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Dropping the bomb
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/ ^ | Thursday, March 12, 2015 | Steve Hays

Posted on 03/12/2015 7:17:13 PM PDT by daniel1212

I'm going to comment on the ethics of nuking Japan. This is one of those perennial issues that America-bashers constantly raise. There are two extremes we need to avoid: "my country right or wrong," and "blame America first." For me the war has a personal dimension. My late father was a WWII vet who served in the Pacific theater. He was radio operator in the Air Force. His squadron conducted reconnaissance over Japan. He had some interesting stories to tell: i) He trained on B-17s in Alaska, then flew on B-29s in Florida. ii) Our pilots discovered the jet stream. They exploited the jet stream as a tailwind, making the planes fly twice as fast. The Japanese figured we must have some secret technology to make our planes so fast. iii) One time their plane crash landed on lift-off. The cause was sabotage. iv) One time he saw ball-lightning form on the outside of the plane. v) One time a window blew and the gunner was sucked out of the plane. vi) My father knew a day before that we were going to drop the A-bomb on Japan. Not because he was in the loop. He was a lowly staff sergeant. It was accidental. He and some buddies were joking with a high-ranking officer on base about dropping that new-fangled A-bomb on Japan. The officer's reaction was horrified–not because it was in bad taste, but because he was in the know. Because his facial reaction as a dead giveaway, he went ahead and told them that, as a matter of fact, they were planning to nuke Japan the very next day. Of course, my dad and his comrades were severely admonished to keep that to themselves. I'll begin by reviewing the standard argument for nuking Japan:

In World War II the Japanese military fought with a ferocity that made al-Qaeda look casual and uncommitted. In Okinawa, the Japanese hurled more than 1,000 kamikaze suicide bombers at the American fleet, and tens of thousands more kamikazes readied to defend the Japanese home islands. Japan still held huge swathes of Chinese territory, where unrelenting war and mass-scale atrocities had already cost more than 10 million Chinese lives.Just as disturbing, recent American experience in Saipan and Okinawa had illustrated the extent to which the Japanese civilian population would suffer in any further close combat. By some counts, up to one-third of the total civilian population of Okinawa died during the American invasion, many by suicide as parents killed children, then themselves, rather than fall into allied hands. At Saipan, Japanese civilians committed suicide by the hundreds — sometimes cutting their own children’s throats — persuaded by Japanese propaganda that Americans would commit unspeakable atrocities against civilians. Assuming similar behavior during an invasion, estimates of additional Japanese casualties ran into the millions — with American casualty estimates wildly varying but certainly no less than hundreds of thousands.Faced with the twin realities of inevitable Japanese defeat and staggering civilian and military casualties, the allies did the right thing: On July 26, they issued a surrender demand, the Potsdam Declaration. The Japanese rejected it, the atomic bombs followed roughly two weeks later, and the war ended.As the horror of World War II begins to fade into distant memory, it’s imperative that we not let the Left control the narrative. Already in pacifist Christian circles, I’ve seen historically illiterate professors and pundits condemn the Hiroshima bombing with greater ferocity than they condemn the rape of Nanking, much less Japan’s years-long reign of terror in China.

http://www.nationalreview.com/node/355313/print

I'll also quote a few statements by Curtis Lamay which gives an idea of how military advisers at the time viewed the conflict:

We’re at war with Japan. We were attacked by Japan. Do you want to kill Japanese, or would you rather have Americans killed?

From his autobiography, also requoted in Rhodes, 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb', p. 596

As far as casualties were concerned I think there were more casualties in the first attack on Tokyo with incendiaries than there were with the first use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The fact that it's done instantaneously, maybe that's more humane than incendiary attacks, if you can call any war act humane. I don't, particularly, so to me there wasn't much difference. A weapon is a weapon and it really doesn't make much difference how you kill a man. If you have to kill him, well, that's the evil to start with and how you do it becomes pretty secondary. I think your choice should be which weapon is the most efficient and most likely to get the whole mess over with as early as possible.

The World at War: the Landmark Oral History from the Classic TV Series , p. 574

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Curtis_LeMay

From early on he argued that, "if you are going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force. Use too much and deliberately use too much... You'll save lives, not only your own, but the enemy's too."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/peopleevents/pandeAMEX61.html

The point isn't that we necessarily agree with him, but in assessing the morality of nuking Japan, as well as the morality of those responsible, we need to take their intentions into account–instead of simply imposing our own viewpoint onto the issue. i) There were some notable critics of the war. Eisenhower and MacArthur opposed dropping the bomb. However, Ike was a political rival who ran against the Truman administration, and MacArthur had an ax to grind with Truman. ii) The problem with alternate history is that, as a matter of fact, we never get a chance to find out how that would have played out. Since the counterfactual alternatives were never tried, we don't know how well or badly they would have fared in comparison with what we actually did. Even if successful, the alternatives would still prolong the war effort, leading to more American dead and wounded. Even in a best case scenario, how many US soldiers should we sacrifice to spare Japanese civilians? And, of course, you could have a worse-case scenario for American soldiers and Japanese civilians alike.

iii) I also expect that Hirohito had a very sheltered upbringing. That would leave him terribly out of touch with reality. It would take something spectacular to shock him into awareness. I'm reminded of The Last Emperor in the Forbidden City. True, that's China rather than Japan. But I presume that in both cases, the royal family had little exposure to the outside world, much less the modern Western world.

iv) One fresh perspective comes from John Wheeler, the renown physicist who worked on the Manhattan project:

When Wheeler learned the news, he was devastated. He blamed himself. “One cannot escape the conclusion that an atomic bomb program started a year earlier and concluded a year sooner would have spared 15 million lives, my brother Joe’s among them,” he wrote in his memoir. “I could—probably—have influenced the decision makers if I had tried.”

http://nautil.us/issue/9/time/haunted-by-his-brother-he-revolutionized-physics

What's striking about Wheeler's lament is that he essentially reframes the discussion. He thinks we should have dropped the bomb sooner! He laments the fact that we didn't develop it faster and deployed it sooner so that we could have ended the war earlier. The sooner WWII ended, the more lives that would save for all parties concerned.

Moreover, that seems to shift the hypothetical to possibly dropping the bomb on Germany. At least for starters.


TOPICS: History; Military/Veterans; Miscellaneous; Religion
KEYWORDS: atombomb; b29; ethics; geopolitics; hiroshima; nagasaki; war; ww2
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To: Pelham

And the land is STILL desolate and unlivable!!

https://www.google.com/search?q=hirosima+today&rls=com.microsoft:en-US:IE-Address&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=ie7&rlz=1I7ADRA_enUS475&gws_rd=ssl


121 posted on 03/13/2015 6:45:45 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie

Compare a picture of Hiroshima today with Detroit and you wonder which city was hit by the bomb.


122 posted on 03/13/2015 9:26:20 AM PDT by Pelham (The refusal to deport is defacto amnesty)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
The battle of Okinawa ended in June.

My late father was wounded on Okinawa in May 1945 (Sixth Marine Division), but he would have been healthy again in time to take part in the invasion of Japan. He had no doubt that dropping the bombs was the right thing to do.

123 posted on 03/13/2015 10:00:54 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
The battle of Okinawa ended in June.

My late father was wounded on Okinawa in May 1945 (Sixth Marine Division), but he would have been healthy again in time to take part in the invasion of Japan. He had no doubt that dropping the bombs was the right thing to do.

124 posted on 03/13/2015 10:00:54 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Elsie
The Tybee Island B-47 crash was an incident on February 5, 1958, in which the United States Air Force lost a 7,600-pound (3,400 kg) Mark 15 nuclear bomb in the waters off Tybee Island near Savannah, Georgia, United States. During a practice exercise, an F-86 fighter plane collided with the B-47 bomber carrying the bomb. To protect the aircrew from a possible detonation in the event of a crash, the bomb was jettisoned. Following several unsuccessful searches, the bomb was presumed lost somewhere in Wassaw Sound off the shores of Tybee Island.

A satirical "news" website "World News Daily Report" ran a story in February 2015 stating the bomb was found by vacationing Canadian divers and that the bomb had since been removed from the bay. The fake story spread widely by gullible readers via social media.

Kind of makes the absence of that Malaysian flight more believable.

To date, no undue levels of unnatural radioactive contamination have been detected in the regional Upper Floridan aquifer by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources (over and above the already high levels thought to be due to monazite, a locally occurring sand that is naturally radioactive).[11][12] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_collision

125 posted on 03/13/2015 10:55:59 AM PDT by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
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To: daniel1212
On the night of 9–10 March ("Operation Meetinghouse"), 334 B-29s took off to raid with 279 of them dropping 1,665 tons of bombs on Tokyo. The bombs were mostly the 500-pound (230 kg) E-46 cluster bomb which released 38 napalm-carrying M-69 incendiary bomblets at an altitude of 2,000–2,500 ft (610–760 m). The M-69s punched through thin roofing material or landed on the ground; in either case they ignited 3–5 seconds later, throwing out a jet of flaming napalm globs. A lesser number of M-47 incendiaries was also dropped: the M-47 was a 100-pound (45 kg) jelled-gasoline and white phosphorus bomb which ignited upon impact. In the first two hours of the raid, 226 of the attacking aircraft unloaded their bombs to overwhelm the city's fire defenses. The first B-29s to arrive dropped bombs in a large X pattern centered in Tokyo's densely populated working class district near the docks in both Koto and Chuo city wards on the water; later aircraft simply aimed near this flaming X. Fourteen B-29s were lost. The individual fires caused by the bombs joined to create a general conflagration, which would have been classified as a firestorm but for prevailing winds gusting at 17 to 28 mph (27 to 45 km/h). Approximately 15.8 square miles (4,090 ha) of the city was destroyed and some 100,000 people are estimated to have died.

This was in early March, 1945. More people were killed than at either Hiroshima [70,000–80,000 dead] or Nagasaki [22,000 to 75,000 dead] - but the Japanese refused to quit.

The single bombs got their minds right. The revisionists need to STIPH (Shut Their Ignorant Pie Holes).

126 posted on 03/13/2015 11:24:52 AM PDT by kiryandil (making the jests that some FReepers aren't allowed to...)
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To: Pelham

127 posted on 03/13/2015 11:46:04 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: kiryandil
This was in early March, 1945. More people were killed than at either Hiroshima [70,000–80,000 dead] or Nagasaki [22,000 to 75,000 dead] - but the Japanese refused to quit.

Another worthy addition. This thread should be a reference for all future debates (not that there was one here) on the issue. In addition,

334 B-29s took off

The numbers alone are astounding. And on the night of May 30th, 1942 1,047 bombers took part in Operation Millennium that attacked Cologne, Germany. In addition to the bombers attacking Cologne, 113 other aircraft on "Intruder" raids harassed German night-fighter airfields - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Cologne_in_World_War_II

And that was just the RAF!

128 posted on 03/13/2015 2:18:58 PM PDT by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
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To: kiryandil

“...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

Eisenhower 1963

I could see him possibly making that statement in August ‘45 when he didn’t really understand the full scope of what happened in Asia. But by 1963 you’d think he would have figured it out.


129 posted on 03/13/2015 2:26:07 PM PDT by nascarnation (Impeach, convict, deport)
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To: nascarnation; kiryandil

“Eisenhower 1963. I could see him possibly making that statement in August ‘45 when he didn’t really understand the full scope of what happened in Asia. But by 1963 you’d think he would have figured it out.”

The quote was merely reported in 1963, in Newsweek.

Eisenhower actually spoke those words in 1945 to Secretary of War Stimson:

https://tinyurl.com/pjqnsbz


130 posted on 03/13/2015 7:56:06 PM PDT by Pelham (The refusal to deport is defacto amnesty)
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To: Pelham

Thnx for that info, P. :)


131 posted on 03/13/2015 8:07:01 PM PDT by kiryandil (making the jests that some FReepers aren't allowed to...)
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To: daniel1212

Read the book “Downfall” it only deals with the last few months of the Pacific campaign and the decision to drop the Bomb. Very well researched and a great read.


132 posted on 03/13/2015 8:15:08 PM PDT by Captain Peter Blood
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To: Pelham

“...The quote was merely reported in 1963, in Newsweek.

Eisenhower actually spoke those words in 1945 to Secretary of War Stimson:

https://tinyurl.com/pjqnsbz";

It’s only the middle of March. August - marking the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the Atomic Bombs - is four months in the future, and the revisionist anti-nuke, anti-British, anti-American flummery is already gaining momentum (it started last month, when UK’s BBC broadcast a veritable orgy of hysterical self-blaming, in honor of the 70th anniversary of RAF and USAAF air strikes against Dresden).

One cannot help but predict, we are in for some heavy lifting, if we are to re-establish historical verisimilitude.

Gen Eisenhower was not an aviator and had no experience leading the fight against Imperial Japan (to tell the truth, he had no experience at all: never went through one single minute of combat, never heard a shot fired in anger). But he wasn’t unique: several senior US military officers expressed a lack of conviction after the fact. Some were leaders of the country’s air forces (USAF did not yet exist). Not terribly startling: all had been born before 1900 and were products of the 19th century, a gentler time (despite the obtrusion of the Napoleonic Wars, and the American Civil War). Indubitably, a more moral time.

All were also politicians, to some degree. When it became clearer which way popular opinion was starting to drift, many quickly tried to surf the wave and boost their reputations, by speaking out about how they’d been against The Bombs “all along.” Crass? Possibly.

At least the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, and later came out against nuclear weapons, had the moral courage to follow their own consciences, without wetting a finger to test the political winds.

Ike’s purported misgivings also cannot be divorced from the inter-Service rivalries of the day (yes, those clashes predated WWI, carried straight on through both World Wars without letup, and sharpened later). It’s less than pretty, but it’s a perennial pastime inside the US military establishment.

Essentially, ground forces and naval forces (who had practiced their rivalries for generations on end) were deeply offended by the conclusion of WWII: USAAF came out of nowhere - in terms of the doddering timeline, backward-gazing viewpoint, and self-satisfied lassitude that shaped American military corporate culture before 1939 - and had the temerity to win the war before this cohort of tradition-bound, ambition-driven GOFOs could carve out a place for themselves in the earth-shattering events of the day, and one-up each other while doing so. Lost chances at military glory wound senior officers deeply, right in the old ego. It’s easier to endure physical wounds sustained in actual battle.

Captain Peter Blood recommended _Downfall_ by Richard B. Frank, and deserves thanks from the entire forum. One hopes more actually read it, and obtain a better grasp on events at the end of the Second World War.


133 posted on 03/14/2015 4:20:18 PM PDT by schurmann
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To: schurmann

The USAAF didn’t play a role in the decision to use the atomic bomb and they really didn’t have a clear understanding of what it would do. Hap Arnold mentions his own surprise that it inspired Japan to surrender.

The decision to drop the bomb was made by Stimson, Marshall, Groves, a few Manhattan Project people, and of course Truman. It wouldn’t necessarily be more destructive than massed conventional bombing but they knew it would inflict an enormous psychological shock. Oppenheimer pointed out that the visual effect of a 20,000 foot mushroom cloud would be tremendous. They guessed right.


134 posted on 03/14/2015 10:41:33 PM PDT by Pelham (The refusal to deport is defacto amnesty)
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To: daniel1212

Dropping the bomb saved many more Japanese lives than American lives. And.....saved them from Soviet occupation. Hell the Japanese should send a big thank you note every year.


135 posted on 03/14/2015 10:47:23 PM PDT by TomasUSMC (FIGHT LIKE WW2, WIN LIKE WW2. FIGHT LIKE NAM, FINISH LIKE NAM.)
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To: daniel1212

The bomb stopped the war but did not keep the peace.

GETTING RID OF THE JAPANESE WARLIKE INSANE SUPIERIORITY COMPLEX BY SHOVING AN AMERICAN MADE CONSTITUION DOWN THEIR THROATS ....IS WHAT DID.

That why we failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We let them include in their Constitutions articles like...NO LAW SHALL CONTRADICT ISLAM.


136 posted on 03/14/2015 10:54:47 PM PDT by TomasUSMC (FIGHT LIKE WW2, WIN LIKE WW2. FIGHT LIKE NAM, FINISH LIKE NAM.)
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To: colorado tanker

My dad was preparing to ship from the European theatre to finish up the war in Japan. They knew at the time American soldiers would die en masse! Thank God for the timing of the bombs, for it enabled my father to go back home to my mother, start a family in peace, simple ordinary peace. What lucky children we baby boomers were to have parents who enjoyed a home, 2 cars, 3 kids, unlocked front doors, low taxation and regulation. No Big Brother, A sense that with hard word, families could accumulate wealth, build a savings for the future. It was idyllic for awhile.


137 posted on 03/14/2015 11:14:13 PM PDT by The Westerner
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To: TomasUSMC
That why we failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. We let them include in their Constitutions articles like...NO LAW SHALL CONTRADICT ISLAM.

For while the liberals work to negate it, the Constitution, understood in the light of the Founders overall, reflects general religious Christian principals and beliefs, one of which is the separation of church and state.

Which disallows a formal state religion, but not religious acknowledgment of the general faith of the founders and the people, which was not Islam. And the state depended on religion to bring souls to be controlled from within so that they need not be controlled from without. Thus enabling smaller gov. And fostering wisdom in electing leaders who reflect their values.

But having been blessed by God, the people increasingly made the blessings their ultimate object of affection and source of security, and believed prevaricating pols leaders who promised more of such on the expense of others. Thus leaders yet reflect the general real faith of the people, but not that which was behind the Constitution.

Washington's Farewell Address, 1797 — Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. (Farewell Address, 1797; http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp)

John Adams (1735—July 4, 1826. Second President and one of the Founding Fathers. Assisted Thomas Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence): Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure, than they have it now, they may change their Rulers and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty. They will only exchange Tyrants and Tyrannies." (Letter to Zabdiel Adams, June 21, 1776; http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/hlaw:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28dg004210%29%29

[T]he Christian religion… is the basis, or rather the source, of all genuine freedom in government… I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of Christianity have not a controlling influence. (K. Alan Snyder, Defining Noah Webster: Mind and Morals in the Early Republic (New York: University Press of America, 1990), p. 253, to James Madison on October 16, 1829)

Justice Joseph Story, Supreme Court Justice from 1811 to 1845 stated (emphasis mine), “One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law. There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundations.” (Joseph Story, Life and Letters of Joseph Story, William W. Story, editor, Vol. II, p. 8, 1851)

§ 1865. Indeed, the right of a society or government to interfere [be involved] in matters of religion will hardly be contested by any persons, who believe that piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well being of the state, and indispensable to the administration of civil justice. The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion, the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to him for all our actions, founded upon moral freedom and accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues;--these never can be a matter of indifference in any well ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive, how any civilized society can well exist without them... This is a point wholly distinct from that of the right of private judgment in matters of religion, and of the freedom of public worship according to the dictates of one's conscience.

More .

138 posted on 03/15/2015 6:18:45 AM PDT by daniel1212 (Come to the Lord Jesus as a contrite damned+destitute sinner, trust Him to save you, then live 4 Him)
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