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Today is the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima — 60 Comments

1. I recommend an excellent segment from the 1980s (?) television series “The World at War” surrounding the dropping of the bomb and events leading up to it. I was surprised to see that one of the persons speaking in the film was Alger Hiss! My uncle, a diesel mechanic with the Army Corps of Engineers when it built the runways on Tinian Island, told me that he and the guys were astounded when the first B-29 landed. It was very advanced, and was an extremely large project within the US.

   I should add that Richard Rhodes “Making of the Atom Bomb” is a spell-binding discussion of the physics and scientists who developed the weapon.

2. Excerpts from Louise Steinman’s The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father’s War. She visits the Hiroshima Museum.

   An uncomfortable thought kept insinuating itself in my mind: part of the story was missing here. I tried to push it away but it bore down with some insistence. There was little introspection here on the larger context of why Hiroshima was incinerated, of what else was happening in the world on August 6, 1945. The wording on the Pearl Harbor display was a troubling example: “On December 7, 1941, a bomb was dropped on Pearl Harbor and Japan was hurled into the war.” Was dropped. Was hurled. In this “victims’ history,” as one scholar called it, “the war appears as a natural catastrophe which ‘happened’ to Japan, as if without the intervention of human agency.”

   True, there were some displays downstairs, added as recently as 1994, which showed that Hiroshima was a hub of military activity. But the possible reasons listed in large block type for why the United States dropped the bomb—(1) limiting U.S. casualties, (2) to force Japan to surrender before the Soviet Union could enter the war, and (3) to measure the effectiveness of the bomb—do not mention the responsibility of Japan’s own military government’s refusal to surrender as a cause……

   Before we left the museum, I stopped to write in the guest book, waiting first while a woman and her young son made their entries. After they stepped away from the book, I read what the boy, a resident of Hong Kong, had written in a childish scrawl: “I mean, everything here is sad and all, but who started it first? Who attacked other countries first? Who killed first?”

   It was not apparent in the museum that, up until the moment the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan had been waging a war of aggression.

   In a blazing flash, its sins in Korea, Nanking, Burma, and Bataan were dissolved in the greater sins of humankind. In that one instant on August 6, 1945, Japan the aggressor was transformed into Japan the victim. What had gotten lost in that horrific and instantaneous transformation?

   Japan killed in the neighborhood of 10-20 million civilians during WW2. That makes the A-bomb victims small change to stop such a horrific war.

3. IIRC, Fussell’s essay was an opinion piece, not definitive.

   Academe is shot through with the sort that Thos. Sowell calls ‘the one-uppers’ and shot through with a subtype of narcissist you see a certain number of in mundane life, the blowhard who is persuaded he can do everyone’s job better than those currently doing those jobs. Intellectual life in this country is drowning in the conceits of it’s producers. We’d be better off hearing less of them.

4. I probably owe my life to those bombs. My father was serving in the Pentagon, having been brought home from Italy, and expected to be sent to the Pacific. My older sister was in utero, but I might not have happened had Dad gone.

5. I recommend you read the book, “Hell to Pay” by D.M. Giangreco.

   It analyzes in detail “Operation Downfall”, the US plan for invasion of Japan, and the Japanese plan to counter it.

   Neither Japan nor the US would be the same today if the invasion had been executed. The US estimated it would have a million casualties. The Japanese had suicide planes, boats, and ultimately women and children fighting the US forces with bamboo spears.

   US servicemen returning from Iwo Jima and Okinawa saw the carnage resulting from the Japanese tactic of fighting to the death, and the US navy experienced over 5000 casualties from the kamikaze attacks.

   It would have been a bloodbath of epic proportions that would have impacted the society of the US and Japan together, and we would not have withstood it.

6. I lived in Tokyo back in the day. One of my pet likes is Meiji/Taisho Architecture — especially Taisho interiors. There’s very little of it extant in Tokyo. Thank you, General Curtis Le May.

   Add in Nagoya, Osaka, and a much larger bunch of Japanese cities most people have never heard of and Hiroshima and Nagasaki pale by comparison. Except politics.

   This whole A-Bombing thing bores me. Incendiaries killed far, far more.

   The US did Japan a bunch of gigantic favors and they got off pretty lightly in the end.

   Looking forward to the day their ‘helicopter carriers’ (haha) ship squadrons of F-35Bs. Kaga and Izumo: legendary names. Anything bad for the PRC is good.

7. I also read today, that the bombing preserved much of Japan’s treasure. Two cities were destroyed, but we didn’t destroy the country. And the war would have gone on for years, killing our soldiers and Japanese civilians.

8. In other news, it must be a cold day in hell. Someone at Hillsdale College has removed head from posterior, taken a look out the window, and taken the irreversible step of burning his bow tie.

   https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/american-conservatism-is-fiddling-while-rome-burns/

   A mite milquetoast for me, but Journey of a Thousand Miles…

9. Oh… One thing Russia’s declaration of war on Japan *did* majorly contribute to was the CCP victory in the Chinese Civil War.

   Having mainly sat out the War in remote provinces outside Japanese control while the corrupt but at least in some ways patriotic KMT actually *did* make some efforts to fight Japan, the CCP inherited all the military material the Russians bagged when Japanese armies surrendered to them in Northern China. Made a huge difference later.

   Don’t think it had much effect on the surrender debate or timetable. Had there been no A-Bombs and had the war dragged on another year or two, the prospect of Stalin having a go at taking Hokkaido certainly would have concentrated minds.

10. The Japanese Army and Navy were filled with insubordinate and suicidal officers some of whom tried to stop the surrender even after the bombings. I would say the Japanese were extremely lucky to get out of the hell of their own making without the utter obliteration of the Japanese people.

11. The B29 was the most technologically advanced aircraft in WWII. Pressurized, capable of 30,000 ft, radar target acquisition. Gunsights linked to the turrets via computer (electromechanical). Project cost was 2 billion in 1944 dollars; twice the cost of the Manhattan project. Here’s a link to the 29 at the museum where I volunteer as a docent: https://www.neam.org/shell.php?page=aircraft_collection_detail&name=boeingb29a

    My father died in 1982 from leukemia. The doctors said he was a late war casualty as he was part of the occupation army in Hiroshima immediately after the surrender.

12. Catching the train from Platform 9 3/4 gets you here:

    https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=21039

    On why we need to embrace chaos and learn how to ride the tiger.

    Sorry folks, Heritage Foundation was Platform 9.

13. In almost any way you look at this event, the bomb served to end the war more quickly and avoid more senseless casualties. Millions would have starved and died had the Allies invaded the main Japanese islands. It is a cruel equation but the arithmetic is clear.

    TL/DR: If you don’t want to be destroyed, don’t start wars of aggression.

14. @Chases Eagles

    Japanese Militarism had many roots. One significant issue was that much of the junior officer class by the 1930s was only 2nd or 3rd generation lower middle class in origin. Sons of Schoolteachers and minor officials. Back before that, very junior samurai who were totally dispossessed and impoverished during the Meiji Reforms, or even peasants.

    I often harp on about migration from countryside to cities and destruction of the old ways of life causing massive problems. This was a prime example. Many of the New Men in the military had nothing for them outside this way of life. In situations like this (and we’ve all read the same in relation to the Southern Gentry in the US Civil War) it took a *lot* of persuasion to make them surrender.

    The actual surrender decision was taken of course by members of the real Japanese Elite who mostly went on to live comfortable and prosperous lives after the war. The Bombs gave them a face-saving way to cut their losses.

15. For an interesting comparison: the explosion in Beirut was apparently 2700 tons of ammonium nitrate…the Hiroshima bomb was about 15,000 tons of TNT equivalent.

    It’s indeed noteworthy that there has been so much attention to Hiroshima and Nagasaki but so little, relatively speaking, to the bombings of Tokyo and other places in Japan and Hamburg and other cities in Germany. (Almost unknown in historical memory is the fact that in the run-up to the D-Day invasion, the Allies conducted an intensive bombing of *France*, for the purpose of turning the relevant section of the country into a “railway desert,” thus inhibiting German logistics.

    There is a German movie (fictionalized) about the bombing of Dresden, which I thought was well-done. I reviewed the film as a springboard for discussion of the strategic bombing campaign, here:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/7260.html

16. We in the West may look at out past from different angles and hang our dirty laundry out to dry for all to see in the process. In the Confucian East the elders and ancestors are to be venerated and at the very worst left alone. So most Japanese are sorta/kinda aware of some horrors that took place, but except for a few, it’s unseemly to talk about there. Their school text books dismiss with the Pacific war in a very few pages. What’s a few unfortunate years? After all, Japan has 3000 other years of glorious history to learn about.

17. @physicsguy

    Can recall various EE professors back in the 80s pointing out that many of the seminal papers around servo-theory, state space control theory, etc. were published immediately after the war when declassified.

    I love the story of the Tupolev Tu-4 and how it was re-engineered. Must have seemed like an alien space ship to the Russians when they first got their hands on a B-29.

18. Zaphod – good comments.

    As you say, the coming of the West in the mid-1800’s threw Japan into a protracted chaos that saw the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the restoration of the Emperor (Meiji Restoration). The change was tumultuous and IMO Japan’s rise during the Meiji period is more amazing than China’s more recent changes/rise in that China has done it in a shrunken, globalized world. Japan transformed itself incredibly in a matter of a few decades (late 1800’s early 1900’s) without the aid of the modern communication/transportation. It’s a very interesting period in Japan.

    This ending of old Japan officially ended the shoguns and samurai classes. Many of these previously higher status samurai didn’t simply fade away – they were the ones who built the new Japan. And surprise, surprise – they created a military state.

    IMO, the Meiji Restoration was the official end of the samurai, but WWII was the actual end of the samurai. Their death before dishonor ethos permeated the country, and that was built up in the decades leading up to WWII. It took almost destroying Japan for them to surrender, and anyone who hasn’t read about the surrender and how close it came to not happening should read up on it. It was exactly this ethos that made it almost not happen.

    Now, having said that . . . just like there are still old time racists left in this country after racism has for the most part been eradicated (IMO), there are still plenty of folks in Japan who are unrepentant for Japan’s atrocities in WWII. The samurai ethos wasn’t totally eradicated.

19. The Japanese Imperial Army wasn’t exactly a bunch of choir boys. For about three weeks beginning in late 1937 they carried out the infamous Rape of Nanjing, in which 300,000 Chinese were slaughtered, using only guns and swords. Anyone today claiming that they would have surrendered peacefully has no understanding of the Japanese at the time.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre#Massacre_contest

20. One historian asked the question: Since Japan rejected unconditional surrender, we were going to invade which would cost 250k dead [likely including my father and several uncles].
    So, since Japan wouldn’t do what we wanted, we’re going to punch ourselves in the face. Why?
    Look at the Treaty of Versailles. Letting a nation like Germany–starting two world wars and enjoying the Holocaust entirely too much–up easy and to manage their own affairs is a monstrous crime against humanity.
    The lesson of Versailles was going to be applied to Japan as well. We will smash you flat, sit on you, remake you from dogcatcher on up so you can’t and won’t possibly do this again. Never.
    Fortunately, we able to manage this with the atomic bomb.

21. Zaphod, it is sad that both Japan and the CSA both started stupid doomed wars for imperialist reasons and both did so in a way that enraged their opponent and ultimately led to the end of their way of life. But the Japanese waged an evil war and the South existed for an evil cause so perhaps it was cosmic justice in both cases.

22. My husband and I went to Nagasaki last year on our trip to Japan, and it was pretty meaningful — mostly because, despite the horror they endured, the Japanese built it back and got on with it. Nagasaki was a secondary, and probably ill-advised target: the primary was the industrial/shipyard Kokura, but the weather wasn’t good, and the bomb didn’t take out a lot of industry, but hit a Christian area. There was a Soviet-era “Peace” park, pretty neglected, and a museum — not very lavish, but moving. There were school children there.

    My experience with Japanese people isn’t extensive, but those I’ve met have been closer to Paul Fussell’s opinion of the bomb. They were very very tired of war.

23. If you leave out, twist, or discount certain inconvenient facts, then the case for us here in the U.S. having dropped these bombs as a generally unprovoked, and unnecessary exercise of some sort of racism is a lot easier to sell.

    (That was the impression that you might have gotten had you stopped by the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. between June 28, 1995 – May 17, 1998, and strolled through their “Enola Gay” exhibit, whose displays, photos, and explanatory placards reportedly somehow failed to reference the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor as a “casus belli” for our war against Japan.)

    Some information to consider–

    One of the key factors in deciding to drop these bombs was the alternative.

    (One might remember that prior to the proposed invasion, our troops had fought several recent, high casualty island battles in which Japanese soldiers had not only fought to the last man, but Japanese civilians had also committed suicide rather than fall into our hands.)

    Thus, based on examples like the above, what the “butcher’s bill,” what the estimated casualty count would have been—both for our troops and for the Japanese–military and civilians alike—had we staged an invasion of the Japanese home islands, was horrendous.

    (There is a whole cottage industry in Academia devoted to disputing or downplaying those casualty estimates, their importance, and the role they played in the decision to drop these Atomic bombs.)

    Little known/remembered and ironically, it was only after Japan surrendered that we discovered—via immediate, post-surrender, on the ground surveys conducted by U.S. military personnel–that our intelligence estimates for how much in the way of troops, aircraft, ships, artillery, munitions, petroleum, food, and other equipment, and supplies the Japanese military had stockpiled for the climactic “final battle—a “final battle” that several of the more fanatical Japanese generals wrote they were just itching to fight–and thus, how long such a battle might last and how many casualties we and the Japanese might incur, had fallen far short in our estimates of the amounts of these things that the Japanese had actually managed to hold back for that final battle i.e. had our invasion actually taken place, it would have likely taken a lot longer and generated many more casualties than our existing, already horrendous casualty estimates predicted.

    Next, to be taken into account and not ignored, was the fanaticism of much of the general Japanese population, which believed in, and was still in the grip of the Emperor myth.

    Japanese civilians–young and old–who were being told by their newspapers and other forms of Japanese Imperial propaganda that their duty to Japan and to the Emperor required that they should each go down to the beaches with any implement they could find that could do harm—a hoe, a rake, a kitchen knife, a club—and that it was their duty to the Emperor to kill at least one American invader before they themselves were killed.

    You can imagine what kind of Japanese civilian casualty count that would have resulted in.

    You can often come across statements by WWII veterans, or accounts of what they told their descendants, about how–after fighting in Europe and elsewhere–these soldiers had received new orders, and were headed for the Pacific, to be part of the immense force we were starting to gather for our possible invasion of the Japanese home islands.

    How many of them would have died or been crippled for life, had we actually invaded? That had to be part of the calculus.

24. Don’t forget that the Japanese army had issued orders that all prisoners were to be killed and they did that at one POW camp in the Philippines.

25. David Foster, you made points that I was thinking. The bombing campaigns against Tokyo, and German cities like Hamburg, Dresden and Berlin eclipsed the Atomic bombs in terms of human toll; except of course for the suddenness of the destruction.

    There are always revisionists. So many of them are late to the table so to speak, and have no real understanding of the times.

    Let me just say on a personal level. My Dad, father of 3, was in the U.S. Navy’s amphibious force, and was a crewman on the LCVP types that made the run to the beach. His ship was part of the force that was gathering for the invasion. I have no problems with how President Truman ended that horrible war.

    On another note–Russia. I don’t know what Truman was thinking, and don’t know if he ever revealed his thoughts. But, Russia was threatening to jump in against Japan at the last minute, and do a land grab in the East along the lines of what they were doing in Europe. I think that played a part in the urgency to get the war over. As it turned out, with Mao’s defeat of the Nationalists in China, it may not have mattered. But, that was not to be known in 1945.

26. An associated event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident

27. As usual, Snow on Pine provides an excellent summary of the result of Operation Downfall due to the plans of the US and Japan detailed in Hell to Pay.

    The Japanese military telegraphed their strategy too clearly throughout the island hopping Pacific campaign, culminating in Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The US was expanding the draft in response to planning of Operation Downfall, and the casualty estimates and experience in Okinawa drove the decision to use the nuclear weapons.

    Yes, the Japanese military attempted a coup to stop the Emperor from broadcasting his famous surrender message. Also MacArthur understood that only by avoiding the execution of the Emperor could a peaceful occupation be achieved.

    And it is well to look up “Manshu Detachment 731” to realize that only a complete defeat of Japan was acceptable. We had to make a bargain with the Devil to hide their “research” results from Stalin. Just as we had to sink all I-400 class submarines that were captured at the end of the war for the very same reason.

28. “Almost unknown in historical memory is the fact that in the run-up to the D-Day invasion, the Allies conducted an intensive bombing of *France*, for the purpose of turning the relevant section of the country into a “railway desert,” thus inhibiting German logistics.”
    Personal note: several years ago my wife and I were traveling by train from Paris to the Normandy coast. In our compartment was a younger (than us) man, who turned out to be a Priest going to his Fathers funeral. Evidently his Father had been in the French Foreign Legion in North Africa. He mentioned the destruction of the Normandy area prior to the invasion, saying how bad it was and in his opinion not necessary. I was a little annoyed when he said that so I just said “Next time we will let the Germans win”.

29. Thanks for all the excellent comments.
    Though it seems that EVERY YEAR they have to be dusted off and reposted because of the USUAL (REVISIONIST) SUSPECTS, who will NEVER TIRE in their efforts to manufacture, distort and warp history so as to discredit the US (and the West) in every way and in sphere.

    I quite a while ago decided to go the easier route: EVERYTHING that these “usual suspects” claim is false. If they say, “bad” then it’s good. If they say “evil” then it’s righteous. If they say “wrong” then it’s right.

    (I also apply this succinct “rule of thumb” to the current madness sweeping the US and the world…)

    True, it’s “a bit” simplistic and not for everyone…but it works for me.

    The “down side” is, of course, that one misses some of the more fascinating historical aspects; but the assumption is that the general—and some specific—points are already known, which enable such a “strategy” to be justified. (That is, if they weren’t well known, the strategy would be much harder to justify.)

    But the main point—that the Number-One rationale of these revisionists is, in the best Gramscian spirit, to discredit the US and destroy any sense of accomplishment or pride of accomplishment.

    Again, thanks for the comments….

30. @Barry Meislin:

    And thereby induce paralysis.

    A viable nation state and its governing elite cannot carry on like Woody Allen trying to decide which pair of socks to wear in the morning.

31. Then again, it’s almost as if I’ve read before of a term which cuts through all this crap somewhere… some kind of *principle* of simplified governance… which emerged as a reaction to the situation in a degenerate dysfunctional republic. Now what was it?

    *scratches head*

    They’re playing with fire. The stupid children don’t know what they risk unleashing.

32. Zaphod…here’s a hint…a person of advanced age was elected as President…if his mental state had been what it once was, it seems unlikely that he would have appointed the Chancellor that he did in fact appoint.

    Just can’t think…what *was* that country?

33. LYNN HARGROVE:
    I was a little annoyed when he said that so I just said “Next time we will let the Germans win”.

    I bet that shut him up. 🙂

34. Somebody on PJ Media brought up an interesting datum in connection with the Japanese surrender decision, to the effect that Japanese military intelligence supposedly had determined with remarkable insight the number of bombs we had probably been able to build by August 1945 and, I guess, realized suddenly that our atom bomb stockpile was a little more ahead of schedule than they thought possible at the time. The person didn’t give a source for this idea, though I find it intriguing and am not inclined to dismiss it out of hand. After all, Japanese are not stupid people. (I would have asked about it on that site, only I find that the comments section over there has a disturbingly low S/N. It’s saner here.)

35. @David Foster

    Something about a washing line in there somewhere…memory ain’t want it used to be. Oh nope.. that was the Siegfried Line.. Different Movie. Hindenburg don’t scan.

    As a poor student I worked for a while in the same restaurant with a direct descendant of Franz von Papen who worked behind the bar (student, too). She was cute and personable, if somewhat reticent about the ancestry stuff. Now that I’m older and wiser, occurs to me that semi-autistic free-associating connection-making machines like myself were probably not her cup of tea hehe..

36. “…unleashing…”

    I think they do know what they want to unleash.

    They are drunk (or otherwise hepped up) on the “glamor” of being “on the barricades”, of making history.

    They ARE probably unaware of the results of the inevitable pushback.

    (Since everything’s, in the end, really just a computer game, I guess; and if they do actually get thrown in jail, they’ll be out on bail—thanks to Sorosian largesse—by the next morning.)

    Of course it could be me who’s totally unaware…since I believe that their plan to head us all towards the abyss—the buffalo jump—will ultimately fail.

37. I was born in the summer before August 1945, I used to say all the folks born after were mutants which was nonsense.

    War no matter where it happens is absolute disaster for those in its path and there has always been noe-combantant injuries, there is no such thing as a good war and bringing the other side to an unconditional surrender is essential as we learned with the 1918 Armistice and then forgot it with the Korean War.

    I have no idea what we have been doing with all of sand lot wars in the subsequent years because I am so tired of spending out precious U. S. Military blood without knowing exactly what our goals are to win each encounter.

    I had a father and uncles who were military in WWII, some of whom had already fought in Europe, and they were getting ready for the Pacific War and, thank the Lord those big Bombs helped make the Japanese decide to surrender and then General MacArthur at his best, helped them rebuild their nation, America at its best.

    History is always a mess an now we are just about to slip into ‘Old Testament’ times of human behavior where things don’t always make much sense.

38. Of course, one of the key objectives of the Gramscian Project is to rewrite history,

    To quote Orwell’s extraordinarily important observation in “1984,”

    “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

    And, if you are from the younger generation and weren’t taught very much history to begin with, or what history you were taught had already been “fundamentally transformed” by your oh, so dedicated Leftist “educators,” why, then, it’s very easy to fool you, and to lead you astray.

    Your picture of the world has already been manipulated, misshapen, and “transformed” in a fundamental way; black is white, up is down, the truth is a lie, and lies are the truth, and things that actually happened have been “disappeared,” deliberately misinterpreted, or twisted out of shape, and fabrications and lies have taken their place–see, for instance, the New York Times “1619 Project.”

39. @Barry Meislin:

    Hard to say. I do think that in addition to knowing that they’ll probably get off lightly in legal terms, that many are also high on their own propaganda supply and have a very simplistic ‘Deliverance’ type caricature of just who inhabits the pot that they are frantically stirring. There was a bit of a media pearl clutching about envisioned ‘Boogaloo Boys’ reactions a few weeks back. Of course as part of the leftist LARPing they need to have some cartoon enemy that they are taking ‘brave’ risks against…

    Thing is, the folks they are really pissing off don’t LARP and don’t carry on like us in public forums and are more doers than talkers. Hell, let’s assume worst case that the Left wins… then these useful idiots will be first into the pits. Comrade Database will see to that. Comrade Filing Cabinet could not be reached for comment.

40. One of the metrics that has jumped out at me from the legacy of the atomic program is associated with the dread that the US was feeling at the prospect of a conventional invasion on Japan. As the Allied Forces got closer to Japan, the fortified islands they were invading were becoming increasingly belligerent, trenchant with their defense and often unwilling to surrender even in the face of overwhelming opposition.

    I’ve read that part of the preparations the US was making in advance of the final invasion was to manufacture a supply of Purple Heart medals in anticipation of casualties. The metric that jumped out: Our armed forces are still working through that inventory supply today.

41. Cont’d–See the link below, where the discussion refers to this 1619 Project not as “History,” but as an attempt to shape and control the “narrative,” our National historical memory.

    See https://pjmedia.com/culture/tyler-o-neil/2020/07/29/1619-project-founder-admits-its-not-a-history-but-a-fight-to-control-the-national-narrative-n724944

42. @ Snow on Pine:

    Read Mencius Moldbug to see if any of *our* right of centre received historical ‘truths’ have been warped and twisted. I’m serious.

    MM = Curtis Yarvin is a Jew. Not self-hating conspiracy-mongering Unz type either. Not a Holocaust Denier. Doesn’t believe in Aliens. Comes from a Congressional Staffer / Foreign Service family background. Has done well for himself in Silicon Valley. Nobody’s fool.

    So give him a chance to get past the antibody defenses 🙂

    We know that Leftism is a problem. But what if Classical Liberalism is the Ur-Problem and there is something in it which means that no matter how hard we try, any Liberal/Humanist project will inevitably turn Leftist?

    At the very least, people need to think more deeply and outside the box about why Conservatives Always Lose.

43. Philip,
    The version of that story that I heard is quite a bit simpler (though I don’t know if it’s the actual case): that after Nagasaki, the Japanese HAD ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA whether or not there were more A-bombs to come, but ASSUMED that there were.

    In any event, Truman certainly wasn’t going to tell them….

44. Kate,

    My wife’s father was a combat engineer bivouacked
    on Okinawa and scheduled to go in on the third wave of the invasion. She would not have been born if President Truman didn’t make the difficult decision to end the war quickly and save BOTH American and Japanese lives.

    So none of my children would have been born either. Nor any my grandchildren. And their future descendants.

45. This anniversary suddenly almost makes me wish I had a little tiny piece of uranium, maybe cast in the shape of an attractive little lozenge perhaps 4 mm long and in a pretty ornate leaden case that I could keep with my other collectibles and show to the neighborhood kids once in a while. It wouldn’t be that dangerous to have around, right? Maybe it’s just the wine. 🙂

46. Related (from Michael Flynn):
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/gen-flynn-warns-vicious-assault-enemies-all-good-letter-america

47. “We know that Leftism is a problem. But what if Classical Liberalism is the Ur-Problem and there is something in it which means that no matter how hard we try, any Liberal/Humanist project will inevitably turn Leftist?” Zaphod

    Identify the factor(s) within Classical Liberalism that arguably and invariably leads to Leftism and we can examine it.

    Until then, Classical Liberalism’s basic tenets being diametrically opposed to Leftist i.e. Marxist tenets presupposes that they bear no relation to each other.

    As for Humanism, it exchanges a bleeding heart faux compassion for tough love.

    “But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.” Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

48. Shame what happened to the pilots and crews..

49. Zaphod…”But what if Classical Liberalism is the Ur-Problem and there is something in it which means that no matter how hard we try, any Liberal/Humanist project will inevitably turn Leftist?”

    A very scary thought. Could you summarize the cause-and-effect logic?

50. The problem is that of “Classical Liberalism” becoming perverted and fundamentally transforming itself—or, more precisely, ALLOWING itself to be fundamentally transformed—into a more ideologically extreme perversion (of either Left or Right, but usually Left).

    (The question is, MUST this inevitably happen?)

    Because such extremism IS a perversion. It requires lies, constantly. It requires the rewriting of history, constantly. It requires a constant enemy—a target (or rather, series of enemies and targets against which to direct its RIGHTEOUS wrath AND deflect —i.e., protect itself against—its own myriad internal contradictions).

    This, if nothing else (though there is much, much more), is the crucial lesson of Orwell.

    The true problem is, how can Liberals—actual people—maintain the vigilance and vigor required to maintain, sustain, renew and energize Liberalism.

    How does one fight the perverting allure of easy answers provided by false gods (of whatever variety).

    How does one CHOOSE to maintain a sense of respect while changing that which needs to be changed, improving that which needs to be improved, without throwing the baby out with the bath water, as it were?

    How does one maintain a sense of discipline, enable oneself to choose well, and direct one’s energy towards the good and the constructive…and not the opposite.

    Put another way, how does the individual—and society—maintain and preserve its “ballast”.

    (One might also ask, how does one fight against the often deadening and trivializing, if seductive, aspects of prosperity? Of plenty.)

    It is THE problem of individuals and societies, of all ideologies and religions—of Life, generally.

    (Keeping in mind that people have built-in “issues”—however they are called—and that easy answers of any type must be resisted….)

    However, to get back to Classical Liberalism, perhaps it has a built-in weakness, since it is based on “The Good” and strives to find ways to achieve it. At the same time, “The Good” and how to achieve it is often fraught with over-analysis and excessive theorizing, which elevation of the theoretical is a two-edged sword and may lead one further away from one’s purported goal instead of closer to it.

51. “To minimize suffering and maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security.”

    –Walter Miller, A Canticle for Leibowitz

52. Read Mencius Moldbug to see if any of *our* right of centre received historical ‘truths’ have been warped and twisted. I’m serious.

    Why? He’s a hobbyist.

53. In Laura Hillenbrand’s book, “Unbroken,” about the capture and imprisonment IN JAPAN during WWII , of the Olympic runner, Louis Zamperini, he describes seeing work details in 1945 of Japanese civilians mobilized to resist the expected invasion of Japan by US forces.
    Japan had every intention of fighting to the very end.

    Also recall that Japan is an island nation, and once their navy was basically destroyed or rendered ineffective by the US Navy by 1944, well it was clear that it was all over for Japan.
    But they still did not surrender.

    Best estimates indicate that a military invasion of Japan by the USA and allies would would have resulted in a casualty total far in excess of the number killed due to the A bombs. Just think about the resistance the Japanese employed at Okinawa; they fought until they were all dead – very very few Japanese surrendered.

    Anyway, if Japan had any interest in surrendering, then why did it take a second
    A-bomb to have them surrender?
    Was one A-bomb not enough?

54. Neo, the reference to the American Thinker article on Russia’s entry into the war seems to be more focused on a not so objective “historian” than the Russian aspect per se. I found this article from 2013 to provide a stronger argument in favor of Japan surrendering based on a real fear of a Russian (Soviet) invasion: https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/ . Two strong statements from near the end of this long article:
    1) ” … while it might be possible to fight a decisive battle against one great power invading from one direction, it would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions.”
    2) “Japanese intelligence was predicting that U.S. forces might not invade for months. Soviet forces, on the other hand, could be in Japan proper in as little as 10 days. The Soviet invasion made a decision on ending the war extremely time sensitive.
    And Japan’s leaders had reached this conclusion some months earlier [in June].”
    I do note this article is silent on a possibility of fighting Russia in 10 days and the US separately in several months; presumably not militarily possible.

    I also wonder if anyone here knows about the aspect/ prospect of simply sieging the island chain to starve them out over say the next 6 months and why that was apparently not an option?

    My father fought in the Pacific theater in a support role, not as a front line combatant, but I am still glad Truman made his fateful decision as there is still a small chance I might not be here otherwise (along with many others commenting here now and over the past years).

55. Kate — second the motion! My dad only got to Europe in February of 1945. He didn’t have enough points to be demobilized after V-E Day, so he was not released until May of 1946. Had it not been for Harry Truman’s decision, the chances I would be here today range between slim and none.

    Lynn Hargrove — when we were stationeds in German, we used to get the same crap from the Krauts about how we had bombed this, bombed that, blah, blah, blah. My response was, “You should have thought of that!

56. Zaphod: “… what if Classical Liberalism is the Ur-Problem and there is something in it which means that no matter how hard we try, any Liberal/Humanist project will inevitably turn Leftist?”

    If classical liberalism involves the establishment and maintenance of liberty by recognizing and supporting individual human rights, I suggest that the road to liberty (R2L) requires a mature focus on recognizing reality and acceptance of responsibility to address the issues and problems discovered thereby. In some ways this is simply restating GB’s tough love comment. The Democrats/ leftists have clearly side stepped reality in numerous ways and avoided responsibility for proper governance of areas under their control. Unfortunately in too many cases the Republicans/ conservatives have not really stepped into the breech either.

    Past discussions of our republic being only suitable for a virtuous people (John Adams, et al.) suggest maybe we have fallen down in that area, whether misdirected by excessive or easy prosperity, decline of religious fervor for various reasons, or Gramscians purposefully neglecting traditional values as they destroy our heritage and related institutions. My own view is that too few people appreciate morality as really being the mixture of inherent (genetic, evolved) psychological characteristics and the cultural elements developed within a particular society [see for example, Larry Arnhart; Darwinian Natural Right: the Biological Ethics of Human Nature (1998)]. We need to use this insight to better maintain valid virtuous positions. For example, proscriptions against homosexuality from a largely agricultural and pastoral society in 900 BC might no longer apply in 2020 if sexual orientation is eventually shown to be mostly or totally genetic in origin. Conversely, our inclination to seek transcendence in some form must not also be denied (along with freedom of conscience). The Golden Rule covers a lot of this, but tit for tat game theory also suggests a corollary: “Do unto others as they have done unto you … until they stop.” Also an aspect of tough love.

    But in some recent blog thread (here or elsewhere?) the topic came up of the limits on creating a successful republic with a large population over a large geographic area. The main argument (by the Roman Cicero?) was that the people’s representatives cannot help but become more distant from their own communities and social circles as these elements of government increase. There just may be limits on what conservatives can ask our 1776/1865 Constitution to achieve, without further corrections. I would favor a number of amendments, but one that maybe the founders and framers should have considered was a mandatory convention of the states every 50 or 60 years (i.e., every two or three generations?) to ensure any amendments desired or of merit might at least have a chance of being aired. There is a lot more to this idea than can be covered here, but perhaps amending the Constitution is now just too difficult under the current two options. Thus many of the current distortions of law and governance obtained by all three branches cannot be properly or quickly changed when “consent of the people” is slipping away but we are not yet fully under a tyrannical boot.

    And maybe Zman is suggesting there are just human limitations on maintaining suitable social interactions when our community is greater than 150 people or so. Perhaps more study along the lines performed by Jonathan Haidt are also warranted to explore this further. Certainly the magnitude of trust involved in our modern (global) world is very large, and a wonder to behold. But also more fragile than we often appreciate.

57. “Anyway, if Japan had any interest in surrendering, then why did it take a second
    A-bomb to have them surrender?
    Was one A-bomb not enough?” – JohnTyler.

    I’m somewhat surprised it didn’t take three.

    Once is happenstance.
    Twice is coincidence.
    Third time is enemy action.

58. Okay, not really surprised, since we told Japan the first time that it was Enemy Action.

    On the Liberal to Leftist shift: the simple answer is that Classical Liberalism consists of an ethos that allows it to be exploited, whereas “tougher” ideologies or government systems have no problem with the destruction of contrary, and dangerous, ideologues.

    To wit:
    One man, one vote, one time.
    Alinsky: Make them follow their own rules.
    Cloward-Piven strategies.

    “Free speech for me, but not for thee” directly subverts Classical Liberal values.
    Same for most of the Bill of Rights (“I can demand privileges for MY tribe, but YOU have to bake that cake”).

    There’s a reason they are called “Bleeding Heart Liberals.”

59. My father, a US Army radio operator, was on a troop ship in Tokyo Bay when the surrender was signed, preparing for the invasion of the Japanese homeland islands. When we went to the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy and saw the Enola Gay, he said that plane probably saved his life, and made all of us kids possible. He spent the rest of 1945 and 1946 in Japan as part of the occupation forces, and visited Hiroshima. While he came to respect the Japanese culture, he had no doubts or regrets about how the war was ended. And neither do I.

60. Thank God for the Atom Bomb.

    (And, Thank You, Paul Fussell!)

    The great American novelist, William Styron, described his feelings in reaction to the word reaching him as a young Marine on Saipan awaiting orders for the invasion of Japan: ECSTACY.

    They were going to live to be old men.

    Hundreds of thousands of young Americans would have perished. Millions of Japanes lives were saved. And that’s in addition to the 250,000 Asian lives dying per month under Japanese occupation.

    Thank you William Manchester in, “Goodbye Darkness” and E.B.Sledge’s,
    “With the Old Breed on Pelelieu and Okinawa.”

    My own Dad was an engineer with the 20th Air Force B-29’s on Tinian. His Bomb Group, the 462nd Helbirds in the 58th Bomb Wing on West Field when the news reached them that those two B-29’s, Enola Gay and Bock’s Car, had ended the coming horror of invasion. He told us boys growing up in a post war L.A. suburb that the young Marines preparing for Hell ran up to them and their SuperFortrsses with incredible gratitude and massive relief.

    The Hellbirds Group Motto on the nose of their airplanes:
    WITH MALICE TOWARD SOME.

    I use that motto today to apply to Radical Islam and the current epidemic of the American Left.

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