[tanuki]

There is a meme going around the current opinion industry that Japan was preparing to surrender when the Americans and the bomb pre-empted them. Speaking from direct family experience, from ground level things didn’t look that great.

August ‘45 in Omuta, Japan saw everyone in my maternal grandparents’ neighborhood, including my tubercular grandfather and midwife grandmother, training with bamboo spears to meet American tanks. My mother and her siblings were up in the hills, gaunt from malnutrition and being eaten alive by parasites. My father (wouldn’t talk about it, but probably) was training to be a kamikaze at the grand old age of fifteen. So much ground was being dug up and concrete was being poured that you can wander what looks like pristine wilderness and come upon fortifications.

To sum up, Japan in ‘45 was not a society ready to quit. It was a society ready to die. Think North Korea. The bombs were dropped at the end of summer. There wasn’t going to be a fall harvest that year and the winter would have been murder.

The US could have put off all action for just a year and out of a population of around 90 million, at least 10 percent would have died. The majority would have been children under the age of 12 followed by the elderly. And that says nothing for how many Chinese (remember them?), Koreans and other Asians would have died as the Japanese war machine continued to strangle their infrastructures in the pursuit of a horrific conflict.

The sudden end of the war, however it was achieved, was a deliverance for millions of Asian children. It is a shining example of the maxim that the most humane thing to do in a conflict situation is to end it. So on behalf of many people on earth who wouldn’t be here but for your courage, dedication and loyalty, I salute you General Tibbets, your colleague General Sweeney and all the members of the 544th Bombardment Group.

Okay, I’ve had my say. Flame away, folks! BTW, I’m here because my Dad volunteered for the Korean War USAF. Strange world, isn’t it? I’ll be remembering him and Generals Tibbets and Sweeney tonight at my church’s All Saints Mass.

[geopyg]

“Strange world, isn’t it?”

Yes it is! Thanks for the story, as I’ve seen the footage on documentaries of the children and women training with sticks, but you never know how widespread it really was. (Japanese propoganda?).

What is so great is that the U.S. and Japan, Germany and to a certain extent Russia are allies and friends now. Compare that to the tribal clashes that go on elsewhere in the world (Middle East for example) that seem to go on for hundreds of years.

[Diamond]

That has to rank as one of the most powerful posts I've ever read.

Cordially,

[Let's Roll]

I couldn’t have said it better than #71 did. Thank you and it was also beautifully written.

[Ultra Sonic 007]

Bump for truth. War is Hell, and the most merciful thing to do is end it.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

We lived in Japan in the 1950s. Our maid, Masako, was a 10 year old in 1945, forced to work in a munitions factory in Yokohama. The building had a large red cross painted on the roof.
The building was hit anyway by the bombing of early '45 and after the fires were brought under control, she was put to work salvaging some of the machinery which was set up in caves dug into the soft sandstone bluffs.
12 years later, I played with my Japanese playmates in those caves and repeated words and phrases Masako taught me. In about 1959, a little kid got hurt in one of these caves and the MPs ordered all of them to be cemented shut. All of them were closed with one exception near our house. This was an occupied cave where a poor Japanese family still lived. The front of the cave was covered with tin, with a tiny smokestack through this wall. They heated the place with a single hibachi stove that burned a pressed chunk of charcoal located under the low dining table. The family sat around this table with a heavy quit covering their legs to stay warm.

[art_rocks]

I know a fellow officer whose company commander was of Japanese descent. Before they went on the tank range, the company commander had his company yell “Banzai”.