Hiroshima And Nagasaki: Still Justified 70 Years Later
A mushroom cloud rises above Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. Newscom View Enlarged ImageAug. 6 marks one of America's most important anniversaries, remarkable for what happened on that date in 1945 and for what did not happen subsequently.What did happen was that the Enola Gay, an American B-29 bomber, dropped Little Boy, a uranium-based atomic bomb, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. That dramatic act hastened the end of World War II, which concluded within a week of the Aug. 9 detonation of Fat Man, a plutonium-based bomb, over Nagasaki.These are the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare.Approximately 66,000 died in Hiroshima from the acute effects of the Little Boy bomb and about 35,000 more in Nagasaki from the Fat Man device. (The short-term death toll rose precipitously due to the effects of radiation and wounds.)Within a year, the "was it necessary?" Monday-morning quarterbacks emerged and began to question the military necessity and morality of the use of nuclear weapons on Japanese cities. Since then, revisionism, uninformed speculation and political correctness have erupted.The historical context and military realities of 1945 are often forgotten in judging whether it was "necessary" for America to use nuclear weapons.The Japanese had been the aggressors, launching the war with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, then systematically and flagrantly violating international agreements and norms by employing biological and chemical warfare, torturing and murdering prisoners of war, and brutalizing civilians even forcing them into prostitution and slave labor.Invading The HomelandMoreover, as a result of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, what did not need to happen was Operation Downfall, a massive Allied (largely American) invasion of the Japanese home islands that was being actively planned.As Allied forces closed in on the home islands, the intentions of Japan's senior military leaders ranged from fighting to the last man to inflicting sufficiently heavy losses on invading U.S. ground forces to make America agree to a conditional peace.U.S. strategists knew from having broken the Japanese military and diplomatic codes that Tokyo had virtually no inclination to surrender unconditionally.Finally, because the Allied military planners assumed that "operations in this area will be opposed not only by the available organized military forces of the Empire (of Japan), but also by a fanatically hostile population," astronomical casualties were thought to be inevitable.The losses between February and June 1945 just from the Allied invasions of the Japanese-held Pacific islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa were staggering: 18,000 dead and 78,000 wounded.A study performed by physicist (and future Nobel laureate) William Shockley for the War Department estimated the invasion of Japan would cost 1.7 million to 4 million American casualties, including 400,000 to 800,000 fatalities, and 5 million to 10 million Japanese deaths.These fatality estimates were in addition to the members of the military who had already perished during four long years of war. American deaths were already about 292,000.In other words, the invasion of Japan could have resulted in the death of twice as many Americans as had already been killed in the European and Pacific theaters of WWII up to that time.Much has been made of the moral line that supposedly was crossed by the use of nuclear weapons, but many historians regard as far more significant the decisions earlier in the war to adopt widespread urban bombing of civilians initially by Hitler in attacking English cities and later by the Allied devastation of major cities such as Dresden, Hamburg and Tokyo.Memories Of WWIHistorian Victor Davis Hanson has called attention to two factors that argued for the use of America's nuclear weapons.First, "thousands of Asians and allied prisoners were dying daily throughout the still-occupied Japanese Empire, and would do so as long as Japan was able to pursue the war."Second, "Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay planned to move forces from the Marianas to newly conquered and much closer Okinawa, and the B-29 bombers, likely augmented by European bomber transfers after V-E Day, would have created a gargantuan fire-bombing air force that, with short-distance missions, would have done far more damage than the two nuclear bombs."The nighttime fire-bombing of Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945, was, in fact, the most destructive bombing raid of the war, and in the history of warfare. In a three-hour period, the main bombing force dropped 1,665 tons of incendiary bombs, which caused a firestorm that killed some 100,000 civilians, destroyed a quarter of a million buildings and incinerated 16 square miles of the city.Tokyo was not the only target. By the end of the war, incendiaries dropped by LeMay's bombers had totally or partially consumed 63 Japanese cities, killing half a million people and leaving 8 million homeless.Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-viewpoint/080515-765219-dropping-atomic-bombs-on-japan-was-necessary.htm#ixzz3i1qNNvzm Follow us: @IBDinvestors on Twitter | InvestorsBusinessDaily on Facebook
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Considering the hundreds and thousands of innocent Japanese civilians who were killed and suffered greatly before they died, it should be pointed out that;
the people most responsible for war with the US, were given immunity and never were brought to justice because of the U.S. concern over the Communists. This includes the infamous Unit 731 which made the horror of Dr. Josef Mengele's camps look pale into comparison.
The innocent were punished, the ones most guilty, were set free. American Justice.
Henry repeating rifles, sharp's rifles, colt 45's - wonder if Wounded Knee or Sand Creek or Washita or numerous other massacres of Indian peoples would have occurred if those weapons weren't available?
In 1945, Allied military planners and political leaders were correct, both tactically and morally, in not wanting to repeat history. It was their duty to weigh carefully the costs and benefits for the American people, present and future.
Had they been less wise or less courageous, the American postwar baby boomer generation would have been much smaller.
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Why don't you talk about the 89 million Native Americans who were killed?? Not important enough for the investors?