Posted on 08/14/2014 8:21:40 PM PDT by Retain Mike
We now mark the 69th anniversary of VJ-Day preceded by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end WW II. The generations which made the decisions for World War II have passed away. The generation which faced the tragic violence required for carrying out those decisions is rapidly leaving us.
As this personal knowledge becomes ever rarer, we must increasingly listen without response to revisionist contra-factual analyses expounding about what a needless, tragic and profoundly immoral decision the United States had made. The arguments advanced display a pleasing, deliberate ignorance which burnishes this peculiar new morality. However, these views can be countered by presenting the history that the Greatest Generation, and their parents and grandparents lived into and through.
In support of dropping the atomic bombs, historians often cite the inevitability of horrifying casualties if troops had landed on the home islands. They extrapolate from 48,000 American and 230,000 Japanese losses on Okinawa to estimates of 500,000 American and millions of Japanese casualties for mainland invasions. However, these figures arise from studies preceding the unfolding recognition by planning staffs of the American experiences on Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Even these estimates are over seven times the dead and wounded suffered by Americans during The Battle of the Bulge; casualties that shocked the American public.
However, such estimates could have greatly understated casualties. Kyushu and Honshu at over 100,000 rugged square miles mathematically enable at least 500 vast redoubts; complex fortifications comparable to that General Ushijima constructed to inflict most losses on Okinawa. This rapid increase in killing efficiency extended to planning stubborn defense of major cities just as the Germans carried out in Berlin. The feeble response to B-29 bombing missions caused U.S. planners to vastly underestimate the thousands of kamikaze airplanes with aviation fuel concealed for invasion. The American “island hopping” strategy had ended, because the Japanese had determined the few regions within their mountainous country that could accommodate the huge armies and air forces needed to subdue the main islands. Harry Truman contemplated increasingly dire estimates causing him to reflect on the possibility of “an Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other”.
The Japanese War Faction maintained the standard of 20 million Japanese deaths for planning final mainland battles; battles intended to inflict millions of casualties, and to convince America to abandon the Potsdam Declaration. They had redeployed veteran Kwantung divisions from China, mobilized home defense armies, and distributed suicide bombs and bamboo spears to civilians transformed into soldiers.
Americans also faced biological warfare. Occupation searchers uncovered large stockpiles of viruses, spirochetes, and fungus spores throughout rural Japan. These biological pathogens had already been tested on Chinese civilians. For the Japanese one delivery system directed citizen soldiers to infect themselves and stay behind the advancing troops.
The Greatest Generation and their parents would have been enraged to discover a cabal had ignored the nuclear option for ending the war simply to indulge some incestuous moral orthodoxy. If there was any alternative, Harry Truman, Henry Stimson, and George Marshall were not about to procure the deaths of countless Americans in protracted ground campaigns following amphibious assaults matching the D-Day landings.
Revisionists claim Japan was seeking surrender, but history reveals Japanese negotiation initiatives proved too vacuous to make dropping the bombs unnecessary. These supposed negotiations cite proposals Foreign Minister Togo directed Ambassador Sato to offer to Molotov. In those proposals, Japan intended bribing the Russians into neutrality with conquered Chinese territory. The Soviets would then mediate settlement terms preserving Imperial visions of peace with honor. The first June 29 contacts ignored attributes of surrender with proposals the Russians considered too vague to answer. The August 2 proposals accepted the Potsdam Declaration as only one basis for further study.
When Ambassador Sato finally saw Molotov on August 8, two days after Hiroshima, he received a war declaration instead of answers to his latest proposals. U.S. cryptologists reading “Magic” confirmed Togo’s Russian contacts were ineffectual. American intelligence also knew those involving Allen Dulles in Switzerland lacked any Japanese Cabinet knowledge or interest.
The pattern of Japanese contacts demonstrated an unwillingness to accept any responsibility for understanding Western expectations for negotiation strategies. The fact America had destroyed its navy, massacred its island garrisons, and bombed its cities into cinders should have prompted Japanese proposals embracing a Western style of clarity.
Instead the Japanese Privy Council debated the Final Battles arguments into utter physical and mental exhaustion for eleven hours following the Nagasaki bomb on August 9. For the final meeting, Hirohito reluctantly invited Baron Hiranuma, who had always fiercely disapproved of the war strategy. He reproved Foreign Minister Togo for never making concrete proposals to the Russians and Minister Anami for accepting limitless nuclear warfare deaths without any opportunity to retaliate. Hiranuma also maintained the Emperor’s spiritual essence, as the foundation of Japan’s future, endured independent of any government imposed by surrender. The ministers made no answer to his arguments, but remained unyielding.
At impasse Hirohito, the god-king, spoke the “Voice of the Crane” in the sweltering, underground bunker. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence negotiations with allied belligerents.
Here was illuminated the critical role Kokutai played in surrender. Any prominent Japanese lived within an intimate spiritual three dimensional fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. Emperor Hirohito foresaw the probability of defeat by January 1944 and appointed a Peace Faction. However, he and his advisors conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, fire bombings of over 60 cities, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths. The atomic bombs removed the Final Battles argument allowing the War Faction to relent, allowing Hirohito to assume his unprecedented roll, and requiring no one to lose face. Their cabal remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. In their first meeting, when MacArthur praised Hirohito for ending the war, the Emperor replied others also deserved praise. Yet the Peace Faction could not prevail until the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki so dramatized Japan’s situation that Hirohito could intervene and elevate it into dominance at that final meeting.
Another point says the bombs accomplished little. Supposedly Roosevelt’s decree of unconditional surrender was compromised away by allowing Japan to keep their Emperor. However by accepting the Potsdam Declaration, Japan abandoned the militarism that had committed the country to Asian conquest. The Emperor’s and the government’s authority became subject to the Supreme Allied Commander. Their authority was later subject to the Japanese people’s free expression for determining a post war government that eradicated multi-millennial martial and imperial characteristics.
The moral failure of a negotiated peace requiring anything less than total submission was unacceptable. Allowing a blockade to operate interminably, while deferring to the War Faction any decision about whether Japanese and allied prisoner deaths met their 20 million standards was intolerable. Allowing months of diplomatic dithering to accompany additional hundreds of thousands of civilian and military deaths throughout Asia was intolerable. An imperial, militarist Japan could not be allowed to intimidate future generations when they were on the cusp of producing nuclear weapons.
Allowing the premeditated ignorance of revisionists center stage as the institutional knowledge of the Greatest Generation and their parents and grandparents dies away must remain intolerable.
Partial bibliography:
Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco
The Atomic Bomb and the End of WW II, The National Security Archive
Japanese Biomedical Experimentation During the WW II Era, Sheldon H. Harris, PhD
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamni
Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange
The Secret Surrender, Allen Dulles
Hirohito, Edward Behr
Japan’s Secret War, Robert K. Wilcox
Battle of Okinawa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa
Normandy landings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normandy_Landings
The Battle of the Bulge http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge
Japan geography: http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/geography/Indonesia-to-Mongolia/Japan.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html Okinawa redoubt was about 100 sq mi
Allied POWS Under the Japanese http://www.mansell.com/pow_resources/camplists/rg331-box%201321-jap%20pow%20camps.htm Military prisoners were 34,000 in Japan, 70,000 outside Japan, and 112,000 civilians. There were already 142,000 Anglos and Pilipino victims of criminal killings.
Statistics of Japanese Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources* http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM As a tactic of administering conquered lands, the Japanese had murdered 6 million Asians from 1937 to 1945.
There are many other stories I overheard and could relate, but one consistently repeated theme was how their unit or ship was scheduled for the Japan invasion. They always thanked God they didn’t have to become fodder for that killing machine. Therefore I developed and now rework from suggestions I receive and from additional sources this narrative about dropping the atomic bombs. I also break it into four letters I send to papers.
Based of feedback so far I need to add a discussion about the increasing fragility our leaders were noting on the home front concerning support for the war. The casualties beginning in June 1944 into summer of 1945 were much greater than the experience of this country in the previous two and half years. I remember the story told by one man who was too young to serve, but as an adolescent delivered telegrams part-time for the local Western Union office. He eventually quit, because every day he had to deliver the death notices and people began looking at him as a death angel with some combination of anxiety and hatred.
The partial biography of the sources I used contains a lot of helpful insights and perspectives I didn’t emphasize. The recently published book Hell to Pay by D. M. Giangreco is especially valuable. I was able to find confirmation of so many of my other sources in his book. About 30% of the book is bibliography, appendices, and notes.
We didn’t start it but we damned sure ended it. Where are the real decision makers now?
The last time we ever saw complete and unconditional surrender...
Just to make the point clear, let’s firebomb Tokyo again
Only the soft and mushy lefties buy the revisionist crapola that some how Japan wouldn’t have fought to the very last person...... The easy proof is that the first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th....Japan did not immediately surrender (even though they had been bombed heavily before this). On August 9th Nagaski was bombed. It is a good thing they surrendered then because we were out of atomic bombs to get their attention
As one who was here when the bombs were dropped, I can tell you that it was welcomed by practically 100% of the American people. One had to be alive during WWII to understand the savagery and brutality of the Japanese. Karma is indeed a bitch.
Liberals believe that somehow wars can be “managed” and the death “limited.” That’s why they start or continue so many of them, and wage them badly.
It was immoral. Bombing civilian targets is always immoral. Dresden was immoral. London bombing was immoral. Do not kid yourself.
A fine essay. The main thing missing I think is the detonation of the Japanese atom ten days or so after Nagasaki by the islet in the Sea of Japan between Korea and Japan. Professor Nishina and the other boffins might have been possibly able to produce enough material by Operation Downfall to use a nuke against the landing forces.
The Army and Navy had started rival programs BEFORE the US began the Manhattan Project. Lucky for us they could not co-operate.
You do not know what you are talking about, and your ignorance makes you dead wrong.
But what do you do if you are fighting an enemy who has no morals? What if an enemy bombs your civilians? What if an enemy commits atrocities against your prisoners of war? What of morality then?
And the irony wasn’t lost on them either.
They attacked us at 8:15 am
We dropped the bomb at 8:15am.
Take that!
Oh do tell?
So you consider it a higher moral calling to fight them conventionally and see 1 million more Americans perish to take their little island nation?
Gee, nice of you to assign more lives as a mere commodity to e traded for a more noble and pious point of view.
The fact that the Japanese had decentralized their munitions industry throughout the city did not make it any less legitimate a target. And for what its worth, Hiroshima was leafleted by American bombers for days prior to the drop, advising the "civilians" that their city was about to be destroyed and urging them to evacuate. Their Japanese masters forbade them to leave their posts in the factories.
Dresden was the center of the Zeiss-Ikon factories, which made the eyes of the Nazi war machine. Even residents could not understand how they made it so long without being bombed. I don't know the answer to that either. It should have been hit earlier.
It makes a difference to know the facts.
damn right it was.
I was being prepared/readied on Leyte for the invasion of Japan when the ‘bombs’ were dropped. My only brother had been killed fighting on Okinawa just a few months earlier. I was mad as hell and ready to go for the invasion. when it came time for the surrender aboard the Missouri I had cooled somewhat. However, from the scuttlebutt on Leyte the invasion of Japan would have been one horrific loss of life on both sides. I got to see a lot of carnage of the war from the Philippines to the Marianas. Today I still have ill feelings towards the Japs of those days.
There are Chamberlains everywhere
“War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it. The crueler it is, the shorter it is”.
William Tecumseh Sherman Atlanta, Ga. July 1864.
CC
My Grandad turned 18 in July 1945 and would doubtless have been conscripted into the British Army to take part in that invasion. My estimations based on the casualties taken and inflicted on Okinowa suggest that over a million allied soldiers and upwards of 17 million Japanese civilians would have been killed in any invasion. The bombings where the most moral alternative there was and I might not be here today if they weren’t dropped.
just ask the Chinese or Koreans if they think it was necessary and ok to drop the Atomics on Japan.
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