67 Years Ago Today and the Continuing Nuclear Protest
It was on this date in 1945 that Hiroshima was destroyed by a new weapon, a single bomb dropped by a B-29 named Enola Gay, named after the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. In the years since, many have tried to make the point that dropping of the bombs was an unnecessary act, as they claim the Japanese home islands were on the verge of defeat and would have surrendered soon enough without dropping the bomb.
There are several flaws in that argument. First, after nearly four years of all-out war, Americans were tired of war. The prospect of what would surely be at least another 12-18 months taking the Japanese home islands was not a palatable thought. Second–as alluded to in movies and elsewhere, the Allies won the war in Europe, but at a huge cost. America was nearly bankrupt, spending nearly 38 percent of GDP on defense, compared to less than 4 percent of GDP today. Third–the casualty estimates of Operation Downfall varied widely, but all agreed that there would be huge casualties, and most of those estimates were only for the first sixty days, and only one took into account Navy casualties. Iwo Jima and Okinawa that same year showed that taking of the Japanese home islands would be possibly far more devastating in terms of both allied and Japanese casualties than eariler estimates. Finally, when the Japanese were asked to surrender after the July 16th test of the Trinity device in New Mexico, the Japanese basically was that of “mokusatsu,” meaning to treat with silence or silent contempt–a nice way of them telling the Allies to shove it up their ass.
A quick end to the war with the fewest casualties was needed, and the atomic bomb, rightly or wrongly, provided that end. It is said that all of the Purple Hearts made up for Operation Downfall have been given out to the casualties of every war and action the United States has been involved in over the past six and a half decades, and there are still Purple Hearts left.
To that end, a semi-related story from WBIR-Knoxville about several protestors who broke into the Y-12 facility at Oak Ridge last week and threw what they claimed was human blood on the building. Way to go, G4S–great security job you’re doing there. I would suggest to those people that the bloodshed had the bomb NOT been dropped, and the deterrence it provided for several decades afterwards, saved far more blood than was shed on this day and three days later in 1945.
Category: Antiwar crowd, Foreign Policy, Historical
This came up a year or so ago when John Stewart said something stupid about the Truman and the bomb. Shocker. Bill Whittle lays it out nice and simple for anyone claiming the bombs were unnecessary.
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=56&load=1808
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If we would have blockaded them into submission, the whine today would be how we starved millions to death-what actually happened is irrelevant to the smug, self-righteous superiority of the perpetually indignant. I have no words to express the contempt I feel for these morons, but thankfully most Americans see them for the fools that they are.
Invading the Japanese homeland would have been a lose-lose situation. What the Japanese demonstrated on Okinawa and Saipan in regards to the brainwashed mentality that those people held was something that my Great Uncle never got over. He told me, back in the early 70’s, about how the civilians would throw themselves off cliffs rather than come in contact with the Allies, because they were told by the military that we would eat them and their children and they believed what the military had told them. Many years later, I saw some of the film footage of that exact thing happening and it made your stomach turn. A full invasion would have had a loss of life that would rival Stalingrad.
“I would suggest to those people that the bloodshed had the bomb NOT been dropped, and the deterrence it provided for several decades afterwards, saved far more blood than was shed on this day and three days later in 1945.” Very true, but the left is hell-bent on rewriting history to conform to their world view. And, in that view, WWII was the fault of the U.S. and ending it was the fault of the U.S.
“the smug, self-righteous superiority of the perpetually indignant.” Nicely said, 68W. And it describes those dolts perfectly.
The people responsible for the atomic bombs being dropped resided in Japan not Washington DC…deciding to invade your neighbors, raping and murdering as you go, and then adding the entire world to the list of those who should be enslaved leaves few options for those you intend to kill or enslave….
Americans chose to destroy the nation that stated it would destroy America, there is a strong lesson there that perhaps is lessened with the passing of time…that lesson is simply this: when a nation or political group states it intends to kill you or others like you, it is wise to believe them and act accordingly.
The Israelis know this lesson as a simple truth, if the Arabs disarm there will be peace in the mideast, if the Jews disarm there will be a lot of dead Jews in the middle east, believe your enemies words and stop him from acting on them by killing as many of them as you can…which lesson will those who think like John Stewart learn, I wonder?
And not just our casualties, either. I remember a TV show that talked about it and pointed out the massive Japanese casualties that would be suffered. As in, “exterminating the race” numbers of casualties-either through banzai waves, massive naval, air, and indirect fires on our part, or the concurrent Soviet occupation of part of Japan that would have happened.
But it would have been much more humane to have done that than used the A-bomb. /sarcasm
If you look at the order of battle for Operation Downfall, it’s amazing to me to think that there wouldn’t be on the order of hundreds of thousands, if not possibly over a million Allied casualties:
http://www.kilroywashere.org/006-Pages/Invasion.html
Plus, of course, the bombs didn’t immediately end the war anyway.
A large number of Japanese officers wanted to keep fighting despite the bombs, and almost pulled off a successful coup to keep doing so on the eve of the surrender announcement.
Hell, the 2nd bomb was dropped on 9 August 1945. On 12 August 1945 a torpedo plane hit USS Pennsylvania and killed 20 guys, wounded 10, and the BB had to be towed back to Guam.
The other thing people also forget about “starving the Japanese into submission” is that a shitload and a half of Japanese troops weren’t anywhere near Japan. They were stretched all over the Pacific on Islands we had bypassed, or fighting in Southeast Asia, or in China. Hell, the Japanese were still fighting Allied troops in Western New Guinea when the war ended.
This is a good map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1945-08-01JapWW2BattlefrontAtlas.jpg
Note all the territory still being held by Japanese troops. The whole “we had them bottled up on the home islands” thing is a myth.
Anyway, there’s also a number of good books on the subject, including one that deals a lot with the last B-29 raid.
Also consider that WWII was not declared “officially” over by the UN until 1951. I was on Guam and saw the picture of Sergeant Yokoi in a bar on Tumon Beach. Remember, this guy didn’t surrender until 1972, and he wasn’t even the last one they found.
The bombs were a necessary evil IMO. If the Japanese were going to fight to the last person, we had the tools to make that happen, thankfully, they saw this and surrendered. In the long run we saved way more lives than we took, why can’t people see that? If it hadn’t been the A-bombs, it could’ve been something else, remember, carpet bombing and Japanese houses didn’t mix well…
“A large number of Japanese officers wanted to keep fighting despite the bombs, and almost pulled off a successful coup to keep doing so on the eve of the surrender announcement.”
“Japan’s Longest Day” directed by Kihachi Okamoto tells the tale about that unsucessful coup attempt. It’s on Netflix.
My father was in Marine boot camp when the bombs were dropped. No way to know for sure but there is a good chance he would have died on the beach and I never would have been born.
I’m with VOV on this one. You don’t want me to throw rocks at your house? Don’t throw rocks at mine! Japan threw rocks at everyone’s houses, everyone threw rocks back. After throwing rocks for a while, we threw boulders. They did this to themselves the same way the Nazi’s brought the destruction of Germany down upon themselves. Dad was part of the team that brought down the Nazi’s, luckily he survived only getting wounded a couple of times. If not for the “bomb” he could have wound up invading Japan and I might not be here!?
Loach: same here. My dad and one of his brothers were both serving in the Pacific at the end of the war.
The samurai culture in 19th century Japan refused to open up to the West until the government was threatened with a US Navy bombardment. It was the impetus behind the kamikaze pilots who, when they were low on fuel, flew their planes into US Navy ships during the war in the Pacific, causing enormous damage. (Kamikaze means warriors of the divine wind. It is constantly misused by newscasters to imply suicide, which is hara kiri.)
Their stubbornness and refusal to surrender never made any sense to me, but it was their warrior’s way.
I think the estimation of losses in continued fighting was somewhere between a half-million and 4 million.
These idiot children who protest nuclear development have no idea how lucky they are that the use of those two bombs made it possible for them to live their spoiled lives the way they do.
The most ridiculous thing of all is that we had already killed far more Japanese civilians with incendiary ordinance in one single air raid on Tokyo than we did with each independent nuclear bomb. All those B29 raids Curtis LeMay oversaw amounted to far more devastation than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I don’t know if we could have achieved the same end with sustained raids using conventional ordinance or not, but if the metric is devastation, one wonders why people weren’t/aren’t “fired up” about incendiaries.
Of course, big picture, coming out ahead of the Soviets at the end of WWII was just as important as defeating Germany and Japan. We were already looking at a stalemate in Europe. I believe Truman couldn’t have ignored that the Soviets couldn’t ignore the nukes…
Further, everyone seems to forget about the extensive firebombing campaign we’d already been running. Careful bringing that up though or you’ll dredge up Dresden whinging too. Hell, they outright buried the fact that the Japanese had plans in place to arm the civilians to make a last ditch effort too.
I figure the people throwing a fit about the atom bombs probably don’t know much about the Bataan Death March, Rape of Nanking, Unit 731 etc.
My great grandfather was out there as a pilot. Another person that might not be here without the bomb. On a side note there, I always found it funny the plane he test piloted for wasn’t the one he flew…
Dresden, right…because the Germans had been so honorable up to that point…
NHSparky #10: Ya beat me to it.
Was on Guam in early ’69… I thought the “Still a Japanese Soldier, or two, in the jungle.” was just a line to spook the newbies when I first heard it.
On the larger issue… Coming on the heels of the bloody Okinawa campaign NOT using nukes would have been criminal.
[…] of only two atomic bombs ever used in combat is being remembered and, as is the case every year, an occasion for protest of both the weapons themselves and the United States and our decision to employ them, some oft-ignored perspective is in […]
The Jon Stewart comment was beyond ignorant. He said we should have dropped a bomb over the ocean as a threat, then bombed a city if they refused to surrender. I guess the fact that we dropped a bomb on a fucking city and they didn’t surrender escaped him.
Also, on a personal level, I always note that the day after the nuke anniversary is the anniversary of my great uncle’s death on Gavutu.
So the nuke thing doesn’t garner that much sympathy from my family.
Go beyond that, Adam. Like the US and the Germans, the Japanese knew of the potential of an atomic bomb, and like us, were working on one as well.
Fortunately, we got there first.