My father was a US Marine on Okinawa in 1945. He had just spent 3 months locked into what had degenerated into WW1 on an island against an enemy that preferred death to surrender (something you can’t accuse the Germans of). He had spent his 22nd birthday in a mud filled hole, ate up with open, infected sores and surrounded by the rapidly decomposing bodies of his friends because the shelling was so intense that they couldn’t get their dead out. Despite no hope whatsoever of holding the Americans, the Japanese Imperial soldier continued to fight to the death, taking thousands with him.

When it ended, they started training and re-equipping for the invasion of the main islands. They were openly told to expect 98% casualties on the opening day of the invasion, 1st MarDiv being slotted to go onto the beaches around Tokyo as the lead assault unit.

When news came down that the bombs had been dropped and the war had ended, he told me that they wept openly, battle hardened Marines. “It was if someone had lifted a death sentence off our heads. The way the Japanese fought we would have had to kill all of them before it was over, and in the process they would have killed most of us. It wasn’t a very pleasant thing, but I’m god damned glad Harry Truman dropped that bomb.”

That was from a guy who grew up in the Depression and spent what would have been his sophmore and junior years at Mich. State damn near getting killed in the Pacific.

This Monday morning quarterback stuff is bollocks. Until you’ve been face to face with people who’ve been conditioned from earliest childhood that to die for a diety is the greatest expression of their individual and collective self, you will never begin to fathom what would have happened had the US been forced to undertake an invasion of the main islands.

This is old news.

The Internal assessment of the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey of June, 1946 stated that “Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”

Admiral William D. Leary, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, agreed, calling the atomic bomb “a barbarous weapon,” also noting that: “The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

The British scientist P.M.S. Blackett, one of Churchill’s advisers, wrote after the war that dropping the atomic bomb was “the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.”

Comments such as those of Hurricane Jim show how difficult it is for Americans, especially those of previous generations, to come to turns with the crime against humanity they inflicted against the Japanese people during WWII.

Most of us have seen Togo’s telegram to Sato: “Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace. It is his Majesty’s heart’s desire to see the swift termination of the war.”

Zinn offers some reasons — in addition to the obvious fact that Hiroshima was the opening salvo of the cold war, not the deciding factor in the end of WWII — why Truman was so reluctant to accept the (eminently reasonable) terms:

“There is also evidence that domestic politics played an important role in the decision. In his recent book, Freedom From Fear: The United States, 1929-1945 (Oxford, 1999), David Kennedy quotes Secretary of State Cordell Hull advising Byrnes, before the Potsdam conference, that “terrible political repercussions would follow in the U.S.” if the unconditional surrender principle would be abandoned. The President would be “crucified” if he did that, Byrnes said. Kennedy reports that “Byrnes accordingly repudiated the suggestions of Leahy, McCloy, Grew, and Stimson,” all of whom were willing to relax the “unconditional surrender” demand just enough to permit the Japanese their face-saving requirement for ending the war.”

when tokyo was firebombed the americans killed (burned to death) 100,000 people, mostly women, children, and elderly. in 1 night apparently.
also tachiarai, oita, and omura were firebombed.
over 50 other medium sized japanese cities and towns were given the same treatment.

brigadier general bonner fellers, chief of psychological operations in the pacific under general douglas macarthur referred to the tokyo bombing “one of the most ruthless and barbaric killings of noncombatants in all history.”

the atomic bombs were no less barbaric but the japanese people would be rightly pissed about being used as human test subjects for such a horrible technique.

(crime against humanity they inflicted against the Japanese people during WWII.)

The people of Nanking will see this in quite a different light.

The people of Nanking will see this in quite a different light. hjim

why?

i kind of think that the people of Nanking would be rather against the killing of civilians don’t you?

it’s not like the americans were exacting revenge on their behalf