Posted on 08/06/2015 8:52:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Don’t start wars you can’t finish.
Japan was an aggressor against the US in WWII.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved countless US military lives.
No further explanation is required.
Amen
Yes. In war, your object is to win and keep your troops safe. We no doubt saved countless American lives.
Do the ends really justify the means? …That is not what Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about. The entire Japanese nation was willing (for the most part, or being “morally” coerced) to sacrifice itself for a false god, namely their head of state whom they believed to be the direct descendant of another false god(dess). Therefore, as counterintuitive as it sounds to some or many, we were actually saving Japan by demonstrating that their god-king was a mortal man.
It’s not “awful”, as we won. If they just said uncle’ the first time a mushroom cloud decorated their sky, there would be no need for another.
The only thing that I do not understand is, why Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why not Tokyo, centered on the “false emperor’s” palace?
And.....why are there still Japanese who lived on the islands still alive? Why are the Japanese islands still there? Why were the Japanese islands not atom-bombed off of the planet so that they would be at worst a vast wasteland/pile-of-rubble or at best a shallow sea?
The military's best estimates at the time were that there would be 1 million American causalities incurred in an invasion of mainland Japan. I imagine that stat made Truman's decision a lot easier.
It also saved millions of Japanese civilian lives.
Had the Japanese homeland been invaded all would have been ordered to commit suicide rather than surrender
Many would have complied
Multiply Okinawa by a magnitude of 100, or more
the “god” emperor needed to be humiliated and humanized, not martyred
Bill Whittle (of pjmedia) did a magnificent presentation on Hiroshima a few years ago and GAWD HELP US with our unremitting reservoirs of guilt if we didn’t go through the SAME THING EVERY STINKING YEAR Aug 06.
Hiroshima is taken to have killed 100K people. Call it 200K people with aftereffects, and nobody estimates that high. By obviating the need for an invasion of Japan, EASILY saved 1 MM Japanese lives and probably 150K American lives/casualties. It isn’t even a close comparison. The Hiroshime & Nagasaki bombings easily saved 500K lives.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved countless US military lives.
No further explanation is required.
Once the public found out the existence of the nuclear devices, had Truman refused to employ them, he would be brought up on war crime charges...
The principle of Kokutai played a critical role in surrender. Any prominent Japanese lived within an intimate spiritual three dimensional fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, Bushido, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. In subjection to this merging of spiritual and political authority, common citizens forfeited individuality to become a collective soul defining Japan. As soldiers or civilian militia they awaited the decree of the Empire’s ruling oligarchy. With such a national unity committed to waging a savage total war, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
By January 1944 Emperor Hirohito foresaw the probability of defeat and appointed a Peace Faction. However, he and his government conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, fire bombings of over 60 cities, looming starvation, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths.
At impasse the two atomic bombs allowed Hirohito, the Son of Heaven, to speak the Voice of the Crane in the sweltering, underground bunker. The bombs were regarded as a dramatic force of nature equivalent to an earthquake or typhoon against which human arguments collapsed. Only submission to such a catastrophe could be proportional to the absolute disgrace of surrender following over 2,600 years of martial invincibility.
Only Hirohito could submit, because he held the heaven created Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation. The War Faction could now relent and no one would lose face. All remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence negotiations with allied belligerents.
Partial bibliography:
Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco
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
[ The only thing that I do not understand is, why Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why not Tokyo, centered on the “false emperor’s” palace? ]
Had they nuked Hirohito all the Japanese that believed in him would have probably gone crazy to Martyred themselves and it would have gotten very ugly even if we hadn’t stepped a boot onto the main island. You would have had several million Japanese who would be willing kamikaze pilots/ suicide bombers / banzai shooters....
In order to save face and his people the two nukes forced the almost god-like in the Japanese eyes Emperor to humble himself in-front of the rest of the world in order to save his own people from being burned to a crisp in future atomic bombings. The event led to the Emperor becoming a ceremonial position and the social evolution of the Japanese people to move into modern times.
“Thank God for the Atom Bomb”
I have to agree with that sentiment.
My Dad was WWII Navy, Pacific Theater and would likely have been killed during the invasion. Which means I wouldn’t be posting this comment since I was never born.
“The only thing that I do not understand is, why Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Why not Tokyo, centered on the “false emperor’s” palace?”
The specific answers to those questions are: Hiro and Naga had not been bombed, as had many Japanese cities. They were selected because the military wanted to see the destructive effects of the bombs without prior conventional bomb damage. Tokyo in fact had itself been firebombed in an incendiary attack that killed an estimated 100K and flattened many square miles of the city. Additionally, there was quite a bit of sensitivity as to how destroying the religious foundation of Japan might well be counterproductive....for whatever reasons you may imagine. Tokyo, yes, was the capital. But the spiritual center of Japan was Kyoto, which was spared a lot of bombing that it otherwise might have been subjected to.
I don’t understand your “islands” question. If you mean “we should have demo’ed the bomb”. That was thought of. At the time, we did not have dozens of them, I think there were ten or so. These things were thought about in great depth, and remember that most of the Manhattan scientists were relatively liberal and did not wish to destroy Japan, only to punish them and bring the war to the most expeditious close possible. There was no real question that Japan would eventually lose the war, and while some of course wanted to inflict massive punishment, the decisions were made after tremendous debate and consternation. I believe they were the right ones, others may disagree. They unquestionably had precisely the intended effect.
Japan wanted war, they got war. Kill everyone and destroy everything until the enemy ceases to exist or unconditionally surrenders. Period.
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