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I feel no shame about the idea that we dropped two atomic weapons on Japan in 1945.
In fact, I kinda brag on it every year.
Dropping those bombs meant that Operation Downfall was never implemented.
That saved countless American lives.
It also saved countless Japanese lives.
The invasion of Japan would hardly have been unopposed and the resistance met during the island hopping campaign led US planners to think that casualties would be extremely severe.
The atomic bombs disrupted the hold the Japanese Army had on the reins of government, and allowed a surrender to be made that didn't lead to another war in a generation or two. I note that in the intervening 76 years we haven't had to drop another nuke on Japan.
The alternate history theory that the military controlled government was on the verge of petitioning for an end to the war, if true, would have led to conditions that would have guaranteed a fresh war with Japan in much the same way Germany started a second war in the late '30's.
This war would have been with atomic weapons on both sides because Japan wasn't really all that far behind us in the research. Giving them 20-30 years to finish that research would have meant they would have the bomb come WW3.
How many lives have been saved from that never happening?
This is actually just a long form way of saying, Nikole Hannah-Jones doesn't know shit about history.
Between not having to implement Operation Downfall and the corresponding aerial campaigns that included firebombing every possible building, actively deforesting the forests, destroying by poison all the farmland, and deep-penetration strikes against any mine or water supply, Japan as a nation and as a people would have ended.
ReplyDeleteMy father, when based in Japan and then Korea just after the active part of the Korean War, got to play around with the ordnance disposal teams that were still blowing up stuff and sealing off mines and caves and got to see all the things they were playing with. The Japanese were well-prepared to wage a very long campaign of complete destruction, and most likely they'd have used chemical and biological weapons against the invaders and against the US homeland (via an increase in balloon attacks carrying real horrors) and... nukes. The Japs really weren't that far from achieving a bomb or three or four.
People like Ms. Three Names just don't understand reality. Like the reality that we as a nation are still issuing Purple Hearts minted for Operation Downfall. Nor the followup reports from 1946 and 1948 that basically concluded that the original estimates of casualties were way understated, once US observers had a chance to see exactly what Hell the Japanese were willing to unleash upon us.
The two bombs allowed Japan to survive. As a nation, as a people, as a productive spot on this earth. And... the two bombs allowed us (the US of A) to not destroy what humanity was left in us by August 1945, after witnessing the horrors of what we found in France and Germany, and what we had uncovered in the Pacific and China as we retook lost land.
She's the same type of rotten spud that thought appeasement with Hitler was possible. That thought the socialization of the US by FDR was a good idea. That Mussolini was cool because the trains ran on time. That Argentina was perfect under the Perons because Evita looked like such a nice person. That thought the Cuban Liberation with CHE! was soooo cool because CHE! and Fidel looked so masculine and coool.
Yeah. No.
I trust modern Japan because they surrendered, and the way they changed afterwards. I trust modern Japan much more than modern Germany, or even modern England. They went from being space aliens in human shape to real humans. While those other countries have turned slowly into aliens in human form.
Like the reality that we as a nation are still issuing Purple Hearts minted for Operation Downfall.
DeleteI read back during Gulf War 2 after 9/11 that we were still using body bags made for Operation Downfall.
Hey Angus;
ReplyDeleteI saw the pictures that the Japanese Soldiers were teaching Japanese civilians how to spear American GI's with Bamboo Spears, and other booby traps. We would have had to annihilate them as a society to beat them, an armistice was a non starter, we saw that with Germany in a Generation, they would have come back stronger and with more lives lost in the future. Pay the butcher bill now or pay the higher bill later.
One of my martial arts instructors took a Japanese spear class from a little old Japanese lady who at the age of 13 was training other children the fine art of spitting GI Joe on a spear, whether metal or bamboo.
DeleteOne of my uncles served in the Phillipines and Okinawa. It is possible that had we not dropped the bombs on Japan he might have been part of the eventual invasion of Japan, and he might not have made it home. A lot of other people's uncles and fathers might not have either.
ReplyDeleteMy father was in the CBI, and my mother's father was serving in the Pacific as a chaplain. Had it gone to a full invasion, both of them might have gone, and I might never have existed. (Whether this is a desirable or undesirable outcome is not for me to say.) And a lot of people I've known had fathers or grandfathers who might well have not come back from an invasion of Japan.
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