Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the reckoning

The Daily Telegraph ^ | August 13, 2012 | Dan Jones

[stuartcr]

No civilians = no callateral damage = every bomb dropped, a successful hit.

Very convenient relativism in action.

[SES1066]

As you said, this is 20/20 hindsight armchair revisionism. Yes, the first use of these war-changing weapons is and should be a matter of continuing study but much of what this review reveals is the ‘modern’ revulsion against the Atom Bomb use PERIOD.

I do not know if either author mentioned the following facts, but the horrific ‘conventional’ fire-bomb raids of Dresden in the ETO and Tokyo also ‘melted’ people! The Tokyo raids killed more people than either A-Bomb (I believe), yet those attacks were deemed proper as the Japanese had moved manufacturing down to household workshops.

There is credible evidence that an invasion of Japan could have resulted in a stalemate where the Allies would have so many casualties with so little gain that some, including Britain, could not sustain the cost and would withdraw. We, today, forget how very close to the edge that Britain came to exhaustion in this war. If you read the early Ian Fleming James Bond novels, you realize that the British wartime economic restrictions persisted for more than a decade after the war.

What would have happened then to the nascent Cold War is a study for alternative history and there are many who have written their speculations. What I know is that the death tolls for a non-ABomb scenario seem to exceed the losses of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by magnitudes on both sides.

Of course, every August Anniversary brings these tomes to book reviewers attention and a reprise of this argument. So this will repeat next year and so on as a hook to hang another view that being a victim of an A-Bomb is a bad thing. What a surprise!

[BobinIL]

This is the difference between the total war in WWII and what we are doing today. In WWII the enemies armies were completely and utterly destroyed, their civilian populations were attacked and supplies of food, water and medical supplies were always short or nonexistent. The infrastructure of their cities were completely destroyed and many of them were left homeless. After 4 years of these hardships the will of the people was broken and they would no longer be a threat to any other country for decades. This type of total war has been lost and this is why these police actions we are involved in today last for years and years with no end in site. Because the enemy is not broken.

[LaserJock]

“This wasn’t just an idea; it was actually fairly close to the truth.”

You’re dead on, sir. Thank you! They made themselves combatants.

I forced myself to read this idiotic screed. 5 minutes of my life I wish I had back.

[Sopater]

They gave up all right to exist at that time and exist now only because of our mercy.

I intend to apply that well reasoned logic to anyone who attacks me, my family, my country, or anyone else without provocation. Thank you for putting it so well.

[fishtank]

Retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets Jr., left, and his grandson, then-Capt. Paul Tibbets IV, pilot the last flyable B-29 Superfortress. General Tibbets was the pilot in command of the “Enola Gay” when it dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945. Now a colonel, the younger Tibbets is the Air Force Inspection Agency commander at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. Courtesy photo

http://www.militaryavenue.com/Articles/Face+of+Defense-+Grandson+Carries+on+Grandfathers+Service-38701.aspx

"Colonel Tibbets also shared something his grandfather told him about nuclear weapons: “We hope we never have to use nuclear weapons in anger again,” said the elder Tibbets.

“But if you think about it, we use these weapons everyday as a credible deterrent," stated Colonel Tibbets. "We, as a nation, should never forget that.”"

[Sopater]

They gave up all right to exist at that time and exist now only because of our mercy.

I intend to apply that well reasoned logic to anyone who attacks me, my family, my country, or anyone else without provocation. Thank you for putting it so well.

[mkjessup]

The only problem with dropping the two atom bombs was that we didn’t have any more of them.

Au contraire my FRiend, in fact there was a third atomic bomb ready for shipment to Tinian Island that would have been designated for Tokyo on 19 August 1945 had the Japanese NOT surrendered. That is based on a memo between General General John Hull and Colonel L.E. Seeman on 13 August, and that memo further stated that if the Japs didn't run up the white flag after Tokyo was nuked, that another bomb would be ready for another drop at either the end of August or the first part of September. There were tentatively 4 atomic bombs slated for Japan in September 1945. and three more in October. Our atomic assembly line was running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Here, read the memo:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf

[mkjessup]

"General General John Hull"

You understand that he was a very important General, lol ;)

[beenaround]

Bet on it. The Germans were thisclose to developing one. I know they surrendered first but who knows what the Japanese were up to. In any case even if dropping the bombs would have only saved 5 lives instead of 500,000 American and allied lives it was worth it.
The blame America crowd pisses me off because they are such freakin’ hypocrites. They finger point and marginalize everything we do but the sh*t hits the fan they are frantically looking for us to bail out their sorry asses. My call after 9/11 would have been to nuke Afghanistan and in no uncertain terms let the rest of the Camel humpers that there is a list of the order in which Arab Nations will be annihilated and each time America or one of her allies is attacked in anyway another one of their hell holes will be turned into a melted slag pile. My guess is after the second time they will turn there interest in another direction and leave us alone. Publicly the world will act with outrage at our barbarism while privately in back channel communications we will be high fived with great joy.

[Graybeard58]

No civilians = no callateral damage = every bomb dropped, a successful hit.

Very convenient relativism in action.

I don't know how you've managed to stay at F.R. so long. Almost everything that comes from your keyboard smacks of liberalism. From siding with homosexualism to being anti America's fighting forces.

Do you post just to piss people off? If so, it's not working. It doesn't elicit anger, like the queers you defend and the anti Americanism you promote, it just brings disgust.

[jerod]

Maybe the question should be this... If the Axis countries had developed the atom bomb first, how many bombs would they have dropped to achieve their maniacal goal of world domination?

It is generally agreed that if these bombs had not been dropped the death toll would have been greater than it was… It also generally agreed that if the world had not been witness to the destruction these weapons created, that the ensuing Cold War would more likely have been a very Hot War. So the actions by Truman ended one war and prevented another much larger and much more destructive conflict.

[I am Richard Brandon]

" the British wartime economic restrictions persisted for more than a decade after the war.

On a slightly different note in this thread:

"Thank you Clement Attlee and your socialist government! Conditions were WORSE in Britain after the war because of your 'wonderful' ideology - currently being visited on the USA by Obama."

[GreenHornet]

I like to point out to liberals, that a good Democrat, President Truman, is the one who made the call to use the A-bomb.

...and it was his predecessor, liberal hero FDR who seized the property of thousands of Amercians of Japanese descent, then had them rounded up and shipped off to relocation camps.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

I can’t quite muster up your grim enthusiasm for mass slaughter. Dropping the A-Bomb was a neccessary evil, but it certainly wasn’t something to be inordinately proud of.

[cpdiii]

This is a garbage editorial, the bombs saved millions of lives, and prevented Stalin from a land grab in Hokkaido and installing a Communist puppet state.

Good post!

Before we would have put one soldier on Japans home Islands we would have destroyed all of Japans major cities, all their industrial capacity, all the major infrastruture. We had total control of the air over Japan and could destroy at will. Japan would have had no way to feed itself, no way to treat it ill and dying. Disease and starvation would have killed many millions of Japanese if we did not drop those atomic bombs.

They would have fought us for each and every square inch of the home Islands. In such a battle (as in all battles like that) we would have killed with a vengeance and hatred that would have been unequaled in history. Many of our troops would have died. Those left alive would have become killing machines hell bent on vengeance, just as they were on Okinawa. Many of the soldiers in caves refused to surrender. We burned them alive with flame throwers. This act though horrifyingly brutal was totally justified. To go into those caves would have cost a lot of American lives.

Please note this is not in any way criticism of our honorable soldiers in WWII. It is simply a statement of fact.

[JAKraig]

I can think of no reason to lose the life of one American to save the life of one, ten or one hundred million attacking ruthless barbarians.

It is truly sad that so many people who did not make the decision to kill 3000 Americans while they slept on a Sunday morning without warning had to die for the decisions of those that did. I do not weep for those Japanese who died but am glad for those Americans who were allowed to live because Little Boy and Fat man were dropped.

It is wrong to think only of the harm caused by the Atomic Bombs while not considering the death and destruction caused by the Axis powers. Japan was ruthless, had they had the bombs they would have been dropped on New York and Washington, D.C. without hesitation and all of us today would be speaking Japanese.

[dfwgator]

Imagine if the war had dragged on until Mao took over China, and then he sent millions of screaming Chinamen into Japan, along with the Soviets.

[Wuli]

The statements that:

"Two studies, by Paul Ham and Craig Collie, based on interviews with survivors"

is clarified down in the text with this line:

"Through interviews with survivors of the nuclear blasts, Ham knits together a reassessment of the politics of 1945"

What it really means is "rewrite" "the politics of 1945".

From this new Leftist assault on history, Allied intelligence was supposed to have infiltrated and understood the sentiments of the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, from which the intelligence the Allies had on the Japanese military and government, and how much the population would have followed them, would have been altered 180 degrees.

No where in this "reassessment of the politics of 1945" is it said to have found/obtained new (or newly uncovered) "interviews" of the political participants of the day. No, their motives and intentions simply rewritten on the basis of the preconceived notion of the authors that the attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were unnecessary.

The authors obviously believed that ahead of time, and the thoughts of the Nagasaki and Hirsoshima survivors is but a foil, an excuse, for "new evidence" that proves that.

By the way, if anyone need notice the "ultimate results", they only need look at Nagasaki and Hiroshima today, and Detroit in 1945 and today.

here's Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

http://www.photopumpkin.com/photo-blog/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-today/

a Detroit:

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f72_1271699423

[luvbach1]

How could that first A-bomb have slipped Stewart’s mind? It did make the papers. Oh, Stewart wasn’t born yet.