[FRIZ]

The New York Times
August 5, 2003

Blood on Our Hands?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/05/opinion/05KRIS.html

Tomorrow will mark the anniversary of one of the most morally contentious events of the 20th century, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. And after 58 years, there's an emerging consensus: we Americans have blood on our hands.

There has been a chorus here and abroad that the U.S. has little moral standing on the issue of weapons of mass destruction because we were the first to use the atomic bomb. As Nelson Mandela said of Americans in a speech on Jan. 31, "Because they decided to kill innocent people in Japan, who are still suffering from that, who are they now to pretend that they are the policeman of the world?"

The traditional American position, that our intention in dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki was to end the war early and save lives, has been poked full of holes. Revisionist historians like Gar Alperovitz argue persuasively that Washington believed the bombing militarily unnecessary (except to establish American primacy in the postwar order) because, as the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey put it in 1946, "in all probability" Japan would have surrendered even without the atomic bombs.

Yet this emerging consensus is, I think, profoundly mistaken.

While American scholarship has undercut the U.S. moral position, Japanese historical research has bolstered it. The Japanese scholarship, by historians like Sadao Asada of Doshisha University in Kyoto, notes that Japanese wartime leaders who favored surrender saw their salvation in the atomic bombing. The Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up, so the peace faction seized upon the bombing as a new argument to force surrender.

"We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war," Koichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest aides, said later.

Wartime records and memoirs show that the emperor and some of his aides wanted to end the war by summer 1945. But they were vacillating and couldn't prevail over a military that was determined to keep going even if that meant, as a navy official urged at one meeting, "sacrificing 20 million Japanese lives."

The atomic bombings broke this political stalemate and were thus described by Mitsumasa Yonai, the navy minister at the time, as a "gift from heaven."

Without the atomic bombings, Japan would have continued fighting by inertia. This would have meant more firebombing of Japanese cities and a ground invasion, planned for November 1945, of the main Japanese islands. The fighting over the small, sparsely populated islands of Okinawa had killed 14,000 Americans and 200,000 Japanese, and in the main islands the toll would have run into the millions.

"The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war," Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief cabinet secretary in 1945, said later.

Some argue that the U.S. could have demonstrated the bomb on an uninhabited island, or could have encouraged surrender by promising that Japan could keep its emperor. Yes, perhaps, and we should have tried. We could also have waited longer before dropping the second bomb, on Nagasaki.

But, sadly, the record suggests that restraint would not have worked. The Japanese military ferociously resisted surrender even after two atomic bombings on major cities, even after Soviet entry into the war, even when it expected another atomic bomb — on Tokyo.

One of the great tales of World War II concerns an American fighter pilot named Marcus McDilda who was shot down on Aug. 8 and brutally interrogated about the atomic bombs. He knew nothing, but under torture he "confessed" that the U.S. had 100 more nuclear weapons and planned to destroy Tokyo "in the next few days." The war minister informed the cabinet of this grim news — but still adamantly opposed surrender. In the aftermath of the atomic bombing, the emperor and peace faction finally insisted on surrender and were able to prevail.

It feels unseemly to defend the vaporizing of two cities, events that are regarded in some quarters as among the most monstrous acts of the 20th century. But we owe it to history to appreciate that the greatest tragedy of Hiroshima was not that so many people were incinerated in an instant, but that in a complex and brutal world, the alternatives were worse.

[critter]

Those bombings saved untold numbers of lives-US and allied soldiers AS WELL AS Japanese-and I believe that to be a true and verifiable fact!

How can we know? DO NOT read history by revisionist liberal 'historians' who write history from the perspective of the current liberal, bleeding heart revisionist theorists.

Instead, read history from the pens of people who WERE THERE AT THE TIME. When you read first hand accounts of Japenese soldiers' wives. While their men were away at war, the (the wives!) were making plans to meet the invaders (US and alllies) on the beaches with nothing more than swords and knives!

Read the accounts of our Thunderbolts downing 15-20 Japanese Zeros in air battles with no losses AND the Japanese REPAINTING the zeros with US colors and hauling them around the country showing off their "WIN".

Considering the supreme arrogance the Japanese had toward their military and their inability to lose, (that is the reason we wiped out thier air force: their pilots were 'so good' they did not begin a training program for replacements till far too late) considering their religion and government were inseperable and based in the Emporor who could do no wrong and considering that nobody had the guts to report the actual military status to him, THEY WOULD STILL BE FIGHTING IF NOT FOR THE BOMBS! Even after the first one, they, in reality, said-BOY THAT WAS BAD. GOOD THING YOU ONLY HAVE ONE!.

I believe 'we did good'.

[Ol' Badger]

Some Buddhist scolded me once during an argument by saying “You call yourself a Christian and still drop bombs!” Imagine what we would drop if we weren’t Christians!

:D

[greyhound]

Critter-

That's exactly my take on history - we have a bunch of people putting 21st century (usually liberal but not always) moral and ethical values on things that happened in a different time.

Human life has not always been valued as sacred. What about the 6 million Jews who also died in WW II? I'm reading a book about the Pacific War called "With The Old Breed", and if the atrocities committed on our troops had anything to do with it, I'm sure Americans AT THAT TIME had little moral hesitancy to drop those bombs.

We also saw it after 9/11 when President Bush accidently said "Crusade".
The leftists howled and screamed about how the evil West had persecuted the noble Arabs. And this was about events 1,000 years ago!




:banghead:

[Ol' Badger]

Well it is a Crusade! We keep getting attacked for what we belive or do! Heck, and Arab that I work with keeps telling me how much better this Country will be if we do this and that. Well ya know what? I like working for a woman and with women! I like my drink and a well done Pork Chop! If you don't like it, well tuff! We might start dropping bigger bombs on you.

The World should count its blessing that the Biggest, Baddest MOFO on the block is the US of A! Who has forgiven more past enemies than us? Who bluids then back up after knocking then down into the dirt? No One!

OK. I'm done ranting. Sorry.

[matis]

Why don't you let me simplify this for you:


ANYTHING the US does, domestically or abroad to defend her interests and the lives of her citizens and soldiers...


IS WRONG AND EVIL.


No matter what we decide to do IT'S WRONG AND IMMORAL!


Because we're America. Because we are the richest and the freest (although we're losing that) nation in history. It is immoral, wrong and evil to enjoy affluence and freedom when so many in the world don't have that.

It is OUR FAULT that they don't have that.

Simply by existing we are EXPLOITING them. Even if we developed the necessary values and worked centuries to achieve our success and they sit sunk in superstition and raped by dictators who are from their own ranks -- it's still OUR FAULT!


We were wrong to use atom bombs on the Japanese then; we're wrong to go after the Islamo fascists now.

When attacked, the moral thing for us to do is wring our hands and ask ourselves how WE caused our poot attackers to hurt us. We must have hurt their feelings, somehow. Like by simply daring to live and breathe on the planet.



And it is also imperative to twist any and all of our actions out of context, to ignore the then current circumstances no matter how desperate and to apply only the highest of utopian "ethical" standards to our people who were fighting for their lives and to preserve our country and our freedom.


It also helps a lot to do all of the above and to decry "violence" generically, while enjoying the protection of, "...men who stand ready in the night to do violence on our behalf."



Now can you see how simple all this is?



P.S. This formula can apply without revision to Israel.




matis

[45King]

So what if we have blood on our hands? What gov't doesn't, either directly or indirectly (but mostly directly?)

Tough toenails. That's life (and death.) Deal with it.

[BowStreetRunner]

IIRC, after the first atom bomb was dropped it didnt make much of a difference to the military officers prosecuting the war.....they thought, "hey another city bombed, woopee"
BSR

[rrader]

Most folks in countries that were attacked, invaded or colonized by Japan, i.e., Australia, China, Korea, Vietnam, the Phillipines etc. still applaud our use of the A-bomb on Japan and wish we had dropped many more on them.

[TallPine]

I didn't read this past the first two lines .... :barf:

So does this Nicholas fellow remember Pearl Harbor?

For that, and the atrocities the Japanese committed in China, we should have melted all of the Japanese homeland. Left it as a barren waste for centuries as a monument.

But we were nice, instead.

[Art Eatman]

I had cousins imprisoned by the Japanese in Santo Tomas in Manila. Later, I went to school with kids with similar experiences in Santo Tomas and Cabanatuan.

As far as I'm concerned, "Made in America. Tested in Japan." is good enough for me.

Forgive? Yeah, well...Forget? Forget Pearl Harbor? Nanking? Manila? Nope. Not this ol' hoss.

Art

[hillbilly]

Another nitpicky historical reality which the revisionists willfuly overlook is the fact that the US Air Force killed more Japanese civilians by fire bombing Tokyo and other large cities with 1000 plane raids using conventional incendiaries than were killed in the two atomic bombings combined.

Yet, no one focuses on the firebombing campaigns because, well, they didn't involve nukes.

In fact, check out how many German civilians were killed by conventional bombing campaigns, and compare that number to how many were killed by the two nuke bombs.

But then again, to revisionist historians with political agendas, sheer numbers of deaths don't mean much. It's all in how the facts can be used to promote a specific outlook.

hillbilly

[JohnBT]

My father was in the Philappines when the bombs were dropped and the war with Japan suddenly ended. Coincidence? Okay, if you say so, but I don't believe it for a moment.

President Truman, wherever you are...

THANK YOU.

John

[atk]

TallPine,

You should go back and read the rest of it. The author starts by presenting some statements, then goes on to try and refute them.

[Sean Smith]

Hey folks, it helps your credibility if you read the whole thing. :rolleyes:

It feels unseemly to defend the vaporizing of two cities, events that are regarded in some quarters as among the most monstrous acts of the 20th century. But we owe it to history to appreciate that the greatest tragedy of Hiroshima was not that so many people were incinerated in an instant, but that in a complex and brutal world, the alternatives were worse.

[CZ-100]

Hey the Japs Started WWII.. We Finished it... Get over it. :what:

[saddenedcitizen]

First, I'm not going to forget Pearl Harbor either, but
Yep, was a 'sneak attack' partially because the Japanese
criptographer didn't get the 'declaration of war'
decoded/translated before the bombing actually started -
NOT that getting the declaration presented sooner
would have changed anything or justified the bombing.
Also, Pearl Harbor was PARTIALLY in response to the U.S.
stopping the sale of oil to Japan after Japan announced its
alliance with the Axis powers.
Not trying to justify ANYTHING here, just stating some things
that SEEM to be left out of school history books so please
leave the flamethrowers on standby !!!
Now, the Japanese were NOT going to surrender and invasion
estimates at that time were one-half to a million casualties.
Best line I ever heard (yes- in a movie but ..) was that 'the
Japanese would eat rocks before they would surrender that
island'
So, something had to be done (unless you feel the war should
have gone on forever).
Ergo, the atomic bomb - Yes it ended the war.
The reason it was used twice was 1) the Japanese did not
surrender after the 1st one and 2) they had to be shown
that the we could do this again and again and again if
necessary until there was NOTHING left of Japan.
I DO NOT FOR ONE MOMENT believe that what the U.S did was
wrong. It was WAR !! NOT a time to make nice and talk
pretty (which is about the only thing the U.N. does - but
that's another rant !!!).

[Duncan Idaho]

The New York Times How would I know if the article is fictional or not?

Sorry, can't waste my time.

[seeker_two]

Hey the Japs Started WWII.. We Finished it... Get over it.

THAT is the moral of the story....

A moral that any enemy that attacks the US should remember...:evil:

Remember the old days when people actually had a BACKBONE and a CLUE?...:D

[TallPine]

Also, Pearl Harbor was PARTIALLY in response to the U.S. stopping the sale of oil to Japan after Japan announced its alliance with the Axis powers.

And THAT is considered justification for war ???????????????

[Gordon Fink]

Also, Pearl Harbor was PARTIALLY in response to the U.S. stopping the sale of oil to Japan after Japan announced its alliance with the Axis powers.

Not trying to justify ANYTHING here …

It’s called reading comprehension. Give it a try. :D

~G. Fink

[BigG]

All the monday morning quarterbacking by the revisionists - woulda, shoulda, etc. means bupkis to me. If we have to do it over again, I would do it. :neener: to all jealous rodents! :neener:

[Tamara]

Club soda'll get that right off. ;)

[Mute]

Gee! And all along I thought that UC Berkely found that liberals were more nuanced and could see things with more ambiguity. Not black and white. :rolleyes:

Pretty pathetic when one has to refer to revisionist history to support one's point.

[atk]

Mute,

I thought that his point was "revisionist history is bull"...

[Mike Irwin]

Revisionist history is a wonderful thing.

Veterans groups in the 1990s just about went off the deep end, and with good reason, when someone finally thought about consulting them regarding the Smithsonian's proposed exhibit commemorating the end of World War II.

It had been written by revisionists, and the overriding theme is that the United States was the criminal agressor throughout the war, ending in the ultimate unpunished war crime, the dropping of the atomic bombs.

The fighting between the two groups got so bad that the Smithsonian finally scrapped its plans for what would have been a very grand, and very flawed, exhibit.

Revisionist historians are largely, in my experience, people whose politics are to the left, and whose sense of self-worth can only be defined as the desire to be guilty, and spread guilt.

A lot has been made about Japanese plans to surrender, that the atomic bombs weren't necessary because Japan was trying to open negotiations.

The historic record simply doesn't bear that out. Even after the atomic bombs were dropped, and the Emperor decided that he would order the nation to submit, elements inside the Japanese military planned a coup to prevent the Emperor from making the announcement.

It is clear that they had no qualms about destroying the Japanese nation while killing as many Americans as possible, and they were prepared to overthrow and even kill the Emperor if necessary.

The Japanese, as a nation, have NEVER come to terms with the crimes that they perpetrated in the name of Asian hemogeny. Japanese history books, if they address the issue of WW II at all, normally mention only the atomic bombings and the firebombing of Japanese cities, but conveniently leave out Japanese atrocities in China, Korea, the Philippines, and other nations which they supposedly "liberated" from Western imperialists.

In many ways, in my mind, the Japanese are even more reprehensible than the French in that sense.

[Mute]

Mute,

I thought that his point was "revisionist history is bull"...

Yes. I was referring to those who actually believe that the atomic bombings were great atrocities.

[Khornet]

AUGUST THANKSGIVING

Hampton Sides, in his excellent book Ghost Soldiers, describes events of December 14, 1944 at Puerto Princesa Prison Camp in the Philippines. There 150 American soldiers, survivors of the Bataan Death March, were held captive as slave laborers. Japanese Lieutenant Sato herded the prisoners into their air raid shelters, telling them that a large force of American bombers was approaching. Mr. Sides describes the shelters:

"They were primitive, nothing more than narrow slits dug four feet deep and roofed with logs covered over with a few feet of dirt. There were three main trenches, each about a hundred feet long. On both ends, the structures had tiny crawl-space entrances that admitted one man at a time. Approximately fifty men could fit inside each one, but they had to pack themselves in with their knees tucked under their chins." One prisoner, James Stidham, injured during an earlier bombing raid and now paralyzed, was placed on a stretcher outside the entrance of one of the pits, to be dragged inside if necessary.

Once the Americans were packed in the shelters, Japanese soldiers appeared with buckets and flung the contents into the shelters. The smell told the Americans that it was high-octane aviation fuel, and seconds later the Japanese tossed torches into the trenches and they exploded in fire. Desperate prisoners, bathed in liquid fire, attempted to crawl out of the entrances. They were cut down with machine guns. As for James Stidham, "A soldier stepped over to him and with a perfunctory glance fired two slugs into his face."

The few survivors, badly burned and crawling desperately toward the jungle, were tortured and then bayoneted. Three or four, however, were overlooked and later escaped to tell the tale.

By December 1944 the tide of the war had clearly turned against the Japanese, and it has been argued that grisly mass murders like the one at Puerto Princesa were the acts of a cornered and wounded animal. How, then to explain the events at Nanking? When that Chinese city was captured by the Japanese, they were at the height of their power, victorious wherever they went. None of the Allies were at war with Japan, and no Japanese territory had felt the lash of bomber fleets. Yet, in Nanking, from December to March 1937, the Imperial Army embarked on an orgy of slaughter. At least 250,000 civilians were murdered. Tens of thousands of women and girls were raped and then murdered, usually brutally and slowly. Laughing Japanese soldiers tossed babies into the air and caught them on their bayonets. Brave international observers and aid workers, doing their best to check the bloodbath, confirmed the stories of barbarity.

Multiculturalists insist that all cultures are valid, and that it is bigoted to judge another culture in light of our own. I wonder how they would approach the Japanese culture of World War II, for it was one whose racism, brutality, and sheer sadism left the Nazis far behind. But in those unenlightened days, the minds of the West had not yet been emasculated by Multiculturalism, and so on Aug. 6, 1945 the most vicious culture of the 20th century was consumed by hellfire. Continued on page 2


AUGUST THANKSGIVING page 2

Imagine the Pacific world conquered by the Japanese. How many times would Nanking and Puerto Princesa have been repeated? What would have been the scene in Australia or Hawaii? Our only guide is the behavior of Dai Nippon up to the moment it was crushed; the leopard does not change its spots.

So every August we should thank heaven for Fat Man and Little Boy and what they did to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In their terrible fireballs a truly monstrous culture vanished, hopefully forever, and certainly to the benefit of everyone, including Japan. The murderous philosophy of Bushido was deeply ingrained in the Japanese mind, and could not be educated out of them. There was no logic which would remove it; by August 1945 it was clear to all, including the Japanese leaders, that defeat was inevitable. Still they fought on fanatically, not for victory, but only to kill as many Americans as possible before they themselves went down. Nuclear fire vaporized Bushido and made possible the thriving, peaceful democracy which is modern Japan. If not for the mission of the Enola Gay, and the bravery and sacrifice of Allied soldiers in the years leading up to it, Japan would have continued unchecked in its descent into hell, for there was nothing at all in the Japanese world to stop it.

Winston Churchill famously said of such nations that "They are either at your throat or at your feet." A people who can do what Japan did are incapable of occupying a middle ground. They can either put the world to the sword, or, as today, renounce arms with the same pathologic intensity, but they cannot carry a sword to be drawn only in self-defense.


Each year at this time in America you can count on the appearance of self-righteous demonstrations lamenting the horror of August 1945. It's in our national character to be gnawed by conscience over our sins. It's part of what made us willing to spill the blood of so many of our young men to free Europe and Asia from worse than slavery, and, irritating though the ignorance of peaceniks may be, we must remember that they couldn't march or even exist if we weren't a fundamentally good nation. While we blush with shame over the internment of our Japanese-Americans, and rightly so, we should also take a moment to recognize the deafening silence in Japan today about Nanking and a thousand other atrocities. As the well-intentioned fools release their doves this year at Ground Zero in Hiroshima, let us remember that there would be no such peace demonstrations anywhere along the Pacific Rim if America hadn't rained destruction on the Japanese Empire.

What lit up the sky over Hiroshima on that August morning in 1945 was not the dawning of a new age of terror. It was the Rising Sun not of Imperial Japan, but of a new age of lasting peace, the completion of the world's emancipation from a racist horror, and the beginning of the liberation of the Japanese people from themselves.

Michael R. Bowen M.D.

[HBK]

Every year a buddy of mine has an essay question asking whether or not we should have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan. THe kids that I work with all usually get the point that we savd a lot of lives by dropping those bombs. I don't know about the others. The sad thing is that sometimes when I'm talking to a kid, he's never heard what the price of invading Japan could have been in American lives.

[atk]

Mute,

I apologize: I completely misunderstood your point. Thanks for clearing it up :)

[roscoe]

People sure were quick to misunderstand the article! Prickly bunch!

NPR had a story a few months ago about how a recent study concluded that the cancer rates were no higher in Nagasaki and Hiroshima than any other Japanese city. Despite this fact, it is official Japanese government policy than ANY case of cancer in those two cities is a result of the bombing.

[DF357]

demorcraaps - the same thing.


Scenario,

It's August 1945, you are President. The bombs are ready and can end the war. Nearly a half a million Americans have already died since Pearl Harbor, in Europe, the Pacific and else where.

You'd probably look at it this way - "One more dead American or thousands more dead Japs? mmmmm let me see, which will it be ?? "

[Deepdiver]

Seems to me the real, true, "unrevised" history has documented how brutal, vicious, inhuman, and barbarous the Japanese were in their treatment of their enemies (combatants, non-combatant civilians, and POW's alike).

...what ultimately happened to them as a result of their attacks on the US, was FAR LESS than they deserved.

Gar Alperovitz, Nelson Mandela, and the rest of these slack-jawed "revisionists" are just trying to re-write history according to their own wish-world, to make up for their own inadequacy.

If we Americans have blood on our hands, then we have a lot to be proud of, because it shows that we are one of the few nations on this earth that is willing to make a stand for what is morally right.

[Dorrin79]

did any of ya'll actually read the article?

He's basically saying that, as terrible as using nuclear weapons against the Japanese was, it was the best option we had, and saved numerous lives.

I can't find much to disagree with there, personally.

[T.Stahl]

Argh, this annual Japanese moaning is really getting on my nerves. :barf:

[longeyes]

NANKING.

What goes around comes around.

Mandela should worry about the baby rape in his own country.

[DaveB]

Paul Fussell's "Thank God for the Atom Bomb" (1988) is recommended reading.

db

[Standing Wolf]

I think I can simplify the entire discussion: we won.

It was a war between a totalitarian régime that trampled on and terrorized much of Asia and a freedom-loving republic on another continent far across the world's largest ocean. Japan started the war without provocation or just cause. Japan lost the war after considerable bloodshed.

If revisionist self-styled "historians" want to snivel and whine about it at this late date, that's their right; it's my right, however, to be glad my father remained in defeated Germany instead of being shipped halfway around the world to fight and perhaps die in Japan.

Never start a fight you can't finish.

[HankB]

In college, when I was satisfying my "fuzzy subject" requirement, I had a history professor who made the preposterous argument that . . . the U.S. could have demonstrated the bomb on an uninhabited island . . . He got really upset - but had no reply - when I said words to the effect of "Professor, dropping the first bomb on Hiroshima killed 80,000 people and destroyed virtually all the infrastructure in a modern industrial city. Yet it wasn't until two more events - Russia's declaration of war and the second atomic bomb - that Japan surrendered. How can you keep a straight face and claim that roasting a few coconuts on some desert island would cause Imperial Japan to surrender, when nuking a major city wasn't enough? Are you saying Imperial Japan valued coconuts more than their own people?"

BTW, my father fought the Japs in WWII, and was part of the early occupation forces. They weren't nearly as beaten as some would claim . . . they had caves, enlarged into tunnels, that you could drive a deuce and a half into for half a mile, with side tunnels absolutely FILLED with munitions. Consensus is that Japs on other islands were running short of supplies not just because of U.S. naval and air interdiction efforts, but because the Imperial Japanese Government was stockpiling supplies for a "last man" defense of the home islands. A Honshu invasion would've made Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Guadalcanal look like a cake walk.

[4v50 Gary]

I enjoyed the article. The author doesn't condemn what we did and brings out the viewpoint that the bombs empowered the peace faction to prevail. I've always maintained that dropping those bombs count as the greatest acts of humanity we showed to the Japanese.

We saved countless lives - Japanese, American and Allied by giving Japan an opportunity to surrender. The alternative would have been starvation or invasion; both of which would have resulted in millions of casualties.

Dropping the bomb cut the war short, allowed the Japanese to save some face and brought a lot of our boys (and our PoWs) home alive. God Bless Truman for having the balls to help the Japanese see the light!

BTW, good point HankB. Betcha only got a B 'cuz you reddened the Perfesser's face. :D

As a sidenote, both bombs were transported by rail to SF Hunter's Point shipyard where they were loaded onto ships for the Far East. I guess that makes SF an Atomic Age City and a participant of those noble deeds.

[Drjones]

Friz:

Shame on you!

You should know better than to take seriously anything the NYT says!!!

If you didn't, well, now you do. The NYT is a liberal rag, unworthy of even toilet paper duty.

[Waitone]

A few random thoughts

--Hiroshima=bad, Nagasaki=bad
--Tokyo firebombing=good? Dresden=good?
--US planners of the invasion of Japan estimated initial troop needs at 800,000 trooops.
--Closer we got to Japan in island hopping the higher the casuality rate.
--The last major engagements approached 25% US casualties and virtually 100% Japanese casualties
--800,000 X .25 = 200,000 US casualties
--God alone knows how may Japanese would have died in a ground assault.
--By the time of the assault on Berlin the US was in serious personnel shortages.
--Japanese casualties in Tokyo's firebombing and Germany's Dresden firebombing are about the same as the two Japanese cities we nuked.

--Now why is morally wrong to die via heat and blast effect from a nuclear device but it is ok to die from heat and blast effect of firebombing?
--Theologians call it "selective depravity."
--I just love it when contemporary moralists impose 21st moral frameworks on historical events. In my view that is just as hypocritical as having two current standards.

Fewer people on both sides died because of the nuclear devices than would have died had we used blowtorches and corkscrews.

Ergo, nuclear weapons are morally superior.

[Mike Irwin]

A little aside....

In preparation for the invasion of Japan, the United States churned out a HUGE excess of military decorations, including Purple Hearts, a number that was sufficient to cover awards to those wounded in Korea, Vietnam, and right up through to the first Persian Gulf War.

I think they finally ran out around 1993.

[telomerase]

Personally I find it bizarre that bombing of millions of civilians is OK but bombing God-Emperors (or dictators of any sort) is not.

However, if you're looking for US WWII atrocities, civilian bombing is not the place to start. Look up Operation Keelhaul. The US rounded up millions of Russian ethnics from Western Europe, using troops and flamethower tanks, and shipped them to the Gulag to die. Now, that's a war crime! (Another proof that FDR and his ilk were truly the greatest generation).

BTW, if you never heard of Operation Keelhaul before the Google search that you're about to do... ask yourself why not.

[13A]

It took TWO nukes. The first didn't convince the Japanese to surrender. Thank God the second DID. As far as I'm concerned, the nukes were required. BOTH of them.

[Butch]

Let us see , the Japs started the war , They raped & murdered women & children, they executed POW's from every country they fought . We should show them mercy. THE MERCY OF GOD!!!!! THE ONLY THING WE DID WRONG WAS NOT WAITING UNTIL WE HAD ENOUGH BOMBS TO COMPLETLY ANNIALATE THE WHOLE [B]NATION

[Deepdiver]

did any of ya'll actually read the article?

I admit - I got pissed off before I finished the first paragraph.

Why couldn'd he just come out and say what the rest of us have said in this thread, with only a handful of words. Instead we had to wade through his "vomitus" to get to what we all knew.

[Dilettante]

He didn't write it for us -- he wrote it for NYT readers. Pretty different group.

I've got a different question for y'all. Was it worth invading Japan in the first place?

We hit them extremely hard between 1941 and 1945. We, with the Brits and Russians, eliminated their (stronger) ally. We destroyed most of their Navy and Air Force and ended any possibility of an East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Nobody else was going to be pulling any surprise attacks on the USA after that.

The point of "unconditional surrender" was to make sure that Japan wouldn't rise again as a threat, the way that Germany did after WWI. But we still fought two pretty big wars in places that used to be part of Japan's empire.

Many years ago a guy from Taiwan told me a story about how Mao Tse-Tung came to power. It seems that Chiang Kai-Shek had a shortage of manpower to fight the rebels and patrol the countryside--so he started to use some of the former Japanese troops, many of whom were still in China, since they had never been forced to go back. People hated this so much that many of them went over to Mao.

As everybody knows, we spent most of the next forty years fighting Communists in Asia in one way or another. We're still dealing with Kim Il-Sung's demon progeny in Korea (but not as much as the North Koreans have to).

I have to ask if we really had our priorities straight. :banghead:

[444]

You mess with the bull, you are gonna get the horns.

[Erik]

"Revisionist historians..."

Yup.

The world was a different place, and we owe nobody much of anything, least of all apologies for H&N.

[greyhound]

So here's an Interesting thought...

what if we had the bomb gefore Germany surrendered?

would we have dropped it on them?

and how would that have affected the Russians and the ensuing Cold War?

hmmmmm

[Dilettante]

Yes, we would have used it. We might have ended the war pretty quickly after that (especially if Hitler was killed in an atomic strike).

My uneducated guess: we probably would have let the Russians occupy part of Germany, but if we won in late '44 (for example), there would not have been Soviet troops positioned throughout eastern Europe. If we were lucky, there mght have been no Cold War, or we might have won sooner.

Caleb Carr had an interesting essay like that in one of the "What If?" history books. But instead of an atomic bomb, his counterfactual was if Eisenhower had told our troops to keep pressing east at a critical point in 1944.

[Oatka]

Years back I read where the "Should we have dropped the Bomb?" question was asked of the Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese, et al.

They replied, "Why did you drop only two?"

In Aug, of '44, the Japs issued a "Kill Everybody" command to the prison commanders, if Japan was invaded. So, not even counting invasion casualties, about 200,000 lives of allied prisoners were saved when they dropped the bomb. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

As the Taliban and Saddamites are finding out, it's not a good idea to get the Americans p!$$ed off.

[Dilettante]

This is a different point of view, lifted from an old Bladeforums thread by Ken Cook (I think you can find him now at USN).
Some days I feel the same way.

Original thread:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=181908

I don't pretend to have the answers Hugh.

FWIW, I am vehemently "Anti-Nuke."

What? A "Hawk" like me being anti-nuke? It can't BE!


It's true though.

I spent ten years in uniform, both as a Soldier and a Marine, and then as now, I was a thinking man.

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself "What is a Nuclear weapon?"

A Nuclear weapon is a weapon designed and intended to be used against non-combatants. Civilians. Men, women, children, Doctors, Nurses, Burger Flippers, Tire Changers, Car Washers, Maids, Mothers, etc.

As a military man, (I no longer wear the uniform but I will always be a military man and a Marine.) I have no problem with the idea of killing soldiers of any opposing force. None what-so-ever. But no power on earth could ever persuade me to wage war on civilians and this is the only possible use of any "strategic" nuclear arsenal.

These are the things I was taught as a Marine.
(Interestingly, I was not taught these things as a Soldier.)

The professional warrior does no more damage than that required to complete the mission.

The professional warrior does not target non-combatants.

The professional warrior will not target hospitals, churches, or schools.

Doing these things constitutes commission of War Crimes and the Marine Corps will always seek out and vigourously punish war criminals regardless of what uniform they wear.

I loathe all that a nuclear missle represents. I despise all that it stands for, and everything it symbolizes whether people understand that symbolism or not.

Having said all of that however;
I understand that as long as anyone has them, we must have them also.

I understand that we must squander billions of dollars in an arms race that no one in their right mind would ever want to win.

I understand that if one side ever acheives a clear "superiority" in that arms race, that they will probably blow the ever loving Hell out of whoever's on the other side of the pond.

US?
Would WE do that?
To date, the United States in the only nation on Earth that has ever deployed nuclear weapons against an enemy in war.
We did it twice.

Many argue that we did the right thing by dropping the bomb. That countless thousands, possibly millions of lives were saved.

Bullshyte.

The question is, "who" died so that "who else" could live?

Easy.

Civilians died so that soldiers wouldn't have to.
That's called a War Crime.

Would we have had to "take Japan in house to house fighting" as has often been said in an effort to "explain away" our use of nuclear weapons?

I don't see why. Japan was out of money, out of friends, and out of fuel. If we'd blockaded their major ports, they'd have had no choice but to surrender.

But we wanted something flashy.

Boom.

Now?
Well now the Genie is out of the bottle and will never be put back.

I once heard someone say that living during the Cold War was like walking around drenched in gasoline and everyone in the world had a match.

Nothing's changed.

So build missles, build anti missle missles, build anti anti missle missles, and then build more missles. Toss in a few suitcase sized "Christmas Crackers" for the kiddies and don't sweat the small stuff, it's just a matter of time til someone screws up and kills all of us.

Fock nuclear weapons.

[Sean Smith]

Saying we shouldn't have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan is basically an appeal to magic.

Such a belief is based on the false premise that any politician in the oval office in 1945 could have done anything BUT nuke Japan.

It is based on the further false premise that any of the belligerents in 1939-1945 would refrain from conventional strategic bombing, which was developed to the point in 1945 where it could wipe out more people in a single large raid than the nukes used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki did. Put another way, the tiny number of atomic bombs we had in 1945 weren't a way to kill more people, but merely to do it in a novel way with fewer planes that would have a greater psychological impact on the enemy. Check the numbers: 100,000+ Japanese were roasted alive in one firebombing raid in March 1945.

It is based on yet another false premise, that a conventional invasion wouldn't wipe out vast numbers of civilians as an inevitable side-effect... a simple non-possibility with 1945 military technologies and doctrines (see what happened in Berlin in 1945 for details).

It further requires you to ignore that Japan had the most advanced biological weapon program on Earth in 1945, a program that had been used in 1945 to decimate various villages in China, and to belive that they would not use such weapons on the beachhead of a U.S. invasion of the Japanese mainland.

[Waitone]

As a military man, (I no longer wear the uniform but I will always be a military man and a Marine.) I have no problem with the idea of killing soldiers of any opposing force. None what-so-ever. But no power on earth could ever persuade me to wage war on civilians and this is the only possible use of any "strategic" nuclear arsenal.

These are the things I was taught as a Marine.
(Interestingly, I was not taught these things as a Soldier.)

The professional warrior does no more damage than that required to complete the mission.

The professional warrior does not target non-combatants.

The professional warrior will not target hospitals, churches, or schools.

Doing these things constitutes commission of War Crimes and the Marine Corps will always seek out and vigourously punish war criminals regardless of what uniform they wear.

I loathe all that a nuclear missle represents. I despise all that it stands for, and everything it symbolizes whether people understand that symbolism or not. Noble sentiment made possible by the passage of time, change in war tactics, improvement in technology, and a change in the general understanding of warfare all brought about the retrospective of the horrors of war.

Again, explain why the destruction of Hiroshma and Nagisaki by a nuclear device is fundamentally different from a moral stand point from the destruction of Dresden and Tokyo by conventional firebombing tactics. WWII was an age where both sides experimented with strategic bombing and it limits. Both sides deliberately lit up civilians. Both sides deliberately sought to introduce unmitigated horror on opposing civilian populations. Both sides were doing things today we'd describe as war crimes. . . . . .but you simply can not take todays definitions and retroactively apply them to previous historical events.

I hope we as a society never, ever find ourselves in a position again where it is kill or be killed on such a massive scale. I hope, but I don't believe. We will at some point in our future be faced with the same moral dilemma only worse. We will no doubt have to make decisions we do not want to make. More than likely we will be face with the absolute horror of asymetric warfare where we are faced with a couple of smoking holes where cities existed or wastelands because of god-awlful biological agents created by stoneage cave dwellers. Our decision will be to exercise asymetric warfare in reverse or simply forgive and forget. Human nature tells me forgive and forget will not win.

[Delmar]

I personally don't know of anyone who loves atomic weapons dropped on cities any more than anyone loved their M-16 as an infantry man to take out a village in Viet Nam.
Yet, every time they patrolled past it, they lost one of their patrol. Nobody is wearing a uniform there, but you know they are setting the man traps while you're not looking. Some may be civilians, and some may be the bomb makers and snipers, so you do your job-not because it makes you proud, but because you have to. You're gonna call in the artillery if it gets rough or air strikes if needed. Maybe you're not dropping nukes, but you will never like that part of you for being forced to do what you had to.

I'm not about to second guess Harry Truman for dropping the A-bombs. For one thing, I wasn't there. Secondly, he had a whole lot of men and women to be responsible for, and if it came out that he had the nuke and invaded anyway, with the large loss of life on both sides-that, I would call criminal. If I am called a beast or a war criminal for doing so-by all means, roll the dice and take me to trial, because my job is the welfare of Americans. First. Last. And Always. I heard one of the pilots over Dresden asked in an interview as to whether he felt any guilt. No, he said. He doubted there were any Jews down there.

[Edward429451]

Bout a year or so ago I did a plumbing service call for a real old guy. Shrunken, aged, no spark. Pointed me towards the kitchen where the leak was and said just take it easy on me (meaning the bill).

Well he had his house all done up in militaria (WWII). Pics, dusty medals, all that stuff. When I was finishing up, I had to say something, so I did. You's in the war huh? He immediately brightened up and started talking. Asked if I had a few minutes to listen to a story or two. I did.

Seems he was on one of the planes or one of the ships, can't remember, that was involved or near the atomic bombs that hit Japan. Says them cities burned like tissue paper. He saw it firsthand. He kept making the point that alot of folks think we didn't need to kill all those japs and they just dont know what they're talkin about, we saved a lot of lives son, he said. They wouldn't a stopped, we had to, and we did it by God!

That guys spark was back and he sat on the edge of his chair recounting the good and the bad of the war. Very animated. He showed me his Garand (Not dusty I noticed!). We talked for two hours until I just had to leave. I told him I was honored to meet him and hear his firsthand account of his experiance. He said he was glad that I was interested. There's a lot to be learned from history if you get the straight of it, he said.

At the time, I didn't understand what he meant by we saved a lot of lives by dropping the bombs on them. I was feeling too much respect for the man to provoke a political debate or asking dumb questions, so let it go and let him talk.

This thread answered that for me and now I understand exactly what he meant. It was a moving experiance to hear a firsthand account, and it just about brang tears to my eyes remembering and recounting it to you all.

I know I made his day just taking the time to let him talk. Keep that in mind next time an oldster asks if you got a few minutes to spare to talk. You never know who you might be talking to... :)

[Dilettante]

(Waitone)
Again, explain why the destruction of Hiroshma and Nagisaki by a nuclear device is fundamentally different from a moral stand point from the destruction of Dresden and Tokyo by conventional firebombing tactics.

It isn't.
In some ways the targeting of civilians was more blatant in the firebombings than with the atomic bomb. An atomic bomb is pretty much all-or-nothing (and back then they didn't have "little" ones).

Somebody made an aside about Jews in Dresden. Amazingly there were a few dozen still there. There was a pretty famous one, a writer named Klemperer (no, not the Hogan's Heroes guy ;) ) who was nearly arrested, but managed to escape because of the firebombing.

A lot of these decisions are covered in Richard Rhodes, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb".
The Army Air Force was sending a third bomb to the Pacific, planning to use it a week or so after Nagasaki.
Truman ordered them not to use it without checking with him, to avoid more killing of civilians.
By the way, it took longer than we had expected for the news to get out after the first bombing. Most of Hiroshima's communications were destroyed in the bombing, and it took a few days before people outside the city understood the scale of destruction.
It is also true that some of the high Japanese military thought that the first bomb was a fluke.

Edward: great work!! There isn't too much time left to get those WW2 stories from the guys who lived it.

[Dilettante]

(Waitone)
Again, explain why the destruction of Hiroshma and Nagisaki by a nuclear device is fundamentally different from a moral stand point from the destruction of Dresden and Tokyo by conventional firebombing tactics.

It isn't.
In some ways the targeting of civilians was more blatant in the firebombings than with the atomic bomb. An atomic bomb is pretty much all-or-nothing (and back then they didn't have "little" ones).

Somebody made an aside about Jews in Dresden. Amazingly there were a few dozen still there. There was a pretty famous one, a writer named Klemperer (no, not the Hogan's Heroes guy ;) ) who was nearly arrested, but managed to escape because of the firebombing.

A lot of these decisions are covered in Richard Rhodes, "The Making of the Atomic Bomb".
The Army Air Force was sending a third bomb to the Pacific, planning to use it a week or so after Nagasaki.
Truman ordered them not to use it without checking with him, to avoid more killing of civilians.
By the way, it took longer than we had expected for the news to get out after the first bombing. Most of Hiroshima's communications were destroyed in the bombing, and it took a few days before people outside the city understood the scale of destruction.
It is also true that some of the high Japanese military thought that the first bomb was a fluke.

Edward: great work!! There isn't too much time left to get those WW2 stories from the guys who lived it.

[Khornet]

welcome aboard. Hope you stick around.

Interesting article you posted. Guy sorta did a Smedley Butler. His reasoning holds together until he gets to historic fact, then falls apart: saying that as soon as one side achieves clear superiority in thearms race, it will blow 'the loving hell' out of the other side...we did it twice.

But we had clear superiority by '89 and have had it since, and have been repeatedly attacked since then, in some cases by organizations we could locate, e.g. the Taliban in Afghanistan, and we didn't nuke 'em. And we had clear superiority for a good while after WWII before the Rosenbergs clued in the Russians, and we didn't nuke them, either.

The deciding factor: AMERICA had the bomb, not Russia, Japan, or Germany. It so pleased God that the bomb would first be held by the one nation least likely to use it callously, and to withold it form the others until such time as America's clear superiority held them in check and kept them from using it as they surely would have done if they had nothing to fear.

Yes, it could be argued that our use of the bomb was callous. It could be argued, but it is wrong. And our subsequent handling of our overwhelming power bears that out.

[faustulus]

The Japanese surrenedered when we made it known they could keep their emperor, had we not made that concession they would never have agreed.
Dropping the bomb was not an easy thing then or a quick decions as most would believe. Truman brooded over the decision. (see his diary entries from July 16 1945 on)
There was a debate over whether or not to use it (remember there were only two) If something went wrong there was a chance to actually strengthen the Japanese resolve (who were talking peace).
The federal council of churches petitioned Truman not to drop the second bomb when they heard about Hiroshima. They were in the minority but there was already some feeling of regret.
Many people were caught up in strong emotions during the WWII. Hatred of the Japanese led to one of the worst moment in America's history with the concentration caps out west for Americans of Japanese descent. Logic and reason were not the order of the day. It was a bad deal all around.
Stopping the war was only one of Truman's goals.
Truman also hoped to make a statement to the Russians, who were slow to join the fight in the Pacific.
There was a group of officials who argued it was stupid to spend all this money on a project and not drop the bomb.
The point of this is that there is no such thing as a black and a white when it comes to history, anyone who believes so hasn't seen all the sides. Whether America was right or wrong doesn't really matter any more, it is done now and just like Russia can't take back her Stalin years and Germany can't take back its Holocaust, America can't take back the bombing.
I think everyone can agree that WWII wasn't the highlight of human history.

[John/az]

Ol'Badger said:

Some Buddhist scolded me once during an argument by saying “You call yourself a Christian and still drop bombs!” Imagine what we would drop if we weren’t Christians!


Buddhists? :D

[CGofMP]

Daddy told me when I was in grade school "Never START a fight, but always FINISH it."

The quiet and refined gentle people of Japan STARTED a fight.

In Hiroshima and Nagasaki we FINISHED it.

Could we have done it with men holding M1 Garands? Sure. But why kill our people when killing theirs works as well or better.

Good for the U.S.A.

[Selfdfenz]

Years ago during the NV War my Father (WWII vet) summed it up this way, "You fight a war to win it".

I'm not too sure that might not be the "Golden Rule of Warfare" and what historians think 50 years later matters not one whit when the next war begins.

Not too many history books make it into the foxholes.
S-

[bountyhunter]

This boils down to a question about how wars end: does the agressor simply get to walk away after it is going badly (when we had pounded the japanese fleet into submission) or is the agressor forced to surrender unconditionally?

Looking at history, the answer is obvious: even when we fought ourselves in the Civil War, the losing side was not afforded an easy out at the end.

The point is that it is a documented fact that we found the defensive plans that japan would have used to defend it's islands and how many troops would be deployed. We can accurately say that we would have lost in excess of one million Americans in the conquering of the mainland of Japan.

The Japanese whiners we have been forced to stroke out here in kali because of the "war crimes" against the Japanese Nationals who were interred in camps during WWII keep saying we should have just sailed home, that japan was already defeated.

Maybe, but that is not how wars are fought, and it is not how they end. If you don't like the way wars are conducted, the solution is to not start them.

BTW: in partial answer to the "reparations for internment" song which is heard endlessly out here, I would offer this: the precision with which the attack on Pearl harbor was carried out and the timing as to when all ships were in port showed the japanese had spies living there. They also had spies on our mainland. Was it extreme paranoia to inter all suspected persons of Japanese ancestry? Yes, but being attacked and dragged into war fosters paranoia, and if you don't like that.... don't start wars.

[bountyhunter]

Somebody made an aside about Jews in Dresden. Amazingly there were a few dozen still there.

True. There were also many thousands of Chinese and Philipino slave laborers who were inadvertently killed in the bombings of Hiroshima and nagasaki. It's unfortunate for sure, but the moral responsibilty lies with those who used them as slave labor (expressly forbidden by the geneva convention), not with the bombing of military targets.

[bountyhunter]

Some argue that the U.S. could have demonstrated the bomb on an uninhabited island......

I howl with laughter every time I hear this ridiculous proposal. We dropped the first bomb on Hiroshima, they saw the devastation, and still refused to surrender. Hence, the need to drop the second.

Yet, somehow, the apologists now claim that demonstrating it on an uninhabited islnd would have caused them to surrender?

Talk about re-writing history!

[T.Stahl]

slave labor (expressly forbidden by the geneva convention),
Did Japan even sign that and similar conventions?
And did the US?


My grandma wasn't in Dresden, but she was one of the refugees in Chemnitz when it was bombed just for the sake of killing as many civilians as possible. She barely escaped from the cellar she was hiding in when the liquid phosphor was flowing in.
But I don't hear her moaning and whining like the Japanese do every <beep> year.

[faustulus]

The absurdity of this is we are arguing over moral high ground. It is like pigs in a mud hole arguing who is dirtier.