History revisionists state that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima & Nagasaki was immoral and unnecessary. They purport that the Japanese government was ready to surrender before this, albeit with little to no evidence to support this supposition.
Had American troops been forced to fight conventionally on the Japanese mainland, earlier battles in 1945 provide a vivid reminder of the facts that President Harry Truman was dealing with:
Battle of Iwo Jima – 21,844 of 22,060 Japanese troops killed
Battle of Okinawa – 95,000+ of 120,000 Japanese troops killed
Update: Jon Stewart vs. Bill Whittle h/t Sooke
There were a number of military studies done of the proposed Operation Downfall, consisting of two parts, invasion of Kyushu, called Operation Olympic, followed by the invasion of the Kanto Plain, called Operation Coronet.
The geography of Japan heavily limited the feasible invasion sites to just these two areas, making it relatively easy for Japan to know where the Allies would have to try to come ashore.
Based on the experience at Okinawa, the War Department conducted a study for Secretary Stimson. It estimated that US casualties would be 1.7-4 million, of which 400,000 to 800,000 would be fatal. It estimated that total Japanese losses would range from 5-10 million.
This was one of a number of such studies done, but it came after Okinawa. US casualties ran about 35% of Japanese casualties. All of these studies ranged considerably in their uncertainty. There was one well-established fact however. The butcher’s bill always exceeded previous estimates.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki spared everyone this unthinkable bloodbath.
Funny thing is, both those cities are in far better shape than Detroit,..
If the Japanese were on the verge of surrender before we bombed Hiroshima, why didn’t they do so immediately afterward? We waited three days before bombing Nagasaki.
The revisionists always overlook one crucial factor, the Japanese people were culturally incapable of doing anything but following their leaders with blind obediance. They were taught right from birth that the noblest thing that they could do would be to die in service to their Emperor. Surrender was the ultimate dishonour (hence the brutal treatment of the allied prisoners, they were seen as disgraceful and not worthy adversaries) to such a point that the wives and families of the soldiers on Saipan jumped over the cliffs onto the rocks below rather than bear the shame of surrender. Truman and his advisors understood that they had to shock the Japanese into realizing that there was no hope in continuing the war.
Revisionists are what they are and want what they want.
Neither has a thing to do with reality.
another thing you will notice about most people who attempt to promote historical revisionist theories is that they are for the most part idiots. For the lesser part nuts.
Revionist liberals can go to hell. These same people would justify the bombing of Pearl Harbor with a smile. A third device was ready for Tokyo. Oppenheimer wanted Hirohito to witness Trinity but was refused.
Funny how they don’t make an issue out of t he Tokyo fire bombing raids that happened earlier.
Far more destructive, high casualty count but since they were not nukes, the moron class doesn’t scream about them.
The hypocrisy level is extreme.
August 6th has always been another “white guilt day” foisted on us by historical revisionists, to which I have to say,”Bullshit”!
It always raises my ire when our milquetoast generation criticises the people who had to fight the Great Wars. We haven’t the character to stick to our guns in a series of small wars all over the planet,and the whole Country gets f***ed up over one little terrorist bastard who shouldn’t have survived.
I grew up with soldiers of both Wars,and they were,and still are, my heroes,ordinary guys who rose to the occasion,magnificently. I will not tolerate anyone running them down in my presence.
Ike,Harry ,Monty,Winston,and a score of other Leaders were spoken of with reverence in my house,and always will be. Harry S.Truman did what had to be done on Aug.6th and 9th,something our generation has no stomach for.
Aug. 6 is also my wife’s birthday, this date in history makes it impossible to forget,and I haven’t in 41 years together.
An excellent essay on the subject is Paul Fussell’s “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” He takes the revisionists out behind the woodshed.
Amen. I went to Pearl Harbour with the first of my two adopted daughters and saw the Arizona Memorial and the USS Missouri. What a different World this would be if Japan would have been allowed a negotiated surrender. China today would still be under Japanese influence and perhaps continued brutalization.
The World owes the USA and Mr. Truman for making the hard choice because it was the best choice. Not just for the sake of American soldiers but for the rest of the World. I owe America too because without the dropping of those bombs I would never have been allowed to adopt my awesome kids.
“100,000 Filipino civilians killed”.
“Aerial view of the devastated Manila in May 1945”
>>> “the scene of the worst urban fighting in the Pacific theater,”.
…-
“Battle of Manila (1945)”
“The Battle of Manila, also known as the Liberation of Manila, fought from 3 February to 3 March 1945 by American, Filipino and Japanese forces, was part of the 1945 Philippine campaign. The one-month battle, which culminated in a terrible bloodbath and total devastation of the city, was the scene of the worst urban fighting in the Pacific theater, and ended almost three years of Japanese military occupation in the Philippines (1942–1945). The city’s capture was marked as General Douglas MacArthur’s key to victory in the campaign of reconquest.”
http://www.enotes.com/topic/Battle_of_Manila_%281945%29
“Funny how they don’t make an issue out of t he Tokyo fire bombing raids”
They don’t make an issue because they know nothing about these raids. Just as they have no knowledge of the carnage that took place on Iwo Jima or Okinawa.
I think it was a mistake to radiate Japan, they became addicted to living with isotopes and now can’t seem to get enough nuclear poisoning.
The United States awards the Purple Heart Medal to anyone wounded or killed in combat. Part of the preparation for the invasion of Japan included the manufacture enough of these medals to cover expected losses.
Think of all of the casualties suffered by American forces since 1945. They have hardly made a dent in the stockpile of medals which were intended for casualties incurred in the invasion of Japan. The decision to use atomic weapons was the correct one and saved literally millions of lives on both sides.
You can revise history all you want, but nothing can change the cold hard facts.
I believe many of the Allied forces that had just finished with Hitler were being mustered to participate in the invasion of Japan. It would likely have meant another year at least of deadly fighting for them. Many British, Canadians and other Commonwealth servicemen had already been in it for 6 years.
Imagine how much more Stalin might have gotten away with without strong opposition in the west.
The USSR declared war on Japan on August 8, two days after the Hiroshima bomb, and wrested South Sakhalin Island and the Kurile Islands from Japanese control, hostilities ended September 3rd, when the Soviets had scooped up those territories. If the bomb had not been used, would they have carried the fight onto the Japanese home islands or left the heavy lifting to the Americans?
The Soviets were impressed by the American’s new weapon, and were soon working hard to make their own.
http://www.historytoday.com/mariya-sevela/sakhalin-japanese-under-soviet-rule
Further evidence of the projected bloodbath of taking Japan, main island by main island, is that the Western Allies got the Soviets to sign on at Yalta to the invasion of Japan after Germany surrendered. Even FDR who knew about the Manhattan Project (unlike then-VP Truman) knew that having millions of Soviet cannon-fodder was going to be required to take Japan by force of arms. Obviously the Western Allies didn’t think the Japanese were ready to surrender or they wouldn’t have gotten the Soviets on board. (BTW, the USSR declared war against Japan and invaded Manchuko on August 8 one month after Germany’s unconditional surrender, partway between the two atomic bombings.)
The American losses would have been far worse than planned in the Olympic (Kyushu) landings. The Japanese had identified the probable landing sites. They also had fourteen combat divisions on Kyushu, with more arriving, rather than the three expected. Think Omaha beach ten times worse.
Leftists always want to play it both ways.
The huge resources the USA poured into the Manhattan project meant tens of thousands of allied participants fighting
the Axis on many fronts were deperately lacking with wounds or death the result. Add to that the civilian death tolls.
Can you imagine the firestorm the left would have ignited after the war if after all the sacrifice involved in building the
bomb, it had not been used for whatever reason?
The left’s postwar anti atom bomb mantra had only one purpose: to protect their beloved USSR, butcher Stalin,
and his successors massive nuclear weapons program .
Those that question the use of nuclear bombs on Japan are the same who are critical of the bombing campaign against Germany. They went so far as to suggest it was a war crime. Death in the Dresden fire bombing rivaled Japan. Like dmorris I have nothing but respect and thankfulness to those who fought in both world wars. My generation will never no what they had to go through.
In my little town there was a WWI vet who served with Lawrence in the ME. After the war he toke my uncle under his wing as my grandfather had been killed in a logging accident. As my mother recounted he was putting up hay in extremely hot weather. He left the field, went into a shed and shot himself. The speculation was he had, had a flashback to the desert.
Another WWII incident was about a family member who led a patrol in Holland to capture Germans for intelligence gathering. Their patrol was discovered and they took fire with 2 dead. They made it back to their lines and Dennis volunteered to go back out again with only one companion. Again they had no luck but survived. This incident was recored by the CBCV’s Halton and named the ‘Night Patrol’.
I don’t second guess anything that was done to win those wars. I don’t pass judgement on the right or wrong of it. Many died and we should all be very thankful for those that came home.
I agrre that Truman had no choice but once they had been used it could be argued that the use of the bombs in WWII is what kept them from being used later when they probably should have been in Korea for instance.
I am sure the few remaining Canadian prisoners of war in Hong Kong and Japan were very happy the war ended sooner rather than later.
Bill Whittle had his atomic bomb opinion piece on PJ Media reposted a couple of days ago, I wish I could find it on vimeo or youtube but alas have not. It supports the above views in the way that Bill often does.
It’s worth the effort to view it. Really good stuff.
This could work in Afghanistan. They should have dropped the H-bombs day one of the war over ten years ago.
Today you’d only have a few heroin junkies “pilgrimaging” to the glass Afghanistan holy shrine with its few radiated poppies standing guard.
The dropping of the atomic bombs was a no-brainer and a good thing for a number of reasons one of the most important being that it eliminated any uncertainty about what the effect of dropping a nuclear weapon on a civilian population would be and did so with what soon afterwards would be classified as tiny atomic bombs.
Imagine if the bombs hadn’t been dropped on Japan. There would have been endless public debates between experts and academics about what the real effects of dropping the bomb would be, creating enough uncertainty that either the US or the USSR might not have been as hesitant to splatter something with a mega or gigaton weapon.
The dropping of the Bombs was a two-for, Japan surrendered and the USSR dropped its plans to capture all of Europe.. It was a brilliant solution.
The comments have covered off most points except perhaps the one: that the Japanese, 1931-1945, treated the Chinese with maximal brutality. Nanking etc.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had much to do with American restrictions on fuel for Japan because of Japanese cruelties.
The revisionist racist liberal swine never mention that little matter.
WWII was expected to last into 1946. With every year, the fighting became fiercer, more deadly weapons were introduced, and casualties rose.
And the Japanese had never surrendered – they died first, taking as many of us with them as they could. Truly, the use of nuclear weapons
against Hiroshima and Nagasaki wrought a miracle.
One of the most interesting conversations I have ever had occurred at ~6:00 pm on August 7, 1995. The previous evening I had watched an hour long ABC special on the fifty-year anniversary of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and it had angered me greatly. The thesis of the special was that the dropping of the bomb was unnecessary and was done for no other real purpose except to intimidate the Soviet Union. The special implied that the only people who wanted to drop the bomb were paranoid anti-Soviets in the US government and US soldiers who really didn’t understand that the bomb drops were not needed. The special featured extensive interviews with a baby-boomer historian who insisted that the perspective provided by time gave historians a better understanding of the military situation than that of the marines who would have performed the landings on the Japanese home islands. The historian claimed he had found a document indicting that the US thought that only 45k casualties would be sustained while conquering Japan.
I arrived at work on the 7th and subjected my co-workers to an extensive rant about the ABC special. I went on-and-on about the expected casualty estimates, the 38k casualties suffered by the US in the battle for Guadalcanal, the experience of the US military wrt Japanese soldiers fighting to the death, the huge number of Japanese civilians who would have starved to death in the event of a protracted battle against the desperate and resource-poor Japanese fighting to defend their homeland against an invader, etc. After a while, I realized that I was being tiresome. I stopped ranting and apologized to my co-workers for getting on my soapbox. To my great surprise, both my co-workers were looking at me with rapt interest and implored me to go on. “Go on”, they said. “We’ve never heard this before”, they said.
Now here is the kicker: one of my co-workers was a college junior, about 22 years old, who had grown up in the Ukraine and had emigrated to the US when he was 13. The other was a sophomore, about 20 years old, who had grown up and gone to public school in Colorado. Both told me that they had been taught that the bombs were dropped on Japan in order to intimidate the USSR and had never even heard other arguments for dropping the bomb. So I discovered that fateful evening that the public schools in at least some American cities were teaching the Soviet Union’s version of the history of the dropping of the atomic bombs to American schoolchildren.
DAMN LIE-BERALS AND THEIR LIE-BERAL LIES! TAKE THAT JAPAN! TO HELL WITH TRUDEAU AND HIS COMMIE CHARTER RAWR RAWR RAWRRRR
SO, 30 to 0 so far. Not a single revisionist view?
I’m not 100% sure, but I believe I lost a Japanese client once for honestly answering his question about Hiroshima (I was FOR). I have a sense (?) that he was OK with Hiroshima but not Nagasaki.
Everything is under review this end.
I will say — and no more — that I’m absolutely sure now that we should not have entered WW1 and that the US entry would not have been possible but for the Revolution of 1913.
Many days I even wonder about WW2.
I recently read, and re-read, Ralph Raico’s libertarian-revisionist Great Wars & Great Leaders. Gulp! Let’s just say, based on these comments, that I won’t be “live-bloggin” it any time soon.
I’m conflicted on August 6th: it’s my youngest daughter’s birthday, age 39.
andycanuck “(BTW, the USSR declared war against Japan and invaded Manchuko on August 8 one month after Germany’s unconditional surrender, partway between the two atomic bombings.)”
For the sake of accuracy, Germany was done in May.
Have a look at this excellent piece of history from the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence, esp. on what SIGINT revealed of growing Japanese strength on Kyushu, and on the decision to drop the atomic bombs:
“The Final Months of the War With Japan”
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/the-final-months-of-the-war-with-japan-signals-intelligence-u-s-invasion-planning-and-the-a-bomb-decision/csi9810001.html
Mark
Ottawa
If a third bomb had fallen on Moscow we wouldn’t have to tolerate today’s revisionists.
I believe the revisionist argument has been whittled down to Allied stubborness v.v the position of the emporer. This is totally unsupported.
Japanese inquiries re the emporer prior to the use of atomic bombs were low level and misdidrected (to the Soviets who were already planning to declare war on Japan and were clearly acting duplicitously).
The Potsdam declaration made no mention of the emporer’s position whatsoever to which the Japanese asked for no clarification and treated the ultimatum with contemptuous silence.
In fact, the Japanese War Cabinet had strong support for the idea of a decisive battle when Allied forces invaded to gain better terms for the emporer, including their fantasy of no occupation or Allied war crimes courts.
Even after the emporer instructed surrender a coup was attempted, clearly showing the military’s lack of respect. The Allies stated the emporer, though subject to occupational authority, would not be tried as a war criminal and the Japanese people were free to retain him as their leader. The hawks stubbornly held out for a decisive battle, until the emporer finally ended the matter for them.
IOW there was a snowball’s chance in hell chance for Japanese surrender prior to the use of atomic weapons.
BTW that use likely deterred future use of nukes. Without a real life and death demonstration of their awesome destructive power, where would the threshold of their use have been?
Me No Dhimmi at August 6, 2012 12:23 PM
I endorse the revisionist view that the US entery into WW1 was a blunder, that there was such fatigue that a negotiated peace would have occurred….with several caviats…
In the scheme of things the US contribution on the Western Front had no real consequence.
The tipping point was the Battle of Amiens, where the British finally got the combined arms doctrine right…..
The biggest caviat is that these assumptions like battle plans fail to survive contact with reality.
Any arguments about the atomic attacks….are really projecting alternate realities with no reasonable accuracy.
As Robert Oppenheimer commented except for background radiation Yokahoma and othe fire bombed cities were indistinguishable from Nagasaki or Hiroshima. Japan could have capitulated without the atomic attacks or had successfully resisted Operation Olympic….too many variables to compute.
Basically….ya just had ta be there….
I do know that the Soviet’s late war offensive was to over-run the Japanese atomic labs in Manchuria and Korea….It is reasonably certain that Japan had tested an atomic device….a genuine game changer…chance being what it is.
Remember that the Soviets and now N Korea prevent any possibility to ever verify the Japanese atomic test.
It took 2 bombs to break the Japanese war spirit.
Don’t forget, that after the **second** bomb was dropped, the Imperial Supreme War Council was tied in the decision to fight on. Get it? 2 cities destroyed, and 3 of 6 wanted to ‘keep it going’. Surrender was not an option for that culture.
When Hirohito accepted the idea of surrender, some in the military found that unacceptable, and they staged a coup — which failed.
Seppuku was still in style back then. If ever there was a culture of ‘dying for your country’, it was Imperial Japan. A lot of people living today are lucky that those bombs made the surrender. And even then, it almost didnt work. The bombs narrowly averted a much bigger disaster.
CT and Eagle, and others, well said.
The revision of history is done to promote a certain political agenda.
My son challenged his Grade XI ethics teacher when she spouted the “immorality of dropping the bomb on the Japanese” line and to her credit she offered to give him a pass on the final exam & give him an A if he could present a convincing argument for using the bomb. He did a lot of research & wrote a discussion paper that looked at the issue from several different angles ….in the end he got his A & the teacher admitted there was a lot she hadn’t known about the situation.
sasquatch “I endorse the revisionist view that the US entery into WW1 was a blunder”
Revisionist. WWI was almost the stupidest war ever fought. The Boer War was stupider. The Germans were almost homogeneous German while the great powers, who held hundreds of millions in slavery, spouted off about freedom and democracy.
The health of Europe would have been improved, had Russia and France been handed a quick thrashing. Almost every battle we have fought in the last 100 years and will fight for the next 100 years has consequences flowing from the settlement of WWI to blame. Revisionist? Isn’t this settled science? I’ll have to ask Suzuki.
Fred – the incendiary missions on Tokyo are ignored because the communist left in the US wanted US nuclear disarmament, so they and all leftist media organs deprecated nukes, exclusively.
So long as the US maintained a large nuclear force, the Soviets at best could only hang on to their gains. The communist left, of course, wanted the defeat of the US by the Soviets. This group is still with us, in the form of Barry Obama, who wants to eliminate the US advantage in nukes. ( By the way, the semaphore signals for N and D ( nuclear disarmament ) superimposed, was the origin of the ” peace symbol ” of the ’60’s left. )
Maz2: You’re right about the 100,000 civilian casualties in Manila, but many of those were actually killed by the Japanese just prior to the battle. Furthermore, Manila did not end the battle for the Philippines. A zillion Japanese had withdrawn to the ‘boondocks’ (Tagalog word) and continued fighting hard.
An overall comment: no matter how I struggle against it, I have to admit to some admiration for Emperor Hirohito. Many comments above have made the points that the Japanese were obedient, considered surrender to be an appalling disgrace to their parents, their ancestors, their village, their teachers, their country, and above all to their Emperor. That’s just how they were, and I’d like to point out there are lessons for us to learn about other, more modern adversaries who have likewise been indoctrinated from the very cradle.
Interestingly, Hirohito shared all those beliefs, and even more so because he was a god: not King-Emperor by the grace of God like George VI, but the actual God-Emperor.
We all know how hard it is to persuade or argue True Believers to some other point of view. Yet Hirohito not only surrendered, but he also relinquished his divinity. That is so huge for a Japanese emperor that I can’t quite do justice to it in words. Certainly one quality that had to be involved in his decision was enormous moral
courage.
But it took both bombs to do it. It took both bombs, but even then it was a near-run thing. His military advisers told him Japan could survive many more bombs; they wanted a major land battle with very many Allied casualties in order to discuss terms for an “armistice” or “cease-fire”. But after Bomb 2 Hirohito made the decision on his own to surrender (almost) unconditionally.
That was very very big, and try as I might, I can’t deny it.
The War Crimes perpetrated by Japanese Imperial Forces are legendary. Prior to Japan surrendering, it was determined thusly, the aggressor has set the rules. During the battle of Midway, two pilots, one of whom had survived Pearl Harbour by using his plane’s guns while stuck on the deck were weighed down and drowned after capture at Midway. One need only look at the photo of the Japanese Officer or Non Com about to behead a blindfolded Australian Army Non Com. When you see that photo, you know immediately that nothing but total and utter obliteration of the Japanese was demanded by the free Christian Nations of the world. If that is not enough for you in Canada, go find a Hong Kong Veteran Prisoner of War, if you can. The horrors they faced are rarely ever repeated. Nukes, every day and any day until they surrendered. Just that simple.
The Bill Whittle video “Jon Stewart, War Criminals & The True Story of the Atomic Bombs”
can be found here:
http://goo.gl/HwC7x
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=mpg&mpid=56&load=1808
@Richards in Vancouver:
“That’s just how they were, and I’d like to point out there are lessons for us to learn about other, more modern adversaries who have likewise been indoctrinated from the very cradle.”
Unfortunately we’re not a nuclear power and can’t nuke the NDP. Plus, someone would have to figure out how to get them all in the same spot at once.
@ marco
Easy, just give CBC a story with 5 witness support that Jack Layton was in hiding, has fully recovered and will be speaking in Quebec at such and such a time and place. Cruel but effective.
I find this revisionist history disgusting, primarily because at the time, 67 years ago, no one knew who would win the war and the future was a blank slate. We did what we had to and in the process saved untold thousands of lives. War is ugly and these armchair experts were not there. Hindsight is always 20/20. Sure, we made some mistakes, but not 67 years ago. War is war and the only options are win or die trying. If the japs/ Russians or germans had the bomb first only a complete idiot would think they wouldn’t have used them.
I’m still waiting for the Japanese to apologize for forcing us to use the atomic bomb on them. So far they have accepted no blame and have shown no remorse. P.S. I know the culture well I have spent many years in the martial arts and have visited Japan in the 60’s before the great historical revisions.
A read of the relevant last chapters of Churchill’s sixth volume on the second world war should inform the matter of whether or not Truman used atomic weapons on Japan to intimidate the USSR.
By Churchill’s account, Truman was trying to position himself as a sort of honest broker between the British and the Soviets, to the dismay of Churchill, who reversed the draw-down of British forces from Europe prior to the Potsdam Conference and wrote Truman directly and at length on matter of Soviet intentions. The “Iron Curtain” speech was delivered in 1946 as an attempted wake-up call to America about Soviet intentions, and (if memory serves) the Truman Doctrine did not come in until 1947, in response to Britain’s decision to withdraw support for anti-communist forces in Greece and Turkey. So, the idea that America was looking for a confrontation with the USSR in August, 1945 appears to me to be inaccurate.
My understanding of the situation in Tokyo matches those above which note the resistance to surrender even after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Truman was a Democrat. That he made this decision ( Can you imagine Obama doing this to his beloved Islamists?) proves beyond doubt it was a dire period to be alive.
That many factors went into the process, but humanitarian reasons along with Political for both sides good. Where front & center.
I’ve stood in the epicentre of the Nagasaki bomb. Yes, the military decision to drop the bomb was a terrible but very necessary one.
Such revisionism would hardly be accepted in Asia where many received the brunt of militaristic Japanese’s cruelty.
Japan wasn’t going to quit after losses at sea, Okinawa, saturation bombing of Tokyo or even after Hiroshima. Their mindset was equivalent to jihadists today.
Not only that, but “Bomber Harris” was ALSO on also on the right track. The revisionists of today make me puke. They are all pompous cowards.