UPDATE: Hiroshima and Nagasaki
This week’s column will discuss Truman’s decision to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The column pounces on the academic nags who disparage Truman.
Academic “revisionists” (most of them lefties looking for tv time) make much of a vague June 1945 estimate that the Kyushu assault would cost “only” 31,000 Allied casualties. This “best case” estimate of casualties from a conventional-only attack assumed the Japanese had 350,000 troops on Kyushu. Today the generally accepted figure for Japanese troops on the island in July 1945 is 560,000. At least 5,000 kamikazes were available. The Japanese were also pursuing atom weapons, another flagrant detail often ignored by revisionists (though they were years away, thank goodness, from developing a weapon).
Twenty years ago a World War 2 vet I know told me what the A-bombs meant to him. In August 1945 he was as an 18 year-old Army private assigned to a unit earmarked for the first-wave of the invasion of Kyushu.
“Those of us in my platoon knew many of us would die in that attack,” he said. “Okinawa was in our minds. We weren’t sure how close we would get to the beaches. Despite our air superiority, the Navy had no effective answer for the kamikazes. And if we did make it onto Kyushu we expected the worst of bunker to bunker fighting. For me and my friends, all of us 18 and 19, the atom bomb meant we would go home alive.”
This private witnessed firsthand the horror of The Bomb. “In late September 1945 my unit arrived in Nagasaki. The harbor was full of rusted Japanese ships, some completely turned over and others floating but entirely blackened and burned. Nagasaki sits in a U-shaped valley and the A-bomb exploded near the center of the valley. The buildings and trees were completely obliterated in the valley, all the way to the ridgeline. Even six weeks after the bomb it was a burnt-out hell.”
The 18 year old private was my father, Tom Bay. He offers some speculative numbers, the kind that count: “Hundreds of thousands of Americans of your generation, Austin, are alive because of the bomb.”
UPDATE: Check out this article from The Weekly Standard.
Here’s a sketch of the “rival narratives:
The sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima seems to be shaping up as a subdued affair–though not for any lack of significance. A survey of news editors in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, first among the top one hundred stories of the twentieth century. And any thoughtful list of controversies in American history would place it near the top again. It was not always so. In 1945, an overwhelming majority of Americans regarded as a matter of course that the United States had used atomic bombs to end the Pacific war. They further believed that those bombs had actually ended the war and saved countless lives. This set of beliefs is now sometimes labeled by academic historians the “traditionalist” view. One unkindly dubbed it the “patriotic orthodoxy.”
But in the 1960s, what were previously modest and scattered challenges of the decision to use the bombs began to crystallize into a rival canon. The challengers were branded “revisionists,” but this is inapt. Any historian who gains possession of significant new evidence has a duty to revise his appreciation of the relevant events. These challengers are better termed critics.
The critics share three fundamental premises. The first is that Japan’s situation in 1945 was catastrophically hopeless. The second is that Japan’s leaders recognized that fact and were seeking to surrender in the summer of 1945. The third is that thanks to decoded Japanese diplomatic messages, American leaders knew that Japan was about to surrender when they unleashed needless nuclear devastation.
The critics divide over what prompted the decision to drop the bombs in spite of the impending surrender, with the most provocative arguments focusing on Washington’s desire to intimidate the Kremlin. Among an important stratum of American society–and still more perhaps abroad–the critics’ interpretation displaced the traditionalist view.
The article discusses radio intercept intelligence and Japanese military capabilities.
A sample:
The intercepts of Japanese Imperial Army and Navy messages disclosed without exception that Japan’s armed forces were determined to fight a final Armageddon battle in the homeland against an Allied invasion. The Japanese called this strategy Ketsu Go (Operation Decisive). It was founded on the premise that American morale was brittle and could be shattered by heavy losses in the initial invasion. American politicians would then gladly negotiate an end to the war far more generous than unconditional surrender. Ultra was even more alarming in what it revealed about Japanese knowledge of American military plans. Intercepts demonstrated that the Japanese had correctly anticipated precisely where U.S. forces intended to land on Southern Kyushu in November 1945 (Operation Olympic). American planning for the Kyushu assault reflected adherence to the military rule of thumb that the attacker should outnumber the defender at least three to one to assure success at a reasonable cost. American estimates projected that on the date of the landings, the Japanese would have only three of their six field divisions on all of Kyushu in the southern target area where nine American divisions would push ashore. The estimates allowed that the Japanese would possess just 2,500 to 3,000 planes total throughout Japan to face Olympic. American aerial strength would be over four times greater.
From mid-July onwards, Ultra intercepts exposed a huge military buildup on Kyushu. Japanese ground forces exceeded prior estimates by a factor of four. Instead of 3 Japanese field divisions deployed in southern Kyushu to meet the 9 U.S. divisions, there were 10 Imperial Army divisions plus additional brigades. Japanese air forces exceeded prior estimates by a factor of two to four. Instead of 2,500 to 3,000 Japanese aircraft, estimates varied between about 6,000 and 10,000. One intelligence officer commented that the Japanese defenses threatened “to grow to [the] point where we attack on a ratio of one (1) to one (1) which is not the recipe for victory.”
The numbers are different from mine, but make the same point about Japanese military capabilities. Read the whole thing.
Last April ,my father-in-law,a former Marine left us to catch up with his buddies he had left behind on Okinawa and at Chosin. He once told me that he considered the atomic bomb the only reason he came home alive. He and the original 27 members left of his rifle company after Okinawa knew, he said, that they would all die on Japanese soil.
Comment by Greg Taylor — 7/31/2005 @ 5:27 pm
In the early 70’s I was working in an office with a young lady - very liberal, very activist. About this time of year she started on how terrible the US had been to use the Atomic Bomb on Japan. Knowing that she was in her early 20’s, I ask her where her father had been when the bomb was dropped. She told me he was in the army in the Pacific. I told her that at times I agreed with her — Just think if they had not used the bomb She probably wouldn’t be around to tell us how bad we were.
Comment by Stan — 7/31/2005 @ 7:10 pm
I wrote a rather indepth article on this subject. If interested, you can see it here.
Comment by Plunge — 7/31/2005 @ 7:24 pm
My in-laws told me that Japan would never have surrendered without the Atomic bomb. What would they know? They were there. My father-in-law worked in the shipyards in Hiroshima, and traded days off with a co-worker or he surely would have died. As it was, they were gathering firewood, quite close to the explosion. I believe they lived near the next train stop from Hiroshima station (toward Tokyo) at that time. This is something like 5 minutes away by train. My sister-in-law, who would have been around 3 or 4 at the time, was knocked down by the blast. They found and cared for a badly burned young boy, who later died from his injuries. In my in-law’s opinion, the quick end to the war was the better outcome. The critics have a long way to go to convince me otherwise.
Comment by Mark Delles — 7/31/2005 @ 7:45 pm
In “Downfall,” Richard B Frank’s essential book on the end of the Pacific war, he mentions the Japanese atomic bomb project and emphasizes why the second bomb was so critical. They were working on a Uranium bomb and assumed we had material only for a single weapon. They were right. They did not anticipate the Plutonium bomb and, when the second bomb was dropped, the Japanese scientists convinced the Emperor (who was not the detached “son of Heaven” of myth) that he had to surrender. THey thought we might drop one a week until they were destroyed. Not only was the first bomb necessary, so was the second.
Comment by Michael Kennedy — 7/31/2005 @ 8:21 pm
And of course, invasion of the Japanese home islands was going to cause millions of American casualties, and probably 10x that many Japanese. IIRC, there was only one north south railway linking the agricultural areas to the greater Tokyo area; doubtlessly this would have been bombed, starving millions in the Tokyo area right there. And lets recall that it took not one, but two bombs to get the Japanese to surrender… and even then it was not unaminous! Clearly defeated, they chose to continue to fight, and would have, had the bombs not been utilized. In this light, the bombs saved millions… both Americans and Japanese.
Comment by BBM — 7/31/2005 @ 8:45 pm
When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japanese physicists performed analysis. They determined that there were reaction products of Uranium 235. They knew from their own weapons program that separation of U235 was difficult. They reported that the destruction of Hiroshima was a bad miracle, a catastrophe, but because of the difficulty in separating U235 from U238, it could not practically be accomplished again. Because of that report, the Japanese cabinet decided to fight on. Their strategy was to continue resistance to get the US to negotiate. With the 30 to 1 exchange rate of Okinawa, the Japanese Cabinet estimated that 30 million Japanese would have to die fighting, to inflict 1 million casualties on the US. They were willing to pay that price. The US read their response because the US was reading Japanese diplomatic codes. The Soviet Union’s invasion of Manchuria began. The addition of Soviet manpower to the equation made their strategy invalid. As that was being digested, the Nagasaki attack occured. It was also analyzed. The Japanese found the reaction products from Plutonium 239. Since Plutonium can be chemically separated, there was now no limit to the bombs that could be produced. The Japanese cabinet reported this to Emperor Hirohito. The Emperor directed that the Japanese government surrender. He sent members of the Imperial family to remaining centers of resistance. It should be noted that the Nagasaki bomb was planned for the center of the residential sector, but was actually dropped on the industrial center. Based on German experience at Schweinfurt, the Japanese had move as much of their industry into residential areas. The Nagasaki bomb “only” killed some 25,000 people, compared to the 78,000 some odd at Hiroshima. Because of the bombs, the Soviet Union did not have an occupation sector in Japan. We know what happened when they had occupation sectors in Germany, China, and Korea. At least Japan was saved that.
Comment by Don Meaker — 7/31/2005 @ 8:52 pm
I have just turned 40. I have no first hand knowledge of the era. However, I cannot imagine that in 1945, ANY wartime leader, of any nation, could possible face his people and say “Sure, I could have ended the war with 300000 Japanese dead; and not one American. But I chose to sacrifice 30000 Americans [or even one] because I was concerned we might kill too many of our enemy.” That sort of perversion, that abdication of an elected official’s sworn duty, exists only in times of which I do have first hand knowledge.
Comment by alan cameron — 7/31/2005 @ 8:54 pm
A key element revealed by MAGIC was the Japanese appreciation of the substantial difference between Uranium and Plutonium bombs. This element reveals the importance of the Bock’s car mission.
Comment by Don Meaker — 7/31/2005 @ 9:07 pm
I highly recommend Downfall by Richard Frank.
Comment by Robert — 7/31/2005 @ 9:43 pm
This is sorta personal with me, too. In August 1945 I was a 16-year old kid. Conventional invasion probably would have meant a long struggle, and had it lasted until I turned 17, guess where I would have been? My 3 sons and 9 grandkids share my thanks to HST that the bomb was used!
Comment by Tom Johnson — 7/31/2005 @ 9:52 pm
You point out that the critics charge that the A-bombs were meant to intimidate the USSR, more than to force a Japanese surrender. Leaving aside the “more than” clause, intimidating the USSR was just as valid and justifiable as the more direct aim of the Japanese surrender. As Don Meaker pointed out, this saved the Japanese the horrors of Soviet occupation; it’s quite likely that it saved Berlin in 1948-9 as well that the USSR was “intimidated”. One can see today that the wartime alliance we had with the Soviets was simply tactical and that they would resume hostilities against us at the first opportunity–after all, they were spying on us and the UK during the whole course of WWII. If Truman and his war cabinet could see all this and project this kind of strategy in 1945, I say they were on the ball and they did their job for this country.
Comment by Robert Solot — 7/31/2005 @ 9:56 pm
As I wrong last year, in August 1945, my dad was a young LT(jg) aboard the USS Zeilin, an Amphibious Attack Transport (a/k/a troopship) in the western Pacific. The Zeilin had survived a direct hit by a kamikaze in January, and was back in service after rushed repairs in San Diego. As a junior officer, my dad commanded small landing craft used to put soldiers and Marines ashore under fire — meaning (with due respect to the dangers they’d face ashore) he was likely to run many, many times the ship-to-shore gauntlet they’d only have to run once. So like Col. Bay, I’m one of those “hundreds of thousands of Americans [who] are alive because of the bomb.” And I’ve always been singularly unimpressed by those who’ve criticized America’s use of the Bomb to end that war.
Comment by Beldar — 7/31/2005 @ 10:01 pm
The choice that Truman faced was not “Invasion†or “the A-bomb.†It was gassing Japanese like bugs during an invasion of Japan and the A-bomb. The autumn 1997 issue of MILITARY HISTORY QUARTERLY had an article by Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen titles “Gassing Japan†on U.S. military plans to gas Japan during Operation Olympic. You can go to this link to purchase the issue with the article here: https://store.primediamags.com/shop/thehistorynet/viewProduct?pm_id=3189 Allen and Polmar ran across references to a plan to gas Japan and put in a FOIA request. Eventually they got a copy of a document labeled “A Study of the Possible Use of Toxic Gas in Operation Olympic.” The word “Retaliatory” was PENCILED in between possible and use. Apparently there were only five of these documents circulated during WW2. After the war in 1947, the document was requested by the Chemical Corps for historical study. In an attempt to “Redact” history, another document was issued to change all the copies to emphasis “Retaliatory” rather than the reality of the US planning to use it offensively in support of the invasion of Japan. The plan called for US heavy bombers to drop 56,583 tons of gas in the 15 days before the invasion of Kyushu than another 23,935 tons every 30 days after that — and that was just the STRATEGIC bombing campaign. Tactical air support was in addition to that. The ground weapons would contribute 1,400 tons of gas shells. At the time of the invasion, 144,762 tons of gas shells were available. Another 9,356 tons would arrive every 30 days after the invasion. Chemical Corps casualty estimates for this attack plan were 5 million dead with another 5 million casualties. Ultimately, it looks like the plan was not approved, but prepared for, since the gas to implement it was sent to the Pacific — likely as a back up to the A-bomb. According to Allen and Polmar, the June 18, 1945 meeting where Harry Truman was briefed on Operation Downfall — the over all plan to invade Japan — by Adm King, Gen Marshall and the rest of the Joint Chiefs was when the topic was broached. We know now that the decision to drop the atomic bomb was made then, although the notes for the meeting only referred to “undisclosed topics.” On 21 June 1945, orders were issued by the Army to produce and ship the necessary quantities of war gas to the Pacific Theater to implement the plan. The key passage from that Gas Attack Plan was: “Gas is the one single weapon hitherto unused which we can have readily available which assuredly can greatly decrease the cost in American lives and should materially shorten the war.” I’d say that this meeting decided that the US was unwilling to take the kind of mass casualties, using Okinawa as a model, that a conventional landing would cost and any available WMD would be used to reduce American casualties. The Polmar article mentions that Gen Marshall brought up the use of gas in a 29 May 1945 meeting with War Sec. Stimpson. He wanted to use gas against the “outer Japanese islands” with less than our best war gas (Mustard gas) to “take the fight out of” the Japanese soldier and reduce American casualties. Marshall then commissioned the study I have been quoting from. The American invasion of Japan would have happened behind cloud banks of poison gas. This article by Norman Polmar seems to have escaped Richard B. Frank, who wrote the Weekly Standard article Austin linked too.
Comment by Trent Telenko — 7/31/2005 @ 10:53 pm
A little known fact is that the American government attempted to warn the Japanese people of the potential use of a weapon of mass destruction. A letter to that fact was signed by the top allied physicists, and was dropped by parachute capsules on Japan. Don’t believe me; you can see this for yourself in a display at the Nagasaki Peace Museum.
Comment by David M. Golden — 8/1/2005 @ 12:15 am
anybody who wants to approach this subject needs to read Eugene B. Sledge’s incomparable “With The Old Breed”, the Iwo Jima histories, or even James Bradley’s “Flyboys” to learn what it was like fighting the Japanese during the Second World War. Masters of defensive warfare, the Marines hardly ever saw them, dug in as they were. They had to be rooted out and killed with extreme prejuidice since they rarely surrendered. An invasion of Japan would have been a bloodbath for all concerned. The Japanese were even going to issue bamboo pikes to women and children. Thank God for Truman’s correct decision.
Comment by boarwild — 8/1/2005 @ 2:44 am
Freeman Dyson once met Robert Butow, the author of JAPAN’S DECISION TO SURRENDER. Dyson asked Butow, ‘If the atomic bombs hadn’t been dropped, when would the war have ended.’ Butow answered, ‘I don’t know. The people I interviewed after the war didn’t know themselves, so I don’t see how I could know.’ And neither do I know either. It ended. Thank God. THE SAUDS MUST BE DESTROYED!
Comment by Stephen M. St. Onge — 8/1/2005 @ 6:01 am
The fantatical level of determination to inflict as many casualties as possible was demonstrated by how the Japanese were training civilians from little kids to grannies to fight the Americans when they came. The kids were to advance on them with bombs strapped to their backs and the older folks to attack with wooden pikes and sharpened sticks. Death in battle insured their transmution into minor Shinto deities.
Comment by Banjo — 8/1/2005 @ 6:30 am
A lot of people think with their emotions, not with their rational minds. To an emotional thinker any type of violence is abhorrent, even if it prevents much worse violence. There is simply no reasoning with an emotional thinker. Their capacity for reason is equivalent to someone with an IQ of 67.5. It is much better to leave them to their jobs as university professors, journalists, lefty bloggers and think-tankers. They confine themselves to their own concentration camps where they are easily identified and disregarded.
Comment by Roger Balmer — 8/1/2005 @ 6:52 am
How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb It was easy, really. I started by knowing something about history, and followed up by not being a hate-America-firster. The rest just followed. Don’t miss Austin Bay on the decision to drop the bombs at…
Trackback by The Spoons Experience — 8/1/2005 @ 7:53 am
My late father, who was of the WWII generation, reduced it down to the simplest terms I’ve ever heard. It was his contention that: Hiroshima + Nagasaki = Pearl Harbor + four years interest
Comment by Rich — 8/1/2005 @ 8:04 am
It’s absurd to claim that the US should have invaded Kyushu. It would clearly have been a bloodbath. But it’s unrealistic to present the choice as Invasion vs A-bombs. The military was set to invade, but that could and should have been stopped. By August 1945 Japan’s industrial base had been destroyed by conventional bombing. More importantly, Japan had no natural resources to speak of and her merchanet marine was at the bottom of the ocean thanks to an incredibly successful and rarely acknowledged submarine campaign. Japan could not feed herself at this point. A perfectly viable choice would have been to simply to continue to pound Japan with bombers and wait for the country to fall apart or starve. American casualties would have been very low. Japanese casualties would, of course have been much higher than they were historically, because it was going to take a long time to get the government to surrender. This would have the advantage of not setting the precedent of using atomic bombs. It would have the disadvantage of destroying Japan, allowing the Soviets to conquer large chunks of China, and likely causing a horrendous revolution in Japan. I think the right decision was made, but I wouldn’t want to have to make the choice.
Comment by nittypig — 8/1/2005 @ 9:32 am
A college friend’s father was a survivor of the Bataan Death March. After having been shipped to Manchuria for most of the war, he ended up mining coal in Japan. He said that the dropping of the bombs was the best thing that ever happened to him, if for no other reason than the sudden improvement of his treatment by the guards. If memory serves he was imprisoned not too far from Hiroshima. From my own point of view, if the Japanese didn’t want to get clobbered, they should have stayed home.
Comment by Shadow — 8/1/2005 @ 9:56 am
It is also useful to point out that Japan had a civilian militia of approximately 20 million people. They were armed with muskets, spears and swords gleaned from museums and private ownership. The intention was to use human wave tactics to stop American forces on the beaches. The Japanese Press was exhorting the population to preparations for suicidal sacrifice. When the Japanese garrison on Attu was wiped out almost to the last man the Japanese Press described it as the “shattering of a beautiful jewel.” It was not more than 1 year later that this same press was describing the entire population of Japan in this way in preparations for the invasion. The entire population of 140 million people was being prepared for mass suicide. We should also recall that our estimates for casualties were ALWAYS wrong. One of the things that made Okinawa so shocking to the public and military was that we badly underestimated the enemy strength and our own losses in dealing with them. In the invasion plans for Japan, Operations Coronet and Olympic, planners were figuring on 500,000 killed, wounded and missing. If past performance offers any indication, the actual casualties would have been closer to 1 million U.S. troops killed,wounded and missing. Japanese losses would have been something on the order of 5 to 7 million!!! The Atomic bombing of Japan was probably the most humanitarian action we could have taken. All those bombs did was convince the Japanese that no invasion was necessary, we could simply wipe out their population while risking only a few planes. Within the Imperial Headquarters there was some considerable debate over how many bombs Japan could take. That number was 10. Japan thought that it could take 10 atomic bomb hits and still possess sufficient forces meet an invasion.
Comment by sean spoonts — 8/1/2005 @ 10:36 am
The atomic bomb was basically the definition of a necessary evil. That doesn’t mean dropping the bombs is something we should be proud of, or something we should celebrate. It’s something that had to be done to finish something that I wish had never been necessary in the first place. As for people thinking with their emotions and not with their rational minds, I think this is a good example of that: “Hiroshima + Nagasaki = Pearl Harbor + four years interest”
Comment by Nick Frame — 8/1/2005 @ 11:27 am
It wasn’t just American lives that were saved. I’m in the same boat as Mr Bay. My father served in the Middle East, but as the European war drew to a close, he and his unit were steeling themselves for deployment to the Far East. They fully expected to be killed. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks came as a deliverance. I very likely wouldn’t be writing this if not for the Manhattan Project. Besides, the question isn’t whether Japan would have been nuked in some counterfactual history of the War, but how many times. By late 1945, the US had nearly twenty warheads, and more were coming off the production lines every month. It’s ludicrous to assume that these weapons would not have been used, at the least, for battlefield preparation.
Comment by David Gillies — 8/1/2005 @ 11:33 am
Dropping the A-Bomb The Posse has never bought into the revisionist view of the atomic bombings of Japan that has now permeated academia. Despite being force-fed books on the subject, we understood that 1. War is hell, 2. Japan started it, 3. Japan
Trackback by Posse Incitatus — 8/1/2005 @ 1:28 pm
My father, now 85, was a sailor on a destroyer escort in the pacific. After two months on picket duty around Okinawa in which many ships were sunk or damaged by kamikaze, his ship was headed to Japan for “special” missions. That meant taking soil and sand samples from beaches for study prior to landings. It was dangerous work. He still won’t buy a Japanese car.
Comment by doctor jack — 8/1/2005 @ 2:39 pm
The Chinese version of Rich’s father’s equation is: Hiroshima + Nagasaki
Comment by Brian — 8/1/2005 @ 3:15 pm
I too have a personal interest in the question – at the time the atomic bombs were dropped, my (late) father was training for the invasion of Kyushu. He was going to be a platoon leader in the second wave, and they had been told to expect 80% casualties. So I’m probably one of those who would never have been had we proceeded with the invasion. But there is so much more to the story than what the critics and revisionists mention. Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while horrible, were not the most damaging or deadly air raids on Japan. We killed more people and destroyed more property in a single fire raid on Tokyo than in both atomic bombs combined – the main difference being the Tokyo raid took hundreds of airplanes and tens of thousands of bombs while the Hiroshima and Nagasaki raids each took a single airplane and a single bomb. Had we continued the “normal†air raids on Japan while seeking peace talks, the Japanese people would have continued to die by the tens of thousands. Meanwhile there was little evidence the Japanese were really interested in anything resembling the unconditional surrender we were demanding. A little know fact is that, even after the atomic bombs were dropped, there was an attempted military coup to prevent the actual surrender. Furthermore, in the long run, it was probably of great benefit that atomic weapons were actually used. If the atomic bombs had never been dropped on Japan and provided such a graphic demonstration of how horrible these new weapons were, it would have been far easier for someone to have made the decision to used them in a future conflict. Then the death toll from using the bomb would not have been one hundred thousand, it could easily have been one hundred million.
Comment by TJDoll — 8/1/2005 @ 3:41 pm
“A perfectly viable choice would have been to simply to continue to pound Japan with bombers and wait for the country to fall apart or starve. ” The history of strategic bombing suggests such a course would be significantly less effective than you suggest. What is strategic bombing good at? Blowing up factories and infastructure? Arguably, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilians as we saw in Dresden and Tokyo. Certainly no fewer Japanese lives would have been saved. Moreover bombing wouldnt have softened the Japanese up militarilly much further. The pillbox and rifle battles that were in the offing didnt require battleships and fighter planes that the factories produced. And its hard to strategically bomb rice paddies. The Time article also makes the argument that the Japanese could have been starved. That is a humanitarian solution? The rations would have gone to the army and the women and children would have sufferered the hideously painful death by starvation. That is assuming Japan couldnt feed itself at a subsistance level as it had for thousands of years. There is really no reason to believe Japan couldnt hold out indefinately against a blockade and air campaign. Others of less staunch will and rabid fanaticism had done so.
Comment by Mark Buehner — 8/1/2005 @ 4:47 pm
Second Guessing Truman Austin Bay and Plunge Pontificates remember the anniversary of the Hiroshima A-bomb drop by recounting the circumstances of the time. Honestly, I don’t really have much time for people who insist on second guessing Truman. Setting aside the probab…
Trackback by Cutler's Yankee Station — 8/1/2005 @ 5:55 pm
George MacDonald Fraser’s book Quartered Safe Out Here provides the British foot soldier’s view of the Hiromshima bombing and one of the best descriptions of that life. He says that because we dropped the bomb, he was not one who might have been killed. If killed his 3 kids and 6 grandchildren would not have been born. To avoid that, he says, “I would pull the plug on the whole Japanese nation and never even blink. And so, I dare suggest, would you.”
Comment by Matthew Connolly — 8/1/2005 @ 6:11 pm
I’m not a big fan of Harry Truman. People today who ae not old enough to remember his presidency don’t realize he was a very unpopular president at the time. However his two major decisions, dropping the atomic bomb and firing McArthur, were undoubtedly right. McArthur was flat out insubordinate. As to dropping the bomb, Truman was U.S. President which means his first responsibility was to save AMERICAN lives. Also, I think it is generally conceded that more people were killed in the firebombing of Dresden than at Hiroshima. Where’s the outrage about that? I believe Truman was invited to a tenth anniversary memorial service at Hiroshima. He said he’d go but not to expect him to be apologetic. People who criticize his decision to drop the bomb are really only showing their ignorance of the situation at that time.
Comment by Dr. Fager — 8/2/2005 @ 6:51 am
Annoying Lie #2 A recent article by Richard B. Frank, a World War II historian in The Weekly Standard refutes the simplistic claims that the US bombed Japan while knowing that Japan was already planning peace.
Trackback by An Ignorant American's Blog of American Arrogance — 8/2/2005 @ 10:10 am
I believe that dropping the bombs was the right thing to do for two reasons: The first is that it ended the war quickly. Suggested alternatives of starving of continued convetional boming would probably have achieved success but at what price? The number of Japanese dead as a result would have been far greater that from the bombs. Invasion would probably have succeeded, but at a cost that is is truely unimaginable. I sure the world today would be far far different and we as a nation would suffer far far more guilt (for those who wish to feel guilty)than anything derived from the use of the bombs. Secondly, and I think this is really, significat, the bombs would have remained an unknown quantity. The result of which is that they would have been much much easier to use in the fifties. And because of that they would most probably have been used with far worse consequences than the loss of two cities. I suspenct that one of the reasons we avoided WWIII is because we saw the result of the use of nuclear weapons in actual combat. It was a hard lesson, but fortunately it was a lesson well learned.
Comment by Michael — 8/2/2005 @ 1:08 pm
Thank-you for addressing the myths on this issue. The revisionist history we are taught in college fails to adress many of the factual realities of the situation in 1945.
Comment by NYgirl — 8/2/2005 @ 8:38 pm
History documents exactly how the war would have proceeded had it been necessary to invade the main islands of Japan. Others here have pointed out how Japanese women and children were already being armed. But the Japanese army showed what THEY would have done, by doing it. Even after the Emperor gave the word and the army officially gave up, on every little island in the Pacific Japanese soldiers simply retreated into the bushes and guerillaed on for the next decade. Literally. They were still being caught, or finally being flushed out in the mid-’50s. This despite their having suppressed and in many cases brutalized the indigenous islanders. Now consider what they could and would have done on the main Japanese islands, with the support of their own population around them. It is all too clear what the upshot would have been. I turned 17 the month after the two bombs were dropped. Had they not been, I strongly doubt I would be around to write these words.
Comment by L, Chimene — 8/2/2005 @ 8:55 pm
My own inexpert opinion, after thousands of hours of study into the mind of the liberal thinker, is that we shouldn’t have used the atomic bombs because…It’s not fair!
Comment by W. Gillick — 8/5/2005 @ 12:34 pm
As a conservative, a decorated veteran of 12 years military service during the Vietnam years and a writer on military subjects, I am disgusted with the crap that comes out about the use of the A-bomb. First, there was no urgency at all to drop the bombs when they were used. The invasion wasn’t planned for another three months and the battle of Okinawa, Iwo Jima and the Philippines were long since over. But even more important, all of Japan’s major cities had already been bombed into rubble. Furthermore, the Japanese had been sending out peace feelers since May and Washington knew Japan would surrender if the emperor was allowed to remain on the throne. The ONLY reason for dropping the bombs was to demonstrate their power to the rest of the world, particularly the Soviets. The official history of the United States Army Air Forces in World War II records that on August 4, 1945, two days before Hiroshima, Fifth Air Force pilots came back from missions over Kyushu to report that the Japanese were waving white flags. Post-war interviews of Japanses revealed that almost 70% of all Japanese had reached the point that they could not endure one more day of war. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that the war would have been over before November 1, the planned day for the invasion, regardless of whether the A-bombs were dropped. Few in the Army Air Forces, the men who had been fightig the Japanese, believed the bomb was necessary. It was those who had never seen Japan who swallowed the line that without it, casualties might have reached one million, an allegation that Truman made several years after the fact.
Comment by Sam McGowan — 2/2/2006 @ 11:42 pm