My good friend Borepatch has recently posted several articles about Japanese atrocities during World War II. He is doing this because like clock work, every year on this day some liberals come up with a story about how the United States committed war crimes by using atomic bombs on Japanese cities in order to end the war. Every year, like clock work, they are wrong, but that never deters them.
Here are a few things that they never seem to get around to mentioning.
The fire bombing campaign against Japan, particularly Tokyo, killed far more people and damaged far larger areas than the atomic bomb attacks. Estimates vary, but range up to 1,500,000
The atomic bomb was not, as the liberal claim, developed for use against the Japanese because they were Asian and thus inferior to white people. The purpose of the Manhattan project was to develop atomic weapons for use against Germany, specifically Berlin, before the Nazis developed their atomic bomb for use against the Allies. It was only after German resistance collapsed in late April and early May of 1945 that the plan to use the bombs on Japan was developed.
A land invasion of Japan by Allied forces was projected to cost over 1,000,000 Allied casualties and based on events at Okinawa, tens of millions of Japanese would have been killed. The British were also planning to invade Malaya and then Singapore, which would have lead to even more casualties.
An invasion Japan would likely have dragged on well into 1946, prolonging and already too long war at great expense in money and lives on both sides.
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war much earlier than it would have otherwise and thus saved lives.
Both cities were legitimate military targets because both cities contained factories and other facilities that supported the war effort. Just as in Europe where both sides bombed cities that contained industrial facilities that supported the war, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fair game. Destroying industrial facilities and killing the non military personnel who work in them are considered legitimate goals of military action.
The United States has nothing to be ashamed of for bombing an enemy in time of war with a very effective weapon which caused the enemy to surrender and end the war. It’s part of our history and should be remembered for what it was. A legal act of war against an enemy that had no intention of surrendering.
Good post.
I find it ironic that the “Peace” advocates who suggest that we could have negotiated a surrender would have been happy to leave a war-mongering, fanatical, super-race obsessed government in power. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
This is the first I’ve heard of this Liberal theory. There was no mention of it at our last vegan yoga tax the rich adopt illegal children chocolate free bake sale. Anyone who believes the atomic bomb was a war crime is confused.
Really? Maybe they don’t trust you any longer. You might be suspect because you converse with conservatives. Using my secret liberal decoder ring, I found this article. http://tinyurl.com/3e6qh3g
Sorry, but I’m still having a little bit of trouble with the idea that ANYBODY has the right to trample the innocent.
Who starts it and who finishes it is irrelevant. That happens to be the way we break the back of our enemies. It’s what humans do. Regimes come and go and many are built on the blood of the innocent.
You can call me a Liberal, or a Hipple or Ishkabibble for all I care. The fact is that NONE of us are civilized until we stop killing each others’ children!
Do you think maybe that would be a good place to start?
Would you be civilized enough to join me in suggesting that the Rules of Engagement worldwide be amended to REMOVE children from war zones? Let the troops go at it. Let them fight their wars to the death. It’s a mutual agreement sort of thing. But for starters, keep the kids out of it.
…without pointing a finger or assessing blame my observation is that when it comes to the conflicts that this country has been involved in over the last 20 years, the body count of our own children has been proportionally NIL!
Rather than comparing barbarities, how about finding better ways to do business, even if it’s within the context of war?
Consider that one side does as much as possible to avoid casualties among children and that the other uses children as human shields, plants bombs on their children, and plants bombs among the children of their enemy before you start throwing your accusations around. Guess which side is which?
EDIT the above to read:
when it comes to the conflicts that this country has been involved in since I understood what I was observing, which has been 45 years…
“Just as in Europe where both sides bombed cities that contained industrial facilities that supported the war, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fair game.”
It should be noted that certain of the Allied mass-bombing attacks in Europe are now considered war crimes, or at least would be if anybody attempted them today. The two examples I’ve heard of are the Hamburg firebomb attack and the 1945 raid on Dresden.
It should also be noted that to some extent the firebomb raids were an act of desperation by Curtis LeMay. As I heard the story, high altitude bombing was proving much less effective over Japan than it had over Germany, because of local weather conditions. The Tokyo firebomb raid of March 1945 was a somewhat desperate attempt to prove that the B-29 bombing campaign was not an expensive failure. (The airplane itself was already thought of as a failure – drastically underpowered and costing far too much per unit.)
” Destroying industrial facilities and killing the non military personnel who work in them are considered legitimate goals of military action.”
Indeed. Something else to remember: prior to Hiroshima, only one atomic bomb had been detonated before, and that one was in the desert a hundred miles from nowhere. I don’t believe that anyone understood yet just how horribly destructive it would be, destroying a major world-class city in an instant. They thought of it as a bigger bomb, that’s all.
Did you know that Hitler changed the tactics of the Luftwaffe from attacking British airfields to bombing British cities, especially London, because the military only tactic failed. Was that a war crime, or is it only when the US or it’s allies do something you don’t like that a war crime was committed? Ever hear of Guernica? Would the bombing of Liverpool or London be considered war crimes? How about the V1 rockets that were aimed towards London, but didn’t specifically target any facilities, just the city in general? How about the German torpedoing unarmed civilian ships in both World Wars?
My understanding of the rationale for the fire bombing of Tokyo is that the Japanese had dispersed their manufacturing from large centralized plants to small shops interspersed with with residential neighborhoods. Thus bombing as had been used in Germany was not working and thus the tactics changed.
You’re shooting at the wrong target, TOTW. I happen to think the atomic bombing was fully justified — and the bombing of London by the Luftwaffe, and by the V-weapons, was emphatically not.
IIRC Hitler turned from bombing military targets to bombing civilian targets in 1940 for two reasons. One was that he flipped his wig, as he was wont to do, because he couldn’t abide England’s continued defiance. The other was that British secrecy kept him from knowing just how close he had come to wiping out Fighter Command. Like so many of his decisions, it could not have been timed any worse if the gods themselves had commanded it. It gave Fighter Command a vital respite. It also blew the lid off any remaining notion of the ETO as a ‘civilized’ war, and opened the way for the Allies’ mass raids on German and occupied cities.
My only point was that nothing is ever as simple as it seems, and there are many ramifications to the matter of air warfare in the Second World War that deserve to be considered. Somewhere around here I have a one-hour documentary about the B-29 bombing campaign. It says, among other things, that weather over Japan was not like weather over Europe, and unpredictable high-altitude winds made precision high-altitude bombing impossible. When General LeMay took over the B-29 force in March 1945, it was an expensive failure. LeMay was under pressure to make it work, and the firebomb raids were one of his solutions. He was not out to burn Tokyo to the ground in March 1945; he was out to salvage a failing campaign, and the damage done to the enemy was secondary.
And yes, Tokyo was a legitimate war target, although the idea of using firebombs on a culture that built mostly with wood and paper should give any civilized person a twinge in his conscience. It’s hard to argue that the Japanese civilians who died deserved such an end … but such things happen in war. General Sherman got it right: war is hell. War is supposed to be hell. It should be terrible, else we would grow too fond of it.
As for submarine warfare: the notion that we couldn’t prosecute Donitz for unrestricted submarine warfare, or for ordering the execution of civilians (which he did), ‘because American subs were doing the same thing in the Pacific’ is a crock. First, the Germans started unrestricted submarine warfare in both world wars. Second, for the US Navy it was a matter of simple practicality. Right after Pearl Harbor (which was itself partly a sneak attack on a civilian target in time of peace), the Navy didn’t have any operational offensive units to use, besides submarines. Third, there was no such thing as civilian travel or shipping in the Pacific Theater. The Japanese Empire did not permit it. Every maru that moved, every one that caught an American or British torpedo, mine, bomb, or shell, was carrying war cargo. The only exceptions I’m aware of were hospital ships — and there are credible reports that the Japanese routinely used hospital ships to transport ammunition and other war materiel. There was one occasion when an American sub sank a Japanese hospital ship. The American sub’s skipper was court-martialed and busted out of the Navy. Our side observed the rules. Theirs didn’t.
Hitler was convinced for whatever reason, probably in part bad information fed to the Germans by double agents, that the campaign to destroy the RAF as a prelude to Operation Lion had failed. You’re correct that it was a close thing since the loss of aircraft was crippling the RAF. Because they were fighting over home country, they didn’t lose as many pilots as planes. The Luftwaffe on the other hand mostly lost the crew if a plane went down. Also, as we’ve noted, their medium range bombers were not suited to the type of bombing campaign that they were engaging in. Which was lucky for London as it would have been worse if the Germans had been able to produce in quantity an equivalent to the Lancaster.
The mass bombing of Europe was aimed at war production by the Germans. The British thought that the type of campaign envisioned by the USAAF was doomed to fail and certainly well into 1944 it looked as if they were right. Hence their night area bombing campaign. Post war it turned out that daylight bombing wasn’t all that great and I’d guess that it wasn’t until the 1990s that true precision bombing came to be.
The Americans were taking large casualties before LeMay was put in charge. As I recall the problem was that the Japanese had the fuses on their AAA set at two different altitudes one high and one low. LeMay (or someone on his staff) figured that out and the planes started flying between the two. Again, the fire bombing was a reaction to the dispersal of Japanese military production late in the war. Or at least that was the rationale.
You’re right about the submarine warfare. The Japanese not only torpedoed Allied hospital ships, they didn’t mark their own or transports used to move Allied prisoners. I think that they also used those ships to move military goods along with the prisoners, which is a clear violation of the rules of war. (As much as their is such a thing.)
Since the US was a signatory of the Geneva Convention we were bound to follow the rules, even if the Japanese didn’t.
That Japanese also waged war against civilian targets of no military importance and slaughtered civilians after cities were captured. Then again the Germans and Russians did the same thing against each other to a far greater extent than the Germans did against the Commonwealth or American troops. Yes, there certainly were exceptions on both sides, but at least on the Allied side when they were discovered those responsible were punished.
Not to mention the Holocaust.
The Bataan Death March comes to mind. Liberal, peace activists seem to forget how the start of the war was an indication of how really inhumane the human race can be.
If they really need to protest, there are current areas that have plenty of atrocities. I’m thinking they won’t tolerated if they happen to go to these places and protest.
Best article I’ve read on the subject: http://pajamasmedia.com/ejectejecteject/2009/05/19/the-truth-about-the-atomic-bombs-print-version/
An invasion Japan would likely have dragged on well into 1946, prolonging and already too long war at great expense in money and lives on both sides.
All too true – and remember that Japan was borderline starving even by June of ’45 – if there’d be an invasion and blockade, very likely millions of Japanese (and civilians in Japanese-occupied mainland Asia) would have starved to death as well.
(Also, contra Wolfwalker, two things:
The changes to the “laws of war” after WW2 are irrelevant – and frankly, it should be pointed out that the only country that actually obeyed them to any extent is the United States; all of the powers we fought ignored them, completely, at all times.
Second, Dresden was a perfectly valid military target, containing command and control systems, a military rail transit hub, and military manufacturing interests.)
(And a note about shipping torpedoing – Admiral Doenitz was acquitted of that charge at Nuremberg precisely because the Americans were doing the same thing in the Pacific. The idea of not attacking shipping was abandoned by all parties as ludicrously counterproductive.
I blame the Wilsonites and the rest for trying to “outlaw war” – all it did was make fodder for people who conveniently ignore one side to blame the other for “war crimes” that were never any such thing before someone wrote a worthless piece of paper declaring them such.
File with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a waste of time.)
One MILLION American military lives and untold Japanese civilian lives vs. dropping two bombs… Actually the second bomb on Nagasaki was because the Japanese military was STILL telling the emperor to continue the fight and bring it to the home islands… Not a lot of choices, and there was a lot of concern for BOTH sides before the decision was made. Revisionist historians CONTINUE to ‘try’ to prove we were the bad guys, but I’m not buying it… My cousin was involved in the Okinawa invasion and saw the decimation of the Okinawan people.
I think that there are a few things missing from the original post and the follow up comments.
1) The atomic bomb was developed by the US in response to Germany’s research into the same kind of weapon.
2) The Japanese had an expectation of it’s people and troops to follow a Bushido code whereby the ground you stood was gained over your dead body.
3) The atomic bomb was used twice and after Truman was presented figures on expected troop casualties and civilian casualities. The death toll from the bombs were far less than those figures. They, therefore, saved lives.
4) Most of these yo-yos quote Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky is a linguist. He speaks outside his expertice in this matter of US History. He ignores the Bushido code, communications capabilities during WWII in the Pacific Theater, and mitilary SOP for bombing missions.
5) Donitz was put on trial for the Laconia order. His US counterparts refused to condemn him for the order because under the same set of circumstances they would have issued the same orders.
6) War is a messy violent business. The Geneva convention was written and signed in 1946 in response to and after the events of the second world war.
Just my $0.02 worth (now $0.02 Canadian….. how sad)
As to point 1,
That’s from my original post.
As to point 2, much of the Bushido code and poor treatment of civilians and POWs was a result of the resurgent militarism of the 1920s and ’30s. As I recall before that the Japanese were noted for humane treatment of POWs.
I agree with you completely about points 3-5. Noam Chomsky generally speaks on areas outside his area of expertise, but he is a darling of the liberals. His views on matters other than linguistics are an important litmus test. His positions are almost invariably wrong, so we know the right position by taking te 180 degree opposite from his.
The first of what we commonly refer to as the “Geneva Conventions” was ratified in 1864 and pertained to the treatment of wounded soldiers. The provisions regarding POWs was ratified in 1929, and the final convention was indeed passed in 1949. All of those are referred to collectively as the “Geneva Convention”.
War has always been messy and violent and always will be. Will we ever see an end to it?
Plato
That hasn’t changed in almost 2400 years, and I don’t expect it to change in the foreseeable future.