67 years ago yesterday

[Gipper]

This is well written and I hope you and others will read it. I believed like you, but I do not any longer. The atomic bombings were wrong and unnecessary and may well have been based in racism.

Was the Atomic Bomb Necessary to End World War II?

The first use of an atomic bomb in warfare took place on August 6, 1945. The weapon was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima by the U.S. bomber Enola Gay, instantaneously destroying four square miles in the middle of the population center. The blast killed 66,000 men, women, and children, and injured an additional 69,000. A full 67 percent of Hiroshima’s buildings, transportation systems, and urban structures were destroyed.
The next (and only other) atomic bomb to be dropped in warfare was detonated over the Japanese city of Nagasaki three days later. That blast killed 39,000 civilians and injured another 25,000; 40 percent of the city was destroyed or unrepairable. The Japanese government surrendered to the U.S. government on August 10, 1945.
Since the last “good war,” a debate has ensued over the moral legitimacy of the use of nuclear weapons, particularly against civilians. The critics hold that it is a crime to incinerate civilians en masse; defenders commonly claim that the bombing was necessary to bring the war to a close, thereby saving countless American lives.
Most of those who make this claim do so in earnest. The problem is that this defense is both historically false, and taken to its logical conclusion, extremely dangerous.
But a discussion of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot proceed without an overview of the imperialist motives for Japanese military aggression, which reflected the age-old drive for power through military intimidation and conquest. The Japanese desired a series of conquests, to constitute the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity sphere. This involved, most importantly, penetration into Korea, Manchuria, China, French Indochina, Malaya, and Burma.
What was clearly not their goal was a prolonged conflict with the United States or any of the other Allied Powers. After establishing their Asian imperium and a defensive perimeter, the Japanese expected to reach a negotiated peace.
It should be clear that the attack on the American military base at Pearl Harbor was not a part of the long-term planning of the Japanese government. Indeed, conservatives and isolationists have long held the view that the Roosevelt administration provoked the Japanese into their aggressive stance as a back door to war in Europe.
Consider the facts leading up to the attack: Roosevelt had made a commitment to Churchill that the United States would enter into the Asian conflict if the British were attacked; the United States was shipping munitions to both Russia and Great Britain; Roosevelt had placed an embargo on oil and metals against Japan; and in the most egregious example, had sent the “unofficial” Flying Tigers to attack the Japanese in China in 1941. All were violations of U.S. neutrality and acts of belligerency.
Vocal critics on the Old Right—such as John T. Flynn and Harry Elmer Barnes—held that the Roosevelt administration was aware of the attack in advance, both from decoded transmissions and intelligence reports. The weight of history has ironed out the appearance of radicalism from the latter contention. Whatever the truth of the Pearl Harbor affair, an extended war with the United States was not a desire of the Japanese.
Japanese Objectives
Apologists for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki need to consider the overall thrust of the Japanese objectives. These objectives do not square with the notion that Japan was intractably set into a policy of mortal combat with the Americans. Not that the Japanese were not willing to fight—they did so for four bloody and grueling years. Yet the oft-repeated claim that the Japanese were willing to sacrifice every last individual before ending the war is nonsense.
In reality, the Japanese were willing to end hostilities with the United States as quickly as they began. Startlingly neglected is the January 1945 offer of the Japanese government to surrender. As the eminent English jurist Frederick J.P. Veale pointed out in Advance to Barbarism,
“Belatedly it has been discovered that seven months before it [the atomic bomb] was dropped, in January 1945, President Roosevelt received via General MacArthur’s headquarters an offer by the Japanese Government to surrender on terms virtually identical to those accepted by the United States after the dropping of the bomb: In July 1945, as we know, Roosevelt’s successor, President Truman, discussed with Stalin at Bebelsburg the Japanese offer to surrender.”
Clearly, then, the bomb did not have to be dropped to save the lives of American soldiers. The war in the Pacific could have ended prior to the European conflict. One suspects that the conflagration’s extension beyond the confines of necessity had more to do with the politics of war than military strategy. The fact that consultation with Stalin played a key role in the decision tends to implicate both what historian William L. Neumann pointed to as “the historic ambitions of Russia in Asia” and “the expansionist element in Stalinist Communism.”
The Japanese offer to surrender came at a time when surrender made sense. Consider the strange apology for the bombing offered by the historian Robert R. Smith, the logic of which may escape even the most alert reader:
“Allied air, surface, and submarine operations had cut the home islands from all sources of raw materials. The effective and close blockade of the Allies established around the home islands would ultimately have made it impossible for the Japanese to supply their military and civilian components with even the bare essentials of life. An early surrender was inevitable, probably even without the impetus supplied by the atomic blasts. It was better for both the Allies and the Japanese the end came when it did.”
Even if the Japanese had showed no signs of surrender and had remained obstinate in belligerency, the notion that the most human carnage possible must be inflicted on the civilians of an enemy government to force a surrender and minimize the losses of one’s own troops is perverse. Consider the consequences of adopting a policy of total war. Logically, if you expect an enemy to pursue this strategy, you will do everything in your power to do the same before the enemy has the opportunity to annihilate you.
Critics of the bombing have made a strong moral case against the action. This is why the defenders of the bombing use strongly moralistic terms themselves. One of the results is possibly the most bizarre and obviously wrong.
Most veterans and defenders of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki claim that whatever the reasons for the bombing and its support, racism was not among them. This is simply not true. The U.S. War Department and related agencies that specialized in producing hate propaganda and lies developed specifically racialist attacks on the Japanese.
Propaganda films, shown to theaters across the country, whipped Americans into war hysteria with films attacking the Japanese with their “grinning yellow faces.” American movie audiences were encouraged to cheer as they watched images of the “upstart yellow dwarfs” meeting their timely ends. The government played on and encouraged prejudice and specifically racial animosity against the Japanese. To be fair, the Japanese held—and still hold—similar views of Americans, views not discouraged by their government.
The most revealing aspect of this latter point is not that racism was involved in drumming up the war spirit, but rather that the truth of the matter has been so thoroughly obscured.
Oddly enough, many apologists are conservatives, who should be the first to recognize that the essence of government is its monopoly on violence. This is a paramount consideration in their analysis of the role of the government in domestic affairs. Consistency demands that conservatives begin to apply their principles across the board—to foreign policy as well as domestic policy. The alternative is the road we now travel, and it leads to total war and the total state.http://www.thefreemanonline.org/features/the-ethics-of-war-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-after-50-years/

The type in bold was by me.

Please read that last paragraph carefully. Total war...total state... We conservatives must always fight against this because it is one of the creeds of the totalitarian and the progressive.

 

[Johnny Tremain]

Everything, to the liberal, everything that has ever been spoken, written or even existed is RACIST.
Everything. The soil below your feet, the auto you drove to work. RACIST.
The Bible, all religions, all human thought--RACIST.
The Periodic Chart of Elements--RACIST.

 

[Gipper]

Everything, to the liberal, everything that has ever been spoken, written or even existed is RACIST.
Everything. The soil below your feet, the auto you drove to work. RACIST.
The Bible, all religions, all human thought--RACIST.
The Periodic Chart of Elements--RACIST.

Problem with your theory in this case....some who cite racism in the dropping of the a-bombs aren't liberal. They are conservatives and libertarians.

But, generally I can agree with your post. Libs scream racism or sexism today at every turn, yet they ignore the blatant racism and sexism found outside the USA.

 

[Johnny Tremain]

Problem with your theory in this case....some who cite racism in the dropping of the a-bombs aren't liberal. They are conservatives and libertarians.

But, generally I can agree with your post. Libs scream racism or sexism today at every turn, yet they ignore the blatant racism and sexism found outside the USA.

Precisely.
The words--and even the concepts--have virtually no meaning whatsoever today.