Alternate history and context: re-evaluating the A-bomb (and more) on its 62nd anniversary.
A year comes round rather quickly, and 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 has an article today in the Guardian on the subject, in which he writes:
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 de 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, there’s no such evidence; 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—or perhaps 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 such as those who think we didn’t go to the moon—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, middle-aged peace-love Boomers regularly do in the town where I live) 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. But propagandists are not just interested in changing opinions in the present, they’re interested in history and the future.
The PBS documentary “Victory in the Pacific” (American Experience, 2005) shows the military and political context — from both American and Japanese perspectives — in which the A-bombings were decided.
Amazing that PBS produced and showed it! Available from Netflix.
At the end of WWII many ordinary Japanese still believed in the divinity of Emperor, the divine mission of the Japanese Empire and Bushido. Despite defeat after defeat, large casualties and dwindling resources, Japanese authorities were still unwilling to accept Allied calls for unconditional surrender. As a possible Allied invasion of the Japanese Home Islands came closer, Japanese civilians–men, woman, children, the young and the old–were being instructed by the Japanese authorities to get whatever kind of weapon, farm implement, anything that could inflict fatal injuries they could find and to be ready to head for the likely invasion beaches, where their duty was to kill at least one Allied soldier before they themselves were killed. There was little dissent in Japan and the secret police, the dreaded Kempetai, took care of the few dissenters that did show themselves. So, although at this point many Japanese civilians were eating grass and bark, many were, nonetheless, ready to fulfill their duty to the Emperor; as the old Japanese proverb went, “Duty is heavy as a mountain, death light as a feather.” Meanwhile, the Japanese military was marshalling all the hoarded stockpiles and armaments they had for the “Final Battle” to defend against Allied invasion of the Home Islands, a climactic battle which, from the tone of their comments and writings, many Japanese officers seemed to relish.
On the Allied side, hundreds of thousands of weary U.S. soldiers, veterans of battles in Europe, had gotten orders to start moving toward the Far East for “Operation Downfall,” the invasion of Japan. Based on the very high casualty rates and death toll from recent combat on Okinawa, Allied casualty estimates were staggeringly high, with the number of Allied soldiers actually killed estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands and in some estimates over a million or more and the casualties on the Japanese side were estimated in one study to include as many as 5-10 million Japanese fatalities if civilians took part in the fighting. It is in this context that the decision to use nuclear weapons was made. Despite the Japanese killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many additional hundreds of thousands of lives, many more of them Japanese than Allied ones, were saved by this decision.
Leftist academics, particularly Gar Alperovitz at the University of Maryland, have made a decades-long cottage industry of producing books and articles arguing that the dropping of these bombs was unnecessary, that the bombs were primarily dropped as a move to intimidate Russia and deter Russian seizure of territory in the waning days of WWII, were not needed to defeat a prostrate Japan and that the casualty estimates that were a main driving force behind the decision, were unrealistically high. Recent research has shown that our casualty estimates were, in fact, far too low because our military intelligence substantially underestimated the numbers of troops, ships, aircraft, weapons, fuel and ammunition that the Japanese had managed to accumulate for the climactic battle in the Home Islands.
P.S.–In doing the research for the above I ran across a small newspaper clipping reporting on a post-war interview with one of the chief Japanese scientists who had been working on Japan’s attempt to build their own atomic bombs. When asked if Japan would have dropped such bombs on the U.S. had they developed them he unhesitatingly said that, yes, of course, they would have dropped them on the U.S.
Since about September of 1945, American leftists have been arguing that using the atomic bomb was cruel, and overly destructive — probably racist, since it was dropped by white people on Asians.
And yet it took two to get Japan to surrender.
Funny, that.
Since professional historians have abandoned the “stories of great men”, it is still useful to point out that their experiences shaped them. My grandfather served with Harry Truman in the Meuse-Argonne in WWI. Truman took great pride in the fact that all of his men made it out of that battle alive. He of course knew in WWII that when they fought on the end of september 1918 the armistice was only 6 weeks away. The Germans fought a tremendous rear guard action and there were many false peace feelers out.
There was no way Truman could not use the bomb based on that experience. He couldn’t look his troops in the eye if he didn’t
Personally, I have never concerned myself too much with the historical spin on the use of the atomic bombs.
My father was a sailor in an attack transport. His duty was on the small landing craft (LCVP) that made the beach assaults. Anything that kept him from making another assault was fine with me.
However, if any scholar doubts the intent of the Japanese they need look no further than Okinawa. This was the last great battle before the invasion of Japan. Here, the Japanese unleashed the Kamikaze in great numbers. There was no intent to surrender or negotiate.
Finally, the atomic bombs were no more lethal in terms of loss of life than the incendiary attacks on Tokyo. But, the awesome power unleashed by one bomb was decisive.
Truman did what he had to do. I also believe that the destructive capability of nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons served as a curb on the U.S.-Soviet-Chinese conflicts.
It is now fashionable to make fun of the concept of “Mutual Assured Destruction” (unfortunately abbreviated MAD), but it worked.
When I was in Japan in the 80s we took a train to Nagasaki to see ground zero, it was an incredible trip in many ways, the peace park there surrounding ground zero is beautiful with all sorts of monuments from many countries in the world, all with the message of never again.
The interesting cultural takeaway was that there is a museum there, 5 or six floors high, as you go through from floor to floor the exhibits get more and more grotesque, I think I only made it to the fourth floor, it got really hideous. We were obviously the only Americans there. I was not proud of what I saw but kept it in context that it ended the war.
Running around were hundreds of young school children in uniform and lots of Japanese, we were told it was mandatory for schools to take field trips there for certain grades. We felt no animosity or anger directed at us in any way. They were laughing and having fun and it felt out of place, everyone seemed happy to be there except for us.
What stuck me was that if the roles were reversed in our culture, we probably would have been angry at whatever people had done this if we saw them there.
I asked one of the tour guides about this and She said “we don’t look at it that way as there was responsibility on both sides”
I never forgot that. So, the left is angrier about it than the people it actually happened to. This was 20 years ago and I was pretty young. I dont know if things have changed there, now that I think about it, tons of Japanese visit the Arizona memorial. I wonder if they get any dirty looks.
Maybe anger fades over time.
George MacDonald Fraser (best known as the author of the Flashman series) has an interesting discussion of this issue in “Quartered Safe Out Here”, his excellent memoir of his WWII service in Burma. Another good essay on this is Paul Fussell’s “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.”
Also, the threat of nuclear war has really faded in the last 20 years or so, I’m sure some remember the duck and cover drills in school, also when Reagan was elected the meme from the liberals was that he was going to intitiate the MAD scenario because he was such a “cowboy” The national debate at the time was about the train based peacekeeper missles so they would survive a first strike, after the end of the cold war that sort of thing really disappeared from our culture, now the islamic terrorists have brought it back to the table.
I tell my kids about this and they cant beleive we ever thought that the world would end by nuclear war. Funny.
John MacM..yes, the George MacDonald Fraser piece is very interesting. He makes it pretty clear what he thinks (that the bomb was clearly justified) but then wonders what his comrades-in-arms (in Burma) would have said if they had been given the choice between dropping the bomb and ending the war, and continuing to fight the Japanese with all the risks that implied. He leaves the answer deliberately ambiguous.
One of my favorite books on the subject is “The Wages of Guilt” by Ian Buruma, a Dutch author. His book compares and contrasts the way Germany and Japan have dealt with their respective legacies of WWII. Buruma is a typical EU leftist but he can write well. In Buruma’s view the Japanese haven’t dealt nearly enough with their sins, while the Germans have, in a way, converted their guilt into the pacifistic zealotry we witness today.
snowonpine, interestingly enough, I think it is Buruma’s book that relates a similar vingnette (Or possibly a Donald Keene book.) in a random encounter with a Japanese vet.
I never forgot that. So, the left is angrier about it than the people it actually happened to.
The war between Japan and America was over and done with decades ago. The internal war of sedition and treason being fought by the Left is still ongoing. Thus why the Left was angry and still is angry. They are still in a war. The Japanese surrendered. Did the Left and their Soviet masters ever surrender? Did they ever admit their inferiority in the Ultimate Test of a nation and its people?
I spent quite a bit of time studying Japan and America. The war between these two nations tested many traits and variables. The human template used to predict actions relies upon cultural and psychological constants.
For one thing, Hirohito, like an patriot, supported Japan because Japan was already in a war. This is regardless of whether he thought Japan should have been fighting the US or not. Japan was in a war, therefore Hirohito would support Japan. This is a cultural and national perspective recent modern times have forgotten. Which is why all the bunk you hear from the Left tends to be based upon Leftist philosophy and culture, rather than Japanese philosophy or culture. Some multiculturalists.
The Emperor is seen as a god because of Japan’s religion of Shintoism. The translation of divinity or “god” is actually inaccurate. The closest approximation to how the Japanese saw Emperor Hirohito is to imagine what Americans would feel if George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Thomas Jefferson suddenly became alive and functioning again. And if you want to understand why Japan surrendered when Hirohito gave his national radio address, just imagine the public reaction if all of these larger than life characters in American history not only came back to life but also spoke through one voice for America to do something. Would America do what Lincoln tells them is the right thing to do? Or would America follow the US military, another institution they believed in, and fight against Lincoln, Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Washington? The analogy has some discrepancies of course. For one thing, Hirohito was seen as a living god precisely because he was seen to embody the best spiritual power of Japan. This combines the US position of President with ancestral worship of Washington, Jefferson, etc. Hirohito not only had the legal authority to make a surrender stick but he also had the public reaction angle down as well. He was the political, religious, and military head.
Bushido said to never surrender for in surrendering you violate your feudal oath to your lord. But if the lord, Hirohito, tells you to surrender then that is what you do.
Japan’s surrender and MacArthur’s reign there is a good example of American Total War in action. The use of overwhelming firepower to force your enemy to submit to your will. Thus ending the war, and hence the suffering, far sooner than the piecemeal fighting present in the Arab-Israeli conflicts. People die and they will keep on dying, while the nuke only required one instant of sacrifice to provide peace for future generations.
Kyoto was actually recommended as the primary target for a nuke target, you know. Kyoto was once the capital of Japan and was still the cultural capital of Japan, with its own shrine. Shrine as in a place to worship Shintoism, which doubles as a graveyard and church.
The Left will never mention that Kokura Arsenal, a purely military target, was the primary target for Fat Man. The bomb that was used to destroy Nagasaki.
The second plutonium bomb core was delivered to Tinian for use in the first deliverable Fat Man weapon against Kokura arsenal only days after the arrival of Little Boy. Due to weather problems related problems, the Kokura primary target was scrubbed and the secondary target Nagasaki was bombed.
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After the detonation of the first plutonium bomb core in the Trinity test, the next weapon that was available was the completed Little Boy. It was this weapon that was dropped on Hiroshima. Another Little Boy weapon would not have been ready for months, for this reason only one Little Boy unit was prepared. In contrast many Fat Man bomb assemblies were on hand (without plutonium), and the actual “Fat Man bomb” delivered against Japan only existed when assembly of the Fat Man unit with the plutonium core was completed shortly before the mission.
That is the reason why Hirohito did not surrender after the first bomb. Because the uranium core would have required many more months to assemble another such a-bomb. Not so with a plutonium core. The scientists told Hirohito that another bomb would not be around for a few months. When the US dropped another a bomb on Japan, when the leaders had not expected it to be so soon, psychological damage was done. A very high proportion of psychological damage.
The Japanese because of their code of the warrior, their honor code, and their culture would not surrender at anything less than absolute national and racial eradication. If they did not believe the US had the guts or the power to do what the US so ambly demonstrated that they would, the Japanese would have tried to get a conditional surrender after fighting a delaying defense action in Operation Olympus. The Japanese knew their island and had accurately predicted where Operation Olympus would put down the main assault force. The Japanese were fortifying that place quite heavily. The Japanese skills at fortification were actually superior to the Germans in Normandy. There were stuff the Marines found while island hopping that the Germans didn’t even think to create.
This would have invited the Soviets in to occupy or grab a portion of the Japanese mainland, potentially creating another Iron Curtail/Berlin Wall. This would have increased the risk of Civil War tensions and mistakes occuring that would cause nuclear winter. The Soviets were notoriously ‘mistake prone’ if you look at Chernobyl.
Little boy was a 15 kiloton nuke. Fatman was a 21 kiloton nuke. MIRV missiles launched from nuclear missile submarines hold many many megatons. People talking about atomic bombs being dropped as if that was a great and terrible thing should realize that these nukes were tactical nukes. Tactical, not strategic.
Nuclear weapons, like flame throwers, are essentially terror weapons. The Left are easily terrorized. They are not like the Japanese. To the Left, one kiloton might as well be 100 megatons. It is not as if the difference in destruction actually matters to them; since when did an increase in loss of life ever matter to the Left?
Source
Fixed some grammar errors when I posted this to my blog.
My method of historical analysis is as I said to Neo in the thread forward of this one. Humans are the constant. Therefore so long as you understand the basic motivations and psychological profile of the prime movers and shakers in WWII, everything else solves itself. Events and details may change. The names of political parties and ideologies may change. But humans do not.
oldflyer…”It is now fashionable to make fun of the concept of “Mutual Assured Destruction” (unfortunately abbreviated MAD), but it worked.”
Actually, I think there is now a positive *nostalgia* for MAD in many circles…there are lots of policy types who long for the “stablility’ of the cold war days and the balance of terror that made this stability possible. And there are also lots of politicians and policy types who believe that massive nuclear retaliation is a reliable safeguard agaist Iranian nuclear aggression–which is a theory I think has many holes in it.
Darrell:
One of the most interesting things I’ve seen–ever–was a car with a license plate frame that read: “Pearl Harbor Survivors Association–Never Forget”.
The car?
A Toyota. I guess that says it all.
Stumbley, good one, we tore their country down then built them back up courtesy of the american consumer and taxpayer, if only the musliims could figure this out. Guess they leave that out of the history curriculum at the madrasas.
OldFlyer: “However, if any scholar doubts the intent of the Japanese they need look no further than Okinawa. This was the last great battle before the invasion of Japan. Here, the Japanese unleashed the Kamikaze in great numbers. There was no intent to surrender or negotiate.”
That’s the truth. While looking at Okinawa, one needs also to examine what the civilians were told, and asked to do. Many died by their own hand after killing their families because they had been told that the Americans were ruthless barbarians. Presumably to make them more likely to fight to the death. I think it likely that there was similar propaganda around the mainland as well. Okinawa was an ugly place, even by the standards of war zones.
Bastiat: “In Buruma’s view the Japanese haven’t dealt nearly enough with their sins, while the Germans have, in a way, converted their guilt into the pacifistic zealotry we witness today.”
Well, Buruma isn’t the only one who thinks that.
There have been some statements from Japanese that they should be more contrite, but they tend to get shut up pretty quick. Example:
“This month, Fumio Kyuma, the Defence Minister, had to step down after he said the 1945 U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were inevitable and justified.”
They are still a ‘face’ society, and have a difficult time dealing with defeat. Even though he was only a child then, my Dad still wouldn’t buy a Japanese car (particularly a Mitsubishi) because the industrialists really never paid any price for their actions. I’d probably steer clear of the older makes too, maybe a Honda or Subaru would be o.k.
Has Japan really done much to repent for the Korean occupation, or the Rape of Nanking? Not really. I’m not even sure the average Japanese knows what happened in either place in much detail.
Buruma is right on the money about the Germans, too.
Also see Oliver Kamm’s post on his blogg.
Link
The Japanese admiral Takijiro Onishi estimated that the bombs saved 20 million lives.
There is a lot of unfinished business both Japan and the U.S. still have to deal with leftover from WWII. In many years of researching Japan-U.S. relations, aspects of the history of the Pacific Theater in WWII and the post war period, it became apparent to me that the key role the Emperor played in all areas of Japanese war plans and day to day Japanese military operations and many of the atrocities that Japan committed in WWII were downplayed or covered up by the U.S. in the immediate post WWII period; there were many avenues of investigation that U.S. government officials chose not to go down, many people they chose not to pursue, many questions they refused to ask. Japanese officials, of course, had a keen interest in minimizing Japanese guilt. The rationale given for actions by U.S. officials was that by taking/not taking the actions they did they would greatly increase the chances for a peaceful Occupation and smooth the way for Japan to become a base they desperately needed for U.S. operations in the Korean War and to make Japan into an ally in the Cold War.
General Douglas MacArthur was one of the driving forces behind these actions and it is very telling that he refused to allow any experts on Japan or Japanese culture to be a part of the team he took over to Japan to run the Occupation. It appears that the Japanese Household Agency, charged with protecting the Emperor, did exactly that by wining and dining–lots of exquisite scenery and pageantry, parties, bows, saki and giggling geishas– the often clueless members of MacArthur’s staff and by playing to the ego of MacArthur’s staff and the great man himself and charming the pants off of all of them. It seems too that many high Japanese government officials also did their duty to the Emperor by taking the blame for all sorts of war crimes and not involving the Emperor.
The U.S. suppression of the number and severity of Japanese atrocities and the central role the Emperor played in the war has allowed Japan to more effectively play the victim card over Hiroshima and Nagasaki and as time moves on, as government officials, veterans and civilians who lived through this era die off, the current incomplete picture of this history–full of gaps and patches covering many inconvenient parts of the picture–becomes the accepted reality.
Further information I uncovered about Emperor Hirohito and General MacArthur. Link
They lived in pivotal times and had to make fundamental decisions that changed the lives and destinies of both of our nations.
My daughter went to school for a year in Venezuela, where one of her friends was a Japanese exchange student. She got the impression that the Japanese still don’t own their piece of the war.
As it happens, every decision maker in WW II was a veteran of or an adult during WW I. Which was, as everybody knows, a particularly horrid war. The Versailles Treaty is widely thought to have contributed to Germany’s role twenty years later. Possibly. It was too easy.
After committing all that horror, the Germans were left to run their own show and did it again, only worse.
There was not going to be any letting down easy the second time. Not from those who came of age during WW I and lived with its social and emotional results.
The Japanese got the benefit of the German lesson.
And both have been good as gold for more than half a century.
So we were going to pound both places flat and occupy them. We might have blockaded Japan until half the population was dead. We might have bombed them for months. LeMay had plans.
But letting them up easy was not in the cards. The question was only how to do it, and how to do it with the fewest US casualties. It seems, although probably nobody was worried at the time, to have saved some millions of Japanese lives.
She got the impression that the Japanese still don’t own their piece of the war.
That is the way it should be. How long does the new generation pay for the actions of the previous? Should the Bush twins sign up because their father is a “war criminal”? Should white folks pay restitution to blacks for the slavery of their ancestors?
Clan warfare is based upon the premise that the other family needs to pay for what they did to your great great great whatever uncle. Clan warfare didn’t get humanity anywhere.
Ymar–It seems to me, though, that unless enough of the people on one side of a war feel that the people on the other side have taken some actions that amount to at least a minimal apology or aknowledgment of their fault or error, the war will never really be settled and over for succeeding generations.
the war will never really be settled and over for succeeding generations.
What is true for you is not true for the rest of everyone else.
The war has been over. The justifications created to explain why it isn’t is just that. You have not looked for an apology. You went back into history and attempted to label the time of occupation was being corrupted somehow.
It seems to me, though, that unless enough of the people on one side of a war feel that the people on the other side have taken some actions that amount to at least a minimal apology or aknowledgment of their fault or error, the war will never really be settled and over for succeeding generations.
if anyone wants to dig up their grandfathers and uncles that fought in WWII and have them hash it out with Hirohito, will have my blessing with them.
opinionjournal.comAnyone who is interested in where the meme that the US did not need to drop nuclear weapons on Japan should read:
“Propaganda Redux” by Ion Mihai Pacepa in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, August 7, 2007[free!]
An excerpt:
emphasis added.
snowonpine said:
And Alperovitz did not make it up. He was just following the party line.
“She got the impression that the Japanese still don’t own their piece of the war.” -Richard A
“That is the way it should be. How long does the new generation pay for the actions of the previous?” -Ymar
Well, I half agree with you, Ymar. It’s not about extracting a pound of flesh for justice sake (there’s already been plenty collected). It’s about them understanding it was their fault and not ours that Hiroshima and Nagasaki got smoked. People that don’t understand that are a problem, as we’ve been discussing all through this thread, right? If the evil isn’t placed properly, it gets placed improperly, no?
Generally, I think we did a good job not overreacting on the Japanese, the results speak for themselves. But we could also have taken a lesson from Japanese culture, and found a few (more, more important) fall guys to take the blame for their masters, while still leaving the Emperor in place. Symbolic offerings to the altar of peace and truth. They would understand.
A few years ago, I read through a paper posted on the CIA site that dealt specifically with recently declassified radio intercepts in the Pacific Area of Operations from the time immediately after the fall of Okinawa and up until the time the bombs were dropped.
The Japanese Navy was beaten, but the Army was not yet so. The island fights had always been intended as front line defenses. Most of the Japanese Army was still intact.
There were several more divisions available to the Japanese than was initially believed. It was also discovered, late in the planning for the invasion, that Japan held substantial air assets in deep reserve for the expected invasion.
One of the primary motivations for the use of the bombs was the real possibility that the invading fleet would take so much damage while closing on Japan from continual and sustained air attack, as well as possible submarine torpedo or suicide attacks that there would be insufficient resources remaining to maintain a viable force on Japanese soil.
There was a real fear that we’d lose the entire invasion fleet from combined damages while approaching, attempting to land forces and egressing the area covered by Japanese land based air craft.
I dont remember many details and not sure of the details I seem to recall from this paper. It was a couple years ago that I read it. Unfortunately, the paper is no longer available at the link I had saved. So, take it or leave it.
It is actually abnormal to have college or elementary aged children walk around with war guilt or guilt about their cultural mistakes. In the event that that occurs, it is most often due to brainwashing; the leftist kind. The Japanese had their 60s as well. It eventually produces cultural paralysis, war reparations, and makes you very vulnerable to Leftist propaganda operations based upon shame or guilt. Looked at what happened to Germany. All their guilt over the Jews didn’t stop their use of anti-semitism and anti-Americanism to win elections. Collective guilt translates only into the power hungry manipulating the masses on the policy level.
fall guys to take the blame for their masters,
There were a couple of key government or military leaders that killed themselves first. As did several other Japanese leaders once failure became evident in several military operations. Hara kiri is also something they understand and approved of.
Germany didn’t have that custom. So you had prisoners that tried to suicide after they realized that they couldn’t defend themselves with “following orders” anymore. And that only occured because the suicide watch was bribed and subverted.
Ymar. I should have been more clear. My daughter’s friend didn’t think it was Japan’s fault.
Manchukuo? The Japanese did it, so what was the problem. They get to do stuff like that.
We used to bomb to save American lives. The other options would have been more horrible.
To repeat: The Versailles Treaty amounted to too little punishment for what the Germans had done in 1914-1918. All the top decision makers in WW II were veterans of or had been adults during WW I, and the horrid social and emotional results.
Then the Germans did it AGAIN. But worse. They were not going to be let up easy. And the Japanese got the benefit of the German lesson.
It’s hard to imagine how angry people were at the perps of the Second World War. The bastards did it AGAIN! We have to suffer this whole thing AGAIN! Because they didn’t learn their lesson last time, but God and Satan and everything else, we will see they do this time.
As has been said before, the bomb was the least bad thing that, given the preceding paragraph, Japan was going to suffer.
If D-day has failed, Germany would have been bombed too. The only thing that saved Germany was its surrender before the bomb was ready.
The Chinese still harbor anger about WW II. They would have certainly encouraged the bombing of Japan with A-bombs until Japan surrendered no matter how many Japanese were killed. After the Doolittle raid on Japan, the Japanese went on rampage trying to capture the Doolittle raiders. During this rampage. over 250,000 Chinese were killed.