The Horrors of Hiroshima in Context

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Victor Davis Hanson:

The dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remains the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history.

No one knows exactly how many Japanese citizens were killed by the two American bombs. A macabre guess is around 140,000. The atomic attacks finally shocked Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese militarists into surrendering.

John Kerry recently visited Hiroshima. He became the first secretary of state to do so — purportedly as a precursor to a planned visit next month by President Obama, who is rumored to be considering an apology to Japan for America’s dropping of the bombs 71 years ago.

The horrific bombings are inexplicable without examining the context in which they occurred.

In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on the unconditional surrender of Axis aggressors. The bomb was originally envisioned as a way to force the Axis leader, Nazi Germany, to cease fighting. But the Third Reich had already collapsed by July 1945 when the bomb was ready for use, leaving Imperial Japan as the sole surviving Axis target.

Japan had just demonstrated with its nihilistic defense of Okinawa — where more than 12,000 Americans died and more than 50,000 were wounded, along with perhaps 200,000 Japanese military and civilian casualties — that it could make the Americans pay so high a price for victory that they might negotiate an armistice rather than demand surrender.

Tens of thousands of Americans had already died in taking the Pacific islands as a way to get close enough to bomb Japan. On March 9-10, 1945, B-29 bombers dropped an estimated 1,665 tons of napalm on Tokyo, causing at least as many deaths as later at Hiroshima.

Over the next three months, American attacks leveled huge swaths of urban Japan. U.S. planes dropped about 60 million leaflets on Japanese cities, telling citizens to evacuate and to call upon their leaders to cease the war.

Japan still refused to surrender and upped its resistance with thousands of Kamikaze airstrikes. By the time of the atomic bombings, the U.S. Air Force was planning to transfer from Europe much of the idle British and American bombing fleet to join the B-29s in the Pacific.

Perhaps 5,000 Allied bombers would have saturated Japan with napalm. The atomic bombings prevented such a nightmarish incendiary storm.

The bombs also cut short plans for an invasion of Japan — an operation that might well have cost 1 million Allied lives, and at least three to four times that number of well-prepared, well-supplied Japanese defenders.

There were also some 2 million Japanese soldiers fighting throughout the Pacific, China, and Burma — and hundreds of thousands of Allied prisoners and Asian civilians being held in Japanese prisoner-of-war and slave-labor camps. Thousands of civilians were dying every day at the hands of Japanese barbarism. The bombs stopped that carnage as well.

The Soviet Union, which signed a non-aggression pact with Japan in 1941, had opportunistically attacked Japan on the very day of the Nagasaki bombing.

By cutting short the Soviet invasion, the bombings saved not only millions more lives, but kept the Soviets out of postwar Japan, which otherwise might have experienced a catastrophe similar to the subsequent Korean War.

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The context we should keep in mind is the context at the time when both bombs were dropped. Truman and the military did not know precisely the power of the bomb. Many had the notion it was some kind of super-incendiary type of munition and its effect was devastating. Also, when the three devices were sent to the Pacific, only five devices had been built. The one in the initial test had failed to detonate (dud). The second one was the successful Trinity detonation. Three devices remained.

Did the dropping of the bombs hasten the war’s end? Probably. Did it save a countless number of lives on both sides? Probably. The casualty estimates for the invasion of the Japanese home islands were considerable. But, these two questions will forever reside under the heading of “what if” since the invasion scenario did not play out.

As to whether Obama will apologize for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, anything is possible with him. The Japanese are not fishing for an apology, and never have. And, they will likely will not ask for one. They understand, and we understand, there are things that happen in war that you do not apologize for.

Both war crimes proceedings, Nuremburg and Tokyo, closed the book on that era. We should leave it at that, including Obama.

They understand, and we understand, there are things that happen in war that you do not apologize for.

I’m not sure that I agree. Three-quarters of a century later, there may be things that both the Japan and the United States should apologize for.

We deliberately targeted civilian populations, both in Europe and Japan. We like to make excuses or pretend that didn’t happen, but it did, and it wasn’t always necessary. There was no military justification for the incineration of Dresden, for example.

The Japanese are in deep national denial about what happened in China, and about the magnitude of Japanese war crimes in general. The denial has carried over generations. Many Japanese genuinely don’t understand why the Yasukuni shrine is so controversial. They really don’t know what the armies of Japan did in far off places.

Apologies are a recognition. I don’t see apologies used in that fashion as a sign of weakness. They can be useful. When you’re on the receiving end, they can sometimes encourage much needed examination of things that have been kept hidden for far too long. It isn’t a good idea to cover up or forget what war can turn us into.

If there is any sort of “apology” made, what would interest me the most would be the response. It might be a while in coming.

@Greg:

I’m not sure that I agree.

Surprise, surprise!. We are shocked that you don’t agree.

Hillary says something has to be done about guns, there were 32,000 people killed by guns last year in the US. She’s not concerned about the 1.2 million babies killed by abortions during that time.

An estimated 3.1 million children who were already born die as a result of nutritional deficiency every year.

Perhaps obsessing over terminated pregnancies that never resulted in births to begin with might be a case of seriously backwards prioritization.

@Greg:

An estimated 3.1 million children

Greg, you need to change your source for factual information. Your number is garbage. Year to date as of this minute for the World is 152,555 deaths due to nutrition, 13, 091,000 due to abortions. That’s like 86 killed for each one that dies from nutrition.

http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/live-world-death-totals

@Greg:

Perhaps obsessing over terminated pregnancies that never resulted in births

Is that supposed to be a nicer way of saying: Babies that were killed before they had a chance to be born.?

@Redteam, #6:

Greg, you need to change your source for factual information. Your number is garbage.

Your linked website is stating a lower figure because they’re not counting children whose deaths can ultimately be attributed to particular diseases, totally ignoring the fact that chronic malnutrition is often the factor that has rendered them highly susceptible to such diseases to begin with. Evidently a child doesn’t die of a problem related to nutritional deficiency unless the ultimate cause of death is starvation.

“We included Abortions in this presentation for added perspective not because we consider it a death, but because of the impact it has on population growth in certain parts of the World.”

Right. I’m sure that’s why they included that number on a list of causes of death. Obviously it was included because somebody has an anti-abortion agenda.

From World Child Hunger Facts:

6.3 million children under age five died in 2013, nearly 17,000 every day. The risk of a child dying before completing five years of age is highest in Africa (90 per 1000 live births), about 7 times higher than in Europe (12 per 1000 live births).

Approximately 3.1 million children die from hunger each year. Poor nutrition caused nearly half (45%) of deaths in children under five in 2011.

Children who are poorly nourished suffer up to 160 days of illness each year. Undernutrition magnifies the effect of every disease, including measles and malaria. The estimated proportions of deaths in which undernutrition is an underlying cause are roughly similar for diarrhea (61%), malaria (57%), pneumonia (52%), and measles (45%) Malnutrition can also be caused by diseases, such as the diseases that cause diarrhea, by reducing the body’s ability to convert food into usable nutrients.

@Redteam, #7:

Babies that were killed before they had a chance to be born?

That’s a logical fallacy known as begging the question, which is a form of circular reasoning. Your argument is nothing more than an assumption of the truth of the thing you’re trying to prove.

Babies are not being killed before they have a chance to be born, because they have to be born—or at least have to have developed to a certain point relatively late in gestation—before they can be properly called babies.

One fundamental problem on the right is that many don’t understand or won’t acknowledge how logic works, and how logic can expose the soundness or weakness of an argument.

Abortion has nothing whatsoever to do with the topic of this thread.

@Greg #9:

To actually HAVE an intelligent conversation with another person, BOTH people have to have a modicum of intelligence. In your exchange with Redteam, that condition is not met.
(Watch as he connects the wrong dots.)

@Greg:

Babies are not being killed before they have a chance to be born, because they have to be born—or at least have to have developed to a certain point relatively late in gestation—

you’re making progress, at least you’re admitting that ‘some’ babies are killed before they are born.

Your linked website is stating a lower figure because they’re not counting children whose deaths can ultimately be attributed to particular diseases,

doesn’t matter, you can add all the deaths (not caused by accident, murder, or injuries in the world except the top 3, Heart, Cancer, and Respiratory and abortions total more than that. Besides, you clearly said “An estimated 3.1 million children who were already born die as a result of nutritional deficiency every year. ” .

@George Wells: George, you’re clearly envious. If you think my numbers are wrong, provide some proof.

@Greg: I find it rather humorous that you linked to a fund raising site for your authority. How about a reliable source with some real numbers. As I said, total all you want to from actual numbers and you will not approach the number of deaths per year from malnutrition that you will get from abortions.

@George Wells:

BOTH people have to have a modicum of intelligence.

you found out where that went when you conceded defeat on your argument about the consumption of water and how much radioactive materials was made by man. Is there another subject you need to be embarrassed about?

#12:

And once again, predictably, you connected the wrong dots.
Before birth, it’s called a “fetus,” not a “baby.”
If you kill it BEFORE it is born, you are killing a fetus.
If you kill it AFTER it is born, you are killing a baby.
I’m not talking about your numbers – I don’t CARE.
I AM talking about your butchering the language.
You said:
“Babies that were killed before they had a chance to be born”
Greg was right.
You should have said:
“FETUSES that were killed blah-blah-blah.”
Not “babies”.
And, of course, you are STILL confused.
Envious?
Yeah. Right.

@George Wells:

Before birth, it’s called a “fetus,” not a “baby.”

Only abortionists call them that. Have you ever heard an expectant mother say “my fetus is kicking me”?

If you kill it BEFORE it is born, you are killing a fetus.
If you kill it AFTER it is born, you are killing a baby.

so either way, it’s a ‘killing’?

You should have said:
“FETUSES that were killed blah-blah-blah.”

No, I was talking about the babies that are killed before they are born.

Watch any scene on tv about a pregnant woman and a conversation with her doctor and see how many times it is referred to as a ‘fetus’ vs a ‘baby’.

Envious?
Yeah. Right.

Yep, when you found out that I knew more about chemistry and physics than you, envy set in. Still there.

@Georgie:

Is there another subject you need to be embarrassed about?

And you chose babies vs fetus?

Actually, in WWII, it was Country vs Country. There were no innocent people. There were also no smart bombs. If anyone thinks that the nuclear bombs in Japan were horrendous, one should look at the bombing of nearly every German city.

@Randy:

If anyone thinks that the nuclear bombs in Japan were horrendous,

Wasn’t that the point? We wanted them to stop the war, it accomplished that.

The point was that the fire bombs actually more destructive than the nuclear bombs and killed more people.

@Randy: Oh, I think using both fire bombs and nukes was the correct thing to do. Make them surrender. Worked very well.