Yesterday was the 76th anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima
[NOTE: The following is a slightly changed version of a post of mine. If you follow the links in the second paragraph, you’ll find three other pieces I’ve written about the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.]
Once again it’s the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Nagasaki followed three days later, and Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945.
To date these two bombs remain—astoundingly enough, considering the nature of our oft-troubled and troubling species—the only nuclear warheads ever detonated over populated areas. (I’ve written at length on the subject of those bombs: see this, this, and this.)
Oliver Kamm wrote a while back:
Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome. The bomb was a deliverance for American troops, for prisoners and slave labourers, for those dying of hunger and maltreatment throughout the Japanese empire – and for Japan itself. One of Japan’s highest wartime officials, Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties.
This context always needs to be kept in mind when evaluating any “terrible thing”—and there is no question that the dropping of these bombs was a terrible thing.
But critics who are bound and determined to portray the West as evil, marauding, bloodthirsty— whatever the dreadful adjective du jour might be—are bound and determined to either avoid all context, or to change the true context and replace it with fanciful myth. As Kamm writes, those who want to portray Hiroshima and Nagasaki as American crimes cite evidence of an imminent Japanese surrender that would have happened anyway.
Trouble is, available information points strongly to the contrary. It’s difficult to know whether those who argue that the bombs were unnecessary and the deaths that ensued gratuitous are guilty of poor scholarship, wishful thinking, or willful lying – but most likely it’s some combination of these elements.
Truth in history is not easy to determine (see this), although it helps greatly if conventions of scholarship (sources, citations) are properly followed. Oh, the main events themselves are often not disputed – except for fringe groups – although the details are often the subject of disagreement. But it’s the motivations behind the acts, the hearts and minds of the movers and shakers, the “what-might-have-been’s” and the “but-fors” that are so open to both partisan interpretation and willful distortion, and so deeply meaningful.
It’s hard enough to determine what happened. How many died in Dresden, for example? Do we believe Goebbels’s propaganda as promulgated by David Irving, or do we believe this work of recent exhaustive scholarship? The former “facts” have reigned now in popular opinion for quite a while, and although the latter mounts a far more convincing case, how many have read it or are familiar with the facts in it, compared to those who have been heavily exposed to the former?
There’s what happened, and then there’s why it happened—the meaning and intent behind the policy. A combination of the two is what propaganda is all about. It takes a lot of time and effort to wade through facts, make judgments about the veracity of sources, and be willing to keep an open mind.
Much easier to stand in a public square (as a bunch of nodding, smiling, waving, elderly peace-love Boomers regularly used to do in a town where I lived) holding huge banners declaring “9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB.” Repeat it often enough, and the hope is it will become Truth in people’s eyes.
Especially in the eyes of the young, and of future generations, who don’t have their own memories to go on. It’s much harder to convince a WWII vet that Hiroshima was an unnecessary war crime than it is to convince a young person of same; the former not only has the context, he has own personal memories of the context. World War II veterans are scarce these days and getting scarcer by the minute. And propagandists from the left are more numerous, with larger platforms from which to distribute their products. They are not just interested in changing opinions in the present, they’re interested in history and the future.
[NOTE: The definitive essay on the dropping of the atomic bomb by a contemporary and a fine historian is Paul Fussell’s “Thank God for the Atomic Bomb.” And for a good discussion of all the controversy about whether Japan was thinking of surrendering prior to Hiroshima, see this. For a discussion of the idea that Russia’s entry into the war against Japan rather than the atomic bomb was the cause of Japan’s surrender, see this.]
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
You don’t win wars by avoiding the terrible things like killing. You have to destroy the enemy’s willingness to continue the fight. The atom bombs did that.
Yes, and….. when the argument comes up with liberals, it is fun to point out that Democrat President Truman ordered those two bombs dropped on helpless Japanese civilians. And Democrat President Roosevelt ordered Japanese Americans put in concentration camps. I think we can all agree that they both should have been tried for war crimes and sent to Spandau prison. (If they went to public school, they may not grasp the concepts of irony and sarcasm.)
What would Henry Wallace have done?
The fellow at “No Pasaran”, whose blog image is “Che Mickey” — Che Guevara with Mickey Mouse ears, has made Hiroshima Day a regular feature with meaty posts plus as many links as one might like, including the Paul Fussell piece:
https://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/search?q=hiroshima
I’ve always been biased, even as a leftist, because my father joined the Army late in the war and would have invaded the Islands as a paratrooper. Not great odds.
Instead Truman dropped the bombs and my father went to Japan as part of the occupation. He returned with books on the Tea Ceremony and Japanese architecture, then married my mother.
I read that the military ordered over a million Purple Hearts in preparation for the invasion of Japan. Thanks to the bombs, those medals weren’t used up until 2008.
What would Henry Wallace have done?
Probably allowed the Soviets to conquer Japan.
Bryan,
Yep, that is a possibility. The world was very fortunate that all the conniving behind the scenes led to Truman replacing Wallace.
There is a good German movie centered on the Dresden bombing: reviewed it and discussed that actual bombing, here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/7260.html
As I noted in the review:
It was indeed pretty clear in February 1945 that Germany was facing defeat, and a traditional national leader–a Bismarck, or even a Kaiser Wilhelm–would almost certainly have elected to surrender. But Germany was not being run by a normal leader. The Nazis clearly intended to fight to the end, and they had convinced a substantial portion of the population that defeat would mean personal disaster for all Germans. (This was amplified by the fact that–although most Germans did not know the details of the Holocaust–they did know that horrible things had been done in their names, and many suspected that retribution was likely.)
While the war continued, thousands of people were being killed every day. No one knew what additional tricks the Nazi leadership had up their sleeve–another secret weapon? Another massive ground attack along the lines of the one that brought on the Battle of the Bulge? ***No one knew, in February 1945, what the date of V-E day would be***.
A Good decision, the Right decision, a Hard decision.
Trump did good. It cost the lives of many Japanese, saved the lives of a great may more Japanese. It saved the lives of US/UK/Aus/NZ troops. Maybe even my Father.
The bombs stopped the destruction of Japanese cities and infrastructure. This gave a boost up the post-War Japan.
I once spoke with a Japanese woman who had emigrated to the Bay Area. She had been a child when the atomic bombs were dropped.
I asked her how frightened the Japanese were after the surrender.
She said they weren’t that much. They expected the Americans would treat them decently.
I have no idea how typical that response was.
We know what happened and why it was the right thing to do. We also know what the motivations are of those who would rewrite history. We even know why and who is responsible for giving those liars a platform from which to lie.
Its easy to excuse the young but when a blood libel is laid upon an entire nation, there is no excuse for a refusal to examine the actual facts of the matter. To evade that moral obligation is to reveal a desire, a need to believe the worst, regardless of the truth. And that need springs from guilt’s remedy, virtue signaling to counter the suspicion that they just don’t measure up to what they were bequeathed.
“To date these two bombs remain—astoundingly enough, considering the nature of our oft-troubled and troubling species—the only nuclear warheads ever detonated over populated areas.” neo
The left in its hubris is giving the ChiComs the time and resources to address that ‘deficiency’ for the CCP fully intends to ‘make up for lost time’ when they judge that victory only waits to be seized.
Paul Fussell’s essay is a classic. His experience as an infantry officer in Europe gave him a grimly realistic idea of what an invasion of Japan would be like.
Another valuable perspective on the question of “Was it right to drop the Bomb?” comes from George MacDonald Fraser (best known as the author of the Flashman novels). Fraser fought as an infantryman in Burma (eventually reaching the dizzying rank of lance corporal). He wrote an excellent memoir of his war “Quartered Safe Out Here”. In the last chapter he discusses his reaction to the use of the atom bomb both at the time as a young soldier on the front line and since as a married man with children and grandchildren. Much like Fussell he was in favor of it then and now.
Louise Steinman, in THE SOUVENIR: A DAUGHTER DISCOVERS HER FATHER’S WAR, discusses her visit to the Hiroshima museum. Steinman bluntly points out the museum’s avoiding Japanese responsibility for the war and the bomb.
Passive phrasing, avoiding Japan’s active role in the war with the US:
As further evidence of avoiding responsibility, consider the reasons the museum gives for why the US dropped the bomb. The refusal of the Japanese government to surrender is not mentioned.
The museum depicts the Japanese as victims of the Bomb. Steinman points out that some Asians not of Japanese nationality have trouble seeing Japanese as victims.
As Japan killed an estimated 15 million civilians during the war, it is difficult to see Japanese as victims at Hiroshima.
I found out after my Okie mother died that she had a beau killed on the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor. Which reminds me of a Kate Wolf Song (In China, or a Woman’s Heart, There Are Places No One Knows.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AidGqvJ1z_E
A family friend, after having never seen any combat since he enlisted in the Marines in 1942 , got sent to Japan as part of the occupation forces. He flew over Hiroshima less than a month after the Bomb was dropped. The shock of seeing that destruction turned him into a lifelong opponent of the Bomb. The emotional shock colored all the “intellectual” arguments he made against the Bomb. (As the author of a number of books, he was quite capable of making intellectual arguments.)Without the bomb, he might have been part of the invasion force. Oh well.
BTW, the Korean War changed Henry Wallace from a pinko appeaser to an anti-Communist. In the 1940 campaign, Wallace equated Republicans with being Nazis.
The whole thing is a huge bore. Once Saipan was taken, nearly all Japanese cities could be and were fire bombed Dresden-style. The planners had to block out 5 cities from the conventional bombing schedule (two targets + three alternatives in case of weather or mechanical issues) in order to have undamaged structures and fresh meat, err, people to experiment on and to enhance the moral effect on the Japanese government and public.
I really see no moral difference between nuking people or firebombing them or using fuel-air bombs or cluster munitions or walking around with a tomahawk braining them. Just a useful Leftist socially corrosive mind hack.
All the other stuff is just Game Theory.
Go to Nagoya… Go to vast swathes of Tokyo. Not a stone standing today that stood in early 1944. Hundreds of thousands incinerated in both places in perfectly respectable conventional ways.
Really no need to talk about the politics of it in the West. We all know how the game is played. It’s a bit curious in Japan though. The Japanese have this deep cultural need to work toward consensus. Now the one and only thing the Japanese far Left/Right can agree on is that Americans Nuking Us Was the Very Most Super Baddest Thing Humanity Ever Done Did. #@$% ‘em.
And I like the Japanese. A lot. I feel very sorry for their having being emasculated and turned into a zombie culture — in many ways Crazy Mishima was right at the end… But… They had it coming.
The real tragedy is that the USA which stormed its way across the Pacific and rained down fire on the Japanese and was more than magnanimous as a victor no longer exists. Never more; Miranda. Never more.
It’s the same as the opposition to the neutron bomb. “A weapon that just kills PEOPLE? And leaves the buildings ALONE? How HORRENDOUS! Why can’t you just use REGULAR BOMBS that do BOTH?”
War IS hell. Fight it with all you’ve got, or don’t fight at all. Total war demands total dedication to winning. Anything else is a greater horror, and causes much more death and destruction.
Hip hip hooray for Curtis LeMay !
I was employed by a major Japanese corporation for five years. Much more civilized than their U.S. counterparts.
For a fun read try “Patriotism” by Mishima.
My late father was another WWII paratrooper (82nd Airborne) who was relieved when Truman signed off on dropping the bomb. Dad went into the Army in early 1942, shortly after Pearl Harbor, and served with the 82nd in North Africa and the European Theater (Sicily, Normandy, the Bulge). He was already married to my mother when the war started, but they had put off starting a family– like many couples who had struggled during the Depression– until they could save enough money to afford having children.
My dad’s unit was stationed near a castle town in northeastern Germany named Ludwigslust on V-E Day; the 82nd had liberated the nearby Wöbbelin concentration camp on May 2, 1945 (Neo may be interested in the details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%B6bbelin_concentration_camp).
Although Wöbbelin was not one of the larger or better-known camps, my dad and his buddy never got over the shock of what they saw there– which was the major reason why V-E Day, less than a week later, was not as euphoric for them as for civilians back home. My dad and his buddy expected to be sent to Japan for Operation Downfall, scheduled for November 1945. In the event that the planned invasion of Japan had gone through, it would have involved the 11th Airborne Division rather than the 82nd, but my dad could not have known that. As it was, he didn’t get back home until September 1945.
My dad was a lifelong Republican who rarely had a good word to say about any Democrat in the White House, but he always defended Truman’s decision to drop the atom bomb.
This doesn’t add anything to the discussion, but it got me thinking.The Lutheran pastor who married my wife and I was of Japanese descent. His wife was a young physician in Japan during the war and was severely injured working in a hospital during the bombíng of Hiroshima (or maybe Nagasaki, I don’t remember which). After the war she emigrated to this country and they were married. They were a wonderful couple and my wife was very close to them.
My father-law was part of the occupation force after the war, and after he passed we found photos he took from one of the bomb sites he visited, along with letters to his mother describing his impressions.
My father was a B-17 pilot during the war who no doubt would have been sent to the Pacific theater along with many others if we hadn’t dropped the bombs. Anybody who doesn’t acknowledge the millions of lives saved by the dropping of those bombs has no knowledge of history.
The Japanese people know what their country did, they can’t face it because the concept of redemption has no cultural basis in their society. Seppuku is all they have in the face of deep shameful sin.
@GB:
Suicide *is* redemption for the Japanese. As it was to some degree in Classical Antiquity for that matter. But more so for the Japanese.
The Christian view of suicide is somewhat of a human cultural outlier — and will become more so in the future.
Just the facts. Moral implications / Valencia’s are a separate orthogonal issue.
*valences*…
@GB:
Commodore Perry and the United States are as guilty of setting Japan on the path to the Rape of Nanjing as you are for the Holocaust. I recommend you sponsor a Rape of Nanjing Museum for your hometown 😀
Guilt is the Achilles Heel of Western Christian Civilization. You won’t find too many Jews wailing about their ancestral guilt, so I think I can safely dispense with saying Judeo-Christian Civilization :).
Every culture has its Achilles Heel which can be mind-hacked. We stupid dumb#$%^ Whiteys make fools of ourselves trying to mind-hack other cultures with *our* weaknesses. Doesn’t work.
The A-Bombings of Japan were the perfect mind-hack which provided a face-saving way for the Japanese to surrender unconditionally without dishonour. Yeah yeah Pavlovian drool about ‘What honour? The Japa#%^#ingese?!? Totally misses the point. They live inside their heads, not yours.
And today in 2021 you get idiots trying to beat the Chinese over the head with Universalist (I puke) Liberal (I laugh) Democratic (I weep) Values (Jaysus wept!). Meanwhile they’re at our throats using racism and intersectionality against us :).
Mind you, the Japanese military behaved with impeccable punctiliousness in the Russo-Japanese War and WWI. A few factors at work here:
1) Civil and Military Elite really *were* the Best of the Best whose families came up through the Meiji Restoration, Boshin War, etc.. and who had been educated in the West.
2) Officer Corps virtually all old Samurai Class.
3) Japan was in process of getting rid of unequal treaties and Western Extraterritoriality so had extra incentives to behave very well.
By the beginning of China Adventures in 1930s leading to WWII, there were a lot of Lower Middle Class New Men in the officer corps with all their attendant insecurities and ideological virtue spiraling possibilities. Sons of Rural School Teacher types. Always have to watch out for them. Also a lot of Leftist trouble in Japan in the 10s and 20s. Gets ignored and papered over now just as the Communist street violence in Weimar Germany certainly never happened, no way. Nazis Bad! And the Great Depression.
But I think the best explanation I ever read was from Earthly Powers (a novel with one of the more memorable opening sentences) by Anthony Burgess. He has a female character say something to the effect of ‘The poor hive-minded dears could not go mad singly, so they all had to go mad together.’
PA+Cat, my father in law 82nd too. 504 Reg. Your father?
SHIREHOME–
Small world– my dad was in the 307th Airborne Engineering Battalion. Was your dad also in Germany in 1945?
“Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties.”
Easily, the greatest act of charity ever performed by a nation at war towards its enemy.
BTW: my father was on a troop transport in the middle of the Pacific on VJ day. I owe my existence to the Bomb.
“Mind hack” from a hack that prefers the CCP. Who is “us” and “we” to this BoBo?
Carry on, nothing to see.
I saw a documentary where a group of Japanese officers heard the emperor was going to announce the surrender and conspired to kidnap him or otherwise prevent the announcement. This was actually AFTER the two bombs had already fallen.
Due to an American bombing raid, power was cut and the officers missed their chance to grab the emperor. They still had a possibility of capturing the recording he made but no one would tell them where it was.
After the emperor’s broadcast, the rebellious officers killed themselves. The bombing didn’t stop some of the more fanatical ones, only the emperor’s call for surrender did. The air raid foiled their plans.
I owe my existence to the Bomb.
Walter Sobchak et al.:
Nice to meet others whose fathers might well have died invading Japan.
Aside from my family, this is the first time I’ve encountered others.
David Foster,
My in-laws grew up in Germany and lived through the war. Their statement which I have also heard from their peers was that they knew Germany was losing and the Allied forces were coming and everyone’s sole focus was hoping and praying that the U.S. and British forces would arrive prior to the Russians. The way they tell it, at least among the civilian population, there was no will to continue the fight and there was admiration for the Americans especially, but tremendous fear of the Russian Army.
huxley @ 4:49pm,
That mirrors my in-laws experience in Germany. Not only were they unafraid of the Americans, they admired American culture and the American way of life.
Gringo @ 6:31pm,
When Bush I started the Gulf War to expel the Iraqis from Kuwait I was explaining the U.S.’s reasoning (which I agreed with) to my mother-in-law who had grown up in Germany during WWII. When I finished there was a long pause and she looked at me, knowing I could not understand what she knew and said, “There is never a good reason for war.”
The longer I live the more I grow to understand what she meant. The past 20 years in Afghanistan don’t seem as urgent as they did in 2001.
@huxley:
Can’t be that rare. OTOH, he never spoke of it. It was just last year that I started going through his Army papers.
He enlisted in 42. They told him to go back to school and enroll in ROTC. He wasn’t called up to active duty until mid-44. They got around to shipping him out in May 45. In August he was on a troop transport in the middle of the Pacific when the war ended. He spent 9 months in India doing paper work, and came back in 46 and was discharged. I was born about a year later.
Required reading: Richard Frank’s ‘Downfall’, one of the very few examinations of the political situation inside Japan at the end of the war; and Richard Rhodes’s ‘Black Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb’, which discusses the American decision to use the bombs.
Short version: The Japanese government was full-on delusional about its circumstances and prospects; and, after the Japanese military’s suicidal refusal to surrender and the civilian mass suicides on Okinawa, Washington wasn’t eager to pay the butcher’s bill an invasion would incur.
There was in fact a minor military revolt over the decision to surrender. There was also a plan to kamikaze the Missouri when she came into Tokyo harbor. It never happened because there wasn’t enough fuel to get the planes up, but I leave it to the reader to decide how that would have worked out if there had been.
My uncle had been scheduled to be in the invasion.
“The whole thing is a huge bore”
… and who would know more about being hugely boring?
obsessive, knee-jerk, can’t help himself, what a loser
Walter Sobchak said, “@huxley:
Can’t be that rare.”
There must be a lot of baby boomers who owe their existence to the Japanese surrender in August 1945. By my calculations, the 13,000 survivors of the WWII 82nd Airborne alone (KIA: 1619; MIA: 279; wounded in action: 6560) could have fathered enough kids to populate three Roman legions, allowing only one child per paratrooper. I assume the offspring of WWII sailors, Marines, and USAAF crews are numerous too. Neo’s blog is a really good place for all kinds of “class reunions.”
@ Rufus – “There is never a good reason for war.”
This may well be true, but there are many, many, many bad excuses.
Most of them involve pride and greed.
Added several books to my list – “too many books, too little time!”
Found these posts to be of interest.
https://frontierpartisans.com/20912/the-frontier-partisan-world-of-george-macdonald-fraser/
“Quartered Safe Out Here is Fraser’s other well-known work. It is a memoir of his World War II service in the latter stages of the Burma campaign. Quartered Safe out Here is often mentioned as one of the best combat memoirs by a soldier in WW2.”
Talks about much more than just the book mentioned by John+F.+MacMichael.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/178976.The_Souvenir
“In 1945, an American G.I. mailed home a Japanese flag. Fifty years later, his daughter unfolded the past. Growing up, Louise Steinman knew little about her father’s experiences in World War II. All she knew was that the whistling teakettle was banned from the kitchen and that she was never to cry in front of him. Years later, after her parents’ death, she found an old ammunition box, filled with nearly five hundred letters her father had written to her mother during the War. She also found a silk Japanese flag inscribed to Yoshio Shimizu. Who was Yoshio Shimizu and why did her father have his flag? So began Steinman’s quest to return this “souvenir” to its owner, and in the process, to learn more about the war that transformed the expressive young man in those letters into the reserved father she had known.
Weaving together her father’s raw, poignant letters with her own journey, Steinman presents a powerful view of how war changed one generation and shaped another.”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4998.Downfall
“In a riveting narrative that includes information from newly declassified documents, acclaimed historian Richard B. Frank gives a scrupulously detailed explanation of the critical months leading up to the dropping of the atomic bomb. Frank explains how American leaders learned in the summer of 1945 that their alternate strategy to end the war by invasion had been shattered by the massive Japanese buildup on Kyushu, and that intercepted diplomatic documents also revealed the dismal prospects of negotiation. Here also, for the first time, is a comprehensive account of how Japan’s leaders were willing to risk complete annihilation to preserve the nation’s existing order. Frank’s comprehensive account demolishes long-standing myths with the stark realities of this great historical controversy.”
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-sun-the-making-of-the-hydrogen-bomb-richard-rhodes/1007988828
“Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War.
Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.”
One of the most fascinating books that I’ve read about The Bomb is “Heisenberg’s Bomb” (yes, THAT Heisenberg). Some people have doubted that he deliberately hid the requisite physics from Hitler’s people while working on other military projects, but this article supports his claims.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg13518370-300-heisenbergs-principles-kept-bomb-from-nazis/
4 September 1992 By Dan Charles
Unequal time to the naysayers, whose position is covered in the book.
https://slate.com/culture/2002/03/heisenberg-s-big-idea.html
I don’t recall the book author ever questioning why Bohr’s testimony should be accepted uncritically, and neither does the Slate writer.
IIRC, the author was ultimately persuaded in Heisenberg’s favor, but it was a close run.
I suspect no one will ever know for sure.
@David Foster – “There is a good German movie centered on the Dresden bombing: reviewed it and discussed that actual bombing, here:”
An excellent essay founded on your review of the “Dresden” movie.
Also, very prescient for what we are seeing all around us today.
However, as things appear now, you were perhaps a bit too optimistic and generous to the Left.
The enemy is well on the way to winning the war, although they may yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory with their blatant, greedy, and cynical over-reaching and the revelations of the perfidy of their leaders.
I grabbed a few stories off the first search page, but there was not much about what he said unless that’s behind the WSJ paywall (where my excerpt ends), but it seems to be mostly speculative.
He was in Germany June 4-5, 2009, but the news stories themselves make the actual timeline confusing. I wish reporters would use actual dates rather than “yesterday” or the day of the week, which isn’t immediately useful after the fact, especially on the internet where the publication dates aren’t always the original ones. (/rant)
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2009/0605/p06s12-woeu.html
Nothing about what Obama said, mostly about the city’s reaction to his visit.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/International/story?id=7738205&page=1
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124415845045387021
By Daniel Schwammenthal From today’s Wall Street Journal Europe.
June 5, 2009 12:01 am ET
David’s essay on Dresden mentions this, in the context of the bombing debate.
“In his 1960 book Science and Government, C P Snow described the secret debate between two factions of British scientists, led by Henry Tizard and Frederick Lindemann.”
I looked up the book (might as well add another to the list) and found an interesting parallel to the Covid debacle.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674072374
Nothing new under the sun…dark or otherwise.
AesopFan:
Have you seen Mark Felton’s video on “Hunting Heisenberg: Capturing Germany’s Atomic Secrets”? It’s short (not quite 11 minutes) and incorporates clips from the Alsos Mission films:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrCc9XfNoBE&ab_channel=MarkFeltonProductions
@AesopFan:
“Nothing new under the sun…dark or otherwise.”
The problem is that there’s always Something New Under the Sun for the Managerialist BugXirsons who have dimly heard of The Two Cultures (if at all) and gotten the garbled Take Home Message that Technocracy Rules OK.
Our problem is not Classically-educated Humanists who do not know the Third Law of Thermodynamics. Our problem is MBAs, Bankers, or for that matter Machine Learning Tensor Core Jugglers who don’t know their Hesiod, Thucydides, Xenophon, Tacitus, Josephus (just kidding), Gibbon, Shakespeare, Milton, KJV, and so on… If you don’t have a smattering of these, everything that comes along will be New! Shiny! And you *will* #$%^ up in your responses to ‘new’ happenings. But it’s nearly all more or less happened before. Humans be Human. Our driving passions, jealousies, vices, foibles, foolishness haven’t changed noticeably in 2500 years. These same clowns who laughed at Rumsfeld don’t know what they don’t know
“You won’t find too many Jews wailing about their ancestral guilt…”
That is one seriously (if not hilariously) misinformed contention….
(“Mea gulpa”?)
…but it might remind one of the old joke that “The Jews may have invented guilt but the Christians perfected it”.
(Did I say “joke”?….)
In any event, keep on keeping us splendidly entertained…(seriously!!)
@BarryMeislin:
Maternally-induced Guilt doesn’t count! 🙂
I’m with you on Christian Guilt-fixations.
Concur wrt Quartered Safe Out Here. More subjects than his combat experience “Kipling’s last army”, all the warrior tribes of the Raj.
Fraser’s experience with the Borderers led him to write of the Border Reivers, “Steel Bonnets”. And Candlemass Road, fiction.
My father was pretty much in Fussell’s position He’d been an Infantry officer, platoon leader and sometimes company commander until they could find another captain. Several times wounded and left in Europe when his division rotated home after VE Day to train for Downfall. But when the casualties from Okinawa were counted up, he passed the “fog-a-mirror” physical and would have been in the invasion. His younger brother had had a tour in B24 in the Pacific and was doing conversions training on the B32, slated to return. His older brother had had a ground job in the EIghth Air Force but was being retrained as an Infantry medic.
One of my mother’s two brothers had been a Marine in the Pacific, surviving five
landings. The other, a Coastie in the North Atlantic, likely to be one of the radar picket line which was so badly hit at Okinawa.
In my immediate family, five Blue Stars. None turned to gold until a couple of wars later.
My father and his brothers went to pay their respects to the parents of a friend who’d been killed late in the Pacific War. “If we’d had the bomb earlier, Arthur would be here with us today,” the mother said. A mathematical certainty for a quarter million Americans in a different scenario. This generation has gone to its reward and as witnesses are only available by family story.
In college, I ran into a woman with whom I’d gone to high school. Class of 62. So it was probably less than twenty years after VJ Day. Her father was also a veteran. She was convinced the Bomb was a horrible crime. Best she could come up with was that a thousand planes were “fair” and one plane was not. Getting that good college education, by golly.
I think the Nazis unwittingly helped us develop the bomb by creating emigres out of the Hungarians Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller and John von Newman.
Two other Europeans played a major role as well, Enrico Fermi and Neils Bohr. Imagine if we had proportional representation at Los Alamos, would we have ever produced the bomb?
Dad was a USAAF radio technician at North Field on Tinian. Service record says 358th Air Service Group/313th Bombardment Wing/504th Bombardment Group of the 20th Air Force. Worked on the B-29s that leveled Tokyo, Nagoya, etc. Had a rep as a savvy diagnostician/fixer, so was occasionally seconded to other units on the island for tricky repair jobs. Worked on some of the planes in the 509th Composite Group (atomic bomb). He recalled seeing the USS Indianapolis at the pier on Tinian, after its high-speed run from San Francisco carrying components for the first bomb. Also saw the construction of the hydraulic pit for loading the bomb into the Enola Gay and figured it was for something unusual. He never expressed any regret or reservations about Hiroshima or Nagasaki. He did express horror about the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945. Not regret, but horror at the scale and manner of destruction.
Second the recommendations for Fraser’s “Quartered Safe Out Here” and Paul Fussell’s books. Others have mentioned Eugene Sledge’s “With the Old Breed”. I can also recommend Russell G. Davis’s modest but affecting “Marine at War”. Fussell and Sledge were postwar friends; you can read some of their correspondence in the Eugene B. Sledge Papers at the Auburn University Libraries: http://diglib.auburn.edu/collections/ebsledge/
AesopFan…I wrote about the Snow book and the Tizard/Lindemann conflict–which I see as very relevant to our present-day covid and climate issues–last year.
Radar Wars: a Case Study in Expertise and Influence:
https://ricochet.com/834816/radar-wars-a-case-study-in-expertise-and-influence/
@AesopFan
My impression reading some of the Farm Hall transcripts is that there were three good reasons that the Germans didn’t develop the bomb.
1) Little funding.
2) Conviction that separating the isotopes on an industrial scale was impossible.
3) They had no understanding of industry, they were scientists.
Also, no Fermi. The primary aim seems to have been developing a reactor. Fermi succeeded in doing that in Dec 1942. It was after the Nagasaki bomb that the German scientists realized that the US had a reactor because the fissile material had to be Plutonium, of which the Germans had produced tiny amounts, micrograms IIRC. The reason the Germans had problems building a reactor was slowing down the neutrons, they wanted heavy water for that, Fermi used graphite. The use of fast neutrons, as in the American bombs, escaped them.
I don’t know that Heisenberg was deliberately holding back development, I get the impression that he was just the wrong person to lead such a project. Contrast that with Groves (industry) and Oppenheimer (scientific team leader) working together. It is true that Heisenberg worked out how the bomb functioned very quickly once he realized that the Americans had used pure U-235, but that was only some weeks after the bomb dropped. Also notable was the German conviction that their science was vastly superior, it didn’t occur to them that the British and Americans could succeed where they had failed. Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
As to Goudsmit, I attended a talk he gave, and he gave many, about his experience tracking down the German developments. I wouldn’t say he was blinded by fear of a German bomb, but rather by bitterness. He was Jewish and Dutch, and lost family. And he had immense contempt for Heisenberg based on Heisenberg’s inadequate response to a request to help a (friend, relative?).
I have heard it claimed that there was a conflict between the use of graphite for the V-2 missile program (for the control vanes) and its potential use for nuclear reactors. Hard to believe that the total graphite production capabilities were that small, though.
David Foster:
IIRC you can mine graphite, or you can manufacture graphite from petroleum. IIRC(2) more was/is made than mined. Nazi Germany did not have enough oil for their grand plans, they had enough evil though. There always seems to be plenty of evil.
David Foster:
Forgot the graphite manufacturing path from coal suited for steel making. The USA had sources of coke (to make graphite) from coking coal and petroleum, and Leslie Groves.
Backing up a big step, why invade?
Why, indeed? Why not the European Usual? Bunch of guys die young who should have died old. Countryside gets torn up. Borders shoved around some. Big shots don’t miss a meal.
See WW I. See Versailles Treaty. Five years after, the guys…Ludendorf, v. Hindenburg, others involved were getting ready to do it again.
See WW II. Lesson there. Don’t let the Germans run thei own affairs. Smash them flat, occupy them for a period to be determined, hang the big shots, remake the institutions from dog catcher on up. Did I mention occupy?
Lesson to be applied to the Japanese without having a precursor in some version of WW I fought in the Pacific.
Which requires occupation which requires invasion.
Unconditional Surrender was a realization that the European Usual wasn’t going to cut it this time. Not with these people, German or Japanese.
Which answers a question posed as, “If you don’t surrender, we’re going to do something terrible to….ourselves.”
@David Foster
The Germans wanted heavy water because it was a better moderator than graphite. Nothing but the best for them. Fermi was both an experimental genius and a top notch theorist. And very pragmatic.
Zaphod said “ Josephus (just kidding)”.
On the one hand, I take what Josephus said with a grain of proverbial salt, since he could not even get the retelling of the Old Testament correct. At least in the English translation I was reading. I finally skipped over much of OT summary and skipped on ahead.
One thing I took note of his claim that many of the revolutionaries were rough on the regular people during the Roman siege of Jerusalem.
I find this plausible as revolutions initially attract some of the more violent , radical people. Some of whom are not necessarily idealist , but are just using “ revolution” as an excuse for violence and personal reasons. Witness black BLMers looting black businesses.
Having said that, I am also aware that Josephus is not without suspicion as a pro Roman Jew. In spite of working as a Jewish officer during the war, prior to his capture by the Romans.
The “ nothing new under the sun” takeaway involves that nasty things happen during revolutions, not just from the side of the existing order, but from within even supposed liberation movements.
Speaking of German Heavy Water.
The allies did not just sit idly by while the Germans worked.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_heavy_water_sabotage
Jon baker:
Neil Bascomb’s recent book about the Norweigan sabotage of the Noskhydro heavy water plant and the follow on sinking of the ferry carrying the heavy water is very good. This happened after the British commando raid failed. Can’t post the link, smart phone dumb operator.
My opinion on the bomb has always been this: Consider what would have happened if Germany or the USSR had developed the bomb and a means to deliver it first. World history would be quite different. Both countries’ leadership would have tried to use the bomb to subjugate their enemies and become world dominant. The United States was the only country with the bomb and a means to deliver it for four years. And even after the Soviets produced a bomb in 1949, they didn’t realistically have a means to deliver it for a few more years. During those years the U.S., rather than use its overwhelming military advantage to subdue other nations, set about rebuilding Europe and Japan with the goal of maintaining peace. Few other nations would have been that selfless and well-intentioned toward the world. YMMV.
jon baker, om:
“The Heroes of Telemark” was a mid-sixties WW II film about the sabotage of that heavy water plant. With Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris. Made a big impression on me as a kid. I’d like to see it again.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heroes_of_Telemark
Lest it be forgotten, the Japanese had their own Manhattan Project to develop an atomic weapon during WW II.
According to conventional accounts, the Japanese didn’t get far. Though some say the Japanese did manage to make a bomb and test it shortly before the end of the war.
https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/japanese-atomic-bomb-project
“…prior to his capture by the Romans….”
Well actually, Yosef ben Matityahu (AKA Josephus), was a valued commander of a key force of Judean troops in the Galil (Galilee, i.e., north of the country); but when he realized things were going south, he opted to switch sides, an act of betrayal which casts a shadow over his entire oeuvre, even though his manifold descriptions (taking into account the need to prove himself loyal to Vespasian and then Titus) have proven to be accurate in many cases and are a much-used historical resource for the period.
Also was, apparently, a very talented soldier.
One might wonder whether his considerable body of work was a kind of atonement….
Sometimes Zaphod tosses out a link to unz.com, an alt-right site. I occasionally read unz and find interesting stuff. However, unz also offers bitter fruits of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that I can’t get past. Like:
______________________________________________
Edward Curtin’s classic article “The Satanic Nature of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” is worth re-reading as we commemorate the holocausts perpetrated August 6 and August 9, 1945. The fact that the people running the American empire are purely and simply evil—the term “psychopathic” isn’t strong enough—was illustrated by the completely unnecessary atomic bombings of Japanese civilians, which, contrary to public myth, did not cause Japan to surrender or save any lives. It was nothing more nor less than a message to the Russians. What a way to send a message.
https://www.unz.com/audio/kbarrett_edward-curtin-on-the-satanic-nature-of-the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/
______________________________________________
It doesn’t get better when you click the Curtin link on Hiroshima/Nagasaki:
______________________________________________
How can one describe men who would intentionally slaughter so many innocent people? American history is rife with such examples up to the present day. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc. – the list is very long. Savage wars carried out by men and women who own and run the country, and who try to buy the souls of regular people to join them in their pact with the devil, to acquiesce to their ongoing wicked deeds. Such monstrous evil was never more evident than on August 6 and 9, 1945.
Unless we enter into deep contemplation of the evil that was released into the world with those bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we are lost in a living hell without escape. And we will pay.
http://edwardcurtin.com/the-satanic-nature-of-the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/
This is another good essay on the use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/06/our-use-of-nuclear-weapons-76-years-ago-was-a-moral-and-strategic-imperative/
My father told me he was designed to be in the first wave in the invasion of Japan as a signalman. In Okinawan my father was in the 3rd wave and saw the first two signalmen killed. He never complained about the bombs being used and he was in one of the cities 3 days after the surrender.
Truman overruled the military and ordered the bombs used after reading the reports about the Japanese resistance at Okinawa. Little is reported about the firebombing of Tokyo first to try and force a surrender and the leaflets wee dropped warning of a new terrible weapon; in the firebombing possibly more died there than from either of the bombs
huxley:
Some twisted agitprop there.
Cue the God of the copybook headings.
AMR: from the article I linked to above:
In fact, the most destructive bombing raid of the war, and in the history of warfare, was the nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945. In a three-hour period, the main bombing force dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs, which caused a firestorm that not only killed some 100,000 civilians, but also destroyed a quarter of a million buildings and incinerated 16 square miles of the city. Tokyo was not the only target: By the end of the war, incendiaries dropped by LeMay’s bombers had totally or partially consumed 63 Japanese cities, killing half a million people and leaving 8 million homeless.
@huxley:
So you got to wring your hands in public and bewail the sad state of human affairs.
There are some rabid anti-semites posting and commenting at Unz.com
Does that mean that by ignoring every post at Unz.com you will be sure to never miss out on some intellectual fertilization you couldn’t have gotten elsewhere? Does it mean that every Unz article is therefore off the table?
Are you being a bit like Wagner who supposedly threw his conducting gloves on the stage floor and and put on a new pair after conducting pieces by Mendelssohn? Must I be like that? If I post a reference to something I read on Unz which makes zero mention of Jews, is it necessary to divert into an Opera in Three Acts about Anti-Semitism?
Unz, himself is a Rengade Jew. He has some strange ideas about Covid and a few other topics. He prides himself on publishing people who disagree with him and with each other. How many other sites do that today?
It’s like Gab. You want Freedom of Speech platform in an Unfree World, then you’re going to really get it good and hard concentrated in the few places which permit it.
Unz runs an interesting sidebar titled American Pravda which looks at historical disinformation and things we’re sure we know are true but which original source documents suggest might not be. You might enjoy some of it. Again, it’s not all about Jews.
If I put myself out there as a torch for all the super wicked bad nasty impolite stuff, it’s for a reason. Have you not perchance noticed that the Enemy controls the terms of all debate in the West? Anything you say outside the Overton Window is by definition Nazi or crypto-Fascist and in five minutes it’s clear that you’re going to be gassing Jews so we must shut you down NOW. There’s only one cure for that. Smash the @#$%ing Overton Window. Sure it might hurt some Jewish feelings here and there… but we’re *all* being done to death or slavery by ‘Good Manners’… Jews too.
I ask you again as I pass you the smelling salts… What does this ritual wringing of hands *do* or achieve? Who does it help?
@stu:
“I think the Nazis unwittingly helped us develop the bomb by creating emigres out of the Hungarians Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner, Edward Teller and John von Newman.
Two other Europeans played a major role as well, Enrico Fermi and Neils Bohr. Imagine if we had proportional representation at Los Alamos, would we have ever produced the bomb?”
Damn right. More than a few Minyans worth at Los Alamos and I guess Oak Ridge. Stupid of the Nazis. But nobody ever said the Nazis were driven by pure logic. Would have been smarter to slap a bunch of Jewish Geniuses in Nazi versions of Beria’s Sharashkas and have had the bomb first. This is what a Foolish Consistency gets you. A bit like not reading anything from Unz because you might catch cooties from the article posted in the sidebar.
The reason is to stoke outrage and call attention to yourself. It’s a feature. Occam’s Razor. Prefers the CCP. Case closed.
Carry on.
Proportional Representation at Los Alamos might have produced the Boom Box earlier.. but certainly not the Bomb.
@om:
It must be very refreshing to live in your very simple little world of black and white certainties. Thank you for your psychological insight.
Your welcome!
Had to dumb it down for you.
Your features and ploys are pretty obvious, but the emperor imagines his clothes are splendiferous.
So you got to wring your hands in public and bewail the sad state of human affairs.
There are some rabid anti-semites posting and commenting at Unz.com
Does that mean that by ignoring every post at Unz.com you will be sure to never miss out on some intellectual fertilization you couldn’t have gotten elsewhere? Does it mean that every Unz article is therefore off the table?
Zaphod:
Oh, come on. If anyone is wailing here…
I’ve read Unz and will continue, now and then, to do so. However, like most sensible people I keep tabs on the signal-to-noise ratio in my information sources and adjust my skepticism accordingly.
I can read Vox and get something out of that too. Vox is easier for me because I know where its biases are and can make adjustments. Unz is harder because I don’t know where it might suddenly go off the rails.
“The Satanic Nature of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” caught me quite by surprise.
So much to read, so little time. I do appreciate getting your off-my-beaten-track links.
A weird site you might find interesting, if you haven’t already visited, is Vigilant Citizen. It is quite crazy, but not entirely, and it’s fun sorting it out.
https://vigilantcitizen.com
any military leader should be more concerned with his troops than the enemy civilians.
that being said, while the bomb helped end the war it was the Soviet invasion of the Japanese Empire that really ended it.
@avi:
The Soviet invasion of Manchuria certainly concentrated the Japanese Military Mind. But I think they would have happily fought to the death if not for the A-Bombings having provided a face-saving excuse for surrender. Most of them died in Siberian gulags and they knew that surrender meant this… so it was a case of obeying direct order from the Emperor. IMHO.
It was absolutely a tragedy that the Soviets got their hands on so much Japanese military hardware in Manchuria as they handed most of it over to the CCP which had largely sat out the war letting the KMT (corrupt and hopeless leadership, but plenty of brave troops) and the Japanese attrit each other. So the CCP’s PLA was fresh out the gate with good equipment at the end of WWII. Never looked back.
Why bother fight the Japanese when you can win the ‘Peace’ and re-write history to have yourself bravely defeating the Japanese later anyway? Mao was an evil genius. Too many commentators at large and also here spend too much time on the Evil part of what works and not on winning. Dead Moralists are still dead.
“They all knew ….. an absolute tragedy ,,,, plenty of brave troops,” but dead. More smoke from the amoral-ist. LOL
Time to run before sunset. Keep the jokes coming.
Carry on.
“The Soviet invasion of Manchuria certainly concentrated the Japanese Military Mind. But I think they would have happily fought to the death if not for the A-Bombings having provided a face-saving excuse for surrender.”
the Japanese strategy never considered defeating the US. From before Pearl Harbor , it was to make it so painful to the US that they would agree to a negotiated settlement. This was their plans until the end. After the second A-bomb, they were willing to sacrifice more cities. Other than Kyoto, they were mostly destroyed already. Their strategy of making it too painful for the US was contingent on the Soviets brokering a deal.
When this idea ended with the Soviet invasion all hope was lost. the rapid destruction of the Kwangtung Army put more fear in the heads of the Japanese High Command than the a-bomb.
They were prepared for Operation Downfall and knew it would commence until November. However the Soviets overran the home Island of Karafuto and were ready to attack the sparsely defended Hokkaido in September.
By surrendering to the US the Japanese knew they would get a better deal, keep the Emperor and the threat of the bomb would stop the Soviet onslaught.
Of course had Truman said they could keep the emperor, maybe they would have surrendered earlier.
Hello. I’m thankful to see the reminiscences from various people here. Rufus, glad to see you in action again.
(I have nothing of substance to add to the topic of Hiroshima, so this is purely a matter of me basking in the light of others’ contributions.)
}}} The longer I live the more I grow to understand what she meant. The past 20 years in Afghanistan don’t seem as urgent as they did in 2001.
Rufus, Iraq and Afghanistan failed because our fifth column press was determined to do the same things there that they did in Vietnam…. undermine the American reasons to fight at the same time they gave encouragement to the enemy to keep fighting, that America would fold as long as they did that.
It is clear that, after the Tet Offensive, the NV, having lost countless invaluable men and irreplaceable materiel, yet gained absolutely nothing of value, none of their objectives, was talking about surrender, about how to get the best terms they could get. THIS is all according to some higher-ranking members of the military.
THEN they heard how the US media was spinning it, as a gross failure of the American military, and they KNEW that all they had to do was hang on, and sooner or later the USA would lose its will to fight.
And yes, the C-sing M-fers did it once again with Iraq, the endless daily body count (which only stopped when Bush left office) and the constant negation of everything good which was happening.
Without that encouragement to keep fighting us, there would have been far less support for suicide bombings, etc., and, more critically, those opposed to a unified government would have been less encouraged by the opportunity to fight their REAL enemies, the apostate Muslims (i.e., the shiites and the sunnis — both apostate to the other). ISIS is Obama’s legacy.
We might have a unified, sectarian Iraq by now (they had long been one of the least religious of the ME Islamic states, one reason they were chosen)… and a shining beacon to Islam of what it was capable of.
OBloodyHell:
“We might have a unified, sectarian Iraq by now (they had long been one of the least religious of the ME Islamic states, one reason they were chosen)… and a shining beacon to Islam of what it was capable of.”
And water might flow uphill and Entropy reverse itself spontaneously.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CG2cux_6Rcw
^^^— It’s not Zen. But it’s Enlightening. If you’ll let it be.
Tell me… Does the Franklin Mint advertise in National Review? Asking for a Friend.
The amoral-ist has the last word don’t you know. Not his monkeys, not his country, not even his history. A trifecta of arrogance. But the CCP is his future.
Over and out.
Re AesopFsn and the Heisenberg: unacknowledged Saint or Nazi Dinner? Debate.
My simple answer after repeatedly surveying materials on the question I’ve decades us this: neither.
Bohr knew he was pro-Hitler. But contrary to his any many’s claims, the actual finding records of Heisenberg’s research spending requests were very small if not tiny.
This was because of a different reason. Heisenberg believed that an atomic bomb was too impractical because it would be too large. Requiring an entire ship to enter a hostile harbor if it could be made that small.
Two of Heisenberg’s students later caught Heisenberg’s thousand fold calculation mistake on the effects of an atomic pile’s size needed to produce criticality (recall the football field at the University of Chicago where this was actually achieved), or instability.
The two made 5he correction and quickly got behind the allied side to make the Bomb. Because suddenly a transportable device was possible!
These two students believed Heisenberg would catch the mistake and correct it. (There were no back door channels to maintain communications at that time.)
But he didn’t. And there’s no evidence that he ever did. The extant evidence is also on the other side.
Which is why the secret tapes revealed H and his fellow captured German scientists utterly surprised, simply shocked! By the news of Hiroshima and the Bomb. Because IMPOSSIBLE!
I see these assholes waited until almost all WW2 vets are gone, or at least way past the age to kick someone’s ass to trot out this bullshit.
It’s Nagasaki Day, the Pu for the Trinity device, tested at Alamogordo NM, and Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki, was made at the Hanford Works, near here, much to the eternal shame of local progressives.
Cappy. I sympathize. But it was going on decades ago.
Fussell suggested that condemning the use of the bomb meant, particularly among former military, one was not of the lowly status of Infantry, or other below-the-salt branches. It was a status thing. Not having been at risk in the invasion meant you were far too important.
I can imagine some people are that twisted, but to advertise….
It’s hard enough to determine what happened. How many died in Dresden, for example?
Don’t exclude the other half of the Axis. Let’s remember how Japan invaded China for pure reasons of economic greed, before any such thing as a nuclear weapon existed, and slew not hundreds of thousands but MILLIONS of Chinese civilians by traditional methods of warfare.
So that’s OK, because they weren’t Americans, and because of their exquisite hand craftsmanship?
Richard Aubrey
Fussell suggested that condemning the use of the bomb meant, particularly among former military, one was not of the lowly status of Infantry, or other below-the-salt branches. It was a status thing. Not having been at risk in the invasion meant you were far too important.
Fussell’s hypo agrees with the Marine officer family friend who was against the bomb after flying over Hiroshima several weeks after the bomb. He had no combat experience.
As I’ve said before, my father was an Infantry platoon leader, occasional company commander until they could find another captain.
We talked a lot about the war but practically nothing about his baggage. I heard about that obliquely from my mother.
Had a neighbor who’d fought in the Philippines. From time to time, having a drink, he’d go back there, to what he’d seen the Japanese had done to POW and civilians. Could hardly talk.
Two guys who thought the bomb was a great idea.
@RichardAubrey:
Attitude toward the A-Bombings is a handy Shibboleth separating hopeless oxygen-wasting idealists from realists.
But I wonder what stealth Shibboleths Americans should be taking note of in their neighbourhoods today? Best to have lists compiled in advance. Spur-of-the-moment quizzes and guessing games played for keeps are unlikely to be fun.
@ TJ – “Re AesopFsn and the Heisenberg: unacknowledged Saint or Nazi Dinner? Debate.
My simple answer after repeatedly surveying materials on the question I’ve decades us this: neither.”
Sounds plausible to me, although it’s been a long time since I read the book.
Do you have a reference or link I could use to update my understanding?