I.e., the Japanese still managed to lose the war.
Racism
Americans
may have felt hatred for the Japanese during WWII, but it was not for
what race the Japanese belonged to and it was certainly not a hatred
that allowed them to murder on sight (what did the so-called American
racists hate, and fight, the Nazis for, then ; for being blond,
blue-eyed Aryans?!). It was for what they had done, the treachery in
Hawaii (remember Pearl Harbor?), the murders of POWs on the Bataan death
march, and the numerous other atrocities committed throughout the
Pacific, of which
the rape of Nanking is only the most repellent. Still, that anger alone was not what led U.S. authorities to drop atom bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was the Japanese refusal to surrender, backed by
the prospect that the blood-letting would continue and that
the fighting would, in fact, intensify.
The Americans' Uncalled-for
Intensification of the War
Many more Japanese died in the hell-hole of Okinawa than in the nuclear blast of
Hiroshima.
More were killed in the battle of Leyte Gulf than in the explosion at
Nagasaki. Based on America's 35% casualties on Okinawa, if 767,000
Americans were to attack Kyushu, one prediction said the dead and
wounded would number 268,000, as many as the number of battle deaths
that the U.S. had experienced in the war so far. As for Japanese battle
death figures, they inevitably dwarfed those of the U.S. (On average,
the ratio of combat fatalities was 4:1;
on Iwo Jima, three Japanese died for every American; on Okinawa, that
figure was 15:1; at Leyte Gulf, 20:1; on Attu, in the Aleutians, 50:1.)
Japanese casualties on the battlefield by summer 1945 numbered 1.2
million total.
Nobody suggests that
the Japanese be grateful for being the target of at atomic bombs — but, bearing those figures in mind, who can doubt that
far more lives
— as millions of soldiers and civilians rushed to the defence of their
homeland — would have been lost in conventional warfare than actually
were at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
War on Civilians
Those who criticize the Americans for
waging war, nuclear or otherwise, on civilians
forget that the Japanese armed forces were arming every person
available in Japan, from women and children to the elderly, and with
everything from advanced firearms to primitive pointed bamboo sticks, to
fight the Yankee invaders to the death.
Incidentally,
this was not as fanatical as it may sound at first, given their own
behavior on enemy soil. The Empire of the Sun expected American
soldiers to submit the Japanese people to the same atrocities — in fact,
it expected the "foreign devils" to treat them worse — that its
soldiers had hoisted upon foreign civilians such as those at
Nanking
or Manila. Japan's coming victims might as well avoid dishonour and at
the same time contribute to holding back the U.S. onslaught by, if
possible, taking a few enemy soldiers with them to their death. Fight to
the last had been the Japanese motto throughout the war.
Thus,
the war promised to become even more bloody, as it indeed already had.
Still,
the atomic targets were not chosen out of the blue. "[O]ne of the most
important military-command and communications centers in Japan [that]
would have become the Imperial headquarters had the islands been invaded
and Tokyo been captured" (The New Yorker's
John Hersey), the Honshu island
city was (correctly) referred to as an "important naval base" by
Le Monde back in August 1945, although it is typical that in a retrospective 60 years later (
scroll to bottom), the
independent daily
omitted all types of strategic information and all types of context,
for expressions such as "martyrdom", "crimes against humanity", "a
haughty indifference of the laws created by men to check barbarism", and
"a graduation as useless as indecent into horror". (Needless to say,
Japanese actions at
Nanking and the Bataan Death March did not figure into this kind of rants.)
Peace Feelers Ignored
It
has become common for some to say that the Japanese were ready to sue
for peace, and that the treacherous and demagogic Americans (or their
leaders, if you want to be cute) ignored the peace feelers. There's so
much to say to this charge one hardly knows where to begin. First of
all, we are told the peace feelers were secret. If it was so obvious as
we are told that the Japanese (or, at least, their government) as a
whole were desirous to establish an era of peace and goodwill (unlike
the murderous Yankees),
why didn't they simply make the call for peace public (and thereby stigmatize the leaders in
Washington,
had the latter refused to take them up on it)? If asked the question,
we will be told that it wasn't that easy and that Japanese pride was
involved.
Well… exactly! If pride is involved, to what
extent can you be sure the peace offer — or any message — is sincere,
and especially, how much power does the individual (or the band of
individuals) have in proffering it
if he or they are surrounded by sizable parties of prideful leaders, soldiers, and other individuals?
As
it happens, if and when you get a message (be it a peace proposal or
anything else) from a mortal enemy — or even from a traditional friend
(think
Chirac and
Villepin at the
UN
in early 2003) — how are you to know they are sincere? Is disinformation
of some kind involved? How do you know they're not stalling for time?
Time for what? To prepare their fellow leaders, and the population, for
surrender? (In that case, how do you know what the chances are they
will be successful in the task?) Or to build more weaponry (including their own…
atomic bomb!), arm more
combatants, launch more attacks, and/or kill more of your own
nationals?
And who would the peace feeler have been from?
From the entire government (in which case they could have made it
public, supposedly)? From a clique in the government? And if, so, how
much power did its members actually have — and were the latter sincere,
were they wishful thinkers, or might they the victims of manipulation
(from those who wanted to stall for time for military reasons)?
To
use a surreal example of a peace feeler (from the same conflict), in May
1941 Rudolf Hess asked for peace between Britain and Germany (after
flying a Messerschmitt solo to Scotland), only to be immediately
disowned by
Adolf Hitler.
For months — years, really — British citizens, commoners and
responsible leaders alike (not to mention nervous foreigners, and their
governments), wondered what secret intentions, if any, might have laid
behind the feat.
Also,
to what extent should we go in trusting
today's
Japanese accounts of their willing and innocent peace-seeking forebears?
In
any case, here are some things to ponder: it is well-known that the
Imperial Army was full of officers and men of the type as those who,
when they learned that Japan would eventually surrender, tried to
prevent Hirohito's message to that effect from being broadcast. It is
also known (not least to the Navy personnel at the time!) that while the
Japanese were supposedly desiring peace, kamikaze pilots were crashing
their Zeros into U.S. Navy warships. What is less known is that over 400
people were arrested in Japan in 1945 on the mere suspicion of favoring
negotiation.
In conclusion: the Americans were aware of
the propensity of the Japanese to fight to the very end, and untold
thousands had bled, suffered, and died in so learning. And for very good
reasons, Americans were not very trustful of the Japanese; indeed, the
formers' tendency to regard the latter as duplicitous cannot be ascribed
only to racism, far from it (remember Pearl Harbor?).
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Related:
• Hiroshima 15: Examining the Issues Surrounding the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Japan (Erik Svane)
• Hiroshima 14:
"I regard Hiroshima revisionism as the greatest hoax in American history" (Robert Maddox)
• Hiroshima 13: Although It Is Not Said Openly,
Hiroshima Also Played a Purifying Role, IE the Baptism of a New Japan, the Event that Put an End to 50 Years of Crimes (Le Monde)
• Hiroshima 12: Political Correctness in Japan:
The comment "tramples on the feelings of victims", so… Shut the F**k Up and Lose Your Job! (re the forced resignation of Japan's defense
(!) minister)
• Hiroshima 11:
If Western elites cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all; most never learned the narrative of WWII, only what was wrong about it (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Hiroshima 10:
If Not for the Atom Bombs, Japan, as we know it today, would not exist (S L Sanger, author of “Working on the Bomb”)
• Hiroshima 9:
Over
one million warning leaflets were dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and
33 other Japanese cities 5 days before the Hiroshima bombing (Bill Whittle)
• Hiroshima 8:
Was It Wrong to Use the Atom Bomb on Japan? (Father Wilson Miscamble)
• Hiroshima 7:
Some Facts About Hiroshima and World War II That You Hear Neither From America's MSM, University Élites, and History Books, Nor From Japan's (New York Times)
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