Barton J. Bernstein (Pictured here on his favorite "stuff")
Posted on 08/06/2014 2:28:23 AM PDT by No One Special
"The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul," he wrote. "The only difference between this and the use of gas (which President Franklin D. Roosevelt had barred as a first-use weapon in World War II) is the fear of retaliation."
Those harsh words, written three days after the Hiroshima bombing in August, 1945, were not by a man of the American left, but rather by a very prominent conservative -- former President Herbert Hoover, a foe of the New Deal and Fair Deal.
In 1959, Medford Evans, a conservative writing in William Buckley's strongly nationalistic, energetically right-wing magazine, National Review, stated: "The indefensibility of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is becoming a part of the national conservative creed." Just the year before, the National Review had featured an angry, anti-atomic bomb article, "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe." Like Hoover, that 1958 essay had decried the atomic bombing as wanton murder. National Review's editors, impressed by that article, had offered special reprints.
Those two sets of events --Hoover in 1945 and National Review in 1968-69 -- were not anomalies in early post-Hiroshima U.S. conservatism. In fact, many noted American conservatives -- journalists, former diplomats and retired and occasionally on-duty military officers, and some right-wing historians and political scientists -- criticized the atomic bombing. They frequently contended it was unnecessary, and often maintained it was immoral and that softer surrender terms could have ended the war without such mass killing. They sometimes charged Truman and the atomic bombing with "criminality" and "slaughter."
Yet today, this history of early anti-A-bomb dissent by conservatives is largely unknown. In about the past 20 years, various American conservatives have even assailed A-bomb dissent as typically leftist and anti-American, and as having begun...
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were easy decisions and absolutely the right ones under the circumstances. Screw what liberals spew as "history".
My parents and relatives from that generation always credited President Truman with making the difficult and necessary decision to drop the bomb. As a result, many GI lives were saved.
Ok, Truman was a Democrat. But unlike the pseudo Democrat (communist) in the White House today, Truman could make the hard decisions without worrying about what do-gooders and other whiners think.
Roosevelt was a Democrat too. One can say lots of bad things about Roosevelt, but he wanted us to win the war, unlike certain contemporary Democrats we could mention.
They weren’t military properties; they were selected because the few planes Japan had left wouldn’t be defending them.
Clearly if the bombs in Japan were “crimes” and akin to dousing people with gasoline, then the “American conservative nationalist right” (all terms used by the author in this liberal handwringing piece) must’ve LED the “ban the bomb” movement, right?
What Truman did was not a crime.
According to libtardism discrimination is immoral. Bombs should not discriminate but treat everyone equally.
My parents and most of their generation in this town were committed, lifelong Democrats. They've passed on, but I wonder if they would still embrace the Democrats today. I think they would be appalled by the pressure to accept every perversion as normal and would be unhappy with the utter lack of leadership. I know they wouldn't be happy with the politically correct girly man occupying the White House today.
My relatives in Missouri abandoned the Democrats in the Clinton years.
Author is a blooming idjit
it would have cost a million US soldiers to invade Japan
don’t want collateral damage?
don’t start a war
I can’t celebrate the deaths of hundreds of thousands of non-combatants but I accept its clear necessity. Truman, the last decent democrat to hold the Oval Office made the right call. I hope he came to peace with his unavoidable decision. It was the right thing to do but it was still horrible.
The battle for Okinawa lasted 82 days (April - June 1945). The Allies had about 14,000 deaths (with an estimated total of more than 65,000 casualties). Japan had about 77,000 casualties. Some sources say that 100,000 - 150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide.
These losses on Okinawa were a big factor in Truman’s decision to use Little Boy (Hiroshima) and Fat Man (Nagasaki).
If Hoover had kids who would have had to invade Japan, I’d bet his opinion would’ve been different.
FDR basically continued Hoover’s policies, and stuck his own label on them.
The deaths are on the hands of Tojo and Company.
Those kids also probably would have had to stay in Japan to fight the Communist “North Japan” Army.
And we were getting the third bomb ready to go when Japan finally decided that life was better then death.
By the time November rolled around we would have had bombs coming off the line pretty steadily and we would have used them.
You have only to visit Shuri Castle in Okinawa to understand why. You will see pegs in the wall about knee and ankle height that what was left after the bombing. And the commander still would not surrender.
And they only surrendered after Hirohito went on the radio and expressed the desire to surrender.
He almost didn’t live to make that broadcast.
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