Posted on 08/05/2005 8:26:29 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
It’s the first week of August, so the media will do what they’re always doing about now in years ending with a five or a zero: rehashing whether we should have used the A-Bomb on Japan. Let me offer something new, however. I’m going to share some crucial facts I haven’t seen in any news article on this issue. I’ve seen this information in various books, but you can find it all in “Code-Name Downfall: the Secret Plan to Invade Japan—And Why Truman Dropped the Bomb” by seasoned historians Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar.
Hell in the Pacific
President Truman said he used A-bombs because an invasion of Japan would have cost 500,000 American lives and countless Japanese lives. The casualty reports from Okinawa must have weighed on him. Situated 350 miles from Japan and populated by thousands of Japanese civilians, Okinawa was a preview of what Americans could expect if they invaded Japan.
It was hellish. Many defenders had to be burned out of bunkers and caves with flamethrowers. Nineteen hundred Kamikaze sorties were flown, and they were horrifyingly effective. They sank or damaged many ships, and killed 4,900 sailors. USS Laffey was attacked by 22 kamikazes in 80 minutes, and took six hits.
Okinawan civilians were told that Americans would torture them. Thousands (including children) committed suicide; others fought U.S. Marines hand to hand. By the time the fighting was over America had lost 12,520 men and Japan lost 107,000 people. Meanwhile, in Japan, the militarist government toiled to make the civilian population into a vast kamikaze fighting force. If necessary they were to attack the invaders with sharpened bamboo stakes or garden tools. Army intelligence estimated (accurately, it turned out) that they had 8,000 planes in reserve for kamikaze attacks and would build 2,500 more by the end of September. The invasion was scheduled for November 1st.
Could Harry Truman really be expected to look at these casualty counts and intelligence reports and think, “The fight has gone out of these people?”
The coup attempt
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed Japan’s War Council met to discuss a possible surrender. Their vote on the matter was a tie, with some hoping for a chance to fight the “Decisive Homeland Defense Battle,” where millions of Japanese rose up and spilled rivers of American blood. Emperor Hirohito broke the tie by voting to surrender. He prepared a recorded address to be played over the radio the next day.
That night the militarists attempted a coup at the Imperial Palace. They hoped to take over the government and continue the war, or at least destroy Hirohito’s recording. The Emperor was kept safe and the mutineers were rounded up in the morning, but other militarist insurrections popped up for days. If they had succeeded, an invasion would have surely followed. Most importantly, their activities refute the idea that Japan was ready to surrender quietly. A significant portion of the government was eager to commit national suicide, even if it meant making the Emperor a glorified prisoner.
The Other A-Bombs
The officers writing the invasion plans had no idea the A-Bomb existed, but Army chief of Staff George Marshall knew about the bomb, and had a plan to use it. Each of the three invasion beaches on Kyushu would be “prepped” with an A-Bomb, and another would be dropped a short distance behind each beach to wipe out nearby reinforcements. A third bomb would be used to destroy the next wave of reinforcements as they arrived. Japan would suffer 9 nuclear attacks, 11 counting Hiroshima and Nagasaki if the invasion had followed a successful militarist coup. Presumably the process would be repeated two months later for landings on Honshu near Tokyo. Weapon scientists were working on a way to use a siren or other attention-getting device to get soldiers to look at the bomb, so that they would be blinded when it detonated.
Imagine Japan being subject to not two, but nine or even twenty nuclear detonations. Imagine a nation flooded with blind men.
The A-Bombs killed 210,000 people. Many died horribly. Yet Japanese troops had killed millions of civilians for no reason during their power grab. Some people were desperate to stop the killing; others were desperate to spill more blood. A fallen Japanese soldier in the Aleutians carried this poem:
I will become a deity with a smile in the heavy fog.
I am only waiting for the day of death.
The day of death came to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but because Truman made that decision, it came to at least a million fewer people elsewhere, a merciful action in the infernal calculus of war.
Silverback's column ping!
If anyone wants on or off my monthly column ping list, please notify me here or by freepmail. These may become weekly columns in the future.
Congratulations on your op-ed, and thanks for posting this. The horror of what happened and what might have happened serves as a reminder to us to be strong so we can deter adventurism such as that in which Japan was engaged for years and which finally brought us into the war.
Thanks Harry!
WARNING - If you do not like the way we finish wars, do not start one with us.
Uncle Sam and his Misguided Children
We celebrated the bombing of Hiroshima the other night. Raised a few beers and were glad my dad and many other Americans who were on Okinawa didn't have to die.
Better the side that started the war should die. Didn't take long to end WWII after we dropped a coupla those big boys.
Thank you for your compliments.
I have my own reasons for supporting the use of atomic weapons against Japan. My dad (who passed away three weeks ago last Wednesday) served on a Navy LST and would have participated in the invasion of Japan. Judging from all I had read, there was a pretty good chance he would have not made it past his 22nd birthday if he had done so. The libs who whine about dropping the bomb can kiss my a$$. No Hiroshima and Nagasaki= No Big Red Clay. to quote Gene Hackman in "Crimson Tide" - "Drop that motherf---er, twice!"
Thanks Harry Truman.
Additionally, you can imagine the fallout that would have been involved if Marshall's tactical nuke plan had been used. Horrifying.
I am very thankful that my dad didnt see alot of combat. He told me that the closest to combat he came was depth charging subs on several occasions. My uncles were another story however. His two older brothers both saw combat. The oldest brother was wounded in Europe and the next oldest served on a destroyer in the South Pacific. My uncle Herman (my dad's sister's husband) served from the day after DDay until 1946. His Nebraska National Guard unit won the most Presidential Unit Citations of any in the war. Nebraska ETV made a documentary about him and his buddies that they show every Memorial Day weekend. That guy had terrible violent nightmares until the day he died at age 84. (He tried to strangle my aunt in his sleep when he was in his sixties because he thought he was being attacked by a Nazi soldier) A good neighborhood friend of my dad and uncles (who was also a great family friend until he died a few years ago) got hit by a shell in France. He layed unconscious in a ditch for two days until the corpse unit came along to collect his body and found that he was still alive. He got one of the first experimental knee replacements and went on to farm until he was in his 70's. I guess my point is that I am glad that my pop didnt have to go through all that because of the decision that Truman made. Not to mention I got to be born.
Excellent work.
If you want to talk numbers, remember this from "Why Truman Dropped the Bomb", Weekly Standard, http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/894mnyyl.asp?pg=1
" This brings us to another aspect of history that now very belatedly has entered the controversy. Several American historians led by Robert Newman have insisted vigorously that any assessment of the end of the Pacific war must include the horrifying consequences of each continued day of the war for the Asian populations trapped within Japan's conquests. Newman calculates that between a quarter million and 400,000 Asians, overwhelmingly noncombatants, were dying each month the war continued. Newman et al. challenge whether an assessment of Truman's decision can highlight only the deaths of noncombatant civilians in the aggressor nation while ignoring much larger death tolls among noncombatant civilians in the victim nations."
The Japanese deserved the two bombs.
My great uncle Delbert was wounded by a machine gun in the Battle of the Bulge while his platoon was retreating. They were sure he was dead, and he couldn't move or shout at first, so they left him for dead. He could hear the crunch of their boots as they ran away. He's still alive today.
Thank you.
I respect the Japanese people greatly on many counts, but consider the level of self-delusion it requires to think that Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an unjustified attack on an innnocent population. No wonder they ban books about their atrocities.
Oh, forgot to say thanks for the info and link.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.