Dad's Take (WWII Vet) on the Nuke

[hso]

My father served in WWII and never for a moment thought that the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki wasn't needed and saved American lives as well as those of Japanese civillians.

An upper estimate of a quarter of a million total Japanse lives lost from the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are less than the low estimate of a million Japanese lives expected to have been lost in the invasion of Japan. By those numbers Japanese lives were saved by the use of the atomic bombs in Japan by a factor of 4 to one. The estimates on American lives saved by not having to invade Japan range from 1/4 million to a million American lives. Regardless of how you look at things the use of the atomic bombs on Japan saved far far more enemy and American lives than were lost in the bombings.

 

[Standing Wolf]

Wars are supposed to be won, not discussed ad infinitum.

Once upon a time, it appears we knew better than to fight land wars in Asia.

 

[HankB]

My late father fought with the 3rd Air Commando Group in WWII. When the bomb dropped, he was actually on a troop transport "somewhere" in the Pacific. At first, they didn't know what to make of the announcement, but then the ship's captain came on the PA and explained that we had a secret weapon, a bomb so powerful that one would destroy a city . . . Dad said he NEVER saw such a happy bunch of guys, before or since. They looked at each other, and said . . . "We're actually going to get to go home!!!"

An editorial in today's paper made a cogent observation: doubts grow about the bomb's use as the doubter gets further in time and space from the actual fighting.

In college, I took a class on "The effects of nuclear energy on society" which was jointly taught by both a "Social Science" professor and a (goofy) History professor. One day in class, the latter was railing about our "improper" use of the bomb. He said we should have staged a "demonstration" for the Japs by arranging for Jap observers to watch the bomb dropped on some uninhabited island. I raised my hand and asked "Sir, as a professor of HISTORY, I was just wondering . . . how do you manage to say something THAT ridiculous with a straight face???"

Upset, he asked me what I meant.

"Professor, at Hiroshima, we dropped a bomb that wiped out a whole city and killed 80,000 people in an instant. That sort of demonstration would convince any rational person that the war was hopeless, yet the Japs fought on . . . Russia declared war, and the Japs fought on . . . it wasn't until a SECOND bomb was delivered ON ANOTHER CITY that the Japs decided they'd had enough, and even then, a military coup against their own emperor was narrowly averted, largely through luck. And now you stand with your revisionist history more than thirty years later, and suggest that nuking a few COCONUTS would have caused the Japs to surrender? Do you really BELIEVE that asinine nonsense, or are you just trying to see if anyone in class is paying attention to what you're saying?"

His reaction? He berated me for using the perjorative word "Japs."

I asked him, since we WERE talking about WWII, if he preferred "Nips."

At this point, not just the rest of the class, but even the other professor was laughing. He (the other professor) said to the history professor "Pete, I think he's got you there."

P.S. I ended up with an "A" in the class, thanks, no doubt, to the social science professor.

P.P.S. I do a "little" stamp collecting, and during the Clinton administration, the Post Office, over several years, issued a series of stamps commemorating WWII, year by year. When it came to commemorating 1945, the original set had a stamp referencing Hiroshima . . . at the request of the Japanese government, that Bill Clinton pressured the Post Office to remove that stamp from the set.

They did. :banghead:

 

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

To a man, every WWII veteran I have ever met and discussed the war with wished the United States had had more nuclear weapons, and earlier. The only regret was that the war took so long to win.

My father was involved in the nuclear arsenal in the 50's and 60's. He was recalled to duty for the Berlin Crisis and was assigned to a NBC school on the east coast and Ft. Holabird during that time, as he was assigned to Ft. Bliss prior to that. He was a 'missile man' during that time and said several times to me, later in his life, that he would have been glad to have given the order to launch if Soviet tanks had rolled or if Cuban missles had come active.

Regards,
Rabbit.

 

[Waitone]

I despise a la carte morality.

Nuking 2 japanese cities is bad because we used nukes.
Firebombing 1 European city (Dresden) and 1 Japanese city (Tokyo) un-bad because we did not use nukes.

More people died in Tokyo and Dresden than the two nuked cities yet no moral outrage is expressed over firebombing.

Fact of the matter is an invasion of Japan would have been horrifying for both sides. Dropping the bomb saved lives.

 

[afasano]

A Japanese beach landing was expected to be a meat grinder, if we had a better way and Truman didn't use it there would have been a president Dewey.

 

[Byron Quick]

I've several Japanese friends. I admire much of Japanese culture. The claim that Japanese lives were saved by the use of the atomic bomb moves me not at all. If the calculus had been that the use of the atomic bomb would kill ALL of the Japanese and would have saved the life of only one American soldier...then President Truman, fulfilling his duty as that one soldier's commander in chief, should have ordered the use of the atomic bomb.

I can understand your culture and admire your culture but when it gets down to brass tacks; I know where my loyalty rests. If Japan didn't want to go the distance; the country shouldn't have tossed its hat in the ring.

 

[Tankcommander]

After hearing about the Jap unit 731 and the rape of Nanking, Korean comfort girls, beheading POWs, etc... the list of Jap attrocities is nearly endless. Hiroshima and Nagisaki were not pay back enough. The estimates of Chinese killed in Nanking was over 200,000, killed the old fashioned way with rifles, baynets and swords, up close and personal. My great uncle was on Iwo as well but he didn't make it back. I also have to agree with Byron if it saved one American life it was worth it.


TC

 

[Kurush]

And the Nanking Massacre was a tiny part of the Japanese genocide against the Chinese. All told the Japs killed about 20 million Chinese, only 3 million of whom were actually combatants. It's unfortunate that Japanese civilians ended up paying for the crimes of their government, but Japanese clearly needed to be stopped, one way or another.

 

[Sindawe]

They deserved a lot more punishment than they got.

/Willaim Munny "We all got it coming..." There is not one civilization or nation with out stain anywhere on the face of the planet. It would be a grave error to ignore the sins of our nation (for those members here in the US) while throwing stones at others for their sins.

On topic: I've just finished watching the Discovery channel's presentation of Hiroshima: The first weapon of mass destruction. Worth the time to view, it presents the events leading up to the bombing, and the effects, in a neutral fashion. Does not lay point fingers at either side. Should be part of manditory viewing in history classes that cover 20th century history.

 

[Ky Larry]

The people who question our use of atomic bombs against Japan were not faced with the prospect of savage, merciless, brutal combat. It's easy to say what someone else should have done. Not a single one of the critics has ever been shot at. Simply put, "If it ain't your ass on the line, don't tell somebody else what they should have done."

 

[Farnham]

My grandfather jumped into all sorts of nasty European battlefields with the Army, and the only time he ever spoke of the war was when I joined the Marines. He said, "When you need to kill somebody, you'll know it, don't think about it, just do it."

He also called me a "sea-going bellhop" or some such dated foolishness, but all that aside...

Had he been killed dropping into Hiroshima or Nagasaki or Tokyo or Yokohama, I wouldn't be here, so I say, "GO NUKES!" I imagine he would too, were he still around.

S/F

Farnham

 

[Texian Pistolero]

Yeah,

like,

the riceburners asked for it,

even begged for it,

so,

it is like,

pretend that this is a graded exercise.

What I would say to the Japanese,

is, like,

don't do the crime,

if you can't do the time.

Capish?

 

[chaim]

The bombs saved possibly millions of US troops and Japanese soldiers and civilians who would have died in an invasion.

As for how members of that generation in my family feel/felt about it:

On mom's side one of her (much) older brothers was in the Navy at the time. I haven't heard one word from that (very liberal) side of the family that it was anything but needed.

On dad's side, one of my grandmother's brothers (her favorite of her brothers) is still MIA in the Pacific Theater. It appears the B24 or B17 he was flying (I can't remember for sure which he flew) was probably shot down over the Marianas Trench based on when/where it disappeared. I've never heard anything negative from anyone in any generation from that side of the family about the bomb.

 

[res1b3uq]

really enjoyed

reading through these comments. Like-minded folks, I guess. Terlingua--Terlingua--They've got lectricity in Terlingua?

 

[ZeroX]

I'm with the consensus that we were in the right to drop the bombs.

What steams my beans is the news shows that do a piece on the bombings and when they need commentary, go to a girl in a junior high field trip to a Hiroshima memorial museum. Talk about about an informed and objective analysis.

 

[Monkeyleg]

HankB, good job!

 

[Turkey Creek]

My Dad was a Naval Aviator in the Pacific driving SB2C's off of aircraft carriers, his favorite being CV10, the Yorktown- among other places, he hit Tokyo- I was less than 5 weeks old when the big one dropped- yeah Dad had been home on leave, but that's another story that I try not to think about - my point being that if we hadn't used the bombs, I very well could have grown up without a father, and never had a sister- my Dad's attitude has always been that we were lucky to have Harry Truman when we needed him- Dad is now 85 years old and failing, but to this day one of his favorite lines about the "Japs" (for the moderators this is his quote) is, "you couldn't trust the B&%#(@^'s then and you can't trust them now"- who is anyone that wasn't there and didn't live thorough it to say Harry was wrong?- IMHO Harry Truman was our last President who had any real cahonies and I've never met a WW2 vet that would disagree

 

[4v50 Gary]

Kudos HankB!

 

[Zundfolge]

One thing that people forget about those two atomic bombs dropped on Japan ... they probably saved billions of lives because the world got to see the devastation of two relatively small atomic bombs, thus giving most of the world's leaders some pause when they think about using the bigger ones developed later.

It is quite possible that those two atomic bombs gave birth to the MAD theory and prevented the cold war from becoming a full scale nuclear exchange.

 

[pyrguy]

Dad is now 85 years old and failing, but to this day one of his favorite lines about the "Japs" (for the moderators this is his quote) is, "you couldn't trust the B&%#(@^'s then and you can't trust them now"

Dad would of been 83 this year. That was what he said too. I bought a Toyota in '73 and heard it from him.

He never talked much about his time as a radio operator in the Merchant Service but there were a few stories that he did tell.

I got the feeling that there were lots of things that he couldn't/wouldn't talk about almost 60 years later. They were still "Top Secrete" to him or he was never told what was on the ship.

The one thing he did say was “I’m glad I did what I did but I wouldn’t chose to do it again.” It was a job to do and they did what they had to do to get it done.

 

[Rebar]

It's important to realize, that we never faced the bulk of the Japanese Army. We picked off isolated island garrisons, which was hard enough, but most of their army was on the Asian mainland, mostly China. They would have brought these largely intact veteran units back to defend the home islands, those would have been very very tough indeed to dig out.

 

[straightShot]

My dad was in when the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor, and he got to come home in September, 1945, after we dropped those bombs. His division, the 41st, fought in New Guinea, the Phillipines, Zamboanga, the battle of Biak, etc.

He never talked about the war itself, but he admired Truman for the courage to drop the bombs and end the war. 60 years later, I do not doubt this wisdom, and I'm extremely grateful that he did not have to invade Japan as his division was preparing to do.

 

[Moonclip]

I think the bomb was necessary and saved countless people on both sides but I wonder why the USA did not think about continuing a blockade and massive conventional bombing. I doubt Japan could have survived much more of that.

I knew about unit 731 a long time ago and it angers me that the general American public knows all about the Holocaust,required subject in some schools I believe, but nothing about Japanese atrocities.

I actually have a book on the rape of Nanking, quite disturbing,many graphic pictures, and I think the author ended up killing herself.

It surprises me although I suppose people can't hold grudges forever, to see many Philipinos and Chinese,especially older ones, driving Japanese vehicles. Considering Japans somewhat non apologistic stance on WWII and all I don't think I could do it if I was a member of one of these groups.

 

[Dr.Rob]

I know it got my grandfather ( a flight engineer on B-29s) home a lot sooner.