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Why Truman Was Right
anyone with a family member who survived Bata’an, or anyone who honestly looks at the results, knows. there would BE no surrender. the Japanese Empire and culture would have never permitted it.
The atrocities they freely committed rival those committed by daesh today. our subsequent friendship with Japan has, intentionally, cloaked the memories of the horror of the armies of Japan. to our soldiers, to civilians, to each other. Kami Kaze pilots were bolted into their planes. our men, marched for days without food or water were killed without a thought if they fell out. the dead lay everywhere.
We see children being brutally murdered in the Middle east. our children are not told that the Japanese used bayonets on children. the parallels are amazing.
and we still sit back and close our eyes. we condemn the men who ended the horror (Truman) and we watch the horror building again. and then, we go back to our video games and reality shows. and ignore the reality around us.
Peter,
For me this comes under the general heading “The left’s strong suit isn’t Reality”. This is why we must not relax over things like Common Core. History’s most important function in my view is to provide context. We are all familiar with the psychological concept of gestalt. It is often the context in which facts are viewed which leads people to conclusions about them. This is much much too important a part of the education of the young to be left to those who have a narrow ideological axe to grind. Much less to those who literally hate Western Civilization.
Reverend Miscamble provides an effective synopsis of a very neutral reading of the facts surrounding the dropping of the bomb. This would inoculate the young or poorly informed against demagogic attempts to twist and use this event. He is doing a public service. Thanks to the Reverend and thanks to Prager U.
Regards,
Jim
Japan was actively to open surrender negotiations for at least the month prior to the bombs being dropped. There has been no refutation of this.
I have known several men who having fought their way up through the Pacific Islands or across Europe were slated for the invasion of Japan. That that invasion was prevented by the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is all the justification I will ever need.
It is easy to show the terrible suffering of the Japanese who survived the bombing and pretend that they were innocents, but the truth is you get the government you deserve, and the Japanese government of the 1930 and 40s was monstrous. The orders handed down to its military were clear and unambiguous. The actions taken by the military against the Chinese and other conquered Asian peoples, the atrocities and war crimes committed by the Japanese against captured American and allied forces, the unwillingness of Japanese soldiers to surrender which created unbelievable casualty numbers on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, only a prelude to what would happen during an invasion of the home islands made the choice Truman made not only essential but a courageous choice by a man who had experienced war first hand.
It is not just the American left that has attempted to rewrite history. The Japanese themselves are attempting to cast aspersions on Truman. This is total nonsense. There are tons of documents and photographs proving the depravity of the Japanese military. The last two major battles of the war, Iwo Jima and Okinawa made it clear how this would end. Truman did right.
Guru-are you saying the Japanese Empire was ready to accept the terms of surrender at least a month before the bombings?
I’m sure factions were considering a stop to the war if they could keep what they currently held-parts of China, all of Korea, etc. History shows they were not willing to accept the allies terms until after Nagasaki.
They aren’t? This is a huge generation gap issue — I was told this. I don’t think it’s true that our subsequent relations with Japan have served to cloak the issue; after all, we have good relations with Germany, too.
On the other hand, John Kenneth Galbraith is persuaded that the Japanese would have surrendered surely by November without an invasion. He thinks the A-bombs were unnecessary and unjustified because the war was ending any way. The A-bombs meant, he says, “a difference, at most, of two or three weeks.” But at the time, with no indication that surrender was on the way, the kamikazes were sinking American vessels, the Indianapolis was sunk (880 men killed), and Allied casualties were running to over 7,000 per week. “Two or three weeks,” says Galbraith. Two weeks more means 14,000 more killed and wounded, three weeks more, 21,000. Those weeks mean the world if you’re one of those thousands or related to one of them. During the time between the dropping of the Nagasaki bomb on August 9 and the actual surrender on the fifteenth, the war pursued its accustomed course: on the twelfth of August eight captured American fliers were executed (heads chopped off); the fifty-first United States submarine, Bonefish, was sunk (all aboard drowned); the destroyer Callaghan went down, the seventieth to be sunk, and the Destroyer Escort Underhill was lost. That’s a bit ‘of what happened in six days of the two or three weeks posited by Galbraith. What did he do in the war? He worked in the Office of Price Administration in Washington. I don’t demand that he experience having his ass shot off. I merely note that he didn’t.
Paul Fussell “Thank God For The Atom Bomb”
Japan has been far more evasive about their WWII record than Germany has. After all to Germany’s great credit they have not only acknowledged their complicity in such actions they have also paid reparations to many of their victims. Japan has more or less chosen to pretend like nothing happened. I think much of this difference is with respect to different cultural philosophies about guilt and shame. Germany for all its secular bent still has strong Christian roots, and so there is a sense of the need to admit wrong and ask for forgiveness (reconciliation for us Catholics). Japan clearly lacks such a dynamic.
It might also be said that we have far closer cultural ties to Germany than to Japan and America was probably more willing to forgive Germany which did very little directly to us than we were with the Japanese. Thus the Japanese prudently thought that it might be better to not bring back any memories for us and just pretend like nothing happened.
I was going to comment and thought better of it. My dear father led a platoon onto bloody Omaha beach. Japan would have been his next deployment. Western Chauvinist and I and our five sibs might not be here today if Truman hadn’t made the decision to drop the atomic bomb – twice.
This is not the comment I was going to make. It was much darker and would have revealed an old woman’s mind turning toward the mideast and thoughts of revenge.
Benjamin Wiker at the NCRegister agrees with the history but comes to a different conclusion. He writes:
I find Fr. Miscamble’s argument persuasive but struggle with the morality.
Are you saying Japan offered to surrender and we turned them down?
There’s the question as to if some less absolute terms would have avoided the need for the bombs. It’s also interesting how the use of the bombs tends to distract from the firebombing of Tokyo. If dropping the bombs was the right thing to do, maybe the firebombing was unnecessary?
The other thing is why do people feel the need to justify a decision made 70 years ago? No one here had any choice in the matter. It doesn’t make Americans alive today more or less virtuous whether the use of the bomb was right or wrong.
In Niall Ferguson’s War of the World documentary series, he makes the case that the reason the Japanese were determined to fight to the death was the result of early battles in which the Allies killed the surrendering Japanese soldiers. You don’t have to be steeped in an ancient code of warrior honor to forgo surrender against an enemy you believe will kill you no matter what. I’d like to know the extent to which Ferguson is right. Note that he is reservedly supportive of the decision to drop the bombs.
To some extent I think Little Boy and Fat Man (and to a smaller degree, the internment camps) made it easy for Imperial Japan’s crimes to be swept away. Other countries were bombed to ruins. In a great YouTube video, a historian (forget which one) points out that the Allies killed more German civilians with strategic bombing. But the land of the rising sun was the only one nuked and that made them sympathetic enough that Unit 731 and Nanking never occupied the public conscience the way that Auschwitz and the Warsaw Ghetto do.
None of this is to say that Truman was wrong, but that the method of ending Japanese war crimes provided an excuse for forgetting the same crimes.
They were trying to get a cease fire to negotiate the terms of the surrender, and to the Russians, but essentially, yes that.
“May have even saved lives” should be replaced with “definitely saved lives.” It is very true that a large swathe of the Japanese civilian population was being turned into a militia which would have undoubtedly been obliterated by an actual invasion.
No, they were trying to negotiate a surrender. This makes the moral calculus of the invasion over the difference between the potential negotiated conditions of surrender and the unconditional surrender demanded.
So if the invasion was over a few islands in the pacific and the maintenance of their imperial form of government were the bombs worth it? Would the invasion of japan been necessary at all?
I would propose that the invasion of japan which is held out as the alternative is a false dilemma, because there is the third option, accept the Japanese offer to negotiate conditions.
I love the bomb. If it wasn’t for the bomb, neither my wife nor I would have ever been born.
Both of our Dads were Marines. Her Dad was in (IIRC) Guadalcanal, mine was stationed (also IIRC) on some island training for the invasion of Japan. If the bombs had not been dropped, it’s highly likely neither of them would have survived, which in turn meant . . . well, we wouldn’t be going to any Meetups – assuming our Japanese masters would allow them.
My Uncle (now 95) was part of the occupation force in Japan. He told me that the powers in Japan at the time had told the general population that the Americans would invade, rape all the women, kill all the men, and enslave all the children. If an enemy vowed to destroy us like that (Iran? ISIS?), wouldn’t you fight to the death and take out as many of the enemy as possible? Kamikaze cubed.
The truth is that Truman didn’t fret about making the decision. We had a weapon, and he used it – probably the last Democrat that knew how to fight a war . . . and end it victorious.
Excellent video. Very “web-y,” current, and clear.
The Weekly Standard article by Richard B. Frank linked to below goes over some of the same territory, although in a bit more detail. Frank explains why some of the older scholarship had condemned Truman, and then convincingly argues that a vast trove of more recently-revealed intelligence from the era (including Japanese diplomatic and military cables intercepted by the U.S. and summarized in a daily newspaper of sorts for top government officials called “Magic”) proves, beyond doubt, that the Japanese were making massive preparations for a mainland invasion and that, prior to the Hiroshima, they were unwilling to consider unconditional surrender that would have ended the imperial government. The Japanese preparations for invasion were so substantial that there was a growing divide within the U.S. military over whether a seaborne invasion could even succeed. The Navy was trending toward an attrition strategy, believing an extended blockade was the way to end the war.
Not that I really doubted it before, but after reading this piece, it’s hard to fathom why anyone–other than those who are still devoted to Imperial Japan–questions the morality of Truman’s decision.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/894mnyyl.asp
Cat III,
Ferguson’s hypothesis is a form of self-delusion. The Japanese cult of suicide is totally documented. From the Kamikaze to the Japanese soldiers who remained on Islands for an extra 20 years. The need to blame American culture is ridiculous. The Japanese brutality for a prior decade in China is totally documented. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was not because of any American act of aggression. In fact the evidence is so overwhelming I think it suggests that Mr. Ferguson needs mental help.
Regards,
Jim
The Japanese, at least those who actually think about Japan, a minority to be sure, know themselves. They know there would have been no surrender without the bomb, indeed there almost wasn’t a surrender. Yet, don’t think the bomb and the surrender have been forgotten amidst the good relations.. They all read the 47 Samurai. Godzilla and other beasts created by Atomic explosions are Americans, even when we help them kill the beast. The Japanese who lived through this period were grateful we did not treat them as propaganda told them we would and as they treated defeated peoples. The war time generation is dyeing off, the youth hasn’t been taught the real history. Japan is an important country, they are a unique people and we should manage our relations with them with knowledge and intelligence. What that means is not at all obvious.
Guruforhire, no Allied leader found conditional surrender to be acceptable because that would have meant that the Japanese leadership that had torched half the world and killed tens of millions would be allowed to continue. So, if you want to impose on history an “alternative” that all allied leadership had ruled out, and rightly so, then I suppose you have a point. But that’s historical revisionism. You can’t declare the act immoral because you think conditional surrender was acceptable.
Yes, if one thinks that the conditions of surrender such as we understand them, did not justify the invasion then yes, than nuking japan should be held as immoral.
One can disagree and say that the conditions as we understand them did in fact warrant an invasion, and you are free to argue that.
Neither argument revises history.
If you found that video a little wishy-washy. Here is a similar argument presented with more detail, force and relevance.
http://www.pjtv.com/series/afterburner-with-bill-whittle-56/jon-stewart-war-criminals–the-true-story-of-the-atomic-bombs-1808/
I’ll miss Jon Stewart. (I never watched him. I’ve never seen his channel. I’m not sure if I get it.) His smackdowns have been very educational.
One of the benefits of using nuclear weapons is it made it clear beyond any doubt that Japan had not merely lost the war, but been decisively beaten. As such it foreclosed any possibility of a “stab in the back” theory or “we could’a won it” mythology springing up.
The value of this is not to be underestimated in considering how these were foils used by Hitler in his rise to power in Germany.
Same thing can be said about the firebombing of Dresden.
If there hadn’t a Pearl Harbor, Rape of Nanking, Bataan Death March, Korean Comfort Women, etc. There wouldn’t have been a Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yes, and their initial bargaining position was pretty close to status quo ante bellum. They wanted peace – on their terms. So, no it did not really change the moral calculus or the need for an invasion. In reality, they were playing for time hoping the Allies would go away.
Seawriter
Same here, Stad. In the Coast Guard, my father served on a cutter that acted as a minesweeper at Okinawa. He seldom talked about the War, but he was always convinced that Harry Truman had saved his life.
The situation was somewhat more complex. Japan never made any peace offer to the United States or England before the bombs were dropped. What did happen is that while the Japanese Cabinet itself was paralyzed over surrender with the military chiefs who constituted 3 of the Big Six cabinet members adamantly opposed to surrender, the Prime Minister asked Sato, Japan’s ambassador to the Soviet Union (which was still neutral at the time) about its interest in serving as a mediator to settle the war. Because the Japanese Cabinet could never agree on what, if any terms, would be acceptable to it, the ambassador could only raise the matter vaguely and without including any substance.
The situation enraged Sato who on July 13, 1945 cabled Japan’s foreign minister:
. . . [More to come]
More on Sato’s message to Togo on July 13:
After a further exchange of messages, on July 15 Sato cabled:
Finally on July 18 Sato took the initiative and proposed to Togo that Japan tell the Soviets it was willing to surrender unconditionally except that the Emperor must be preserved. On July 21, Togo responded refusing to do so and stating that:
These were the cables that the Americans were intercepting and reading in almost real time and why they were convinced that peace was not at hand.
Now we are having a serious conversation! Thanks Mark! That is a persuasive interpretation of the relevant information.
Every time I reread the materials I get a little more insight. There were some elements in the Japanese government who wanted to offer a surrender that would have been acceptable but the military chiefs, who had incredible power, refused to consider it at least until they bloodied the Americans in the anticipated invasion. The Emperor’s role remains ambiguous to me.