Subsequent posts drifted into an alleged conspiracy by FDR to cause or allow Pearl Harbor to be bombed. Those posts have been moved to a fresh topic at http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?10855-FDR-Conspiracy-to-bomb-Pearl-Harbor
Millions of people renounce, abandon or betray their marriage vows every day.
Just as nations routinely renounce, abandon or betray their agreements, treaties and alliances.
It’s true that Truman and his advisers wanted to finish the war as quickly as possible, but you can relax, it didn’t have anything to do with the USSR. Thousands of innocent people were dying every month at Japanese hands in the vast stretches of territory still occupied by Japanese forces, and hundreds of US servicemen were still dying on the Navy ships and aircraft then blockading and bombarding the Japanese Home Islands. Stopping this slaughter alone justified the use of the atomic bombs to end the war; it was no “war crime” by any stretch of the imagination.
At one point, Truman asked one of his civilian advisers what he thought the USSR would do as far as entering the Pacific war was concerned and how the US should react under certain circumstances. The man replied that the USSR was going to do what it planned to do (invade Manchuria) whether the war was ended or not, and that the US could do nothing to change that fact. He was almost certainly correct.
In point of fact, the first atomic bomb was dropped before the USSR entered the war and the second bomb was dropped just hours after the USSR entered the war, so USSR’s entry into the war meant nothing except that the Japanese defenders of Manchuria, if captured, faced decades in the Gulag.
President Truman did feel that just having the atomic bomb would give the US the upper hand in Europe where the USSR was ignoring the promises it had made during the war, breaking agreements, and generally running roughshod over Eastern European states. Demonstrating the power of the atomic bomb to the Soviets was a plus, but it was NOT the even close to being the primary reason the bombs were used on Japan.
Incidentally, the USSR never advanced into “former western controlled territory” in the Far East; Manchuria was formerly part of China and had never been under western control; The US couldn’t have cared less about Manchuria or who ended up controlling it. As for Hokkaido, MacArthur would never have permitted the Soviets to land on that island. The tentative Soviet plans called for a regiment-size landing which probably would have been repulsed by the Japanese even in their weakened state. Stalin was interested in occupying a portion of the Japanese Home islands and expressed that interest to US officials, but MacArthur and Truman made it very plain to him that no such thing would be tolerated by the US.
Your contention that the war was almost “finished already” is rather weak because the IJN was simply not going to surrender, and was waiting for the US to invade Japan hoping to inflict grievous casualties and thereby win an improved negotiating position. When the Japanese Army leaders realized that the use of the atomic bomb meant no invasion would need occur, the war was over.
If the war had gone on for even a few more months (let alone into 1946), millions of Japanese would have starved to death. The 1945 Fall rice crop had failed due to poor weather and the diversion of chemicals from fertilizer production to explosives for the armed forces. The Japanese government was hoping to feed the Army with the rice and would not have had enough to prevent a famine among it’s civilian population. But with the war ending in early September, 1945, the US was able to organize an emergency sealift of 800,000 tons of food to Japan, thereby saving an estimated 6,000,000 Japanese civilians who would have otherwise starved to death.
The Allies knew that the Invasion of Mainland Japan will be as much deadly and thought that it will be bloodier than Stalingrad. 25x the casualties on Stalingrad. And they will be losing maybe half of an Army Group for it. And, back then it is war, it is not a crime to commit attrocities just to end a war in Human eyes.
This assumes that using atomic weapons was an atrocity.
I don’t agree.
Atrocity can be defined in many ways but, for simplicity, in war it generally involves unnecessary and monstrous brutality or cruelty to defenceless prisoners of war or civilians.
Japan bombed many cities and civilian targets before and during WWII.
Allied bombing, whether conventional, fire or atomic was no different to Japanese bombing in any respect other than destructive power.
If one accepts that it was legitimate for Japan to drop a 500 pound bomb on a civilian target in various parts of Asia and Oceania, it follows that it was legitimate for the Allies to do the same.
If the principle of dropping a bomb of considerable destructive power by both sides is accepted, it follows that it is acceptable for both sides to drop bombs of unlimited destructive power.
Which is exactly what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
And exactly what Japan would have done all over China, the Pacific, Oceania, and North America if it had got the technology first.
@Rising Sun, I think the Americans chose the latter option to end the war earlier than they would be expecting. In my opinion only, the Allies were really exhausted that time. And they don’t want to make the war last longer.
Earlier than those with no knowledge of the atom bomb were expecting, but still part of the Allied aim to end the war as soon as possible with the fewest Allied casualties.
No, the Japanese were exhausted.
The Allies, primarily Americans so far as the hard fighting was concerned by then, were just grinding on as they had for years before, and would until Japan surrendered.
Nobody on the Allied side wanted the war to last longer.
Which is why the atom bombs were dropped.
And which saved millions of Japanese from death at the hands of the invading Allies and from starvation because of their own government’s many failures.
It’s not an atrocity to kill people, even civilians, in order to end a brutal war as quickly as possible with as few casualties as possible.
And it wasn’t Stalingrad the Americans were thinking about, it was Okinawa where they had suffered enormous casualties, more than 73,00 overall with 12,500 dead or missing, and been forced to kill more than 100,000 Japanese defenders. What was really disturbing was that estimates of Japanese civilian casualties exceeded 163,000 dead out of a pre-battle population of only 490,000. In all, more than a quarter of a million people had died over one rather small island.
President Truman actually said at one point that what bothered him most about the prospective invasion of Japan was the possibility of having to fight “dozens of Okinawas” all over the Home Islands.
A Hiroshima Apology?
Japan’s continued focus on remembering the bomb has been an understandable sore point for its Asian neighbors, who suffered greatly at its hands.
By WARREN KOZAK
For the first time since the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Japan 65 years ago, today the U.S. ambassador to Japan will attend the official commemoration ceremony at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The U.S. ambassador has always declined the annual invitation, but this year is different. President Barack Obama decided to acknowledge the event with the presence of a high-level dignitary. As State Department spokesman Philip Crowley explained, Ambassador John Roos will be there “to express respect for all the victims of World War II.”
Gene Tibbets—the son of Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets Jr., the pilot who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima—called the Obama administration’s decision “an unsaid apology.” Whether or not that’s the case, by saying “all the victims” Mr. Crowley raises the specter of moral equivalence, a problem that’s grown worse over the years when it comes to judging right and wrong during World War II and throughout history.
The U.S. dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. When the Japanese still didn’t give up, the U.S. dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki three days later. On Aug. 15, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally, ending the most brutal war in the history of the world.
Japan remains the only country ever to have been targeted by atomic bombs. More than 120,000 Japanese died instantly from the bombings and perhaps as many succumbed to radiation poisoning afterwards (the exact number will never be known). It should be noted that when President Harry Truman was considering whether to invade Japan instead of dropping the bombs, his advisers estimated that an invasion would result in one million American casualties and at least two million Japanese deaths. In the strange calculus of war, the bombs actually saved Japanese lives.
[b]If the Obama administration wants to ease the friction over this event or even to apologize, then perhaps it is also a good time for the Japanese government to begin to discuss World War II truthfully with its own people.
Since 1945, Japan’s narrative has centered almost exclusively on the atomic blasts and its role as victim—with short shrift given to the Japanese invasions of China, Manchuria, Korea, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Indochina, Burma, New Guinea and, of course, the attack on Pearl Harbor. Japanese children have learned little about the Rape of Nanking or the fact that as many as 17 million Asians died at the hands of the Japanese in World War II—many in the most brutal ways imaginable.
There is also the inconvenient truth that Japan started the war in the first place. There would have been no war in the Pacific between 1937 and 1945 had Japan stayed home.
[/b]
Focusing on the atomic bombs paints the Japanese as victims, like other participants in World War II. They were not. The Japanese, like their German allies, were bent on global conquest and the destruction of other people who did not fit their bizarre racial theories. Japan’s continued focus on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been an understandable sore point for its Asian neighbors, who suffered greatly at its hands.
There are times when ordinary citizens understand history better than their leaders. In approaching Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Mr. Obama should consider a related event that took place 25 years ago. On May 5, 1985, President Ronald Reagan made a rare public relations gaffe when he visited the Kolmeshohe Cemetery near Bitburg to lay a wreath at the graves of German soldiers.
His reasoning came from a decent place—he wanted to help bolster his ally, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, and he thought that enough time had passed to allow both countries to move on together. But a firestorm erupted when it was learned that the graves were not just those of ordinary Wehrmacht soldiers but of SS troops as well. President Reagan dug in his heels despite strong protests and laid a wreath at the brick tower that loomed over those graves.
The protests came not because people refused to move on or because the postwar bonds between Germany and the U.S. were not strong and real. They were then and they remain so today. Rather, the anger came because the president’s act created a tacit understanding that U.S. soldiers were no different than SS Storm Troopers, whose bloody tracks still leave a horror throughout Europe that can barely be equaled in that continent’s long, lamentable history. The G.I.s were liberators. The SS were demented murderers. Period.
Young people today may have a hard time understanding that point because of the moral equivalence and political correctness that have taken over our society, our media and especially our universities. It teaches our children that all countries have good and bad elements within them—something so obvious that it’s trite. But this lesson has become so powerful that it is not out of the norm for young people today to believe that, while World War II was certainly horrible, all sides share some blame.
Concerning today’s event in Hiroshima, the State Department said “at this particular time, we thought it was the right thing to do.” It may indeed be the right time for our two countries to share this event. But by tacitly placing all of World War II’s participants in the same category, we undermine the ability of future generations to identify real evil, putting them at great risk.
Mr. Kozak is the author of “LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay” (Regnery, 2009).
My bold http://online.wsj.com/article/NA_WSJ_PUB:SB10001424052748703748904575411123599873634.html
I’m with Gene Tibbetts and his opposition to the offensive notion of an unsaid apology.
I’m not hostile to Obama, but if he and his coterie want to express respect for all the victims of WWII it would be an outstandingly good and simple idea to do it somewhere else than on the soil of and at a hypocritically misconceived shrine to the people who started it with America, and the rest of the non-Japanese world.
It is beyond laughable for Japan to present itself as the victim rather than the perpetrator which got what it brought upon itself by its own criminality, brutality and general contempt for humanity, which far exceeded on countless occasions over protracted periods of time for far, far, far greater numbers of defenceless people than were casualties of the atom bombs.
I don’t doubt that some people killed by the atom bombs were good and decent people by any standards and that, either personally or given the opportunity some of them might even have been kind Allied POWs as were some rare Japanese during WWII.
But also I don’t doubt that my parents and my grandparents and six million other Australians would have been enslaved and worked to death in appalling conditons and eventually exterminated by the Japanese in their usual brutal WWII fashion (e.g Tol Plantation, Parit Sulong, Banka Island, Alexandra Hospital, Sook Ching (maybe nearly as many people as killed directly by the atom bombs) Burma Railway, Sandakan) if they had achieved their ultimate aim of conquering Australia.
So don’t expect me to beat my breast over a couple of hundred thousand Japanese who were as much a victim of their nation’s militarists and Emperor as my parents and grandparents would have been.
The people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki died as a direct result of their nation’s aggressive war and its later refusal to surrender when beaten long before it finally surrendered.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not testaments to American brutality or the evils of atomic warfare but purely to Japan reaping as it sowed. And it still can’t grasp that.
might as well let them build a Kamikaze memorial at Pearl Harbor. Obama also supports the mosque being built at ground zero.
Hear! Hear!
It would sure be nice for Japan to admit to the attrocities committed at Nanking in 1937, for example the massed bayoneting of over three hundred thousand captive and surrendered civilians, or during the entire war the killing of 16 million Chinese. That is before we start on an apology for the thousands of Allied servicemen murdered in gruesome medical experiments at Harbin by Unit-731.
Japan’s postwar alliance with USA was a marriage of convenience for Japan who sought refuge from the Soviets and for USA which needed a base of operations in the Korean war. There is still no appreciation by the Japanese that their actions from the Thirties and Forties were cruel an inhumane. There is only an appreciation that USA had a bigger stick.
Nam,don’t give Obama ideas, ok?
There is plenty of documentation on what was known at the time of the decision to drop the bombs.
We knew the Japanese had fortified Kyushu with elements of 15 DIVISIONS (we were attacking with 9 ourselves.)
We also knew from bloody experience, from Saipan where thousands of civilians committed suicide, to Iwo Jima and Okinawa that the Japanese army would fight to virtually the last man.
In short, Ketsu-go would make the whole Japanese mainland a Okinawa from one end to another. Make it a Saipan for the civilians from one end to another (this was expressed by President Truman himself in his diary at the time.)
The only alternative left would be to bomb the food production regions of Japan. Bomb their dykes, firebomb their fields, strike their food storage facilities, in short, starve them. That or the Atomic Bomb.
But starvation would have killed, before we invaided, not only all of our people held as POWs, but maybe millions of Japanese before we could feed them (presuming the government surrendered.)
In short, atomic weapons were the only real alternative that would stop the war before many more died.
And that is exactly what it did!
Deaf
Nam,don’t give Obama ideas, ok?
the mosque has the go ahead for construction and he’s given his public approval
as for the bombs you don’t have to convince me. the army was going to force unarmed civilians to fight on beach’s. they were starving civilians to keep the army feed. Japan’s delay to Truman’s offer is what cost them. they wanted more time to negoiate thru the Russians.
bottom line is it ended the war. and fast. no more blood shed. and saved lives.
what burns my a** is that generation of America, in hind sight, is now being called mass murderer’s. we should have waited longer. invade. do nothing. almost any forum today has this topic covered sooner or later.
no reflection on our members here but most of these critics are British and Germans. and liberals here in the US.
To the extent they’re British, it may reflect a lack of knowledge about what the Japanese did and in particular to British soldiers as POWs, who have often been referred to as the ‘the forgotten army’, and perhaps not least because of the humiliating defeat in Malaya. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/world-war-2/7945710/Forgotten-army-of-POWs-hold-final-remembrance-service-for-fallen-comrades.html
You won’t find the same attitude among my parents’ generation (nor to a lesser extent their children) in Australia who, unlike the British in Malaya as a colonial outpost and unlike the Americans who were never seriously threatened by invasion, were the generation that fought invasion of their homeland by the Japanese.
More recent generations here often have a different view, but that is in part testament to the failure of our politically correct education system (i.e. run by well-meaning bearded ****wits, and they’re just the lesbians!) to put the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in their full historical context. Young people here are quite reasonably and properly dismayed by the huge numbers killed and the immense suffering imposed upon the Japanese by the bombings, as indeed am I. But that’s all that is presented to them, rather than the events which preceded and caused it.
Possibly because this is beyond the capacity of the idealistic but historically ignorant simpletons who design our education curriculum for school students, as exemplified by (and I kid you not) a secondary school textbook here in the 1980s which referred to armed services personnel as ‘harm workers’. And then proceeded to mine that vein from an obviously hostile position. Conveniently ignoring the fact that the *****s who wrote the books wouldn’t have been born because their parents would have been exterminated if millions of Allied harm workers hadn’t faced and defeated Japan in WWII.
Bah!
that’s it. they don’t care how many allied personel suffered or even civilians at the hands of the Japanese. Pearl Harbor??? not enough dead bodies. a non issue. or China or any other country that was invaded. how the war started and fought is not an issue. only how it ended.
And the complete failure to record, or even be faintly aware of, what happened in China under Japan’s heel is just another example of the ignorance of those who set the curriculums (or curricula, for any Latin pedants here).
Which in its own way in the late 1960s - early 1970s is somewhat ironic, given the popularity in certain ‘intellectual’ and ‘educational’ circles of ‘The Little Red School Book’ which got confused with Mao’s ‘Little Red Book’, mostly by people who had not read either, whether they were for or against whatever they thought was in them.
So we ended up with some teachers and some students all in favour of challenging the education and other social and government systems in accordance with ‘The Little Red School Book’ while happily proclaiming the virtues of Mao’s book.
Of course, if any of them had bothered to read the latter, they would have found some statements which seem disconcerting to those of a radical inclination as outlined in the former, such as:
Chapter 26 — Discipline
We must affirm anew the discipline of the Party, namely:
(1) the individual is subordinate to the organization;
(2) the minority is subordinate to the majority;
(3) the lower level is subordinate to the higher level; and
(4) the entire membership is subordinate to the Central Committee.Whoever violates these articles of discipline disrupts Party unity.
Still, these are the geniuses who went on to write the textbooks and teach in schools, commendably infected by an outraged sense of social and other forms of justice which, alas, was not moderated by any balanced understanding of history and pretty much everything else they focused their outrage upon.
Bah!
No matter what we say or vote we won’t change what happened back then. It worked, that’s it.
Now what the world needs to do is to find ways of doing things better.
I don’t think having an ambassador attend a commemoration is in anyway akin to giving an “apology.”
but how did the Japanese interpret it???