Seventy Years
Seventy years ago – on 6 August 1945 at roughly 08:15:45 AM Japanese Standard Time, which converts to 7:15:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time the previous day – the Japanese city of Hiroshima ceased to exist. On 9 August 1945, the Japanese city of Nagasaki followed suit.
Less than a week afterwards, the Emperor of Japan publicly announced his acceptance of Allied surrender terms.
I’ve written about the US nuclear missions against Japan previously. I have no reason to change what I said then. Read the original article if you like; it can be found here.
But I’ll again say this much: if you’re so inclined, perhaps take a moment to say a prayer for the souls of those who died that day at Hiroshima, and for those who died three days later at Nagasaki. And while you’re at it, maybe add a second prayer – that we never again have the need to use such weapons.
Category: Blue Skies, Historical, Military issues, Nukes
Yep. As an NBC NCO, I may have been one of the few Soldiers out there who hoped that I would never have to exercise my profession for “real”, especially the “N” part.
Amen to that. I never wanted to be busy. As Col Bob Marr told me in 2002: “you stay bored, it makes my life easier.”
After reading “A Higher Form of Killing” (extremely informative book, albeit a little dated 30 years later) I sorta hoped to avoid the B and C parts too. If not more. I gauged the success of training sessions with my folks by whether I could turn someone a little green – 100% successful. Nasty shit.
Thanks my grandfather and millions of his brothers did not have to invade the Japanese mainland.
Oh, yes. My father was waiting in Leghorn, Italy to ship out for the Pacific. Thank God the war ended.
That report button is way to close to the reply button!
My grandfather lead landing craft waves in most of the Pacific island invasions. He was very thankful he didn’t have to assault the Japanese islands.
As tragic a loss as it was for the citizens of those cities, that was a time when real men were in charge and they did what ever was needed to win a war. We can only hope to have such quality of leadership in our country again. LTC West for president.
The sad thing is that just regular folks died in those bombings…not the ass hole leadership of Japan that should have been blown up…its ALWAYS the C.S. leadership that starts all the B.S., one day I would like to see them take it in the shorts and not innocent civilians!! If you want to use the U.S. as an example..go ahead, I had our fearless leadership in mind as well!
I am sorry that the Empire of Japan sought to extend its Asia domination and bought itself some time by attacking Pearl Harbor w/o first formally declaring war on the United States. I am sorry that the Empire of Japan failed to heed the warnings delivered to it by the United States before the first bomb was dropped. I am sorry that the Empire of Japan failed to safeguard its people from further horror after that first bomb was dropped, too, making a second necessary. I am grateful that President Truman did what he did when he did it but, most of all, I am grateful for the American fighting men who, at great personal cost, prevailed against powerful enemies in multiple theaters of war.
Word!!
I’m sorry the Empire of Japan was a racist imperialistic aggressor. I’m sorry that they committed an unprovoked act of war with the sinking of the USS Panay 4 years before Pearl Harbor. I’m sorry that they practiced slavery on an industrial scale. I’m sorry that they considered rape to be good R&R for their troops (provided the victim wasn’t a jap herself) and encouraged it. I’m sorry that they waged a genocidal war of aggression against the Chinese. I’m sorry that they brutalized the Philippines. I’m sorry that they committed unspeakable atrocities against POWs and foreign civilians. I’m sorry that they murdered millions of Chinese women and children in tests of weaponized anthrax and other biological weapons.
I’m not sorry that our subs cut them off from imported supplies. I’m not sorry that Bombs-Away LeMay’s B-29s burned their cities to the ground before the Trinity test. I’m not sorry that we reduced two of their cities to irradiated glass parking lots.
I don’t lack compassion, but their suffering was entirely self-inflicted. And far less than the agony they forced upon others.
Don’t forget that they were egged on by Roosevelt, who boycotted fuel etc from them, the Japs felt they had no alternative…so the U.S. is not going around with clean hands on the issue!
Of course it was our fault! How were they supposed to continue butchering the Chinese and enslaving the Koreans if we stopped selling them gas and steel? What monsters we were!
I have heard from so many of the far left condemning the use of atomic weapons on Japan, but the War Department’s own research and math concluded that if we had to invade mainland Japan, the casualty rate would have been at minimum of 80%.
Now don’t get me wrong about the hapless civilians that suffered from the two bombs, but if we had invaded Japan, those same hapless civilians would have caused a great deal of that 80% casualty number, but just as the German people refused to go against and over throw Hitler, the Japaneses people refused to stand up and over throw emperor Hirohito.
So in closing, better them than U.S.
Our leaders learned their lesson from Hitler, who refused to follow the advice of his high command, that knew the war was lost, and would have allowed the war to end a year earlier. The butcher’s bill was so much higher in Germany, itself, and to our people, than it had to be.
Our leaders’ job was not to let our kids die for their country, but to let some other bunch of poor, dumb bastards die for their country. Revisionist historians notwithstanding.
That comment didn’t come from our leaders, it came from Patton…”Don’t die for your country, let the other poor bastard die for his”!
I was born 6 months after the Nagaski month was dropped. I sometimes think that if those bombs had not been dropped, I might not be here. I am grateful to the pilots and crew of the Enola Gay, the crew of the Indianapolis (May they rest in peace), and to Harry Truman for deciding it was better to end it quick and dirty than drag it on for much, much longer.
I am sure I’m not the only person who owes his or her very existence to the decision to use those bombs.
I will repeat what I always say when the bleeding hearts speak of the Japanese casualties of those TWO bombs. We are still issuing Purple Heart Medals from the order we placed to cover our casualties from an invasion of the main Japanese islands. We expected to suffer one million killed and wounded in what would have been another year of war. As a child we played in the derelict fortifications that the Japanese had built to repel the invaders. Some of them were 25 miles in depth. We estimated that as many as 25 million Japanese would die defending the Home Islands.
PS LeMay and his fire bombs killed more people than did both atomic bombs. Think about that for a moment, if you will.
I was in Osaka Japan on August 6th about 20 years ago. I was traveling with some local people and we took the train up to Kyoto to see the sights. There were many people out on the street and in the tourist places. In Osaka, there were people dressed all in white – they were the spirits of those who had died in the bombing. They had little white cars with loudspeakers and they were haranguing their citizens about the horror of the bombs – so said my hosts. And maybe about the Americans – I don’t speak the language but hosts kept me away from the crowds and low profile.
Golda Meir once said that Israel can forgive the Arabs for killing jewish citizens and even killing jewish children but they can never forgive the Arabs for forcing the jews to kill palestinian children.
I feel much the same about the Japanese. I cannot forget how how they chose to fight the war – giving no quarter, slaughtering millions, abusing their captives. I cannot forgive what they forced us to do to end the war. As horrible as it was, as a people they earned their fate.
You mean things like the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, atrocities committed by the Japanese Military in the Dutch West Indies, French Indochina,… I bought a two-book set that I still have, “The Scourge of the Swastika” which chronicles many German War Crimes, and “The Knights of Bushido” which tells about Japanese War Crimes, one read of both books will make one want us to go back to war with both of them.
You can add using our troops and those of allies as slaves.
The Japanese people I do not know. What I do know is that Japan produced monsters and its government never lacked for obedient, if not eager, butchers whose own propensity and appetite for cruelty and barbarism was great.
You forgot Detachment 731. They made Mengele look warm & fuzzy, and the unit leaders got away with it. They traded their data for immunity from prosecution.
The Japs can whine all they want, but they started it with Pearl Harbor! So “if you wanna play, you gotta pay”
They bombed and sank the USS Panay 4 years earlier on the Yangtze River.
It was during a wonderful little recreational activity remembered today as the Rape of Nanking. The Panay, a gunboat of the US Navy’s Yangtze River Patrol well-known to the japs, was ordered to go upriver from Shanghai to Nanking and evacuate the US Embassy. The Japanese were notified in advance, a large US flag was laid over the pilothouse to be more visible to aircraft, and the weather was clear. The Panay was on her way back to Shanghai with evacuees when jap bombers showed up. They orbited for ten minutes, then blew the Panay out of the water. Orders to do so had come from Tojo’s staff.
Even though those bombs delivered hell on Earth, I’m still thoroughly convinced that the use of them saved countless lives on both sides. As mentioned by earlier commenters, U.S. Forces were expected to take up to a MILLION casualties in the event we had to invade Japan itself, and even more Japanese Civilian lives were saved. It’s a historical fact that the military junta in charge at the time was training and rallying all Japanese people to fight any and all invaders until their deaths, and archival film footage as well as personal recollections of the people there and then corroborate that. I look at those who call for us to apologize for the bombings as reverently as i look at “Hanoi Jane” Fonda. It was a hellish decision and a hellish weapon to use upon an enemy, but after studying WWII History, I think it was the right thing to do.
December 7, 1941 = August 6, 1945 and August 9, 1945. F*&k them. Rest in Peace all those who plowed across the Pacific and never came home.
My father, at this time, was assigned to G/390th Inf, 98th Inf Div, and was slated to be part of the invasion force. He was a PFC straight grunt BAR operator.
Odds are, without Harry giving the go ahead, I would not exist.
So Thanks, Harry, I owe you one.
To the populace of the bombed cities, RIP.
Here is hoping we never have to use such weapons again.
Unfortunately Iran has no such qualms and neither do the terrorist groups they are arming. One thing stopping someone from placing a small nuke in place and setting it off is that there is no way to escape. If you don’t care whether you live or die then that go’s away.
Don’t hold your breath, either Iran or N.Korea will use nukes..no doubt!
The dropping of the bombs in Japan demonstrate two of the most important extremes in life and the awesome power of mankind.
Like many of you, I believe the bombs were not unjust on the Japanese for the atrocities which they perpetrated during the war. Their extreme cruelty had no purpose other than cruelty.
On the other extreme, the great courage it took not only to order, but to perform the dropping of the bomb demonstrates a massive amount of fortitude. I don’t think wiping a city off the map can be considered anything but cruel; however, the cruelty had a purpose. It takes a lot of courage to perform a cruel act in the hopes it will end the cycle.
I’m saddened the Japanese had to learn such a cruel lesson, but I’m glad they did and hopeful it will never need to be repeated. I’m glad the leadership and crew had the courage to exact the lesson.
Right now I am reading “Doomsday Men” by PD Smith
http://www.amazon.com/Doomsday-Men-Strangelove-Dream-Superweapon-ebook/dp/B003JMFASS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438865857&sr=8-1&keywords=doomsday+men
Part of the book talks about biological and chemical warfare and includes discussion of the infamous Unit 731 in Manchuria that conducted biological and chemical warfare experiments on thousands of Chinese civilians whose only misfortune was being in the wrong place.
So any sympathy I have for the innocent civilians who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is muted by the knowledge of what the Imperial Japanese Army did to tens of thousands of other innocent civilians in their 14 year reign of madness and cruelty.
We should all be thankful our country had a president with the fortitude (I would say “balls” but you have Air Force and other PC readers) to use the bomb to end the war and save American lives. In early 79′ a train I was on stopped in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I stepped out onto the platform, said a silent prayer for the dead, and wondered how many more would have died if our president had not acted like, well, the President of the United States of America and not an apologist.
Never been there, but I think I’d do much the same.
It was IMO necessary to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war. IMO it would have been a great moral wrong to have possessed a weapon capable of ending the war quickly at a relatively low cost and not to have used it.
But the civilians living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki generally weren’t responsible for the Japanese Empire’s atrocities. Those heinous acts were done by the Japanese military and government.
The deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary, and probably prevented at least 10 times as many other deaths by ending the war quickly, without an invasion of the Japanese home islands. But it’s still right to remember those who died, and to mourn the necessity of their death.
I am of the belief that if we would have had to invade the island of Japan the use of nerve gas was inevitable.
And AMerica would have been in the right to have used it.
So the bombs actually did save millions of lives, mostly Japanese.
Thank you to the men and women that made that bomb possible too.
RIP to all those that fought on those islands
I am of the belief that if we would have had to invade the island of Japan the use of nerve gas was inevitable.
And AMerica would have been in the right to have used it.
So the bombs actually did save millions of lives, mostly Japanese.
Thank you to the men and women that made that bomb possible too.
RIP to all those that fought on those islands.
A great book on the controversy is here:
Truman and the Hiroshima Cult
http://www.amazon.com/Truman-Hiroshima-Rhetoric-Public-Affairs-ebook/dp/B00LO3S84C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1438886659&sr=8-1&keywords=truman+and+the+hiroshima+cult
The “Hiroshima Cult” that is referred to in the title are the revisionist historians who insist that Truman’s decision to drop the bomb was based on teh Racism or wanting to intimidate the Soviets or being in a bad mood or teh racism (again) or whatever.
Basically it blasts the assertions that Japan was ready to surrender based on conventional bombing alone, or that the projected casualties for Operations Olympic and Coronet (the planned invasions of Kyshu and Honshu, respectively) had been exaggerated (actually the author points out that MacArthur deliberately sought to UNDERESTIMATE the potential casualties because he was afraid that if he honestly stated what the casualties were likely to be the allied Chiefs of Staff would have called off the invasion.)
Very good read, Highly recommended.
A few years back I read an interview of Warrant Officer Saburo Sakai IJN, a Zeke pilot and one of their top surviving aces–incidentally also the guy who shot down CAPT Colin Kelly’s B-17 over Clark Field on December 9, 1941.
He denied Japanese atrocities because he never saw any (on a carrier, no shit), but he called out his fellow Japanese on their hatred of COL Tibbets and his crew. His point was basically: “They weren’t evil, they were US servicemen in combat against their country’s enemies in time of war. They were given a mission, and they performed their duty to the best of their ability. Had I been ordered to drop the same bomb on San Francisco, I would have done it, because that’s my duty.”
Sakai went on to say that he had nothing but professional respect and admiration for the men of the 509th. It seems his fellow japs didn’t appreciate his sentiment very much.
Yeah,
Imagine that….a bunch of civilians not wanting to hear the truth.
Yeah….Imagine that, civilians not understanding.
Test