Posted on 08/08/2004 3:46:08 AM PDT by Renegade
Thank you Harry Truman for preventing my father from becoming a possible statistic in an invasion of the Japaneese mainland .
Roosevelt declared the UN in 1942 but it was not finalized until 24 October 1945.
The allies were for all intents and purposes the UN during the war.
"...the Mayor of Nagasaki labels us as 'egocentric'"
When morons like that even begin to acknowledge the Japanese were responsible for the rape of Nanking, the biological and chemical weapons experiments on civilians, the treatment of allied POWs and the horrendous attrocites that THEY committed, he has no place to open his mouth. He should sit down and have a nice big bowl of STFU with his sushi.
And the same is true today. Those nations that are with us in Iraq are the real UN.
I saw pictures of it and the Japanese officials looked very defeated.
My dad was back on his feet, recovered from burns suffered in a crash landing of a Army Air Force C-46 in India in the China-Burma-India Campaign. He had already been told that he would be called back for the invasion in '45. Instead, the war ended, he got married and I came along in 48.
Mr. Kerry, you are no Harry Truman.
I can understand your misgivings. Why anyone would refer to that day as Happy Nagasaki Day saddens me. Some Japanese officials were seeking a way to achieve a conditional surrender but America only offered, and would only accept, an unconditional surrender.
There are many facts that may help you understand what Truman faced when he took the decision he did. One of those facts is that in the summer of 1945, Japan had more than 2 million soldiers and 30 million citizens who were prepared to choose "death over dishonor".
This isn't the entire story but it may help you to better understand some of what went into Truman's decision.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Lesser of Two Evils
FrontPageMagazine.com August 3, 2001
This August 6 and 9 marks the 56th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The use of the atomic bombs was the only alternative left to President Truman and his officials.
By August 1945, the war with Japan showed signs of continuing indefinitely. As American forces advanced closer to the Japanese mainland, the Japanese refusal to surrender did not diminish but increased. In the summer of 1945, Japan had more than 2 million soldiers and 30 million citizens who were prepared to choose "death over dishonor." This point had already been established by the kamikaze pilots and Japanese soldiers who fought at Okinawa and Iwo Jima.
The Japanese view of war was quite different from that of the American view: death in war was not something to be avoided, but to be sought. The Shinto cult, for example, which preached a radical concept of self-sacrifice, taught that suicide was glorious, while surrender was an unthinkable disgrace. It was at Saipan that even Japanese civilians committed suicide by jumping off the cliffs on the northern tip of the island rather than surrender. At the battle of Okinawa Island, thousands of Japanese had drawn themselves up in a line and killed themselves by hand-grenades, rather than surrender.
The Japanese leadership never disguised its revulsion to the idea of surrender. It repeatedly made clear its intention to fight to the last man, woman and child. The Japanese bitter-end slogan called for "the honorable death of a hundred million" -- the entire population. Allied intercepts of communications revealed that Japanese militarists were obsessed with vindicating their emperor’s, as well as their own, honor in a bloody till-the-death battle over the home islands.
This explains why at this very time the Japanese military was rapidly building up defense forces on the southern island of Kyushu, where by war's end there were 14 divisions and 735,000 troops ready to sacrifice themselves in battle.
Japan's stubborn and unsatisfactory response to the Allies' Potsdam Declaration left Truman with little choice. He knew, as General Marshall's reports confirmed, that at least 500,000 Americans would be lost in an invasion of Japan. That was a conservative estimate, as the possibility existed that up to one million Allied casualties would be suffered. Meanwhile, it was estimated that potential Japanese casualties stood at five million.
Truman and his advisers were well aware that they had just suffered 75,000 American casualties in seizing Okinawa, just a small island. The bombing of the two Japanese cities, therefore, was considered to be the quickest way to end the war with the least amount of casualties on both sides.
For nearly four years America had watched its soldiers being killed by militant and fanatical Japanese troops. And now, every day that the Japanese refused to surrender, the death toll on both sides rose, while Allied POWs and civilian internees in Japanese concentration camps were being tortured and executed.
Truman knew that if an American invasion was carried through, the 100,000 Allied prisoners of war would die. He was aware of Tokyo’s order that, at the moment that the Americans invaded Japan's home islands, the POW's were to be tortured, beheaded, and executed en masse. At many POW camps, many prisoners had already been instructed to dig their own graves. Fifty thousand POWs had already died from torture, starvation, and unimaginable abuse.
In his book The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, “revisionist” historian Gar Alperovitz denounces the American use of the bomb. His book is filled with impressive documentation and sophisticated phraseology. The problem is that the 780 pages of text and references fail to answer one question: would Alperovitz argue the same thesis if he, or one of his children, had been an Allied POW in a Japanese prison camp on the eve of Truman's decision?
Only an intellectual could create the arguments that Alperovitz does. Few academics represent better the ultimate heartlessness of ideas.
That the Japanese bore the brunt of the first weapons of mass destruction, that tens of thousands of innocent and helpless Japanese citizens died during those tragic and soul-searching days of early August 1945 is a given. They deserve our memory, as well as our grief. What is too often forgotten, however, is that the greatest crime awaiting mankind at that terrible time was not inherent in the use of the atomic bomb, but in the more horrifying reality that would have followed its non-use.
The decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented the lesser of two evils.
Interesting to hear that story you wrote. Here's one that happened to me and a friend of mine while heading into Pohang SK in a cab.
We had just debarked from the USS Dubuque for some much needed liberty. We got a cab into town and as we headed into town my friend and I were hotly discussing some WWII Island Battle. Evidently the Elderly Korean Cab Driver understood English pretty well and when we got to our destination and I paid him, he looked at me and grinned, then asked. "You know, Nagasaki Number one, Hiroshima, Number one... WHY YOU STOP??"
I was stunned for a moment, but then had to laugh and respond. "My friend, I wasn't in charge at the time."
I will never forget that old Korean Cabbie.
And all the People cried "A-MEN"!
In 1985, the liberal media tried to find people upset with us about the a-bombs. They interviewed a Korean woman. "What do you think about the Americans dropping an atomic bomb on Japan?"
"How many did they have?" she asked.
"At the time, probably six or seven," came the reply.
"They should have dropped all of them," she answered.
One of Harry Trumans most astute decisions. He saved the lives of not only most of us that were there but hundreds of thousands of Japanese as well.
I have a book all about the Japaneese Bomb Program.
" Japan's secret War" ( Japan's race Against Time To Build Its Own Atomic Bomb) by Robert K. Wilcox--c.1985
***Thank you Harry Truman for preventing my father from becoming a possible statistic in an invasion of the Japaneese mainland **
My dad also.
We lived in Japan (I was an Army brat) from 1951-1961 and so the damage from the war was still quite evident in some areas of Yokohama. About 3 blocks from our house was an empty lot with broken glass and concrete that Masako, our maid, said was a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility. Makaso was a teenager in 1944 and was forced to work in this building and in a ammunition plant by the Japanese militarists. Both had large Red Crosses painted on the roofs. After one air raid, the ammo making equipment was salvaged and moved into a cave where she was forced to work 16 hours everyday until the war ended. One of the last products turned out in the car was a crude, one-shot zip gun that was to have been distributed to civilians. Instructions with the gun said, "one shot, kill American, take his gun."
Same with my father. I am glad that that Demoncrat (Truman) had some balls.
Likewise. My dad served in Europe in Patton's Third Army and was on a troop ship headed to the Orient when the bomb was dropped.
Victory, celebrate today with a victory cup of Sakai......
Japan in 1945 was a feudal state ruled by the code of bushido;fanatical to the core of their being. It would take the two atomic bombs to burn this scourge out of them and the restoration came from the passion of General Douglas MacArthur to see peace and stability restored once again. Had he been allowed to cross the Yalu River our world would be much more stable and we wouldn't have the pipsqueak in North Korea thumbing his nose at us and still starveing his people and he would have also read the riot act to China in the process! Lost Opportunity is a terrible memory!
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