Authored by John Denson via The Mises Institute,
Every year during the first two weeks of August the mass news media and many politicians at the national level trot out the “patriotic” political myth that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in August of 1945 caused them to surrender, and thereby saved the lives of anywhere from five hundred thousand to 1 million American soldiers, who did not have to invade the islands.
Opinion polls over the last fifty years show that American citizens overwhelmingly (between 80 and 90 percent) believe this false history which, of course, makes them feel better about killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians (mostly women and children) and saving American lives to accomplish the ending of the war.
The best book, in my opinion, to explode this myth is The Decision to Use the Bomb by Gar Alperovitz, because it not only explains the real reasons the bombs were dropped, but also gives a detailed history of how and why the myth was created that this slaughter of innocent civilians was justified, and therefore morally acceptable. The essential problem starts with President Franklin Roosevelt’s policy of unconditional surrender, which was reluctantly adopted by Churchill and Stalin, and which President Truman decided to adopt when he succeeded Roosevelt in April of 1945. Hanson Baldwin was the principal writer for the New York Times who covered World War II and he wrote an important book immediately after the war entitled Great Mistakes of the War. Baldwin concludes that the unconditional surrender policy
was perhaps the biggest political mistake of the war….Unconditional surrender was an open invitation to unconditional resistance; it discouraged opposition to Hitler, probably lengthened the war, cost us lives, and helped to lead to the present aborted peace.
The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945. The Japanese monarchy was one of the oldest in all of history, dating back to 660 BC. The Japanese religion added the belief that all the emperors were the direct descendants of the sun goddess, Amaterasu. The reigning Emperor Hirohito was the 124th in the direct line of descent. After the bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9 of 1945, and their surrender soon thereafter, the Japanese were allowed to keep their emperor on the throne and he was not subjected to any war crimes trial. The emperor, Hirohito, came on the throne in 1926 and continued in his position until his death in 1989. Since President Truman, in effect, accepted the conditional surrender offered by the Japanese as early as May of 1945, the question is posed, “Why then were the bombs dropped?”
The author Alperovitz gives us the answer in great detail which can only be summarized here, but he states,
We have noted a series of Japanese peace feelers in Switzerland which OSS Chief William Donovan reported to Truman in May and June [1945]. These suggested, even at this point, that the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender might well be the only serious obstacle to peace. At the center of the explorations, as we also saw, was Allen Dulles, chief of OSS [Office of Strategic Services] operations in Switzerland (and subsequently Director of the CIA). In his 1966 book The Secret Surrender, Dulles recalled that “On July 20, 1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and reported there to Secretary [of War] Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo — they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and their constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people.”
It is documented by Alperovitz that Stimson reported this directly to Truman. Alperovitz further points out in detail the documentary proof that every top presidential civilian and military advisor, with the exception of James Byrnes, along with Prime Minister Churchill and his top British military leadership, urged Truman to revise the unconditional surrender policy so as to allow the Japanese to surrender and keep their emperor. All this advice was given to Truman prior to the Potsdam Proclamation which occurred on July 26, 1945. This proclamation made a final demand upon Japan to surrender unconditionally or suffer drastic consequences.
Another startling fact about the military connection to the dropping of the bomb is the lack of knowledge on the part of General MacArthur about the existence of the bomb and whether it was to be dropped. Alperovitz states,
MacArthur knew nothing about advance planning for the atomic bomb’s use until almost the last minute. Nor was he personally in the chain of command in this connection; the order came straight from Washington. Indeed, the War Department waited until five days before the bombing of Hiroshima even to notify MacArthur — the commanding general of the U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific — of the existence of the atomic bomb.
Alperovitz makes it very clear that the main person Truman was listening to while he ignored all of this civilian and military advice was James Byrnes, the man who virtually controlled Truman at the beginning of his administration. Byrnes was one of the most experienced political figures in Washington, having served for over thirty years in both the House and the Senate. He had also served as a United States Supreme Court Justice, and at the request of President Roosevelt, he resigned that position and accepted the role in the Roosevelt administration of managing the domestic economy. Byrnes went to the Yalta Conference with Roosevelt and then was given the responsibility to get Congress and the American people to accept the agreements made at Yalta.
When Truman became a senator in 1935, Byrnes immediately became his friend and mentor and remained close to Truman until Truman became president. Truman never forgot this and immediately called on Byrnes to be his number-two man in the new administration. Byrnes had expected to be named the vice presidential candidate [to FDR] to replace [Henry A.] Wallace and had been disappointed when Truman had been named, yet he and Truman remained very close. Byrnes had also been very close to Roosevelt, while Truman was kept in the dark by Roosevelt most of the time he served as vice president. Truman asked Byrnes immediately, in April, to become his secretary of state but they delayed the official appointment until July 3, 1945, so as not to offend the incumbent. Byrnes had also accepted a position on the interim committee which had control over the policy regarding the atom bomb, and therefore, in April 1945 became Truman’s main foreign policy advisor, and especially the advisor on the use of the atomic bomb. It was Byrnes who encouraged Truman to postpone the Potsdam Conference and his meeting with Stalin until they could know, at the conference, if the atomic bomb was successfully tested. While at the Potsdam Conference the experiments proved successful and Truman advised Stalin that a new massively destructive weapon was now available to America, which Byrnes hoped would make Stalin back off from any excessive demands or activity in the postwar period.
Truman secretly gave the orders on July 25, 1945, that the bombs would be dropped in August while he was to be en route back to America. On July 26, he issued the Potsdam Proclamation, or ultimatum, to Japan to surrender, leaving in place the unconditional surrender policy, thereby causing both Truman and Byrnes to believe that the terms would not be accepted by Japan.
The conclusion drawn unmistakably from the evidence presented is that Byrnes is the man who convinced Truman to keep the unconditional surrender policy and not accept Japan’s surrender so that the bombs could actually be dropped, thereby demonstrating to the Russians that America had a new forceful leader in place, a “new sheriff in Dodge” who, unlike Roosevelt, was going to be tough with the Russians on foreign policy and that the Russians needed to “back off” during what would become known as the “Cold War.”
A secondary reason was that Congress would now be told about why they had made the secret appropriation to a Manhattan Project and the huge expenditure would be justified by showing that not only did the bombs work but that they would bring the war to an end, make the Russians back off, and enable America to become the most powerful military force in the world.
If the surrender by the Japanese had been accepted between May and the end of July of 1945 and the emperor had been left in place, as in fact he was after the bombing, this would have kept Russia out of the war. Russia agreed at Yalta to come into the Japanese war three months after Germany surrendered. In fact, Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and Russia announced on August 8, (exactly three months thereafter) that it was abandoning its neutrality policy with Japan and entering the war. Russia’s entry into the war for six days allowed them to gain tremendous power and influence in China, Korea, and other key areas of Asia. The Japanese were deathly afraid of communism and if the Potsdam Proclamation had indicated that America would accept the conditional surrender allowing the emperor to remain in place and informed the Japanese that Russia would enter the war if they did not surrender, then this would surely have assured a quick Japanese surrender.
The second question that Alperovitz answers in the last half of the book is how and why the Hiroshima myth was created. The story of the myth begins with the person of James B. Conant, the president of Harvard University, who was a prominent scientist, having initially made his mark as a chemist working on poison gas during World War I. During World War II, he was chairman of the National Defense Research Committee from the summer of 1941 until the end of the war and he was one of the central figures overseeing the Manhattan Project. Conant became concerned about his future academic career, as well as his positions in private industry, because various people began to speak out concerning why the bombs were dropped. On September 9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, was publically quoted extensively as stating that the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a “toy and they wanted to try it out.” He further stated, “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment….It was a mistake to ever drop it.” Albert Einstein, one of the world’s foremost scientists, who was also an important person connected with the development of the atomic bomb, responded and his words were headlined in the New York Times: “Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb.” The story reported that Einstein stated that “A great majority of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of the atom bomb.” In Einstein’s judgment, the dropping of the bomb was a political-diplomatic decision rather than a military or scientific decision.
Probably the person closest to Truman, from the military standpoint, was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William Leahy, and there was much talk that he also deplored the use of the bomb and had strongly advised Truman not to use it, but advised rather to revise the unconditional surrender policy so that the Japanese could surrender and keep the emperor. Leahy’s views were later reported by Hanson Baldwin in an interview that Leahy “thought the business of recognizing the continuation of the Emperor was a detail which should have been solved easily.” Leahy’s secretary, Dorothy Ringquist, reported that Leahy told her on the day the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, “Dorothy, we will regret this day. The United States will suffer, for war is not to be waged on women and children.” Another important naval voice, the commander in chief of the US Fleet and chief of naval operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945 had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, given in a press conference on September 22, 1945, was reported as: “The Admiral took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russia’s entry into the war.” In a subsequent speech at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated, “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.”
It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s assessment was, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing….[T]o use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.” Eisenhower also stated that it wasn’t necessary for Truman to “succumb” to Byrnes.
James Conant came to the conclusion that some important person in the administration must go public to show that the dropping of the bombs was a military necessity, thereby saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, so he approached Harvey Bundy and his son, McGeorge Bundy. It was agreed by them that the most important person to create this myth was Secretary of War Henry Stimson. It was decided that Stimson would write a long article to be widely circulated in a prominent national magazine. This article was revised repeatedly by McGeorge Bundy and Conant before it was published in Harper’s Magazine in February of 1947. The long article became the subject of a front-page article and editorial in the New York Times, and in the editorial it was stated, “There can be no doubt that the president and Mr. Stimson are right when they mention that the bomb caused the Japanese to surrender.” Later, in 1959, President Truman specifically endorsed this conclusion, including the idea that it saved the lives of a million American soldiers. This myth has been renewed annually by the news media and various political leaders ever since.
It is very pertinent that in the memoir of Henry Stimson entitled On Active Service in Peace and War, he states, “Unfortunately, I have lived long enough to know that history is often not what actually happened but what is recorded as such.”
To bring this matter more into focus from the human tragedy standpoint, I recommend the reading of a book entitled Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6–September 30, 1945, by Michiko Hachiya. He was a survivor of Hiroshima and kept a daily diary about the women, children, and old men that he treated on a daily basis in the hospital. The doctor was badly injured himself but recovered enough to help others and his account of the personal tragedies of innocent civilians who were either badly burned or died as a result of the bombing puts the moral issue into a clear perspective for all of us to consider.
Now that we live in the nuclear age and there are enough nuclear weapons spread around the world to destroy civilization, we need to face the fact that America is the only country to have used this awful weapon and that it was unnecessary to have done so. If Americans would come to recognize the truth, rather than the myth, it might cause such a moral revolt that we would take the lead throughout the world in realizing that wars in the future may well become nuclear and therefore all wars must be avoided at almost any cost. Hopefully, our knowledge of science has not outrun our ability to exercise prudent and humane moral and political judgment to the extent that we are destined for extermination.
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I used to believe the Atomic Bomb story. Like all patriotic boys in the late 40’s and early 50’s. 70 year later knowing that the government and their media allies have lied to send thousands of 19 year old to die in various wars,I can no longer accept the official narrative. It’s an exclusive club and we aren’t in it.
If you ever get a chance to watch the videos taken of the rape of Nanking, don’t do it. Do not do it. The Japanese culture that put its people in mind of being so superior to every other people gave permission for them to do anything but fail, upon which they were obligated to shove a sword into their guts. How do you negotiate with such a culture? The captured GI’s who were not tortured to death died in the camps by the thousands from starvation, work, and torment. Every devious method they could think of was applied against their foes and Americans hearing of these things hated the Japanese fighting man with every fiber of their being. If your son had had his feet set on fire with gasoline and laughed at as he danced around before he was further degraded and likely killed, what would be your state of mind?
Yet, to drop atomic bombs on civilians who likely had no choice but to work in the factories and do what their superiors told them to do, in war and otherwise, was bad calculus as well as bad karma as well as immoral in the extreme. Why not drop, if you are gonna show off, offshore a ways? The excuse for doing maximum damage for maximum effect may have been to end, if possible, the “warrior culture” that was Japan and that brought such grief to its enemies as well as its least well off citizens. Well, it did change. Does the end justify the means?
Do you have any proof these things happened to captured Americans beyond an occasional sadistic guard which we had our share of as well?
Now tell us how kind and loving we are. How many cities did we order the Air Force to firebomb in Japan. That same Air Force General then firebombed all of N. Korea. How about the two or three German cities firebombed. And we haven’t even discussed what we did while saving the Philipines from the awful Spaniards.
I’ll make an exception for you, Flea, watch the Nanking videos. Also, here’s a book for you: “Unbroken”
Ask the Marines how it went when their buddies got captured on those islands.
The “occasional” guards on the Bataan march were rather numerous.
I did not mean to overlook Dresden and all the rest. You are absolutely right to point out my omission.
They made a movie titled Unbroken.
https://www.imdb.com/videoplayer/vi717666841
Glock.
I know you mean well but I can’t accept a Hollywood movie made by degenerates and other non Jews as proof of anything. I’m putting together a response to bigfoot and trying to make supper so don’t hold your breath for it but it will get done soon.
Based on the book previously mentioned by Laura Hillenbrand. The book, as often is the case, was much better than the movie.
Hey Wipper, check this out. The feminine looking Japanese guard in the movie (if he drops it, shoot him) is a totally badass Japanese guitar player. Never saw anybody plug a Telecaster into Marshalls, but he seems to make it work .
Come on Fleabaggs, the Bataan death march alone speaks of atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese.
There are many, many accounts by survivors of those camps that can attest to the barbaric nature of how GI’s were treated. Additionally, on a personal note, both my father-in- law, and my dad (both deceased now) were in the Pacific theater and when they did talk about what they saw, and heard, there would be no doubt in your mind what went on. I’m not sure why you felt you needed to take this stand.
My guess is that Flea is pointing out how no one is innocent. Not even the US. AND feelings of superiority (on our part as well) can lead to awful things.
Brewer.
I’ll get to my reasons in a moment, though I probably should have mentioned them.
This kind f sensationalism is what I was challenging. I was not trying to cannonize them. This from bigfoots comment.
“If your son had had his feet set on fire with gasoline and laughed at as he danced around before he was further degraded and likely killed, what would be your state of mind?” These are standard everyday accusations drawn from a box by every military PR unit on both sides of a war. To use these today while ignoring our own human tendencies toward cruelty for propaganda purposes defeats the purpose of a site like TBP.
My own experience in Nam taints my view of anything the American Press reports regarding atrocities. I was knee deep in Operation Phoenix even before I knew it’s name. The atrocities we comitted and often but not always blamed on the VC are unspeakably horrible. Sometime they simply weren’t reported at all. I’m not even discussing the pro’s or cons of why we were there. Just claiming one can’t believe offical reporting. I’m sure you’re dad and lots of others did see horrible things but in the context of the whole, how many and how often.
I myself can but won’t tell you what can happen to young men finding themselves in a war zone. The cruelty I inflicted due to anger, confusion, and fear can’t be discounted anymore than what the VC or Japanese did.
The Bombs were not the result of soldiers being suddenly thrust into a live or die nighmare. They were the end result of cold caculating deranged people and totally unneseccary.
As for the article itself and coming from the Mises institute?
Why now? Why not 5, 10, or 30 years ago? Why today with all that is going on?
Fleabaggs, thanks for taking the time to extrapolate. I understand what you meant now.
The longer I live, and the more information that gets uncovered, I get both sick, and pissed off, that all wars, no matter how justified they seemed at the time, had wealthy elites inciting them, and cashing in on both sides in the fight. After all, all sides in a war need bullets, band-aids, and bombs.
Brewer.
I always try to give a reasonable answer to reasonable questions. When I think back just in my own lifetime and the gross Mal-education we were getting in the 50’s and early 60’s and how it affected our lives it bothers me a great deal. When I look at the progression up to the present it’s impossible to chalk it up to an evolving flow of human kind. It’s deliberate.
Sensationalism? You saw what you saw in Vietnam, but you did not yet watch the Rape of Nanking videos or you’d know just how barbaric the Japanese were, and these victims were civilians. “Rape” is too mild a word for what was done to those people.
My eighteen-year old brother was one of the first troops into Korea’s “Police Action.” At one point his company was overwhelmed and the commander died in my brother’s arms. My brother was the only man to escape that day. The episode made front page news across the country. The boy had binoculars with him and watched the N. Koreans force his fellows to remove their boots and begin running up and down the road. When one would fall after a while from the sharp rocks on the road, he would be shot for sport. It was several hours before the last man fell. A month later my brother, as he was seen often to do, went over in the night to calm a soldier as he was wailing in his foxhole. The guy shot my brother three times in the belly and my brother died calling for his mother. I get it that war is hell. I also get that GI’s are not Orientals, though some few are as bad perhaps though you would know better than I.
I would also say that Churchill and FDR were evil, as perhaps soldiers can’t compare.
Bigfoot/Mustang.
And anyone else who would subject themselves to reading or watching atrocities committed by anyone
is a very sick puppy and in dire need of help.
Secondly, American soldiers guarded and starved to death 1 to 3 million German POWs after the war. It was american soldiers and airmen who slaughtered Iraqi civilians by the millions and laid waste to Syria and are protecting the dope fields of Afghanistan which causes more long term suffering than being tortured to death. So don’t try to sell the Orientals are worse than Americans. And we haven’t even discussed what the Brits did to India. There were 300,000 casualties in Nanking. That’s barely a years work for us Proud Honest American democracy spreaders.
Now I’m going to put up two reports of atrociities provided by the Jewish Zionist owned media and tell me if they sound familiar.
“After the destruction of the POWs, the soldiers turned their attention to the women of Nanking and an outright animalistic hunt ensued. Old women over the age of 70 as well as little girls under the age of 8 were dragged off to be sexually abused. More than 20,000 females (with some estimates as high as 80,000) were gang-raped by Japanese soldiers, then stabbed to death with bayonets or shot so they could never bear witness.
Pregnant women were not spared. In several instances, they were raped, then had their bellies slit open and the fetuses torn out. Sometimes, after storming into a house and encountering a whole family, the Japanese forced Chinese men to rape their own daughters, sons to rape their mothers, and brothers their sisters, while the rest of the family was made to watch.
Throughout the city of Nanking, random acts of murder occurred as soldiers frequently fired their rifles into panicked crowds of civilians, killing indiscriminately. Other soldiers killed shopkeepers, looted their stores, then set the buildings on fire after locking people of all ages inside. They took pleasure in the extraordinary suffering that ensued as the people desperately tried to escape the flames by climbing onto rooftops or leaping down onto the street.
The incredible carnage – citywide burnings, stabbings, drownings, strangulations, rapes, thefts, and massive property destruction – continued unabated for about six weeks, from mid-December 1937 through the beginning of February 1938. Young or old, male or female, anyone could be shot on a whim by any Japanese soldier for any reason. Corpses could be seen everywhere throughout the city. The streets of Nanking were said to literally have run red with blood.”
“My eighteen-year old brother was one of the first troops into Korea’s “Police Action.” At one point his company was overwhelmed and the commander died in my brother’s arms. My brother was the only man to escape that day. The episode made front page news across the country. The boy had binoculars with him and watched the N. Koreans force his fellows to remove their boots and begin running up and down the road. When one would fall after a while from the sharp rocks on the road, he would be shot for sport. It was several hours before the last man fell. A month later my brother, as he was seen often to do, went over in the night to calm a soldier as he was wailing in his foxhole. The guy shot my brother three times in the belly and my brother died calling for his mother. I get it that war is hell.
It just so happens that the Japanese are currently rightfully afraid that we are going to sacrafice them in our war with China we are drumming up. This has caused them to make ovetures to Russia for protection in the event. No Coinky Dink that we have started gaslighting the Japanese weeks before this Hiroshima sudden urge to be honest. Since 80% believe we were right to bomb them this will provide lots of room to remember Nanking and Bataan.
Meanwhile our airforce made repeated attacks on Syrian grainfields to prevent them from sending food aid to Lebanon because our Jewish masters are doing an Arab Spring on them. So now continue in your total cog dis while the world is being taken over by the Oligarchs and prepare to be starved and hounded to the ground by your fellow Americans in the employ of the Gefilte Fish.
Watch the video. Then you would see that the descriptors you provided don’t convey what was. As for sick puppy you will note that you are the one having nightmares.
You might understand if you tried that WW2 GIs grew up in a decent country and desired to keep it, however misguided, whereas the Vietnam soldiers were there against their will and fighting for who knows what and pissed off as well as despised at home. You think that made a difference in how you acted over there!
You completely ignored my examples of WWI american GI atrocities in the millions as well as before and after just to justify hating orientals. Go for it.
The Ameican’s surrendered too easily in the Philippines… “ooooh, ooooh, we have no ammo! Oooooo–ooooh we have no food or water! Oooooh, oooooh my leg got blown off!
Boo-hoo!
The Bushido Code looked down upon an enemy who gave up so easily.
You will note that most Japanese soldiers fought to the death, hand-to-hand, wounded no less rather than surrender… though a few that did surrender were not all ethnic Japanese.
Or how many regular Koreans were killed by bombing in that war.
Fleabaggs, please read the book “Unbroken” if you want proof. Your welcome.
Yes – the end justified the means. We haven’t had any problems with the Japs since. Enough said
About the so-called ‘Rape of Nanking” –if you have ever visited China’s mainland, then you would soon realize just how much the Chinese had if coming from the Japanese (the superior culture in every aspect of life).
Or…maybe Truman was simply unwilling to let the Japanese nation off the hook via a “conditional surrender” after hundreds of thousands of American men had fought and died. Maybe Truman was in sync with an American nation that at that time had no tolerance for anything but absolute victory. Maybe.
Gnome.
“after hundreds of thousands of American men had fought and died.”
Are you sure you didn’t mean to say after hundreds of thousands of American men had been tricked into going to war by FDR & Co.?
More and bigger bombs to come …WW3.
Didn’t you read The Fourth Turning? There is no “conditional surrender” in a Fourth Turning. Japan waged total war in the most brutal and savage manner possible. There was NO WAY they were going to be allowed to do a “conditional surrender.” (((Revisionist history))).
This is just a subplot to the bigger myth of our necessity to even enter WWII. Who got us into that war?
Uh, that would be Japan. Little thing called Pearl Harbor.
Star
Bullshit.
I recently re-watched the sci-fi movie “Equilibrium” starring Christian Bale. The premise is a future with no wars or conflict but only because all human emotion is suppressed through forced drugging of the population, which brings them to an “equilibrium”. Of course the movie shows the enforcer of this, a “cleric” of the new church of no emotions, played by Bale, damaging his daily dose accidentally and starting to feel emotions, and his journey to revolt against this system.
It portrays the lack of emotions as a bad thing, and that society, while free from war, is actually no more alive than if it was in fact wiped out by war.
The climax is shown between Bale’s character and the leader of this religion, a big-brother-esque type which is all seeing and all knowing, but in actuality takes no emotion-suppressing drugs himself, and pleads with Bale not to kill him as he will be let into the inner circle where all leadership feels emotions and only the plebes do not.
Needless to say, Bale kills him anyway, and the rebellion rises.
Why mention this movie? It seems Truman’s “unconditional surrender” was based on his desire for absolute mastery over not only the Japanese people, but as pay back for Pearl Harbor and to squash any Russian thoughts of aggression. These are fear-based emotions. He was afraid, he was angry, he wanted revenge. Make no mistake, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a cowardly act, was also a fear-based decision. Any dissension by moral men was silenced, with the average American not having a clue what this bomb would actually do to human flesh, innocent lives. and yes, children. Americans were not afforded the opportunity to exercise compassion, only the “inner circle” was allowed to decide the horrible fate of a nation.
It speaks volumes when Hiroshima is taken in this, a truthful context. It is not taught this way in history books, and numerous war movies glorify the US and it’s murder of thousands and thousands of Japanese civilians.
It proves that history does repeat itself in the evil actions of so-called leaders. Evil men (and yes women) who allow their egos, rage, pride, and greed to motivate them to commit the worst atrocities upon their fellow humans. All for the so-called “greater good”. Now it’s touted as “for the children”.
I’m sure all the Japanese children that were permanently maimed, diseased, or rendered sterile from these bombs feel so very thankful that the US did it for them.
We also see yellow journalism at work yet again, used as a tool of the politician to warp and manipulate the minds of those who are too weak or afraid to see for themselves. At this point in American history, the Japanese were not only interred at concentration camps here in the US, but vilified in print, with propaganda cartoons aimed at children showing Japanese soldiers as nothing more than monkeys to be wiped out by the big, strong US soldiers.
Fear is always the best and strongest tool to get others to do what you want, as it speaks to the lizard survival part of our brain. Love, on the other hand, is a higher emotion, which moves out of selflessness and compassion and is a more individualized motivator that requires each person to open their heart and mind and activate their moral compass.
Politicians world-wide, with very few exceptions, use fear. Covid-19 has doom porn playing on every mainstream station at every moment, so as to keep the fear-based emotions of adrenaline and cortisol flowing. These 2 hormones are not meant to run at a constant feed, as they wear the body down, producing exhaustion, anxiety, and weakened immune response, exactly what someone would NOT want to be doing at this time.
It also has a secondary effect of so weakening the psyche that the individual is much more open to suggestions and commands, and is very willing to abdicate any decision making process to the government, who assures them they are doing all of this for their own good, all the while pulling the strings to keep them in this feedback loop via fear.
Sadly, our society is now almost exclusively motivated by fear, and this was long before Covid-19 was put in to play as the final turn of the screw.
Our government, both local, state, and federal, has operated on fear through taxation, civil asset forfeiture, medical kidnapping, etc to get the citizens to comply regardless of the morality of such situations, all under the color of “the law”. Thank you, Judge Dredd, we the people are now merely there to put up, and not just shut up, but be decimated through every arm and branch of governmental force available, including death.
Social media is filled with fearful individuals afraid of not being pretty enough, handsome enough, rich enough. Bullies use fear and intimidation tactics which generally involve zero physical violence, yet is so effective that people and kids will commit suicide rather than shut off all media and engage in meaningful in-person relationships.
Every Presidential, congressional, or local political campaign, is filled with fear-mongering about the “other candidate”. He or she (or ze as it goes), is too soft on guns, too hard on guns, too soft on immigration, too hard on immigration. There is never, every any balance or compromise, we see that all of it is unconditional surrender. And now BLM, Antifa, the LGBTQ+, and anyone associated with the left, also has this policy of unconditional surrender.
Despite us wanting to keep our opinions and work on the problem, it is not enough, and so the ground must be nuked and salted.
We have only two choices before us, and using the internet to sow seeds of truth, compassion, and compromise is the only way forward. Fear, violence, and isolation will only lead to Hiroshima here.
Well done.
Hey John, please keep drinking that Liberal/Pacifist Kool Aid. Its working!!!!!!!!!
You think that they actually split an atom and that caused the explosion?
That’s quite a story.
several years ago i read a couple of articles in an online history magazine–
according to the article,the japs were making peace overtures to the us thru 3rd parties that were the same as what they were given by macarthur in 1945 at least by 1944 & probably by 1943–
however,some of the aides around fdr were either sympathetic to the russians or outright spies 4 them,so the offers were either not passed on to fdr or they were altered b/c the russians did not want the japs out of the war–
regarding the koreans,they had wanted to invade the south 4 some time but were held back by stalin,who was their patron–stalin was worried that we would go full on war against russia & he didn’t want that–
an american marine stationed at the moscow embassy was embroiled in a relationship w/a russian honeypot & he gave one of our encryption machines to her–once the russians could read our codes they determined that we would not go to war against russia so he turned the north loose against us–
I hope that you’re not reading Miles Mathis, son…
confession time nikki,i am miles–
All you flag-waving, Murica’ shouting military-first, militards’ out there should actually go to modern day Japan and visit the Atomic Bomb Museum in Hiroshima.
It is completely sobering.
Especially sobering is the reconstruction of the Dia Ichi Bank front steps.
There you will see the burnt outline of a woman sitting there holding a small child.
Her outline (shadow) is burned into the granite when she was vaporized instantly.
Many of the initial GI’s and scientists who visited Hiroshima shortly after the surrender, wept upon seeing the death and destruction.
The OP’s article is correct–Japan would have ended hostilities long before the intended date for invasion in November. Dropping the bomb was unnecessary.
So was the firebombing of many of Japan’s population centers.
Not far from where I lived in Tokyo (Kameido) was the Sumida River.
That mad-man, General LeMay ordered the firebombing of that section of town.
Over 100,000 people died that night. And in the Sumida River, over 30,000 people (mostly women clutching infants) died trying to escape the massive firestorm–but to no avail, all the oxygen was sucked out of the air.
But America won the war–but Japan won the peace.
Now many American cities look like bombed out Hiroshima and Nagasaki on their best days.
Homeless line the streets everywhere. Trash and filth and vermin are up to you knees.
And all the while Hiroshima and Nagasaki cities now both look like something out of a Star Trek movie.
Keep waving your flags.
Ever visited the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor?
The Japanese tourists yammering away and taking pictures don’t seem to get the solemnity of the wreck being an American tomb, either. Unlike other US ships that were repaired and sent back into action the Arizona was left unsalvaged with the dead left behind.
The Japanese tourists are yammering at the Arizona museum because of their country’s great victory over the USA back then… about a war brought about by the interference of the USA in their country.
When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima (a Monday morning) the bomb incinerated several grade schools under the hypocenter–instantly vaporizing several thousand children.
Some military targets huh! –compared to the Arizona.
So in reading the article the question for me is whether the proposed invasion of the Japanese islands was a bluff and used as an excuse to use the atomic bomb? If the bombs failed to finally destroy what little resolve the Japanese had left would the invasion have gone through? By not allowing conditional surrender, the allies ended up in a catch 22 allowing the excuse of using the atomic bomb versus invasion. It’s true that many veterans from the European theater were starting to be shipped to the Pacific for the invasion but were relieved it never occurred.