WAR August 6 - 75th Anniversary of Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima

[The Hammer]

75 years ago today, in 1945, it was the beginning of the end of the most horrific conflict the world has (yet) seen.

 

[The Hammer]

Right on cue...

Pope on Hiroshima anniversary: Possession of nuclear weapons 'immoral'

'For peace to flourish, all people need to lay down the weapons of war, & especially the most powerful & destructive of weapons: nuclear arms,' Pope Francis said.

Pope Francis on Thursday marked the 75th anniversary of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima by calling for peace and repeating that not only the use of atomic weapons but their mere possession is immoral.

Francis sent a message to organizers of the anniversary commemoration, recalling that he had prayed at the Hiroshima peace memorial during his 2019 visit to Japan and met with bombing survivors, known as hibakusha.

“It has never been clearer that, for peace to flourish, all people need to lay down the weapons of war, and especially the most powerful and destructive of weapons: nuclear arms that can cripple and destroy whole cities, whole countries,” Francis said in the message.

He repeated what he had said Nov. 24 at the peace memorial: “The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral, just as the possessing of nuclear weapons is immoral.”

The Holy See was among the first countries to sign and ratify the new U.N. nuclear prohibition treaty, and Francis himself went further than any pope before him in saying in 2017 that not only the use but the mere possession of atomic weapons is “to be condemned.”

Prior to that, church teaching had held that nuclear deterrence could be morally acceptable in the interim as long as it was used toward mutual, verifiable nuclear disarmament. Francis has modified that after seeing the deterrence doctrine has essentially resulted in a nuclear status quo, with arms control treaties collapsing.

“May the prophetic voices of the hibakusha survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki continue to serve as a warning to us and for coming generations!” Francis said in the message.

Pope on Hiroshima anniversary: Possession of nuclear weapons 'immoral'

'For peace to flourish, all people need to lay down the weapons of war, & especially the most powerful & destructive of weapons: nuclear arms,' Pope Francis said.

www.khou.com

 

[dstraito]

Tell the Popes guards to.stand down and for the Vatican to leave the gates open at

Rules for thee but not for me

 

[Faroe]

Nukes ended the war.
Japan survived, and the the world enjoyed a few decades of unprecedented prosperity.
Nukes are all about: Just get it done and over with!
I'd rather deal with radiation than suffer from mustard gas.

Thank you, crew and support team for the Enola Gay.

 

[Dozdoats]

I knew a man who was a POW on the Japanese home islands in WW2, captured when Wake fell early in the war. His name was Dick Darden.

Guests of the emperor: The story of Dick Darden: Darden, Jim: 9780961591212: Amazon.com: Books

Guests of the emperor: The story of Dick Darden [Darden, Jim] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Guests of the emperor: The story of Dick Darden

www.amazon.com

And some f'n communist "Cat-lick" SOB talks about IMMORAL.....

 

[SquonkHunter]

The existence of nuclear weapons, the most terrifying weapons ever devised by mankind, are the reason there was NOT a Third World War between U.S. and "Them" (Soviet Union et al) in the 1950s. Never in the recorded history of civilization had two "superpowers" refrained from all-out war for so long a time.

Refer to Rome v. Persia - off/on for almost 700 years. It ultimately ended when the Arabs conquered Persia and the Byzantines were left exhausted and ripe for attack, subsequently losing the most productive parts of their empire to the invading Arabs. Ditto Poland-Lithuania v. Ottomans - over 250 years of off/on warfare. It ended with the Ottomans exhausted and weak and began their long, slow decline as the "Sick Man of Europe". Poland-Lithuania was left exhausted and weak also, prime target for first the Swedes, then the Russians, Austrians and Prussians, resulting in the final dismemberment and death of the once-great Commonwealth.

In view of the above history it is no great stretch of the imagination to say that most of us here today owe our very existence to nuclear weapons - a fearful tool and terrible master. Just thank God that WE got them first!

 

[cyberiot]

In retrospect, many lives, both Japanese and American, were spared because of The Bombs. The Japanese were training schoolchildren to defend themselves with sticks in anticipation of an Allied invasion. If you were an American soldier on the way to the Pacific theater, your odds of going home were, at best, poor.

For a more complete analysis, I highly recommend Paul Fussell's Thank God for the Atom Bomb.

 

[Double_A]

Doesn't look too bad today.....

 

[Dozdoats]

https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2020/08/the-congo-mine-that-made-hiroshima-bomb.html


The Congo mine that made the Hiroshima bomb work


Seventy-five years ago today, on August 6th, 1945, the first atomic bomb used in combat was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It killed 70,000-80,000 people through blast and the subsequent firestorm, while another 70,000 or so were injured.

Many people still don't know that the uranium used in the bomb did not come from North America. It originated in an obscure part of Africa. The BBC reports:

The Shinkolobwe mine – named after a kind of boiled apple that would leave a burn if squeezed – was the source for nearly all of the uranium used in the Manhattan Project, culminating with the construction of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945.

. . .

The story of Shinkolobwe began when a rich seam of uranium was discovered there in 1915, while the Congo was under colonial rule by Belgium. There was little demand for uranium back then: its mineral form is known as pitchblende, from a German phrase describing it as a worthless rock. Instead, the land was mined by the Belgian company Union Minière for its traces of radium, a valuable element that had been recently isolated by Marie and Pierre Curie.

It was only when nuclear fission was discovered in 1938 that the potential of uranium became apparent. After hearing about the discovery, Albert Einstein immediately wrote to US president Franklin D Roosevelt, advising him that the element could be used to generate a colossal amount of energy – even to construct powerful bombs. In 1942, US military strategists decided to buy as much uranium as they could to pursue what became known as the Manhattan Project. And while mines existed in Colorado and Canada, nowhere in the world had as much uranium as the Congo.

“The geology of Shinkolobwe is described as a freak of nature,” says Tom Zoellner, who visited Shinkolobwe in the course of writing Uranium – War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World. “In no other mine could you see a purer concentration of uranium. Nothing like it has ever been found.”

Mines in the US and Canada were considered a “good” prospect if they could yield ore with 0.03% uranium. At Shinkolobwe, ores typically yielded 65% uranium. The waste pile of rock deemed too poor quality to bother processing, known as tailings, contained 20% uranium.

In a deal with Union Minière – negotiated by the British, who owned a 30% interest in the company – the US secured 1,200 tonnes of Congolese uranium, which was stockpiled on Staten Island, US, and an additional 3,000 tonnes that was stored above ground at the mine in Shinkolobwe. But it was not enough. US Army engineers were dispatched to drain the mine, which had fallen into disuse, and bring it back into production.

Under Belgian rule, Congolese workers toiled day and night in the open pit, sending hundreds of tonnes of uranium ore to the US every month. “Shinkolobwe decided who would be the next leader of the world,” says Mombilo. “Everything started there.”

All of this was carried out under a blanket of secrecy, so as not to alert Axis powers about the existence of the Manhattan Project. Shinkolobwe was erased from maps, and spies sent to the region to sow deliberate disinformation about what was taking place there. Uranium was referred to as “gems”, or simply “raw material”. The word Shinkolobwe was never to be uttered.

This secrecy was maintained long after the end of the war. “Efforts were made to give the message that the uranium came from Canada, as a way of deflecting attention away from the Congo,” says Williams. The effort was so thorough, she says, that the belief the atomic bombs were built with Canadian uranium persists to this day.

There's more at the link, including the less savory side of the mine and the damage it's done to the Congo over the decades since then.

I've been in that area. Shinkolobwe isn't far from the road between Lumumbashi and Kolwezi, in southern Congo. I've traveled between them more than once. I knew there was a mine there, still operational at the time, but didn't know the details. It's interesting that I had to wait until I was on another continent, decades later, to find out its history.

Peter


Posted by Peter at 8/06/2020 09:06:00 AM

 

[Jonas Parker]

If we had gone ahead with "Operation Olympia", the invasion of Japan's home islands, it was projected that there would be 1MM allied casualties and 3MM+ Japanese casualties. Harry Truman saved a lot of lives by dropping the bombs.

 

[TerryK]

When I was in boot camp, during Vietnam, one of the marching cadence calls included the line
"you'll wonder where the yellow went, when we drop the bomb on the orient".
It wouldn't fly now, but at that time people were dying every day in Vietnam.

There's an old saying in the Navy. "as the years pass, old enemies become new allies, and old allies become less friendly".

Hell, Japan now hosts one of our largest Navy bases.
In Vietnam American tourists are welcomed, US Navy ships pay frequent port calls there, and there is even talk of basing Navy ships there.

Hell we were once friends with China, our new current cold war enemy.
We once had military based in Iran training their army and US contractors building bases there that may one day be destroyed by an American bombers when the inevitable war comes.

When politics collide, war happens, and war is a racket.
We will always like some and hate others, and the names of the countries will change over the years. In the years to come there will be many other "atom bombs". It is inevitable.

 

[Dozdoats]

America has always had the best enemies money could buy, thanks to American politicians.

 

[von Koehler]

There is some evidence that the Japanese were working on their own atomic bomb. During the period from the Japanese surrender to when the Americans actually started to occupy Japan, there was a frantic rush to destroy all atomic research papers. A few claim Japan actually tested a weapon in northern Korea. Perhaps that is why Jaspan capitulated after doing field assessments of the two bombed cities; they knew it was not done by conventional ordinance.

Also, there is a lot of controversy about just how advanced the German atomic weapon program was. There is some evidence of an atomic weapon test just days before the defeat. And they were working on an "Amerika" bomber to attack New York City.

Hitler supposedly said that the war would end suddenly, and hoped God forgave them for using such a weapon.

 

[shane]

That it ended the war and saved many lives on both sides is even acknowledged by one
Hiroshima survivor I know and that wrote the forward to my GoodNewsNuke.com article.

He had even sought out the crew of the Enola Gay at a reunion to personally tell them so,
that he understood what/why they did what they did, and that it saved lives ending the war,
which had them all stunned speechless, as they'd fully expected more of the typical abuse
from another of obvious Japanese descent as he'd approached their table.

He told them of how he was in his mothers womb at the time, less than 800 meters from the
hypocenter ground zero, which they did not believe, it being too close and unsurvivable, so
he showed them his Japanese govt paperwork that all survivors had been issued stating it.

Panic Early, Beat the Rush!
- Shane

 

[Dozdoats]

There is some evidence that the Japanese were working on their own atomic bomb.

They were. The Germans shared their nuclear tech by way of a pair of giant submarines. The Japanese eventually dumped their experimental reactor in the sea off the coast of Korea IIRC.

ETA - German submarine U-234 - Wikipedia

German submarine U-234 was a Type XB U-boat of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II, she was commanded by Kapitänleutnant Johann-Heinrich Fehler. Her first and only mission into enemy or contested territory consisted of the attempted delivery of uranium oxide and German advanced weapons technology to the Empire of Japan. After receiving Admiral Dönitz' order to surface and surrender and of Germany's unconditional surrender, the submarine's crew surrendered to the United States on 14 May 1945.

 

[Hognutz]

Hell, which city is in better shape today? Hiroshima or Detroit?

Better to be nuked than have a nigra infestation...

Damn Nips are prolly lucky we didn’t drop diversity on them....

 

[Groucho]

The story I got when I shipped out was that if I got wounded, I'd be getting a purple heart that had been made in anticipation of the number of casualties that would have occurred had we invaded the main island. I didn't get one. Fine with me, but I'm amazed at the planning they did back then and the massive number of casualties they expected.

I'm glad we dropped those bombs. We were tough back then and made tough decisions.

 

[Terriannie]

As a Catholic, I know the necessity of dropping the bomb despite what Pope Francis says. Yes, the specter is horrific. It is devastating, BUT, despite its catastrophic capabilities, it is a TOOL to keep other nuclear bomb owners at bay. We PRAY that it continues to STAY that way!!!

Pope Francis should take a lesson from the surviving priests who miraculously, due to their faith and The Rosary, survived that blast only 1/2 mile away from the epicenter with only minor wounds and no radiation poisoning.

One surviving priest who obviously understood forgave, and even met with the pilot of the Enola Gay: (Now THAT is something to contemplate about!)


Father Hubert Schiffer with the co-pilot of the Enola Gay, Robert Lewis. (The American Legion Magazine, 1951)

The Incredible Story of the Miracle at Hiroshima - Our Lady's Blue Army - World Apostolate of Fatima U.S.A.

By Father Paul Ruge, OFMI On August 6, 1945, the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. The bomb exploded half a mile from the Jesuit Church of Our Lady’s Assumption. More than 100,000 people were killed instantly

www.bluearmy.com

The Incredible Story of the Miracle at Hiroshima
By Father Paul Ruge, OFMI

On August 6, 1945, the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima at 8:15 a.m. The bomb exploded half a mile from the Jesuit Church of Our Lady’s Assumption. More than 100,000 people were killed instantly and thousands more died months later from the effects of radiation. However, the church building and eight Jesuit priests stationed there survived. Nine days later on August 15, the feast of Our Lady’s Assumption, U.S. forces were ordered to cease fire. Father Paul Ruge, spiritual director at the National Blue Army Shrine, wrote this account of his conversations with one of the Jesuit survivors, Father Hubert Schiffer.

I met Father Schiffer in the late 1970s at the Tri-City Airport in Saginaw, Mich., as he was going to give a talk for the Blue Army Novena/Triduum. As I chauffeured him around he told me stories of his life, especially of the atomic explosion at Hiroshima. On the morning of August 6, 1945, he had just finished Mass, went into the rectory and sat down at the breakfast table. He had just sliced a grapefruit and put his spoon into the grapefruit when there was a bright flash of light. His first thought was that it was an explosion in the harbor (this was a major port where the Japanese refueled their submarines.)

Then, in the words of Father Schiffer: “Suddenly, a terrific explosion filled the air with one bursting thunderstroke. An invisible force lifted me from the chair, hurled me through the air, shook me, battered me, whirled me ’round and ’round like a leaf in a gust of autumn wind.”

The next thing he remembered, he opened his eyes and he was lying on the ground. He looked around and there was NOTHING in any direction: the railroad station and buildings in all directions were leveled to the ground.

The only harm to him was that he could feel a few pieces of glass in the back of his neck. As far as he could tell, there was nothing else physically wrong with him. Hundreds of thousands were killed or maimed by the explosion. After the conquest of the Americans, their army doctors and scientists explained to him that his body would begin to deteriorate because of the radiation. Many of the Japanese people had blisters and sores from the radiation. To the doctors’ amazement, Father Schiffer and the other priests had no radiation or ill-effects from the bomb. When asked to account for this incredible situation, in which he and his companions were spared, he said: “We believe that we survived because we were living the message of Fatima. We lived and prayed the Rosary daily in that home.”

He feels that they received a protective shield from the Blessed Mother, which protected them from all radiation and ill-effects. (This coincides with the bombing of Nagasaki, where St. Maximilian Kolbe had established a Franciscan Friary which was also unharmed because of special protection from the Blessed Mother, as the brothers, too, prayed the daily Rosary and also had no effects from the bomb).

Father Hubert Schiffer died on March 27, 1982, 37 years after that fateful day. He gave his account of the Hiroshima bombing at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia in 1976. At the time, all eight members of the Jesuit community from Hiroshima were still alive.

Picture of their rectory:

 

[Elza]

The story I got when I shipped out was that if I got wounded, I'd be getting a purple heart that had been made in anticipation of the number of casualties that would have occurred had we invaded the main island.

I was told that the US didn't strike a Purple Heart until we started fighting in the ME.

 

[Bubble Head]

I was told that the US didn't strike a Purple Heart until we started fighting in the ME.

Not true.

Nobody who was in the military ready to invade Japan wept one tear over that bomb dropping. Not ever. Even the Japanese people thanked us that they were finally rid of the military might that had them enslaved as well. Now I am not saying that nukes are for everyone but they do have there place.

 

[Shadow]

The bombs were terrible but, necessary.

Looking back, I was going to say the Japanese should be grateful we did not inflict them with Democratic politicians... but, nah, I'm not gonna say that.

Shadow

 

[CTFIREBATTCHIEF]

My father had just enlisted in the navy on his 17th birthday in 1945. He was in boot camp when the war ended. Had those bombs not been dropped there is no doubt he would have been sent to the Pacific (he did end up being sent there and served on a number of ships including the USS Oakland, from 1945 until his ship was decommissioned in 1949). Anyone want to figure the odds of an antiaircraft cruiser off the shore of Japan surviving during the all out assault on the Japanese home islands that was being planned. President Truman's gutsy decision to use the A-bomb to put an end to the war probably saved my Dad's life. In doing that, Truman made it possible for ME to be here. and from there my two sons and grandsons.

I raise a glass every August 6th. in gratitude to President Truman. "Thank you Harry, for making that decision, for in doing so, you saved countless lives, including members of my family. One brutal instant, stopped years of brutality in its tracks"

It had to be done.

 

[Dozdoats]

Still alive in 45
In a fix in 46
Almost heaven in 47
Golden gate in 48

Troops in the Pacific expected the war to go on at least that much longer, according to a bit of doggerel anyway.

 

[Dennis Olson]

This has been said by multiple people over the years, myself included. It was not necessary to nuke Japan. That country was already reaching out to the US to sue for peace. They had only one condition: to allow the Emperor to remain in office as a figurehead. America refused. Had we agreed, the war would have ended immediately. But the US needed to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that we had a terrible weapon. That demonstration was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Naturally, upon the detonation of those two devices, the war was immediately over. The demonstration duly noted in the USSR. The Japanese surrender was unconditional.

In the end, the US allowed the Emperor to remain in office as a figurehead.

So how many hundreds of thousands of people had to die on the altar of realpolitik? THAT'S the "immorality" of using the bomb. There never would have been an invasion required. Japan was already beaten. So what was the point of killing all those people, and irradiating tens-of-thousands more?

I don't expect you slavering war lovers to understand or accept what I just wrote. But there is much evidence documenting what I said. Those people died so we could show the USSR that we had a bigger dick.

 

[Michiana MaJo]

Doz.....when I tried to check, on Amazon, what the book about Dick Darden was all about, there were no customer reviews...I always like to read them, before buying a book. I'm sure it is very interesting....in fact, having read the stories of other prisoners of Japanese POW camps, I can just imagine what he went through. Enough to turn one's stomach!

 

[Dennis Olson]

Bump

 

[Ractivist]

Never

This has been said by multiple people over the years, myself included. It was not necessary to nuke Japan. That country was already reaching out to the US to sue for peace. They had only one condition: to allow the Emperor to remain in office as a figurehead. America refused. Had we agreed, the war would have ended immediately. But the US needed to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that we had a terrible weapon. That demonstration was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Naturally, upon the detonation of those two devices, the war was immediately over. The demonstration duly noted in the USSR. The Japanese surrender was unconditional.

In the end, the US allowed the Emperor to remain in office as a figurehead.

So how many hundreds of thousands of people had to die on the altar of realpolitik? THAT'S the "immorality" of using the bomb. There never would have been an invasion required. Japan was already beaten. So what was the point of killing all those people, and irradiating tens-of-thousands more?

I don't expect you slavering war lovers to understand or accept what I just wrote. But there is much evidence documenting what I said. Those people died so we could show the USSR that we had a bigger dick.

never heard this account before. Is it an absolute truth?

 

[Dennis Olson]

Yes. Documentation exists.

 

[von Koehler]

Whether it was absolutely necessary to use the two atomic bombs is highly controversial. What many do not know is that Tibbets was preparing to drop a third bomb on Japan-he had received orders to proceed. Tibbets never revealed what was the target city. At this point in the war, America could produce about one atomic bomb per month.

There are good arguments on both sides of this issue.

General MacArthur used the Emperor as a means to govern occupied Japan. So to avoid countless deaths by fanatical Japanese resistance it was simply more expedient to use the Emperor as a figurehead. So the Americans did grant this condition to the Japanese. The planned invasion beach on the Japanese main island was fairly easy to deduce-there weren't many suitable sites. The Japanese heavily re-enforced this anticipated area. Some Japanese military officers were willing to accept surrender to end the war but not to the occupation of Japan. Peace feelers put out to the Soviets proved to be a failure as Stalin wanted territory held by the Japanese-ending war while he was winning wasn't an option.

Just prior to the scheduled radio broadcast of the Emperor announcing the surrender of Japan, there was an attempted coup by diehard junior officers which almost succeeded.

Stalin did invade the northern Japanese island chain, which Russia holds to this day.

Stalin already knew about the American atomic bomb program through his spy network-the first Russian bomb was a near-exact copy of the Fatman bomb. So the dropping of the two American atomic bombs was neither a surprise to Stalin nor was it a deterrent.

 

[Dozdoats]

Touching the Sun, 75 Years Ago

Last summer, I had a chance to stop in at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, and, while the collection is impressive and even has a Space …

laststandonzombieisland.com

Touching the Sun, 75 Years Ago

Last summer, I had a chance to stop in at the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, and, while the collection is impressive and even has a Space Shuttle, the centerpiece is and probably always will be the Enola Gay.

Every military history buff is of course familiar with the plane. I, perhaps, more so than others as I have studied Col. Paul Warfield Tibbets, coming close enough in North Carolina to his flight suit to see the sweat stains on the collar, and long ago meeting Enola Gay navigator Theodore “Dutch” VanKirk in Georgia before his death. VanKirk thought that dropping the bomb saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the end, ironically most of them Japanese.
The sentiment was repeated when I spoke a few years ago to navigator Russell Gackenbach, who flew on the Hiroshima photographic plane, Necessary Evil, on that fateful day. Like VanKirk, he too has passed.

It is hard not to look at the sheer size of that “aluminum overcast” and feel a sense of spooky unease about the hell that B-29 unleashed once upon a time. Talk about touching history.

One of the most curious facets of my visit to the Enola Gay was to note that it was teeming with crowds of Japanese tourists, many in their teens, all eager to get a look at the plane.

While Al Jazeera argues the Hiroshima bomb is a war crime, I’ve talked about that subject before in past posts and tend to side with VanKirk and Gackenbach as other alternatives seemed more deadly for all concerned in the long run.

Speaking of the long run, most of the nation’s five-star admirals and generals later went on record against the use of the A-bomb. Here is what the two top admirals in the Pacific had to say on its use:

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet stated in a public address given at the Washington Monument on October 5, 1945:
The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war. . . . [Nimitz also stated: “The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan. . . .”]
In a private 1946 letter to Walter Michels of the Association of Philadelphia Scientists, Nimitz observed that “the decision to employ the atomic bomb on Japanese cities was made on a level higher than that of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet, stated publicly in 1946:
The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it. . . . It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before.

Professor of History at Notre Dame, Father Wilson Miscamble, weighs in on the subject with the opinion that dropping the bomb shortened the war and saved countless lives — on both sides.

Prof. Miscamble is not speaking off the cuff. His 2007 book, From Roosevelt to Truman: Potsdam, Hiroshima and the Cold War was published by Cambridge University Press and received the Harry S. Truman Book Award in 2008. He subsequently published The Most Controversial Decision: Truman, the Atomic Bombs and the Defeat of Japan in 2011.

 

[Troke]

This has been said by multiple people over the years, myself included. It was not necessary to nuke Japan. That country was already reaching out to the US to sue for peace. They had only one condition: to allow the Emperor to remain in office as a figurehead. America refused. Had we agreed, the war would have ended immediately. But the US needed to demonstrate to the Soviet Union that we had a terrible weapon. That demonstration was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Naturally, upon the detonation of those two devices, the war was immediately over. The demonstration duly noted in the USSR. The Japanese surrender was unconditional.

In the end, the US allowed the Emperor to remain in office as a figurehead.

So how many hundreds of thousands of people had to die on the altar of realpolitik? THAT'S the "immorality" of using the bomb. There never would have been an invasion required. Japan was already beaten. So what was the point of killing all those people, and irradiating tens-of-thousands more?

I don't expect you slavering war lovers to understand or accept what I just wrote. But there is much evidence documenting what I said. Those people died so we could show the USSR that we had a bigger dick.

You are about 3/4th correct. The Party "reaching for peace" was not the Party in power. The military was. The Japanese were well aware of the "unconditional surrender" that lead to Hitler's demise. They did not want the emperor to go through that. When the first bomb dropped, the military asked their scientists how soon they could have one. My understanding is that the answer was not encouraging.

After the 2nd bomb dropped, the Emperor indicated he would be willing to take a chance , the military was out, the peace party in. They asked us if the Emperor could stay in place, we said yes and the war ended.

In the transition from the war party (military) to the Peace Party, lots of dead, many suicide, some assassination. It was not a peaceful transition and without the bomb might not have taken place.

. I think Paul Fussell chronicles one regiment where every officer, Colonel to 2nd Lt. killed themselves.

Somebody has written a book proving that the Emperor was a war criminal and should have been tried for war crimes. We tried that we would still be shooting them.

 

[Dozdoats]

Saturday snippet: The atomic bomb, Hiroshima, and choices

I've quoted before from George MacDonald Fraser 's magnificent World War II memoir, " Quartered Safe Out Here ". It's one of the fin...

bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com

Saturday, August 8, 2020
Saturday snippet: The atomic bomb, Hiroshima, and choices

I've quoted before from George MacDonald Fraser's magnificent World War II memoir, "Quartered Safe Out Here".




It's one of the finest memoirs by a British enlisted man to come out of that conflict, ranking right up there with Eugene Sledge's "With The Old Breed", perhaps the best American enlisted memoir of the war.




Fraser's memoir is even more eloquent because he was one of the great raconteurs of British literature after World War II, in journalism, fiction and screenwriting. He was one of the best authors of his generation, and it shows in his retrospective look at his wartime career.

Since this year marks the 75th anniversary of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, I thought it might be appropriate to excerpt in full Fraser's thoughts on what that meant to the ordinary fighting soldiers of his generation, specifically those in the Scottish regiment in which he served. My father, who served in the Royal Air Force during World War II, and would have been part of the proposed invasion of Japan if that had been necessary, spoke very approvingly of Fraser's opinion on the matter.

It was a fine sunny morning when the news, in its garbled form, ran round the battalion, and if it changed the world, it didn’t change Nine Section. They sat on the floor of the basha, backs to the wall, supping chah [tea] and being sceptical. “Secret weapon” was an expression bandied about with cynical humour all through the war; Foshie’s socks and Grandarse’s flatulence, those were secret weapons, and super-bombs were the stuff of fantasy. I didn’t believe it, that first day, although from the talk at company H.Q. it was fairly clear that something big had happened, or was about to happen. And even when it was confirmed, and unheard of expressions like “atomic bomb” and “Hiroshima” (then pronounced Hirosheema) were bandied about, it all seemed very distant and unlikely. Three days after the first rumour, on the very day that the second bomb fell on Nagasaki, one of the battalion’s companies was duffying with a Jap force on the Sittang bank and killing 21 of them – that was the war, not what was happening hundreds of miles away. As Grandarse so sagely observed: “They want tae drop their fookin’ atoms on the Pegu Yomas, then we’ll git the bleedin’ war ower.” Even then, Nick wasn’t prepared to bet that we wouldn’t be going into Malaya with mules; we would all, he prophesied, get killed.

It took a week, as all the world knows now, for the Japanese government to call it a day, but even after the official surrender of August 14 there was no cease-fire along the Rangoon road; it was almost a fortnight before the Japs in the field started to come in, and the business of rounding up and disarming the remnants began, but by that time I was over the hills and far away, perspiring before a selection board at Chittagong, playing idiotic games of word association, trying to convince psychiatrists that I combined the qualities of Francis of Assisi and Genghiz Khan, that I knew which knife and fork to use, and “actually, sir, the reason I want to be an officer is, honestly, that I’m sure it’s how I can best serve the Army, if you know what I mean, sir.” “Quite so, corporal – now, when I say the word ‘rape’ what’s the first thought that comes to your mind?” “Sir? Sorry, sir, I didn’t quite catch that . . .”

But that was still in the future. The war ended in mid-August, and even before then Nine Section had decided that the fight, if not necessarily done, had reached a stage where celebration was permissible. I joined them in the makeshift canteen, quantities of beer were shifted, Forster sang “Cumberland Way” and “The Horn of the Hunter” in an excruciating nasal croak with his eyes closed, Wedge wept and was sick, Wattie passed out, Morton became bellicose because, he alleged, Forster had pinched his pint, Parker and Stanley separated them, and harmony of a sort was restored with a thunderous rendering of “John Peel”, all verses, from Denton Holme to Scratchmere Scar with Peel’s view-halloo awakening the dead – Cumbrians may be among the world’s worst vocalists, but they alone can sing that rousing anthem of pursuit as it should be sung, with a wild primitive violence that makes the Horst Wessel sound like a lullaby, Grandarse red-faced and roaring and Nick pounding the time and somehow managing to sing with his pipe clenched in his teeth.

Like everyone else, we were glad it was over, brought to a sudden, devastating stop by those two bombs that fell on Japan. We had no slightest thought of what it would mean for the future, or even what it meant at the time; we did not know what the immediate effect of those bombs had been on their targets, and we didn’t much care. We were of a generation to whom Coventry and the London Blitz and Clydebank and Liverpool and Plymouth were more than just names; our country had been hammered mercilessly from the sky, and so had Germany; we had seen the pictures of Belsen and of the frozen horror of the Russian front; part of our higher education had been devoted to techniques of killing and destruction; we were not going to lose sleep because the Japanese homeland had taken its turn. If anything, at the time, remembering the kind of war it had been, and the kind of people we, personally, had been up against, we probably felt that justice had been done. But it was of small importance when weighed against the glorious fact that the war was over at last.

There was certainly no moralising, no feeling at all of the guilt which some thinkers nowadays seem to want to attach to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And because so many myths have been carefully fostered about it, and so much emotion generated, all on one side, with no real thought for those most affected by it on the Allied side, I would like just to look at it, briefly, from our minority point of view. And not only ours, but perhaps yours, too.

Some years ago I heard a man denounce the nuclear bombing of Japan as an obscenity; it was monstrous, barbarous, and no civilised people could even have contemplated it; we should all be thoroughly ashamed of it.

I couldn’t argue with him, or deny the obscenity, monstrosity, and barbarism. I could only ask him questions, such as:

“Where were you when the war ended?”

“In Glasgow.”

“Will you answer a hypothetical question: if it were possible, would you give your life now, to restore one of the lives of Hiroshima?”

He wriggled a good deal, said it wasn’t relevant, or logical, or whatever, but in the end, to do him justice, he admitted that he wouldn’t.

So I asked him: “By what right, then, do you say that Allied lives should have been sacrificed to save the victims of Hiroshima? Because what you’re saying is that, while you’re not willing to give your life, Allied soldiers should have given theirs. Mine for one, possibly.”

It was a bit unfair, perhaps, if only because I am rather heavily built and he was an elderly philosopher and I was obviously much moved, which may have flustered him, because he was unwise enough to say that that was the point – we were soldiers, the bomb victims were civilians. I did not pursue the question whether the lives of your own soldiers should be sacrificed for the safety of enemy civilians, because if you get into that particular moral jungle you’ll never come out; but I did point out that we were, in fact, civilians, too – civilians in uniform, and could he understand our possible resentment that people whose lives and liberties we had been fighting to protect (him, in fact) should be ready to expend us for the sake of Japanese?

He was getting quite alarmed now, because I do have a tendency to raise my voice in debate. But he stuck to his guns and cried “Japanese women and children!”

I conceded this, and pointed out that I had three children – but if I’d gone down in Malaya they’d never have been born; they would, in fact, have been as effectively deprived of existence as the children of Nagasaki. Was he advocating that?

He pointed out, fairly, that I might not have gone down in Malaya, to which I (only too glad to escape from the argumentum ad hominem which I’d introduced, because it makes you sound like a right moaning “I-was-there” jungle-basher) retorted that someone would surely have bought his lot in Malaya, and how about his children?

He bolted, predictably, along the only escape route open to him – and a well-worn one it has become – by saying that the bombs were unnecessary because Japan was ready to surrender anyway, and it was only done because Truman wanted to use the thing to frighten the Russians, and all this talk that it would have cost 50,000 Allied lives to storm Japan was horse manure, because it would never have come to that.

“You think,” I said, “you hope. But you don’t know.”

Yes, he did, and cited authorities.

“All right,” I said. “Leave aside that I am arguably in a better position than you are to judge whether Jap was ready to surrender or not, at least at the sharp end, whatever Hirohito and Co were thinking – are you saying that the war would have ended on August 15 if the bombs hadn’t been dropped?”

“No, of course not. But not long after . . . a few weeks . . .”

“Months, maybe?”

“Possibly . . . not likely . . .”

“But at any rate, some Allied lives would have been lost, after August 15 – lives which in fact were saved by the bombs?” Not mine, because I’d been in India by then, and the war would have had to go on for several months for me to get involved again. I didn’t tell him that; it would just have confused the issue.

Yes, he admitted, some additional Allied lives would have been lost; he didn’t say they were expendable, but he plainly thought so.

“And that would have been all right with you? British, Indian, American, Australian, Chinese – my God, yes, even Russian – all right for them to die, but not the people of Hiroshima – or you?”

He said something about military casualties being inevitable in war (he was telling me!), but that the scale of Hiroshima, the devastation, the after-effects, the calculated immolation of a whole city’s population. . .

“Look,” I said, “I’m not arguing with you. I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you. I just wanted to know where you stood, and to mention some points which you may not have considered, and to have you ask yourself if you are really in a position, morally speaking, to say who should have died and who shouldn’t?”

“Well!” he said, looking aggrieved. “Where do you stand?”

“None of your goddam business,” I said, sweetly reasonable as always, “but wherever it is, or was, it’s somewhere you have never been, among people whom you wouldn’t understand.” Which was a bit over the score, but these armchair philosophers who live in their safe havens of the mind, and take their extensive moral views without ever really thinking, or exploring those unpleasant dark corners of debate which they don’t like to think are there – they can, as Grandarse would have said, get on my wick.

As to where I stand – oh, in so many different places. They change with time, and my view is coloured by many different considerations. These are some of them.

The dropping of the bombs was a hideous thing, and I do not wonder that some of those who bore a part in it have been haunted by it all their lives. If it was not barbaric, the word has no meaning.

I led Nine Section for a time; leading or not, I was part of it. They were my mates, and to them I was bound by ties of duty, loyalty, and honour. Now, take Nine Section as representing those Allied soldiers who would certainly have died if the bombs had not been dropped (and remember that Nine Section might well have been not representatives, but the men themselves). Could I say, yes, Grandarse or Nick or Forster were expendable, and should have died rather than the victims of Hiroshima? No, never. And that goes for every Indian, American, Australian, African, Chinese and other soldier whose life was on the line in August, 1945. So drop the bomb.

And it was not only their lives, as I pointed out to my antibomb disputant. To reduce it to a selfish, personal level . . . if the bombs had been withheld, and the war had continued on conventional lines, then even if I’d failed my board and gone with the battalion into Malaya, the odds are that I’d have survived: 4 to 1 actuarially speaking, on the section’s Burma fatalities. But I might have been that one, in which case my three children and six grandchildren would never have been born. And that, I’m afraid, is where all discussion of pros and cons evaporates and becomes meaningless, because for those nine lives I would pull the plug on the whole Japanese nation and never even blink. And so, I dare suggest, would you. And if you wouldn’t, you may be nearer to the divine than I am but you sure as hell aren’t fit to be parents or grandparents.

It comes to this, then, that I think the bombing was right? On those two counts, without a doubt. If it wasn’t, what were we fighting for? And then I have another thought.

You see, I have a feeling that if – and I know it’s an impossible if – but if, on that sunny August morning, Nine Section had known all that we know now of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and could have been shown the effect of that bombing, and if some voice from on high had said: “There – that can end the war for you, if you want. But it doesn’t have to happen; the alternative is that the war, as you’ve known it, goes on to a normal victorious conclusion, which may take some time, and if the past is anything to go by, some of you won’t reach the end of the road. Anyway, Malaya’s down that way . . . it’s up to you”, I think I know what would have happened. They would have cried “Aw, fook that!” with one voice, and then they would have sat about, snarling, and lapsed into silence, and then someone would have said heavily, “Aye, weel,” and got to his feet, and been asked “W’eer th’ ‘ell you gan, then?” and given no reply, and at last the rest would have got up, too, gathering their gear with moaning and foul language and ill-tempered harking back to the long dirty bloody miles from the Imphal boxes to the Sittang Bend and the iniquity of having to do it again, slinging their rifles and bickering about who was to go on point, and “Ah’s aboot ’ed it, me!” and “You, ye bugger, ye’re knackered afower ye start, you!” and “We’ll a’ git killed!”, and then they would have been moving south. Because that is the kind of men they were. And that is why I have written this book.

Quite so.

For a trenchant memoir of Fraser's later years, and his caustic observations on it, see his "The Light's On at Signpost".




Both of his memoirs are highly recommended reading, as are all his books.

Peter

 

[MinnesotaSmith]

The Japanese did have an A- bomb project. Would not have produced a weapon till well into the 1950s at the rate they were going. After Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking, comfort women programs, Unit 31, etc. etc., the Japanese nation deserved everything it got. That said, if we hadn't been stupid enough to take the Phillipines in 1898, we could very possibly have managed to stay out of war in the Pacific. Anyone genociding China was doing most of the world a favor. Were I FDR in 1941, I'd have told the Jap gov't that as long as you only F with the Chinks and not us/Brits/Dutch, we'll keep selling you steel and oil.

 

[von Koehler]

[I urge everyone to watch this excellent video because this historian does a great job of covering the complicities of the Japanese surrender decision. It is interesting, from a historical perspective, that the third planned target has still not been revealed by the US government. It has become fashionable among progressive academics to decry the American decision to use this weapon but in 1945 most Americans hated the Japanese and wanted the war over ASAP.]

0:05 / 24:52 minutes

Third Atomic Bomb Attack - Japan 1945

•Aug 9, 2020



Mark Felton Productions

If Japan did not surrender on 15 August 1945, a third atomic bombing was planned. In this programme we examine how Japan's surrender was a complicated and difficult process involving a military coup and how America was reluctantly faced with potentially using the third bomb - but which city was to be targeted? And would it have ended the war? Dr. Mark Felton is a well-known British historian, the author of 22 non-fiction books, including bestsellers 'Zero Night' and 'Castle of the Eagles', both currently being developed into movies in Hollywood. In addition to writing, Mark also appears regularly in television documentaries around the world, including on The History Channel, Netflix, National Geographic, Quest, American Heroes Channel and RMC Decouverte. His books have formed the background to several TV and radio documentaries. More information about Mark can be found at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Fe...

 

[von Koehler]

Whether it was absolutely necessary to use the two atomic bombs is highly controversial. What many do not know is that Tibbets was preparing to drop a third bomb on Japan-he had received orders to proceed. Tibbets never revealed what was the target city. At this point in the war, America could produce about one atomic bomb per month.

There are good arguments on both sides of this issue.

General MacArthur used the Emperor as a means to govern occupied Japan. So to avoid countless deaths by fanatical Japanese resistance it was simply more expedient to use the Emperor as a figurehead. So the Americans did grant this condition to the Japanese. The planned invasion beach on the Japanese main island was fairly easy to deduce-there weren't many suitable sites. The Japanese heavily re-enforced this anticipated area. Some Japanese military officers were willing to accept surrender to end the war but not to the occupation of Japan. Peace feelers put out to the Soviets proved to be a failure as Stalin wanted territory held by the Japanese-ending war while he was winning wasn't an option.

Just prior to the scheduled radio broadcast of the Emperor announcing the surrender of Japan, there was an attempted coup by diehard junior officers which almost succeeded.

Stalin did invade the northern Japanese island chain, which Russia holds to this day.

Stalin already knew about the American atomic bomb program through his spy network-the first Russian bomb was a near-exact copy of the Fatman bomb. So the dropping of the two American atomic bombs was neither a surprise to Stalin nor was it a deterrent.

The first Russian bomb was based on the American Fatman design.

Replica of the Fatman bomb.