments from that comet burn up in Earth’s atmosphere. Especially after midnight, when the sky overhead wheels to become the front windshield of our world as it speeds around the Sun, you should be able to see at least one shooting star per minute.
The calendar, you see, is not a timepiece but a map. And these dates in August are places the planet we share comes to again and again – places, like Hiroshima… and Nagasaki.
Mr. Ponte hosts a national radio talk show Saturdays 6-9 PM Eastern Time (3-6 PM Pacific Time) that can be heard on 210 stations and via TalkAmerica.com. A professional speaker, he is a former Roving Editor for Reader’s Digest. Click here to send him a message.
In retrospect, the first paragraph of the article should be the major premise, however unfortunate, as it is war. If Nagasaki had to be chosen, and hopefully not as the author describes, then the article is far-reaching.
As numerous other posters have brought up, Nagasaki was the secondary target after Kokura (which is also not an inland city as some here suggested-it's on the N.E. coast of Kyushu near the entrance to the the Inland Sea), but that doesn't mean it wasn't a legitimate industrial target on its own. The main Mitsubishi plant was the aiming point, but the bomb missed.
Another poster brought up blockade. In fact, the submarine and aerial mine blockade had nearly brought Japan to it's knees, but not quickly enough to satisfy an America which had seen the end of the war Europe and wanted to get this one over with, too.
The first time I went to my future in-law's house in Nagaski Prefecture, I noticed 2 war era photos on the wall, a woman and a school aged boy. When I asked my wife later who they were, she told me it was her father's older sister and her son, who were killed by the bomb. They didn't live in the city, but by unfortunate chance, went into the city that day.
The fact is, for all the people that died in the atomic bombings, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of lives, both Japanese and American were saved. An invasion of Kyushu would have a bloodbath on a scale that dwarfed Okinawa, the largest battle of the war. The atomic bombing of Nagaski may have "political" in a sense, i.e. let's show the Russians, but it was not bombed because it had a large portion of Japan's tiny Christian population.
Actually Kokura was a very legimitate target. It was one of five seperate cities now consolidated as Kitakyushu City. This was the largest steel producing region of wartime Japan in addition to many other vital industries.
What is amazing to me is that the author NEVER once discusses the validity of the decision to bomb--just the target chosen; and yet everyone reads into the article that invasion is a consideration. Kokura was the intended target. There appears to be three theories on this thread alone regarding why Nagasaki ended up being the target; so you see, there are lots of opinions.
The invasion of Kyushu was very far along in planning by August-see Stark's The Invasion of Japan. It would have gone down if the bombs hadn't worked or hadn't of pushed the Japanese to surrender.
As to why Nagasaki was attacked-it was a fairly large urban and indusrial area that had only been lightly firebombed earlier. It's cold, but we wanted the Japanese to see the effects of the bomb on an intact city. Larger cities like Tokyo, Osaka or Nagoya had already been mostly flattened by conventional firebombing.
But at the last moment the Secretary of War Henry Stimson, who arguably had knowingly precipitated Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack by instigating an international embargo on its life-or-death oil supplies, removed Kyoto from the list for annihilation and replaced it with Nagasaki.
Ponte is just another anti American Bravo Sierra POS, who will rearrange history to suit his agenda. His POS agenda is simple, blame American for everything!
Blaming Stimson for the Boshida Japanese Racists attack on Pearl Harbor is no different than the POS's who blame 9/11 mass murderers on Americans!
Very true. Mitsubishi had two armaments plants at Ohashi. Morimachi and Mitsubishi both had steel plants located in the Urakami Valley, away from the downtown area of Nagasaki. Those targets were detroyed and the residential and business districts of Nagasaki were spared due to the topography of the area.
Bock's Car made three bombing runs on Kokura before Sweeney made the decision to head for the secondary target, Nagasaki. Smoke from the fires still burning from the previous nights bombing of Yawata, by 224 B-29s, prevented the drop on Kokura. Wonder how Stimson was able to manipulate the surface winds to accomplish that feat! One of the many points that revisionists gloss over is this: In the three months that Truman had been President, the United States sustained almost 50% of its total casualties in the Pacific Theater.
On paper it may have appeared that Japan was defeated, but such was not the case. The Japanese conditionally accepted the Potsdam Declaration on 10 August with the following major caveats: Japan would try its own war criminals, Japan would retain control of its troops and disarm said troops itself, the Allies could not occupy the home islands of Japan, Hirohito would remain sovereign ruler. The Allies rejected those terms. Truman counter offered that Hirohito could stay but under the authority of the supreme Allied commander. The Japanese did not reply but instructed their forces to fight on. The Allies toned down their offensive actions and began dropping surrender leaflets instead of bombs. Finally with still no response from Japan, Truman ordered Marshall to resume air raids against Japan. On the 14th Spaatz ordered anything that could carry bombs into the air. The result was the largest raid of the war; 2000 airplanes bombed Japan. High ranking officers planned a coup after Hirohito told them he would announce the surrender to the Japanese people over radio. The coup attempt failed and the message was finally broadcast at noon on the 15th.
This is the most logical explanation, especially given all the other facts you have presented. I am curioius, however. Although the ultimate decision to use the atom bomb on Japan was Truman's, didn't he rely on Stimson for advice, as well as the Manhatten project?
General Sweeney in an interview I saw stated when asked why he wrote the book said he wanted to make sure the real story was told before the truth was lost.
You triggered a memory of seeing an interview with him where he uttered those very words. It did not connect until now.
I have been doing a little research, and apparently Stimson was calliing the shots. Supposedly, he had already advised Truman to drop the atomic bombs on Japan, but of interest: Stimson later noted in his 1948 memoirs, written with McGeorge Bundy, "Only on the question of the Emperor did Stimson take, in 1945, a conciliatory view; only on this question did he later believe that history might find that the United States, by its delay in stating its position, had prolonged the war." (Stimson & Bundy, "On Active Service in Peace and War" pg. 628-629).
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