Nagasaki, Mon Amour

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.

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.

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

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.

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!!!!!

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.

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