Posted on 08/09/2015 2:49:19 PM PDT by NRx
...In 1945, however, we also soon heard much of the other side of the story, and how that same appalling tragedy might have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of American and British servicemen who could well have died in the invasion of Japan which would otherwise have been necessary to end the war. Only more slowly did it come to light how the atom bombs had also saved the lives of anything up to a million prisoners in camps across south-east Asia, whom the fanatical Japanese commander, Marshal Terauchi, intended to massacre if the allies landed on the Japanese mainland.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
It’s like with Dresden, while forgetting about Warsaw, Rotterdam and Coventry.
Did those same Japanese object when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor? Did they object when China was invaded, or any of the other countries they mercilessly attacked and killed civilians? They only objected when it hit them.
The residents of Hiroshima had nothing to do with the Shanghai killings. That sort of excuse is not only inaccurate, but immoral.
Actually, there was no excuse for using nuclear weapons on civilians in Japan. The Japanese were defeated, and near starvation. There was no urgency to invade Japan — except in the plans of Stalin.
Stalin’s agents encouraged us on high own behalf. He then swooped in to seize Manchuria and give Mao this region. Then he began a huge “bring the boys home” propaganda drive to get us out of the picture. Being a democracy, with no staying power in war, we eagerly began to dismantle our military.
But we never needed to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Why those cities? One of them just happened to have the highest proportion of Christians of anywhere in Japan. How did that help end the war?
Japan had been mostly leveled by the time of the atom bombs
we have been privileged to be able to read the NY Times long and thorough accounts of the strategic air campaign against Japan posted here on Free Republic.
between 300 and 500 B29's destroyed targets every day. Here's a partial photo of Tokyo
Why those cities?
I believe there large munition factories in both.
Agreed. I didn’t know until the recent threads that our domination of Japan was so complete that destroyers were shelling villages with impunity.
The international press doesn't care about the men who died... they care about 'sticking it' to the United States. The atomic bombs saved millions of lives - on all sides of the war...
It ended the WAR.
Because the man who would live.
The Man who would at he Wars end would live to meet/marry the woman who would become my Mom.
You see, that man, I would find out as a teenager was slated to be 1st wave of troops for the invasion of the Japanese Home Islands.
That is an exciting thing to learn, thanks for sharing.
A bit more perspective to the bombings.
Hiroshima Peace Park
Compare and contrast with Detroit today.
What a frickin' novel idea! It hasn't been tried in 70 years.
It was the threat of the Allies doing so that moved the emperor to capitulate. Japan didn’t know how many bombs we had and knew this would spell doom for their whole land if they guessed wrong.
One doesn’t have to dish out more than a sample sometimes under the right circumstances.
I'm sorry, but this is simply nonsense.
The military clique in charge of Japan had no intention of surrendering, and was fully prepared to have an Okinawa-type resistance across all of Japan. Their hope was that the horrendous US casualties would force the US to allow the clique to remain in control of Japan. Barring that, the entire Japanese population was expected to die in a glorious if futile defense of the Emperor.
The atomic bombings made it clear that the US possessed both the means and the will to annihilate Japan with no opportunity of resistance: i.e., no glory.
With no possibility of an "honorable" resistance, surrender became-- for the first time-- an option.
And even then, we made a huge breach of our unconditional surrender goals by promising to allow Hirohito to remain as Emperor.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both left untouched by earlier bombing raids precisely to impress the Japanese with the destructive power of atomic weapons.
Eugene Sledge (author of the Pacific War memoir, "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa") was slated to be in the first or second wave of the first planned assault on the main islands. There were to be five waves: the planners expected the first three to be utterly annihilated. Millions of Japanese civilians would have died as well.
Dropping the bombs was necessary. Choosing civilian targets versus government or military ones is debatable.
Keeping the Emperor if possible was a spiritual imperative for the Japanese situation. He was worshiped as a god. It’s good that America understood it, because it was, so to speak, the jiu jitsu pressure point to make all Japan yield.
So did the Germans.
the destruction of Japanese will was absolutely necessary
My Uncle
My uncle too, had just participated in the invasion of Okinawa as a Combat Engineer.
He and his associates, were not eager to go through that kind of thing again...
They were, as many cities were, of mixed use. I have read other stories that weather was part of what went into attacking those cities as opposed to other nearby cities.
And the Allies had leafleted the region not too many days before warning that the region was liable to bombing and that people should get out.
All in all, remarkably humane given the vengeance that Japan richly deserved.
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