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Special Report

Religiously Remembering Hiroshima

By on 8.13.10 @ 6:07AM

Every year it becomes harder to remember why it was bombed in the first place.

Somewhat surprisingly, the 65th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this month passed without many sharp condemnations and calls for repentance by left-leaning church officials. The head of the Two Futures Project, a coalition for left-leaning evangelicals urging a nuclear free world, blogged for the Huffington Post about the atomic anniversaries serving as a reminder of the urgent need for nuclear disarmament. In Switzerland the head of the World Council of Churches (WCC) likewise urged complete “nuclear abolition” based on memories of those destroyed Japanese cities. 

“Again we mourn the people who died from the atomic bombings of 1945 and extend our solidarity and resolve to those who survive,” declared the Geneva-based WCC chief, noting that “65 years on, nuclear bombs still threaten humanity and deny a lasting peace.” He also bemoaned the legacy that since 1945 has seen the world “divided into two camps — a handful of states that assert the right to have weapons of mass annihilation and the majority of states that do not.”

Of course, the WCC chief, who is a Norwegian theologian, did not acknowledge the context of Japanese militarism, with its millions of murdered victims across Asia. And he derided nuclear weapons as wicked without morally distinguishing among the various regimes that possess them or their purposes. In August 1945, many tens of millions rejoiced that U.S. atomic strikes would spare the lives of countless hundreds of thousands, probably millions, from dozens of nations would have died if the war had continued even a few more months, much less years. Interestingly, the WCC’s news service reported about a Japanese pastor and atomic survivor who recently penned his memoir. Setting the context in contrast with silence from Western church officials, he wrote that the atomic bombings were “a result of a war of aggression and colonial rule in Asia by Japanese militarism, which cannot be talked about without a deep repentance as one who supported and cooperated with causing the war of aggression.”

The horrors that Japanese militarists visited upon Asia’s occupied nations even up until the very end are too numerous to mention. But one particular atrocity perhaps iconically represents many. After U.S. forces and Filipino insurgents in February 1945 famously liberated over 2,100 primarily civilian Allied prisoners at Los Banos prison camp in the Philippines, Japanese forces retaliated by slaughtering the entire nearby Filipino village. Over 1,500 Filipino men, women, and children perished on one single horrible but typical day under Japanese occupation. They were not inadvertent collateral casualties from a bombing. Each victim was butchered individually by Japanese troops under command of the embarrassed commander of the by then empty prisoner camp.

Recalling the years of such Japanese crimes that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki does not typically interest Western church officials commentating against the U.S. atomic blasts. And these prelates usually forget about the countless American, Japanese, Chinese, Australian, New Zealander, Filipino, Canadian, Indonesian, Malaysian, Papuan, Korean, Chinese, Indochinese, Burmese, Indian, Russian, and South Pacific Island lives that were spared because of the atomic strikes. Some prominent liberal Western church officials at the time, aware of the horrible choices, were more understanding. John Foster Dulles, later Eisenhower’s secretary of state, was a theologically liberal Presbyterian who in 1945 chaired the Federal Council of Churches’ (FCC) commission on a Just and Durable Peace. In the immediate wake of Hiroshima, but before Nagasaki, Dulles organized a statement from the FCC, precursor to the National Council of Churches. He was joined by the FCC President, Methodist Bishop Bromley Oxnam, himself a prominent liberal churchman.

“Americans can be proud that under their auspices a scientific miracle has been performed,” Dulles and Oxnam announced on behalf of the FCC. They urged a “temporary suspension” of further air attacks to allow for Japanese surrender. And they warned against America, as a “professedly Christian nation,” making atomic weapons a “normal part of the arsenal of war.” More than a week later, they wrote President Truman expressing “profound thankfulness” for the Japanese surrender without further atomic conflict. And they celebrated that America had “showed a capacity for self-restraint which greatly increases our moral authority in the world.” Having given a “practical demonstration of the possibility of atomic energy bringing war to an end,” the precedent “may be of incalculable value to posterity.”

The FCC’s more critical general secretary presaged his coming successors by telling Truman he himself was “deeply disturbed” by the atomic strikes.

Truman responded: “Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.” 

How to confront beastly aggression from Japanese militarists, their Nazi allies, or other dark, kindred spirits has often been difficult for idealistic liberal Western religionists. In 1946, another FCC commission, which included luminaries such as famed Christian “realist” Reinhold Niebuhr, denounced the bombings as “morally indefensible.” They further insisted: “We have sinned grievously against the laws of God and against the people of Japan.” But Niebuhr on his own later pronounced that “the eventual use of the bomb for the shortening of the war would have been justified” if the Japanese had not surrendered.

More articulate than Western prelates now or then perhaps was a retired Japanese Anglican bishop seven years ago who remembered the atomic blasts as a nearby teenage naval cadet. The bombs caused jubilation for the Koreans and the Southeast Asians whom the Japanese oppressed, he recalled to Episcopal News Service. But for the Japanese, who lost hundreds of thousands of innocent people, the bombings also provided freedom from totalitarianism, militarism, colonialism and racism, he said. He described the bombs as “God’s judgment” and “God’s mercy” at the same time. “I’m not affirming or justifying the dropping of [an] atomic bomb by any means,” the bishop concluded. But he surmised that God “can use not only the good thing but also bad things to do his will.”

 

About the Author

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.


Letter to the Editor View all comments (133) |

Robbins Mitchell| 8.13.10 @ 6:22AM

Well,the only people these days who condemn our use of nukes against Japan are self righteous lefty poseurs who want to try to guilt trip the US..screw that....my own father was with a US Navy occupation team on Okinawa at the time helping to plan Operation Olympic...the first phase of the invasion of the home islands schedule to kick off that November...none of his team expected to survive....and even after Nagasaki,the Japanese war cabinet took a voted and refused to surrender....if not for the personal intervention of Emperor Hirohito,the war would have dragged on for another year or so....so the lefty poseurs are free to pretend they are morally superior to those,who at the time,saw the immediate imperative to end the years long Japanese mass murder spree as quickly as possible...and Truman brought that to a halt...literally overnight...which puts the lefty guilt trippers on the wrong side of the moral equation...and on the wrong side of history...

"North Tinian tower,this is Dimples 8-2 requesting taxi clearance"

~Col Paul Tibbets~
6 Aug 1945

Ned| 8.13.10 @ 12:27PM

Ditto that... two uncles in the Navy on Okinawa, another uncle in the Marines on Siapan - no way he'd have made it through another landing - and Dad was in artillery in the Army, in a rocket artillery battery... in previous action units identical to his suffered 85% casualties to counter-battery fire (rocket trails being fairly obvious)... his unit was already under deployment orders when the orders were countermanded and they stood down for the end of the war... I'm firmly convinced that none of the men in our family of Dad's generation would have survived...

chuck| 8.13.10 @ 9:50PM

Unconditional surrender, then we rebuilt the country, installed a democratic government, and the Japs have lived in peace and prosperity ever since. So what exactly did we do wrong here????

lonestar| 8.15.10 @ 4:37PM

Firstly, we insisted on winning the war. Secondly, we didn't apologize for being more technologically advanced, and thirdly, according to the liberal Presbyterian in the article, we were a "professedly Christian nation" at the time. That automatically makes us wrong no matter what we did.


Sarcastically yours,

Appleby| 8.13.10 @ 6:36AM

My late father was fighting in Europe and was waiting for orders that would have sent him to the Pacific had the bomb not ended the war. It is likely that I would never have been born, if that war had not come to a speedy end, much less had 60 years of happy memories of my blessed Daddy.

My cousin Glen Frazier was 16 years old when he was captured by the Japanese and made part of the Bataan Death March. His book, Hells Guest, recounts his experiences, and he was featured on Ken Burns special and in his book that came out subsequently. He is still alive and a Lieutenant Colonel, retired, who had a good life following that terrible experience -- and others like him live because of the bomb.

Daddy frequently reminded us that in a war there are no innocent bystanders. The millions that have been blown to bits by Muslim terrorists in buses, pizza parlours, night clubs and their own homes can bear witness to that -- and they do.

And to those who argue that the bomb was not the answer, I would like to know what they thought the question was.

Brian Mc| 8.13.10 @ 7:09AM

If President Truman had not used Fat Man and Little Boy he would have been responsible for the casualties that most experts believe would have exceeded a million in number. If this had occurred, and then, mothers and fathers, wives, brothers and sisters had found that all along he had held back a weapon that would have ended the war in days, there would have been hell to pay.

Tim*| 8.13.10 @ 7:10AM

Dad , had just finished combat operations in Europe and was assigned a command , as a light colonel for the invasion of Japan ,when we dropped The Big Ones on Japan .

Mess With The Bull & Ya Get The Horns.

Alert1201| 8.13.10 @ 7:58AM

The liberals who are against us using A-bomb are ignorant of history. The see the bombings isolated from the historical events with which they are intertwined.

It is also odd that they pick the Atomic bombs to scream about. By August 6th we had pretty much destoryed every large Japinese city by conventinoal weapons. Our leaders wanted to drop the bombs on large cities to maxamize their destruction yet most of them had already been destroyed.

Ned| 8.13.10 @ 12:20PM

your post is spot on... LeMay and XXI Bomber Command had largely run out of targets by the time the nukes were used, and Japan still refused to surrender - estimates for deaths in the fire storms they created are in the 500K - 1M range, but no one knows...

you could have left it at "... liberals... are ignorant..."

michigander_sandusky| 8.13.10 @ 8:01AM

My dad's ship (USS Princeton) was bombed from underneath him by the Japs at Leyte in Oct '44. He was injured but recovered and was due for reassignment to the invasion force for Japan. I too would probably not be here but for the A-bombs. Also, I had the opportunity to visit Nanjing when we adopted our daughter from China. As a student of WWII history I saw the monuments to the 300,000 Chinese viciously murdered by the Japs in Nanjing and the thousands of women raped then stabbed to death by Jap bayonets. In this "incident" two Japanese officers even had a contest to see which one could cut off more innocent Chinese heads! They ran the story in the Japanese newspapers like it was a home run derby. Japan has never apologized for these atrocities nor for the multitude of others they perpetrated from the early 1930's through 1945. To have not dropped the bombs would have been un-conscionable. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of WWII history in the Pacific theatre should understand the need for the A-bombs.

JimH| 8.13.10 @ 8:10AM

Using the A bomb on Japan is usually presented as the alternative to invading Japan. This was only true because we insisted on unconditional surrender. Had a negotiated surrender been accepted neither alternative would have been necessary. Having obtained the surrender, the terms we imposed were not very different then what would have been obtained in the negotiated surrender.

alert1201| 8.13.10 @ 8:44AM

After the atrocities Japan committed troughout the world, anything less then an unconditional surrender would have been unconscionable.

Seems this is just another backhanded way of saying we were wrong to drop the bomb.

True Man| 8.13.10 @ 9:14AM

Of course it's a backhanded way. Jim believes he is superior to everyone else.

Of course it's likely Jim wouldn't be here either if there hadn't been an a-bomb.

JimH| 8.13.10 @ 11:49AM

These asinine ad hominum attacks to the contrary. The only point I was making was that the end result likely could have been achieved without using the bomb. The emperor remained, the government for the most part remained and there were relatively few war crimes trials. I am no historian but my guess is that once victory was achieved the goal was to re build Japan to help stand against the USSR. If the bomb had not been available to you think an unconditional surrender should still have been insisted upon considering all the additional lives lost?

Blackwatch| 8.13.10 @ 1:18PM

There was sentiment in America to end the war in the Pacific with conditional surrender. America was weary of the war after 5 years. It was there but it wasn't unamimous. Some of that was fear for our servicemen--the prediction of a million dead and wounded during the invasion of the Japanese home islands was frightening.

Yes I think unconditional surrender was neccessary. Why fight a total war and then make a dubious peace? WWI ended without an unconditional surrender and look what that birthed one generation later.

Certain older cultures carry grudges and have racial memories that are hundreds or thousands of years old. The Japanese saw themselves as the center of the world--a master race.

You don't make a dubious peace with a master race. You kill as many of them as you can as fast as you can until they surrender. And then you bust up their culture and their government as best you can and model it after your own.

Unless you want to fight them a generation later.

Believer| 8.13.10 @ 2:35PM

Blackwatch-" You bust up their culture and model it after your own", as far as im concerned we had no choice but to use the bomb, but replace Japans culture with a culture like Americas was not the thing to do. Years ago if you took the subway in Japan, a purse or other package left on the seat would stay untouched until the owner would retrieve it the next day. Now because of American influence they are inching towards the same cesspool Americas in today, Morally Bankrupt. Thomas Jefferson said that our form of Govornment would only work for a Christian people, and observing the present condition of America I would say he was dead on.

Pat| 8.13.10 @ 2:11PM

JimH: If you were an historian, you would know Japan’s surrender wasn’t “unconditional”. We deliberately allowed Emperor Hirohito to retain his status and a somewhat diminished civil authority in post-war Japan – would we have allowed Hitler to retain a minor post within the post-war government of Germany? And this “conditional” surrender wasn’t arrived at accidentally, it was thoroughly debated before hand by Truman and his advisors, with strong opinions on both sides of the issue. A significant portion of the American public (the main street voters) wanted Hirohito executed, along with various and sundry Japanese leaders. The Japanese, in turn, made a serious mistake in rejecting “with contempt” our proposed peace initiative prior to dropping the atomic bomb. The Japanese retroactively contend the “reject with contempt” remark was a mistranslation of their actual response, but no one knows for certain what their true feelings were when they rejected our proposal.

The facts are FDR alone, without Churchill’s or Marshall’s prior knowledge, was the originator of “unconditional surrender” – it was a bonehead move done for political and not military reasons –something Democrats are adept at. Partly, Roosevelt wanted to reassure the Soviet Union that America and our allies were committed to Germany’s defeat, thinking to prevent the USSR from signing a separate peace treaty with Hitler or accepting an armistice. Stalin wasn’t impressed with FDR’s pronouncement, he was completely indifferent to Roosevelt’s personal charm and smarmy reassurances; he demanded action, not words.

Partly, the American war effort against Germany wasn’t impressive at first and FDR had been instrumental in urging America to make war on Nazi Germany. Some historians believe FDR was the actor behind leaking America’s secret war plans to the media just before Pearl Harbor – plans which outlined how we would defeat Germany and with the hope the leak would serve as a means to goad Hitler into declaring war on the United States. FDR had publicly promised American mothers and fathers their sons wouldn’t be drafted to fight in another European conflict, so, politically, he needed Germany to make the first move.

Once the war commenced, it was apparent to everyone, including the postmaster of Bad Axe, Michigan, we weren’t prepared for war and were getting off to a slow start militarily. FDR employed this form of “bold leadership” for political theatre to bolster American resolve. And his political enemies within the media were publicly mocking FDR’s bold talk prior to the war in light of our initially weak response once the war commenced.

JimH| 8.15.10 @ 8:08AM

Sorry for the delay in replying. I just wanted to thank you for an interesting and informative post. I'm curious. Do you know if Japan knew they could keep the emperor when they surrendered?

Pat| 8.15.10 @ 1:58PM

JimH: Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945 – it’s a matter of historical record they, the Japanese, were well aware of America’s and specifically MacArthur’s intentions to retain the Emperor as sovereign over Japan subject to the Supreme Commander’s oversight when the Japanese formally surrendered on the battleship Missouri. But, the historical record also indicates we weren’t the only country which had to agree on a surrender proposal, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and China also had to agree to the terms being proposed. Obviously, after some jockeying for post-war advantages, they did as well.

There was no radio message saying: “Surrender and Hirohito stays in power – signed H. Truman” however. Our intention was not to imprison or execute the Emperor but neither was it to allow the same form of government to remain in control over the Japanese, we wished for a popular democracy like our own to replace Japan’s present government, but we didn’t demand they adopt our form of government as a surrender condition either. Did the Japanese fully understand our intentions? Of course not, the average Japanese citizen had no clue as to what was happening within their own government, nor did the Japanese government feel any obligation to keep them informed of peace negotiations: in point of fact their government told Japanese citizens “we are determined to fight on resolutely…” after the atomic bombs were dropped .

Nor did the one million Japanese soldiers fighting outside Japan know about the Allies’ peace proposal but you may wish to review our official message to Japan and the events which transpired around August 10, 11 and 12th. There were many players on both sides involved but Secretary of State Byrnes and Japanese Cabinet Minister Sakomizu considered the cease fire terms. Our proposal stated we wanted the Emperor to require all Japanese soldiers to lay down their arms - we said the future government of Japan would be determined by the “freely expressed will” of the Japanese people, that the Emperor and the government’s authority to rule would be subject to the Supreme Commander and the Allies decisions.

The Japanese weren’t sure of what we intended in regard to the Emperor’s ability to retain all his former prerogatives, we weren’t exactly sure what we intended either – Truman, Leahy, Forrestal, Byrnes were divided in their opinions. However, subsequent events prove it was Emperor Hirohito, and not the Americans, who pre-empted the negotiations and ordered his subjects to accept our proposal – he did this voluntarily in an effort to save the Japanese people from annihilation as a race. He suspected we had more atomic bombs ready to drop (in fact, we had 2 more) but he also suspected Japanese military leaders wouldn’t budge and planned to make a fight to the death rather than capitulate, with possibly an additional 10 to 20 million Japanese dead.

There is not a simple answer to your question, the situation was anything but simple and clear cut. The Japanese thought the Emperor would be retained but weren’t absolutely certain based on our communications. The Emperor, himself, became impatient with the back and forth and made the initial move toward a cease fire followed by a surrender. Certain political factions within Japan tried to violently prevent the Emperor’s proclamation, offering acceptance of a cease fire, from being broadcast to the Japanese people, so not all Japanese agreed with Japan’s surrender even if we allowed the Emperor to retain some authority.

Harry the Horrible| 8.13.10 @ 9:08AM

And why the heck shouldn't we demand an unconditional surrender from the nation that cravenly attacked us Pearl Harbor?
It is no different from we demanded and received from their Nazi allies.
Personally, I think they're lucky we didn't follow up on Halsey's "When this war is over, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell."

RalphSchmalph| 8.13.10 @ 10:30AM

A negotiated surrender would have been impossible in that it would have validated Japan's conduct of the war itself. Also, it would have allowed for the perpetuation of the fascist political system then in control of Japan. Further, the atomic bombs saved at least one million Japanese lives given the fact that their losses were about 5-1 at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. They would have fought to the death during an invasion and we would have lost 250,000 men to their one million.

Veteran| 8.13.10 @ 4:22PM

I have seen estimates that we would have lost AT LEAST a million, and they would have lost 6 million or more.

NavyBrat | 8.13.10 @ 12:01PM

A samurai does NOT surrender. To surrender is to bring shame & disgrace not only on one's self, but one's family & ancestors. They would NOT have negotiated a peace. Come on, man.

Robbins Mitchell| 8.13.10 @ 12:20PM

Japan had purchased a cyclotron from U Cal Berkeley in 1938 (how's THAT for irony??)to begin working on its own nuclear program to build an atomic bomb it termed the 'genzai bakudan'.,..by 1944 it had a working reactor on the Korean peninsula at Konan and was being regularly supplied with enriched uranium oxide from Germany by submarine....had the Allies waited to invade the Japanese home islands in late '45 and early '46 instead of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki,,that would have given Japan enough time to perfect the 'genzai bakudan' and its mass murder would have continued unabated at the cost of untold American lives

Ned| 8.13.10 @ 12:40PM

"negotiated surrender" - you mean "negotiated" as in, "You can keep China, and Burma, and all of 'French Indo-China' (as it was called then), but you have to give back the English colonies... and the oil fields in Indonesia... and say you're sorry to about 10M dead people..."

And never mind that the Japanese militarists refused ANY surrender... right up until the second big flash of light, and Hirohito's realization that Bull Halsey was serious about Japanese only being spoken in hell when he was done...

The only serious mistake made with the nukes was not dropping the FIRST one on Tokyo, right down Hirohito's chimney... and if he had survived that, we should have hung the SOB...

chris haynes| 8.13.10 @ 8:53AM

So the proper response for Pearl Harbor and rape and plunder is to punish the innocent?

Kill tens of thousands of innocent children at Nagaski, but spare the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

This thinking lives on with this: " I support abortion in cases of rape."

Harry the Horrible| 8.13.10 @ 9:13AM

Ya know, if its a choice between dead American service members and dead Japanese children, I'm all for dead Japanese children.

tdiinva| 8.13.10 @ 9:16AM

Mr. Haynes:

So you believe that at a minimum starving and bunring to death millions of civillians by blockade and bombing is ok while ending the war quickly at a cost of fewer civillian deaths then the Japanese killed in Nanking is the morally superior option?

blackwatch| 8.13.10 @ 1:21PM

tdiinva,

Well met.

Mr. Haynes is an idiot. I think that point has been proven.

Bill| 8.13.10 @ 9:25AM

The atomic bombing of Japan wasn't payback for Pearl Harbor; it was an attempt to shock people who wouldn't believe that they could lose a war into surrendering, and to get a powerless peace movement into a position where they could dominate the warmongers who were running the state.

drudge ette obama| 8.14.10 @ 7:51AM

The Japanese leadership was responsible for any innocents' deaths. Chris Haynes, when you look evil in the eye, you better be prepared to defend completely, not half-heartedly. Go have a latte, you fleshy mound of human weakness.

monty.crisco| 8.15.10 @ 10:51PM

Go troll somewhere else, Haynes. Your argument makes no sense, you naive little twerp. There would have been a lot more dead little children if we had invaded the home isles conventionally, but what exactly are you arguing that we do? "The innocent" as you term them would have suffered much more (ON BOTH SIDES) without dropping the bomb, and the emperor was one of a scant few war criminals that escaped justice from us. But that is to our shame, but the only real shame I see on our side.

Dennis Bergendorf| 8.13.10 @ 8:58AM

One interesting fact that's rarely discussed is that the only time in history when atomic weapons have been used was when there was only one nuclear power, with an arsenal of two bombs.
Years ago I was a safety engineer at a family-owned light manufacturing facility. One interesting fact I learned was that the safety is often inversely proportionate to the perceived threat (the more danger one feels, the more careful one becomes).
As we pare down our nuclear stockpiles, the world may feel more safe, and that, ironically, may actually make the chance of a nuclear strike more, not less, likely.

Louis Jenkins| 8.13.10 @ 9:09AM

The A-Bomb was a good thing. Yes it saved a million lives in the Pacific. The Japanese command system had adopted the "death by attrition" mode of fighting at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. While the US was fighting to perserve life, the Japanese were fighting to end it. Gone were the Banzi charges. Had the Kamakazis gone after the supply ships instead of the capital ones, the whole mess may have had a different story. No, be thankful Truman made the decision to drop the A-bomb. It changed history and allowed us to live.

Bill| 8.13.10 @ 9:19AM

The alternatives to A-bombing Japan:

1. Continue firebombing. Firebombing missions prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed more Japanese than the A-bombs;

2. Continue the blockade and have 10,000,000 Japanese starve to death, as more than one Japanese historian have estimated;

3. Invade, to the tune of a million Allied casualties and tens of millions Japanese killed, plus the use of poison gas, which Marshall was contemplating, and the atomic bombing of the invasion areas with several A-bombs, perhaps as many as five.

One thing that recent readings have established for me is that nuclear weapons aren't necessarily the worst thing that could be used in a war.

KJW| 8.13.10 @ 3:42PM

Indeed, Bill, we LIQUEFIED the streets of Tokyo with our firebombing and they still didn't give up, and apparently were ready to sacrifice 100 million of their own against us.

R Martin| 8.13.10 @ 9:21AM

Those 1945 bombs marked the last time the United States achieved a clear victory in a major conflict. Now, due to hand-wringing over "civilian casualties", we muddle through wars stalemated by enemies who effectively use such sentivities against us. In our own defense we need to be much more aggressive and accept the fact that winning wars involves killing enemies, and their supporters. If we adopted this policy, there would be no terrorism from Somali pirates. How hard is it to track the mother ships by satelllite and destroy them with missiles.

Bill| 8.13.10 @ 9:28AM

We have forgotten what war is about. General MacArthur said it best: "In war, there is no substitute for victory."

Until our nation accepts the validity of that statement in its heart, we will continue to fight wars that we cannot win.

Bill| 8.13.10 @ 9:34AM

For a sense of what an invasion of Japan would have been all about, read Hell To Pay by D.M. Giangreco.

Thunderbottom| 8.13.10 @ 10:02AM

Another book that I would recommend is "Retribution: the Battle for Japan, 1944-45" by Max Hastings. He wrote that even though the Japanese, from the lowliest private to the senior military officers, knew that the war was lost in mid-1944, they expressed the unanimous opinion that the war had to go on because "honor" demanded it. He also wrote that, while Japan was being beaten on all other fronts, they were still holding on, even advancing, in China. Japan followed the "Three-all" campaign in China: "Burn all, kill all, destroy all." Had the two atomic bombs not been dropped, the Japanese would have continued their brutal Chinese campaign to the end of the war which probably wouldn't have come until late 1946 at the earliest.

ncatty| 8.13.10 @ 4:02PM

Retribution is a measured history of the last year of the Pacific War. Among many factors swirling around the bomb-dropping decision was inter-service rivalries. LeMay was convinced that he could win with airpower (conventional) and Admirals King and Nimitz thought victory could be achieved through blockade.

Ned| 8.13.10 @ 12:50PM

Just finished "The Pacific" by Hugh Ambrose - Steven's son. He can be a little tedious, but it's a very real recitation of the experiences of Marines involved in the Pacific war, in their own words from their letters and diaries... Ambrose doesn't dwell on any of the bombing of Japan, choosing to present the limited view of the Marine on the ground...

Phil| 8.13.10 @ 9:36AM

Japan was already on the brink of collapse, and had actively sought terms for surrender for months by the time Hiroshima was bombed.

Alert1201| 8.13.10 @ 9:44AM

On the brink of collapse?? The country had already been firebombed to virtual oblivion and they had not surrendered. It took two bombs to get them to surrender? And still many military leaders did not want to. Something missing here.
Any attempt by Japan to seek terms of surrender before the bomb was just a chance for them to save face. They were tyring to negotate a peace not surrender.

Bill| 8.13.10 @ 9:57AM

Something like 40,000,000 Japanese civilians were part of the Japanese final effort, I think called Ketsu-go. They were trained to fight Allied forces with bamboo spears and to roll under tank treads with mines strapped to their bodies.

The Japanese had at least 13,000 aircraft.

The Japanese had correctly identified the invasion beaches for Coronet and Olympic, and had fortified those beaches with at least twice the number of troops the Allies believed.

There were something like 3,000,000 million Japanese troops in Manchuria some of whom would have been diverted to the home islands to fight the invasion.

The Japanese were known to fight to the death.

The Allies had stockpiles of poison gas and planned to use atomic bombs to open the routes off the beaches.

The routes to Tokyo involved passing through terrain that readily lent itself to defense. There were many ridges like the Shuri Line on Okinawa that claimed lives by the platoon.

The Japanese were aware of the use of kamikaze aircraft on troopships and supply vessels, and the hills of Kysuhu and Honshu were such that kamikazes could pounce on Allied ships with considerable surprise, unlike at Okinawa, where they could be detected well out from the ships.

The invasion of Japan would have been a bloodbath.

My father was boarding an LST to take him to Okinawa for training to invade the home islands when the news of the A-bombing came to him and his fellow troops. Read James A. Michener's, William Manchester's, and James Jones's writings about the relief they felt when Japan was A-bombed.

Harry the Horrible| 8.13.10 @ 10:45AM

The terms were "unconditional surrender." Why should they expect or get better terms than that?

Brink of collapse? That didn't mean thing to the people leading Japan. They would have fought to the last drop of (other people's) blood. Even at the last moment, as the Emperor prepared to announce the surrender on the radio, there was an effort to kidnap him and prevent the surrender.

iblain| 8.13.10 @ 11:13AM

What an ignorant post. Have you read any history at all?

chuck| 8.13.10 @ 11:59AM

He's made up his mind, don't confuse him with the facts.

FACTS, WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN' FACTS!!

Akaky| 8.13.10 @ 2:55PM

Phil, being on the brink of collapse and actually collapsing are not the same thing. And the terms the Japanese were actively seeking for months ahead of time would have meant the loss of some of their conquests, but that there would be no war crimes trials, there would be no occupation of Japan, and that the Imperial system that was a major cause of the war would not be touched. I believe that Max Hastings makes the point that defeat is a fact, surrender is a choice, and until Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed and the Soviets invaded Manchuria and smashed the Japanese Army there the powers that be in Japan were not willing to make that choice. Even after the bombs dropped, the Japanese War Minister still urged the government to fight on, no matter what. The bombs ended the war and saved tens of thousands of lives, both American and Japanese.

Bill| 8.13.10 @ 9:45AM

Unfortunately, the Allies at Potsdam had agreed on unconditional surrender, and the Japanese terms were unacceptable, amounting to a truce or cease-fire, not a surrender. The Potsdam Declaration of July, 1945, was treated with "silent contempt" by the Big Six who were ruling Japan.

Dustoff| 8.13.10 @ 10:00AM

My father made it thru the nightmare of Bataan, hellships and then as a POW in Japan.
The beatings and starvation finally took his live in 1965.

The WCC can go pound sand for all I care.

I could say a hell of a lot more, but it's Friday and it's not the best way to start a weekend.

cuban pete| 8.13.10 @ 10:46AM

Dustoff,
I will offer my communion this Sunday to your father. My family and I thank him for his courage and sacrifice.
All the Best

Dustoff| 8.13.10 @ 5:07PM

Thank you.

chuck| 8.13.10 @ 12:01PM

God bless your father. May he rest in peace......he's earned it.

Dustoff| 8.13.10 @ 5:06PM

Thank you

Bill| 8.17.10 @ 3:20PM

One thing that appears uniformly among the memoirs of the Allied prisoners of the Japanese is the amazing quelling of bitterness and hatred. It is amazing to me that once Japan had surrendered and the prisoners were no longer under their heel, that there weren't massacres of Japanese soldiers in every camp. Instead, those who write about the end seem to have universally thought that they were just grateful to God that it had finally stopped. The hell ships were written about by a fellow named Manny Lawton, who was on one. Those particular stories are so harrowing that I had to put the book down often in order not to be overcome by the account. How people lived through that is a testament to the fiber of their souls.

Petronius| 8.13.10 @ 10:39AM

Everybody is dancing jigs on pinheads here. Today, given modern moral indignation by hindsight and the near impossibility of over arguing circumstances and motives with cowards who would do anything when faced with a blood thirsty predator except fight, this annual exercise in defense of our defense against Tojo's army is a waste, save for one thing. The Japanese Empire was devoted to war and plunder. The use of atomic weapons obviated their medievil mindset.
The imperial high command threw in the towel only because Hirohito put them to the question of how they would fight this terrible device. B 29's flew above the reach of their anti aircraft guns and service ceiling of their fighter planes. With no recourse, His Majesty ended the discussion. At that point He became a true King and not just another despot. He was truly shocked and moved upon seeing his subjects die in that way. He did not want to see any more.
I have a friend who sailed boomers for 20+ years.
He was also the LEM for his boat. Every time they cleared the breakwaters at Holyloch, his ship mates prayed for one thing, "no shot fired in anger." And so it remains.

Heywood| 8.13.10 @ 10:46AM

It was a stated fact that the Allies bombed a few cities --such as Dresden--to say to the Russians that we had a vastly superior bomber fleet that could flatten any city at will. That was the thinking with nuking Japan too--just one of many reasons. You'll also have to take into account that most all Allied countries thought of the Japanese as sub-human--or not even human beings. Racism was very apparent and rampant in those days so not much hesitation at bombing large cities.

alert1201| 8.13.10 @ 10:54AM

I would like to see these "stated facts". The racism claim is also false. Yes, we hated them and expressed our hatred in racist terms but we did not actually think they were sub-human. If anybody thought others were sub-human it was the Axis powers and there are 6,000,000 Jewish graves to prove it.

Its amazing the length liberals will go through to blame America for the speck in her eye, while ignoring the beam in our enemies'.

Heywood| 8.13.10 @ 11:13AM

Far from being a liberal--this is all easy to find information and I had relatives who served in both theaters--the Japanese were as alien to them as Martians would be. I never blamed America--just stating facts that are well known.

Heywood| 8.13.10 @ 11:21AM

Read Truman's autobiography--lots of references to what the Russians were doing, thinking and saying--and also most people thought that the Japanese were even more sub-human after they started Kamikaze attacks. There's many reports from the military leaders for bombing a city--and in more than one case one goal was to scare the Russians and to deter them. Late in the war it was all about the Russians.

Alert1201| 8.13.10 @ 11:28AM

I understand that the bombs were dropped with one eye on the Russians, and to expided the end of the war so they would not invade Japan. Are you saying something was wrong with this? In any major decision there are a confluence of reasons that go into making it, to isolate one of them and say we are wrong to do it over simplifies the decision.

Heywood| 8.13.10 @ 11:52AM

No no no--just sayin' this article never mentions the Russians and that was a reason why. They saved those cities from conventional bombing so we could nuke them later on too. Racism in the '40's was very apparent and rampant. And you know they fostered that against the Japanese b/c to the soldiers it'd be much easier killing a couple thousand civilians from high altitude if they hated them and thought of them as just a target and not defenseless women and children. *Those aren't people--those are just nasty-ass lil'nips!*

Alert1201| 8.13.10 @ 11:22AM

Haywood,
Sorry for saying your were liberal. Still think your wrong about the others stuff but should not have called you a liberal.

iblain| 8.13.10 @ 11:28AM

This is not all common information. You have interpreted events to suit your own opinions. We bombed German cities to stop their war machine and to break the will of the German people. And so what if Americans in general were predjudiced against the Japanese. We didn't attack them and all we wanted to do was end the war. You are seeing these events through a modern liberal filter.

Heywood| 8.13.10 @ 12:03PM

No I'm not and it may not be common to you but it's there to find--it's in many reports coming from bomber command--late in the war. Just one reason given was to deter the Russian. The way to end that war was--in their minds--destroy as many major civilian targets as possible to stop their war machine, kill the people who were making the war go on and destroy the will to fight. And that strategy failed in Germany as their war production was increasing all throughout the war. Hindsight is 20/20--they had a huge bomber fleet and they used it and thought that was the best way to end it--but it actually wasn't--still took boots on the ground to end it.

Petronius| 8.13.10 @ 3:14PM

Talk to the marines who took Okinawa. They witnessed their squad mates being butchered and sexually mutilated by the Japs after they sustained other wounds. Don't dare call that civilized behavior!!!

JP| 8.13.10 @ 11:16AM

Here's a partial list of German cities that were litterally bombed into the stoneage by us:

Hamburg (high explosives and napalm subsequent fire storm casued winds to blow in excess of 80mph).

Berlin
Munich
Dresden
Cologne
Schweinfurt
Dussledorf
Bochum
Dortmund
Essen
Stuttgart
Cottbus
Leipzig
Frankfurt
Kiel
Frankfurt an der Oder
Heilbronn

Again, this is just a partial list. In Hamburg, over 200,000 civilians perished. Essientially, any citiy that possessed any major railheads, factories, distribution centers, etc... was carpet bombed.

Ned| 8.13.10 @ 1:07PM

you forgot London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester,Brighton, Southampton...

JmsA| 8.13.10 @ 11:16PM

And Coventry...

JmsA| 8.13.10 @ 11:20PM

"They that sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind."
--Arthur "Bomber" Harris

Alan Brooks| 8.16.10 @ 12:02AM

"Again, this is just a partial list. In Hamburg, over 200,000 civilians perished. Essientially, any citiy that possessed any major railheads, factories, distribution centers, etc... was carpet bombed."

God's punishment for their putting Hitler in God's place. It hurts when we get what we deserve.

Ned| 8.13.10 @ 1:03PM

perhaps you haven't noticed that the Japanese are STILL an incredibly racist people... as exemplified by people who's families have lived on their islands for 250+ years, and yet are "Korean", can't become citizens, vote, or obtain a passport to leave... and if they left, where would they go?

And, of course, much of the treatment of the Japanese during the war was a direct response to their treatment of everyone else around them, up to and including cannibalism - reports of which are still heavily supressed... Marines took no prisoners because the Japs never surrendered in battle, and because the Marines often found the mutilated bodies of their buddies, after the Japs were done torturing them...

Bruce | 8.15.10 @ 12:17PM

Getting in on this a few days late, but I had a feeling it wouldn't be long before some idiot liberal tossed the RACIST card into the pot.

Can we assume you didn't have any male relatives who fought and died - or would almost certainly have died had the home islands been invaded?

No - I didn't think so.

JP| 8.13.10 @ 11:09AM

Iwo and Okinawa decimated the Marine Corps. Okinawa also cost the Navy a large number of its finest pilots. If the US opted to invade Japan it would have needed every infantry division in Europe to compliment what was left of the Marines and McArthur's forces. Add in the replacements who were being trained state-side and you have an invasion that would have dwarfed D-Day 1944. If people think Fallujah or Tet were bloody battles an invasion would have cost the US upwards of a half million casulties. And the cost to Japanese civilians would have been twice that, if not much more.

What also appears to be forgotten in VE and VJ days was the fact that the US suffered its highest casulties during the final 7 months of the war. Besides the famous Battle of the Bulge and subsequent campaigns, a bloody war of attrition was being waged in Italy. Add in Iwo and Okinawa, and the US suffered over 300,000 KIA, WIA, and MIA from December 1944 through June 1945.

Heywood| 8.13.10 @ 11:10AM

Haven't you ever seen the comics, news, books and movies from that time? Very racists! Always portrayed the *nips* in a very racist way. Also there's several reports coming directly from Generals and politicians giving reasons for bombing XYZ city and that was one reason for justification. All easily reasearched.

JP| 8.13.10 @ 11:25AM

And your point? I can find plenty of propaganda posters that depicted Germans in 1917 as nothing but a bunch of goose-stepping monsters. Several states passed laws that forbade the German language to be spoken -even during Lutheran services. During the 1840s-1870s, the Irish were also depicted as sub-human Pope worshipping pagans. Xenophobia was as American as apple-pie.

You might also note that it was Democrats who instituted many of these fascists laws (Wilson and FDR). Whether it was the infamous sedition laws or rounding up Japanese citizens during the 1940s, Progressives were pulling the strings.

But none of that matterd to either Truman or the General Marshall. The Japanese showed no inclination to surrender. And after Okinawa, the JCS had to plan for an invasion. For the those Japanese who survived the war, the atomic bombs were a blessing in disguise.

Harry the Horrible| 8.13.10 @ 11:51AM

Yup. Japanese were depicted in American popular culture ALMOST as badly as Americans were depicted in Japanese popular culture and propganda.
Almost as badly...
And face it, we treated captured Japanese a hell of a lot better than they treated us.

Heywood| 8.13.10 @ 12:34PM

This is exactly correct--was it like this?--*humanely (?) killing them by the hundreds of thousands* and also didn't mis-treat them when we captured them--at least with the small numbers who didn't fight to the death against us who lost face by surrendering to us--we signed a treaty and were bound by that with our allies and it's same as today--we wish our POW's get treated humanely--even if we kill hundreds of thousands of their women and children from high altitude. What's the difference between the Allies seeking revenge for Pearl Harbor from high altitude over the Japanese killing a village in the P.I.? They were seeking revenge and trying to save their barbaric Empire. Only they did that with troops on the ground--the only way possible for them at the time--we bombed their cities from high altitude. They'd have done the same to our cities if they could have.

Harry the Horrible| 8.13.10 @ 2:29PM

Well, they gave it their best. However paper hot-air balloons with anthrax packets floated across the Pacific just doesn't measure up to B-29s.
The Japanese were perhaps the most clueless people with whom we ever went to war. They didn't seem understand exactly what it meant in terms of wealth and industrial capacity when a single state in the US has more paved road mileage than all of Japan. The fact that their A6M prototype was delivered to the airfield by an oxcart should have been a clue.

Bill| 8.17.10 @ 2:39PM

The Japanese also produced racist stereotypes of Europeans and Americans, depicting them as grossly big and hairy, and of course sexually brutal toward Oriental women. The Japanese indoctrinated their civilians to believe that American fighting men were convicts without any scruples whatever, who would brutalize any civilian they came across. That's the reason why civilians on Saipan (and Okinawa) jumped off cliffs, and murdered their babies before they committed suicide.

NavyBrat | 8.13.10 @ 12:36PM

I was born in Japan while my Dad was stationed at Yokosuka & Atsugi. My Mom had a perfect way to describe the Japanese:

"The Germans THOUGHT they were the 'Master Race.' The Japanese KNOW it."

Those who would wring their hands & shake their fists at history over this are the same folks who think we can "negotiate" with jihadis. The Japanese of that time & the jihadis are VERY similar. The highest honor in BOTH groups is to die gloriously for Allah or the Emperor (also a god, to the Japanese). Surrender is shameful to Allah or the Emperor. Only an idiot doesn't see the parallels.

Big Leo| 8.13.10 @ 4:38PM

My brother lived and taught in Japan for five years. We have many Japanese friends. The Japanese still think they are the master race. They are still among the most xenophobic people on the face of the earth.

Joe Kerr| 8.13.10 @ 1:18PM

The Japanese killed 20 million Chinese (in round numbers). The rape of Nanking included the hand murder of 300,000 non-military (innocent) souls. The militarists had to be stopped and utterly humiliated or we would be facing then today. Hitler survived a number of assasination attempts in near miraculous (providential) circumstances. We may scoff at the hand of providence, but consider that had he died early in the war, and the plotters had sued successfully for peace in less than unconditional terms, we would still be nogotiating with Nazi party members. War really is hell - it's not a time for half measures. That's for couch pumpkins looking back in smug detachment. "Well I would have ..."

Bill| 8.17.10 @ 2:41PM

In the countries of Asia where the Japanese were the occupying forces, by the spring and summer of 1945 they were killing at least 100,000 people per month.

Heywood| 8.13.10 @ 1:26PM

Yes--the Japanese Empire was very barbaric! They killed all those Chinese and the West didn't help much at all to stop it--didn't care b/c the Chinese were also thought of as non-human to most westerners. My father was combat in Korea--said they had no feelings at all if they killed civilians and back then the way they dealt with any kind of infiltration of a city with "insurgents" was to fire up the B-29's and flatten the whole town--*who cares b/c it's just slanty-eyed yellow skinned peasants--not human beings*. Anyone who says that attitude wasn't pervasive with comba

Harry the Horrible| 8.13.10 @ 2:31PM

Sounds like a workable method to me.
Wish we'd consider it in Afghanistan.

JP| 8.13.10 @ 4:53PM

I know of 100 million South Koreans who would call you a liar. Fifty thousand US servicemen died for those "slanty-eyed yellow skin peasants" (you words not mine). My father served in Korea, and he never mentioned a pervasive hatred for the Korean people. The only people who seem to keep that bit of slander are libs like you.

JmsA| 8.15.10 @ 12:01PM

My brother-in-law, a former 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, was stationed in South Korea, and upon his return home he couldn't stop stop talking about how great the South Koreans were and how proud he was to have served alongside ROK troops.

Bill| 8.17.10 @ 3:01PM

In Vietnam, the South Korean soldiers were among our staunchest allies and first-rate troops. Our troops borrowed their camo pattern for U.S. uniforms out of respect, to such an extent that "tiger stripes" were declared by the U.S. military as not legal for U.S. troops to wear.

Dustoff| 8.13.10 @ 5:10PM

No heywood.
After WWI. Americans wanted stay out of all wars. It had nothing to do with race. Which YOU seem to be hung-up on.

JimP| 8.14.10 @ 9:41AM

So, Heywood, you were for invading Iraq to prevent further ethnic/religious genocide by Sadam and to liberate the Iraqi people from tyranny? You are for nation building wars of pre-emption to save people from evil regimes? I suggest we liberate the Cubans first and begin to work our way down to South America thereafter for our dear pal, Hugo. You would approve of going nuclear in the Afghan-Pakistan border area, I suppose, to protect all the others in those countries from the evil doers hiding out in these remote mountainous areas, because if we don't then it is because we are racists and just don't give a darn.

Bill| 8.17.10 @ 2:44PM

The Japanese germ warfare research center in China was near Harbin, China (Unit 731). There, Chinese were routinely experimented on for susceptibility to such lovely things as anthrax. The Chinese people used as subjects by the Japanese were referred to as "logs."

Heywood| 8.13.10 @ 1:36PM

*Well I would have nuked Iran and Iraq by now since they're just ragheads and religious nutjobs--not even human! It worked with Japan...

Pete | 8.13.10 @ 2:55PM

Heywood, nuking Iran and Iraq might be somewhat premature at this point.

Alan Brooks| 8.13.10 @ 4:29PM

"did not acknowledge the context of Japanese militarism, with its millions of murdered victims across Asia. "

They were racist (or more accurately, ethnic jingoists), too. They thought other Asians
-- such as the Chinese-- were inferior.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were as nothing to what Japan did.

Alan Brooks| 8.13.10 @ 4:30PM

... Japan got is just desserts in '45.

Big Leo| 8.13.10 @ 4:36PM

I've studied how the surrender was arranged at great length, as has my historian brother who spent five years in Kagoshima, not far from the bombings. The average survivor of Hiroshima and Nagasaki thought that Japan had WON when the end of the war was announced. The average Japanese thought they had beaten us to a draw. Even during the two days leading up to the surrender, there were Army units fighting each other to prevent an attack on the Missouri and a resumption of hostilities.

Even with the bombing, peace was a close run thing.

dw| 8.13.10 @ 6:50PM

Japan is totally to blame for anything that happened to it and deserved every bit of it.
Look at how the people in every territory or country conquered by Japan was treated by them. They gave no quarter and were extremely brutal to those they defeated. They were guilty of genocide, period.

dw| 8.13.10 @ 6:56PM

And if you read about or listen to the men who were lined up to invade Japan, to a man they thank God for those bombs.
Of course it is real easy for the liberal revisionist historian to condemn this reality but of course, they were not the ones who were going to have to bleed.

JmsA| 8.13.10 @ 8:27PM

I have the striking suspicion that the folks living under martial law in Hong Kong since the capture of the city by the Japanese Army on Christmas Day 1941, hardly cared about those two eggs the U.S. Army Air Corps dropped on the Japanese.

Cow Rie| 8.13.10 @ 9:52PM

Just remember... one of the most vocal critics (and ignorant historian) of Hiroshima/Nagasaki
is the Spiritual Leader of Barry Hussein Obama. That would Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Francis Beckwith | 8.13.10 @ 11:30PM

Mark:

Not everyone who condemned Nagaski and Hiroshima are lefties. Among those that did were Elizabeth Anscombe, and most recently Christopher Tolefsen, who penned his essay on the website of Robert P. George's Witherspoon Institute. See Tolefsen's essay here: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/08/1485

I understand Mark Tooley's resistance to liberal religion. I share it. But just because liberals believe something does not mean that conservatives ought to automatically reject it. Remember, "reactionary" is not a compliment.

OldBull| 8.14.10 @ 4:09AM

The talk about "racism" is just so much hooey thrown up by people who, in the main, have never had to fight to defend themselves. First, what "race" is involved? Americans in the Pacific fought and died to liberate millions of people of other "races:" Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, and on and on. "Japanese" is a nationality; it may even be a recognized "ethnic group." It isn't a separate race. To say that Americans who killed Asians in defense of other Asians did so because of "racist" motives is to render the term nugatory.

Second, as has been cogently pointed out, the Japanese themselves were among the most "racist" of societies. They firmly believed in their inherent superiority to every other people, race, and nationality. They extended their rule over million upon million of those others and treated them with unspeakable barbarity. Should the United States have declined to fight the Japanese because we ourselves were "racist?" That's an argument only a liberal could love: let evil go unchecked because we aren't pure enough to oppose it.

Lastly, this "racism" nonsense overlooks a fundamental reality of the human psyche: before we can kill another human, we must first deny their essential humanity. People don't kill people. They kill krauts, huns, wops, dagos, gooks, nips, wogs, or what have you. IMHO, the root cause of much of the psychological trauma experienced by soldiers lies in the cognitive dissonance involved in killing another human while denying that they are human.

Just one old soldier's opinion....

JimP| 8.14.10 @ 9:17AM

I'll add to the testaments. My father was a Marine who survived 3 island campaigns and was a company commander by the end of the war. He was part of the 3rd MarDiv slated to invade Kyushu on the SW side along with the 4th and 5th MarDivs. He told me this was to be a faint to draw all the Japanese forces there and then the Army with 11 divisions would invade on the SE side of the island. Because Dad had pulled a stint in S2 (Intelligence) before being given an infantry company, he knew the estimates were for all three Marine Divisions to have 100% casualties. As it turned out later, the Japanese knew what we were going to do and were better prepared than we thought which would have made the carnage even more apocalyptic than predicted. God Bless Harry Truman for using the bombs and saving so many American lives, other Asian people's lives and Japanese lives as well. Ivory tower holy men are nothing but false prophets and faux humanitarians. Like the old saying goes, "Sometimes you have to be cruel, to be kind."

chris haynes| 8.14.10 @ 9:22AM

Beware of the rules you lay down.

The Japs were brutal, massacring civilians, POW's. For that reason it was okay to kill thousands of children at Hiroshima, to force their unconditonal surrender, you say. Got it.

Now America. 50 million legal abortions. Enhrined in our great Constitution our military is sworn to defend. 40 years. No credible hope of ending it politically.

Now the Moslems they say abortion is murdering a child. And by your rule, its okay if they bomb New York, DC, LA to force us to stop.

JimP| 8.14.10 @ 9:31AM

Beware the comparisons you draw. In brief, apples and oranges here Chris and you know it. Go back to HuffPo. LOL

Joe B| 8.14.10 @ 9:57AM

As a 18 year old, scheduled for the invasion force,
with a projected million casuluties expected, the bomb was the perfect solution to save American lives..........

chris haynes| 8.14.10 @ 11:06AM

Youre right is is apples and oranges.

You say was okay to kill thousands of children, to stop atrocities and aggression. But by August of 1945 the Jap attrocities had largely stopped. Japan was not a threat to anyone. So it wasnt even about stopping attrocities and saving lives. and blah blah blah. We bombed to get unconditonal surrender. Domestic politics demanded it.

But today our holocaust of abortion attrocity continues. 3000 per day. No hope of stopping it. Our military is sworn to defend it.

Like I say, beware of the rules you set.

JimP| 8.14.10 @ 3:37PM

LOL Nice try at revisionist history. NO the Japanese slaughter had not stopped. YES it was to save lives AND to get unconditional surrender. Why unconditional? Because our leaders learned after the Versailles Treaty of WWI that unconditional surrender was needed to ensure that another world war would not break out. You really should learn history before spouting off. Sure Japan was not as much of a threat in '45 as '42, so what? We were supposed to leave the war criminal militarist tyrants in charge? Which by the way included the Emperor. They weren't surrendering, they staged a coup even after the bombs were dropped and the Emperor was planning to save his countrymen's lives instead of useless slaughter. It took the bombs to get the Emperor to finally say enough. Your insistence on camparing a just war to abortion is a bogus argument. It's easy for you, after the fact, to say that 1 million American casualties invading would have been worth it to not use the bombs, not to mention the millions of Japanese deaths that would have occurred as a result. You are a real humanitarian Chris. Sacrifice millions of lives instead of a couple of hundred thousand, and all for the sake or your moral vanity.

Bill| 8.17.10 @ 2:47PM

You're right, but in the end the Japanese surrender wasn't entirely unconditional; for one thing, unconditional surrender as defined by the Potsdam Conference called for the emperor to be deposed. That didn't happen.

sam | 8.14.10 @ 12:43PM

Its funny how we say that killing so many innocent children was so bad when it was probably their dads slaughtering other peoples children all around the pacific at that time...thats what they get

Answers1| 8.14.10 @ 3:00PM

My in-laws, Japanese who lived in Tokyo during the war, agree with using the bomb. They detested the emperor and his cronies.

philfl63| 8.14.10 @ 11:54PM

Exactly right. We had to treat the Japs like the sub-human beasts they were at the time. Read the book "Hiroshima", and you will discover that people started returning to Hiroshima three weeks after the bombing. Nuclear weapons are perfectly legitimate weapons, and I thank G_D that we developed them first and used them. For all of the hippie pacifists out there, know this hippie-- the first A-bombs were built to be dropped on Germany. The Germans just had the good fortune to surrender before the bombs were ready for deployment. Of course, the Germans were Caucasian, so the dirty hippies and liberals would not have said a peep about using the bombs against them.

James F. bombard| 8.15.10 @ 7:38AM

The Japanese Imperial command actually saw the japanese dying wholesale "like the petals falling from the lotus blossum" we slew the dragon of war with those a-bombs and no amount of hand wringing will make it outherwise

chris haynes| 8.15.10 @ 9:47AM

We needed unconditonal surrender becuase the school children of Hiroshima and Nagaski were sub-human beasts? Surely that's not your best case.

jb| 8.15.10 @ 10:25AM

I was 4 years old when the bombs were dropped. Even at that tender age I can still remember my mother crying herself to sleep every night because my father was in the thick of it since December, 1941.

Now the libtards want to remember my father, and his brothers-in-arms, whom I believe to be the greatest generation of Americans ever, as villains. My BS meter is fully pegged.

jb| 8.15.10 @ 11:12AM

Sorry,,, no edit button here.

But who is to say which sort of death is kinder,,, to die in a millisecond, vaporized by a nuke in an instant, or to die a lingering, painful, bloody mess of a death from a poorly place bullet or mutilated by some other conventional weapon?

Either way, dead is dead. One cannot be more or less dead because of the weapon. I do believe those who died in the fire bombings had a more miserable last few minutes than those at Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Viewed in that light, nukes are the more humane weapon if you want to end a war quickly.

JimP| 8.15.10 @ 10:29AM

Chris, Chris, Chris. Is that REALLY your best argument? Projecting murderous inhuman bigotry onto people who agree with using the bombs for the purpose of SAVING lives/ending WWII? Come on. You need to do better than that. Especially since you have tacitly acknowledged that you couldn't care less about the millions who would have died if we had invaded the home islands. Also, what's with the Clintonian appeal about "the children"? Were you biting your lower lip while you wrote that?

chris haynes| 8.15.10 @ 12:12PM

Saving lives, ending the war. That is better than the folks here who call the Japs subhuman and who justify vengence.

But not so fast.

The purpose was unconditional surrender, an unjust demand, but in keeping with domestic political needs.

Whatever reasonable purpose the pacific war may have had, we failed. Within 5 years China was communist. So much for stopping tyranny and barbarism

And Christian morality teaches that the deliberate killing of an innocent person is never justified. Hard to square that with terror bombing of civilians.

jb| 8.15.10 @ 1:36PM

Chris
That is an interesting supposition, however since historically the Chinese people had never been subject to any kind of democratic government, this was a totally new idea for them.

I submit China was ripe for anything that would free them from the chains of the old ways. Communism was simply the first idea that caught hold.

They got sold a bill of goods that didn't deliver as promised

Oldefarte| 8.15.10 @ 3:03PM

This country should consider recreating those two events in say, vacant areas of the middle east and North Korea; since they brought the Japanese to the pease table and ended WWII!!!!!!!!!!!

chris haynes| 8.15.10 @ 5:38PM

Subhuman? Well, give the Japs this. They never tried to depopulate a country by killing tens of millions by starvtion and disease.

But the Americans did. Yessiree.

The Morgenthau Plan. The krauts were to get 1100 calories a day until they were thinned out to about 50 million. Drafted by Harry Dexter White, the communist spy and Undersecretary of the Treasury. Approved by FDR in 1944. Churchill at Quebec. Truman.

The conservatives, mostly, they fought it. Stimson called it Semitism gone wild for vengeance. MacArthur, he threatend to resign if they tried it on the Japs.

It was US policy in Europe until 1947, when it was dropped, coincidently after the democrats lost the congress. Eleanor Roosevelt and the left tried to keep it going.

I ask, how was the Morgenthau Plan going to be different from the holocaust? I mean from the point of view of millions of victims?

jb| 8.15.10 @ 11:00PM

1,100 calories per day seems a bit extravagant considering what the Germans gave to the slave labor camps, i.e., Jews, Gypsies, and any other non-pure races. Most German slaves lived on less than 800 calories per day. Fact, not fiction.

Bill| 8.17.10 @ 2:49PM

The Morgenthau Plan was discredited almost as soon as Henry Morgenthau enunciated it. No one wanted to do what Morgenthau proposed, not even the Soviet Union. And they didn't. Germany got the Marshall Plan instead.

Brian| 8.15.10 @ 10:06PM

As soulless, heartless fiends , there is nothing the left excels more in than moral posturing.

KyMouse| 8.16.10 @ 3:33PM

I've mentioned this before: One of my uncles was a JAG officer in the Pacific at the end of WWII. He brought back a photo album full of pictures of allied soldiers who had received sword cuts across the back of the neck -- partial decapitations -- apparently to keep them from causing any trouble during their captivity. In the photos I saw, the men were still alive -- if you can call it living.

The Japanese were lucky that we didn't sow their ground with salt.

chris haynes| 8.16.10 @ 9:13PM

Interesting way to exact revenge on the defeated Japs, sowing salt. Do you think that would have been more cost effecctive than the Roosevelt, Morgenthau Truman method, mass starvation and disease. Too bad that old coot MacArthur was a reactioanry right winger who mollycoddled those sub-human Japs.

PS And thanks JB for pointing out the facts. The Nazis did starve people on 800 calories a day, while Truman's figure was 1100.

Maybe that's why we have holcaust museums to remember the Nazi crimanls, while we name one of the greatest American warships for our revereded Truman. 1000 calories a day! What a guy. Cant help but be proud when the USS Harry Truman comes into port flying old glory.

Bill| 8.17.10 @ 2:53PM

It's true that German soldiers went hungry and suffered from diseases after surrendering to the Allies. Some years ago, much was made of this, the claim being that because this happened, the Allies weren't free from war crimes involving genocide.

The nonsense of such an accusation became clear when it was explained by patient historians that the Germans were surrendering by the hundreds of thousands during the last months of the war, and the Allies just didn't have the facilities to house their prisoners, hence the hunger and unsanitary conditions that fostered disease.

Nothing genocidal about that; it was inadvertent and a result of mass surrenders. The lack of sufficient food and the disease issue were resolved as soon as they could be.

Bill| 8.17.10 @ 2:54PM

And of course the Allies (except for the Soviets) didn't treat their POWs anything like the way the Japanese treated even the noncombatant Allied internees, much less how they treated the Allied POWs.

joestudd| 8.17.10 @ 11:18PM

The Bomb ended Japanese militarism. The first Gulf War did not end Bath?ist party.
It was the utter destruction of Japan that allowed it to be reborn into the country it is now.
Thank God and Harry Truman for that.
Imagine 1-2 million casualties in taking Japan and we found out it was unnecessary. Truman would and should have been impeached. Ending the war, saving American lives was paramount.
Even after 2 atomic bombs, it took the Emperor to end it. How many little boys with bamboo spears would the pacifists like us to have killed in an invasion of Japan?

and knowing how destructive the splitting of atoms was may be the reason we are still around to talk about it.
God bless you, Enola Gay

Michele San Pietro| 8.22.10 @ 5:58PM

It was a matter of choosing between 100,000 dead in Hiroshima or at least five times as much in a land intervention in Japan... the Japanese were the aggressors, they had massacred over ten millions of innocent people in the murderous war they had started.

God bless you, Enola Gay

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