Posted on 08/08/2015 4:27:51 AM PDT by Kaslin
This week was the 70th anniversary of the United States nuking Hiroshima and as expected, there has been plenty of second guessing, attacks on America, and claims that nuking the Japanese wasn’t necessary.
Understandably perhaps, that’s how the Japanese feel. I can tell you that with certainty because back in 2008, the Japanese equivalent of PBS flew me out to New York to be part of an online discussion between a crowd of Americans and a group of people from Hiroshima. Again, perhaps understandably, the tone from the people of Hiroshima was very self-pitying. They asked us to look at pictures of Hiroshima as if we hadn’t seen them before. They talked about how devastating the attack was for them. It was like they wanted a big apology from all of America because we hit them so hard after their sneak attack.
Let me say something that a lot of people think, but don’t want to say because we’re friendly with Japan now: Japan deserved to be nuked and it deserved it ten times over.
Japan was allied with the Nazis in a war of world conquest that would have exterminated freedom and democracy across the globe if they were successful. The Japanese deliberately starved and slaughtered millions of civilians, they raped children and pregnant women, they forced families to have sex with each other for the fun of it, they tortured and experimented on prisoners of war -- and then there was Pearl Harbor.
Today, we think of the Japanese as polite people who are good at making electronics, cars and monster movies, but during WWII they were just as fanatical and evil as ISIS or Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, they also had the military, intelligence and organization to inflict their evil on a much wider swath of the planet. They needed to be stopped by any means necessary, that’s exactly what we did and the world, INCLUDING JAPAN, is a much better place for it.
Strategically, it also made sense.
First off, Pearl Harbor needed to be avenged in a manner so terrible that it made our enemies think twice about striking our homeland again. In fact, some might argue that Japan got off light.
“When this war is over, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell!” — Admiral Bill Halsey on December 7, 1941
Happily, it didn’t have to come to that and yet Japan was punished for what it did in a way so terrible that it will live on until the end of human history. That’s no small matter because after what we did to Japan, nobody tried going after us again on our home turf until 9/11. What’s 50+ years of going without a strike on America as devastating as Pearl Harbor or 9/11 worth? Actually, quite a lot.
Additionally, since it had become clear that Stalin might be almost as dangerous after the war as Hitler was during it, it was also important for the United States to deal with Japan instead of leaving another strategic, potentially dangerous nation to be conquered by the Soviets. Ultimately, we ended up fighting a cold war instead of a hot war against the Soviets and it’s entirely possible that our willingness to do what it took to subdue Japan scared them enough to play a significant role in that.
Most importantly, we saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. By 1945, the Japanese had essentially been defeated, but they refused to unconditionally surrender. Allowing a nation as dangerous and evil as Japan to rearm, especially after the world’s post-WWI experience with Germany, seemed like little more than an invitation to an even more brutal war in another 20 years.
Initially, America prepared for a ground invasion, but after seeing the ferocity with which Japan defended Okinawa, we realized taking Japan would cost the lives of millions of Japanese and much more importantly, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers would die in the process.
When people moan about the use of nuclear weapons in Japan, what they’re really saying is that they’d rather hundreds of thousands of American families had grown up without husbands, fathers and sons than see us use nuclear weapons on a genocidal nation bent on world conquest.
Like most people who second guess the hard choices that are made in war, critics of nuking Japan insist that everything would have just magically worked out. Japan would have just surrendered and everything would have ended without bloodshed.
Of course, back in the real world, Japan was putting all of its resources into fending off an invasion and refused to surrender even AFTER the first nuclear weapon was dropped. After the second nuclear weapon hit Nagasaki, there was an attempted coup designed to prevent that nation’s leaders from giving in. Happily it failed, but it gives you a sense of how determined the Japanese were to keep fighting.
The Japanese weren’t the victims in WWII; they were the bad guys. They were perfectly willing to create a Hell on earth as long as their Emperor got to share time with Hitler in the infernal palace and they were allowed to be his little worker demons torturing the rest of the planet. Don’t feel sorry for Japan because it got nuked; feel sorry for the all the innocent lives that were lost because of that nation’s murderous lust for power.
You wouldn’t believe the BS that is taught in Jap schools about WWII. Total propaganda. Most Japs don’t even know about Pearl Harbor.
BTTT .....
And the white privilege crowd has company with the guilty american world view crowd
One Indy news site today has a sob story about a Japanese man who was badly burned in the blast who turned anti-nuke activist..
No mention of the atrocities committed by Japan and the reason for the bomb.
....or the rape of Nanking, Beheading and torture of POW’s.
Sure, by the pink panty putz crowd. Some of these idiots wouldn't even have been born if we hadn't done that...their ancestors would have been killed in the invasion of Japan! What MORONS!
Japan was allied with the Nazis in a war of world conquest that would have exterminated freedom and democracy across the globe if they were successful. The Japanese deliberately starved and slaughtered millions of civilians, they raped children and pregnant women, they forced families to have sex with each other for the fun of it, they tortured and experimented on prisoners of war — and then there was Pearl Harbor.
The b@$tards attacked us at Pearl on 12-7-1941. Everywhere we fought them in the Pacific they fought like hell and rarely surrendered costing many American lives. Truman did the right thing by bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki as it saved thousands of American lives by avoiding an invasion of Japan. As it turned out it was the best thing that ever happened to Japan. We rebuilt them with taxpayer money and now they are one of the leading economies in the world.
IMNSHO, it was the Japanese Military that refused to surrender even after the FIRST drop, that has the blood on their hands.
Very honorable. Not.
And has anyone noticed that the Japanese have not rattled their sabres at us since?
Gee. Wouldn’t it be LOVELY to live in a world where your Enemies FEARED you and your Allies TRUSTED you? Think we’ll ever be there again? *SPIT*
Most Jap tourist get really upset when visiting Hawaii and going on the USS AZ tour. For many it is the first they ever heard of a sneak attack. They are taught they were the victims is WWII.
The “bomb”: Made in America, tested in Japan.
Appearantly 300 B-29’s visiting every day wasn’t enough.
It is also arguable that the bombs saved Japanese lives, likely over a million. If a conventional invasion had gone forward, many more Japanese would have died than did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Anyone with knowledge of what happened in the fight for Okinawa understands this. The Japanese casualties, both military and civilian, were horrific, and the main home islands would have been Okinawa writ large.
Only ideologues and the historically ignorant think the bombs didn’t save lives.
I was at the Memorial this spring.
What I noticed was the complete lack of deference and decorum from the Japanese. The loud talking and selfies and laughter from them, on the Memorial, made me want to give them a piece of my mind.
But, I know that because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my words were already spoken.
I agree that Hiroshima was justified but how are your examples a justification ? Pearl Harbor was a naval base. Good for them if they fought like hell wherever we attacked them. Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do?
I’d hazard to guess that the estimated “one million Japanese lives saved” would translate to many many more in the 70 years since then. Why? Because if that 1 million had been sacrificed to hopeless defeat and death to end the war, they would not have “gone forth and multiplied.”
They got what they deserved. What they begged for.
It was true in 1865. It was true in 1945. The Japanese chose war, and having sown the wind they had nothing to complain about when they reaped the whirlwind.
bump
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