Hiroshima Plus Seventy

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Thank God for the Atom Bomb

Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t merely horrific, war-ending events. They were lifesaving.


By BRET STEPHENS
Aug. 3, 2015 7:02 p.m. ET

Hiroshima

The headline of this column is lifted from a 1981 essay by the late Paul Fussell, the cultural critic and war memoirist. In 1945 Fussell was a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the U.S. Army who had fought his way through Europe only to learn that he would soon be shipped to the Pacific to take part in Operation Downfall, the invasion of the Japanese home islands scheduled to begin in November 1945.

Then the atom bomb intervened. Japan would not surrender after Hiroshima, but it did after Nagasaki.

I brought Fussell’s essay with me on my flight to Hiroshima and was stopped by this: “When we learned to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live.”

In all the cant that will pour forth this week to mark the 70th anniversary of the dropping of the bombs—that the U.S. owes the victims of the bombings an apology; that nuclear weapons ought to be abolished; that Hiroshima is a monument to man’s inhumanity to man; that Japan could have been defeated in a slightly nicer way—I doubt much will be made of Fussell’s fundamental point: Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t just terrible war-ending events. They were also lifesaving. The bomb turned the empire of the sun into a nation of peace activists.

I spent the better part of Monday afternoon with one such activist, Keiko Ogura, who runs a group called Hiroshima Interpreters for Peace. Mrs. Ogura had just turned eight when the bomb fell on Hiroshima, the epicenter less than 2 miles from her family home. She remembers wind “like a tornado”; thousands of pieces of shattered glass blasted by wind into the walls and beams of her house, looking oddly “shining and beautiful”; an oily black rain.

And then came the refugees from the city center, appallingly burned and mutilated, “like a line of ghosts,” begging for water and then dying the moment they drank it. Everyone in Mrs. Ogura’s immediate family survived the bombing, but it would be years before any of them could talk about it.

Because Hiroshima and Nagasaki were real events, because they happened, there can be no gainsaying their horror. Operation Downfall did not happen, so there’s a lot of gainsaying. Would the Japanese have been awed into capitulation by an offshore A-bomb test? Did the Soviet Union’s invasion of Manchuria, starting the day of the Nagasaki bombing, have the more decisive effect in pushing Japan to give up? Would casualties from an invasion really have exceeded the overall toll—by some estimates approaching 250,000—of the two bombs?

We’ll never know. We only know that the U.S. lost 14,000 men merely to take Okinawa in 82 days of fighting. We only know that, because Japan surrendered, the order to execute thousands of POWs in the event of an invasion of the home islands was never implemented. We only know that, in the last weeks of a war Japan had supposedly already lost, the Allies were sustaining casualties at a rate of 7,000 a week.

We also know that the Japanese army fought nearly to the last man to defend Okinawa, and hundreds of civilians chose suicide over capture. Do we know for a certainty that the Japanese would have fought less ferociously to defend the main islands? We can never know for a certainty.

"Understanding the past,” Fussell wrote, “requires pretending that you don’t know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.” Historical judgments must be made in light not only of outcomes but also of options. Would we judge Harry Truman better today if he had eschewed his nuclear option in favor of 7,000 casualties a week; that is, if he had been more considerate of the lives of the enemy than of the lives of his men?

And so the bombs were dropped, and Japan was defeated. Totally defeated. Modern Japan is a testament to the benefits of total defeat, to stripping a culture prone to violence of its martial pretenses. Modern Hiroshima is a testament to human resilience in the face of catastrophe. It is a testament, too, to an America that understood moral certainty and even a thirst for revenge were not obstacles to magnanimity. In some ways they are the precondition for it.

For too long Hiroshima has been associated with a certain brand of leftist politics, a kind of insipid pacifism salted with an implied anti-Americanism. That’s a shame. There are lessons in this city’s history that could serve us today, when the U.S. military forbids the word victory, the U.S. president doesn’t believe in the exercise of American power, and the U.S. public is consumed with guilt for sins they did not commit.

Watch the lights come on at night in Hiroshima. Note the gentleness of its culture. And thank God for the atom bomb.

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Complete bullshit. This is hand-wringing bullshit at its worst. "Modern Japan is a testament to the benefits of total defeat, to stripping a country prone to violence of its martial pretenses". Jesus Christ. We're sorry we had to bomb you, but it was for the best, you stupid fucking animals. The Japanese were finished. We wouldn't accept surrender with the Emperor still in charge. What did we end up accepting? That very goddamn thing.

And it may very well have turned Japan into a nation of peace activists. The better question is what kind of nation did it turn the US into? We've been involved in wars, off and on, ever since.

Another truth never mentioned is that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no great strategic choices. We'd firebombed so much of the large cities that they were two of the few left intact enough to actually see the destructive power of the bombs.

It's always easy to pat yourself on the back after you've done a horrible thing that you're convinced needed doing. This is no different.

Check this out LL... http://www.pjtv.com/series/afterburn...mmentary-1808/







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Complete bullshit. This is hand-wringing bullshit at its worst. "Modern Japan is a testament to the benefits of total defeat, to stripping a country prone to violence of its martial pretenses". Jesus Christ. We're sorry we had to bomb you, but it was for the best, you stupid fucking animals. The Japanese were finished. We wouldn't accept surrender with the Emperor still in charge. What did we end up accepting? That very goddamn thing.

And it may very well have turned Japan into a nation of peace activists. The better question is what kind of nation did it turn the US into? We've been involved in wars, off and on, ever since.

Another truth never mentioned is that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no great strategic choices. We'd firebombed so much of the large cities that they were two of the few left intact enough to actually see the destructive power of the bombs.

It's always easy to pat yourself on the back after you've done a horrible thing that you're convinced needed doing. This is no different. Originally Posted by WombRaider

You're stupid and misinformed, you "#Grubered", freelance faggot, Odumbo Minion from Arkansas. Never met an American veteran from that war that regretted or was ashamed of Truman for his decision, you "#Grubered", freelance faggot, Odumbo Minion from Arkansas.

Check this out LL... http://www.pjtv.com/series/afterburn...mmentary-1808/
Originally Posted by IIFFOFRDB

+1

My Father was drafted in 1944. He was sent to the Philipine Islands as part of the buildup in the event that we would have to invade the Japanese home islands. The war ended without this happening.

Regardless of how much revisionist history is propagated about the events surrounding our decision to use the Atomic Bombs, the fact remains that in a few days after the Nagasaki Bomb, Japan surrendered. And, by all accounts, thousands, and thousands, of US soldiers lives were saved. My father's in particular.

I was born in 1947.

One of the more interesting discussions I have heard about that fateful decision to use the Bombs was this. The Manhattan Project had cost this Country billions of dollars. The scope of this effort is even mind boggling even by today's standards. There is no way the U.S. Government WASN'T going to use the results of that entire Project. And if they didn't, the political fall out would be tremendous if the American a People knew they could have, and didn't, especially if the war would have drug on for another year and more Americans died.

Womby is correct about one thing. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen because we had already obliterated just about every thing else. More people died in the firebombings of Tokyo than in both Atom Bombs.

Was the use of the Atomic a bombs a horrible mistake? That probably depends on how you look at humanity.

Was it nessessary? My father sure thought so.

Saved a lot of lives rather than invading the homeland, also indicated to Russia we had the bomb and would use it.

Link?

You're stupid and misinformed, you "#Grubered", freelance faggot, Odumbo Minion from Arkansas. Never met an American veteran from that war that regretted or was ashamed of Truman for his decision, you "#Grubered", freelance faggot, Odumbo Minion from Arkansas.





+1 Originally Posted by I B Hankering

It figures that woomby the swishy walking "social dumbascrap" would want to rewrite history like all libs do and toe the odumbo apologist party line.
I lived on Okinawa in the late 70's and saw the battle fields. Especially the Shuri Castle area and Sugar Loaf Hill. If woomby had any Marine friends, they could tell him what a meat grinder that was for, first the Army, then the Marines to take and secure. Ask any surviving Marine that fought there if they would have wanted to go on to mainland Japan for more of what they had just experienced. It's real easy for swishy walking pacifists to condemn the actions THAT SAVED LIVES ON BOTH SIDES after the fact out of THEIR guilt, especially when THEY weren't there, wouldn't have gone into the service FOR their country had they been alive at the time, and condem those that DID go to SERVE THEIR COUNTRY in a time of war THAT WE DIDN'T START. In the view of people like woomby, all of those starving, emaciated POW's were expendable if we could have just found a more "polite and PC" way of "negotiating" with the Japanese. woomby's ilk would not care that orders had been given to all of the POW camp commanders to execute ALL POW's in the event of an invasion. In the mind of the swishy walking liberals, it would have been better to negotiate with them like odummer and Lurch Kerry did with the Iranians and give THEM everything THEY wanted as terms for surrender. " It's always easy to pat yourself on the back after you've done a horrible thing that you're convinced needed doing." And it's even easier for liberal social dumbascrap history revisionist to question and second guess decisions made by their betters to stop a war that the lying, swishy walking liberals wouldn't have fought to begin with. This veteran says FUCK YOU WOOMBY !! Tu pinche mamalon y maricone y mojado mentiroso !! Puto tambien !!!

You're stupid and misinformed, you "#Grubered", freelance faggot, Odumbo Minion from Arkansas. Never met an American veteran from that war that regretted or was ashamed of Truman for his decision, you "#Grubered", freelance faggot, Odumbo Minion from Arkansas.





+1 Originally Posted by I B Hankering

Of course you haven't. And you won't. As usual, you missed the entire goddamn point. It's not about being ashamed or feeling regret. The japanese were done. The reason we dropped the bomb was to let the USSR know we had it and weren't afraid to use it. The japanese people paid the price for that demonstration.

It figures that woomby the swishy walking "social dumbascrap" would want to rewrite history like all libs do and toe the odumbo apologist party line.
I lived on Okinawa in the late 70's and saw the battle fields. Especially the Shuri Castle area and Sugar Loaf Hill. If woomby had any Marine friends, they could tell him what a meat grinder that was for, first the Army, then the Marines to take and secure. Ask any surviving Marine that fought there if they would have wanted to go on to mainland Japan for more of what they had just experienced. It's real easy for swishy walking pacifists to condemn the actions THAT SAVED LIVES ON BOTH SIDES after the fact out of THEIR guilt, especially when THEY weren't there, wouldn't have gone into the service FOR their country had they been alive at the time, and condem those that DID go to SERVE THEIR COUNTRY in a time of war THAT WE DIDN'T START. In the view of people like woomby, all of those starving, emaciated POW's were expendable if we could have just found a more "polite and PC" way of "negotiating" with the Japanese. woomby's ilk would not care that orders had been given to all of the POW camp commanders to execute ALL POW's in the event of an invasion. In the mind of the swishy walking liberals, it would have been better to negotiate with them like odummer and Lurch Kerry did with the Iranians and give THEM everything THEY wanted as terms for surrender. " It's always easy to pat yourself on the back after you've done a horrible thing that you're convinced needed doing." And it's even easier for liberal social dumbascrap history revisionist to question and second guess decisions made by their betters to stop a war that the lying, swishy walking liberals wouldn't have fought to begin with. This veteran says FUCK YOU WOOMBY !! Originally Posted by Rey Lengua

If you're a veteran, you disgrace yourself and every veteran with every goddamn idiotic post you make. Have some goddamn pride in yourself and look at what you're doing.

If you're a veteran, you disgrace yourself and every veteran with every goddamn idiotic post you make. Have some goddamn pride in yourself and look at what you're doing. Originally Posted by WombRaider

You are a disgrace to the human race woomby, so I say take your advise and fit it into your lying liberal ass along with your baby-sized head and all those cocks that pack your fudge down at the 'holes ! Stick to topics that you have EXPERIENCE with, like sucking cocks while on your knees and getting your fudge packed !

You are a disgrace to the human race woomby, so I say take your advise and fit it into your lying liberal ass along with your baby-sized head and all those cocks that pack your fudge down at the 'holes ! Stick to topics that you have EXPERIENCE with, like sucking cocks while on your knees and getting your fudge packed ! Originally Posted by Rey Lengua

It's advice, goddammit. Not advise. Enough with the gloryhole shit. It's fucking old. Come up with something else or STFU. It's that simple. If you stuck to topics you knew, you wouldn't have anything to talk about. I've never seen you offer ONE goddamn point that made actual sense. I've never seen you offer ANY words of real wisdom on ANY subject. You obviously have deeply repressed homosexual urges involving a gloryhole. I don't want to hear about it anymore. Save if for your whack off sessions. We're tired of it. You're an embarrassment to yourself and you're an embarrassment to your service.

It's advice, goddammit. Not advise. Enough with the gloryhole shit. It's fucking old. Come up with something else or STFU. It's that simple. If you stuck to topics you knew, you wouldn't have anything to talk about. I've never seen you offer ONE goddamn point that made actual sense. I've never seen you offer ANY words of real wisdom on ANY subject. You obviously have deeply repressed homosexual urges involving a gloryhole. I don't want to hear about it anymore. Save if for your whack off sessions. We're tired of it. You're an embarrassment to yourself and you're an embarrassment to your service. Originally Posted by WombRaider

Maybe YOU'RE tired of it and your fudge packing liberal friends in your reach around crew are, but as you told another poster a few days ago. " FUCK YOU, I DECIDE WHEN IT'S OVER !!! " As usual, you can dish it out but can't take it !!! So , NO, I WILL NOT STFU, ya lying liberal cum guzzling puto ! And how much time in the military do YOU have, ya cock sucking faggot ? And "servicing' your mojado gente down at the holes and marching in the gay pride parades doesn't count, as much as you claim it does. Now that your hero odummer is pushing for transies in the ranks of the military, you've got NO excuse for not joining up !! You ight even be able to get that sex change operation you've been wanting and trying to scam from the taxpayers through odummercare but have been denied. They're giving one to a hero of yours , Bradley / Chelsea Manning, who gave away classified information to wikileaks. But you libs don't think ANY information should be classified, like Shrillary, unless it's to cover up you criminal wrong doing and illicit activities ! So woomby, just expect that I will always be here to rip you a new one, ya lying liberal swishy walking eunuch ! Pobre puto, can't take it ! Go run to the mods now woomby like the weak fag that you are !

I've never seen you offer ONE goddamn point that made actual sense. Originally Posted by WombRaider

Au contraire. Here's one that makes a lot of sense:

It's real easy for swishy walking pacifists to condemn the actions THAT SAVED LIVES ON BOTH SIDES after the fact out of THEIR guilt, especially when THEY weren't there, wouldn't have gone into the service FOR their country had they been alive at the time, and condem those that DID go to SERVE THEIR COUNTRY in a time of war THAT WE DIDN'T START. Originally Posted by Rey Lengua

Too much truth in that one for you to handle, sewer rat?
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The japanese people paid the price for that demonstration. Originally Posted by WombRaider

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/qu...yam224334.html

They paid the price for picking a fight with a Country who in the past had proven that they had the resolve to do what ever it took to win.