A couple of nights ago, Jon Stewart said that Harry Truman was a “War Criminal” for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan.
From the moment I saw that clip I have dropped everything I was doing in order to research, write, shoot, edit and post a reponse. It’s a story I already knew well. I think this is very good work, and I will update the post when I have had some sleep. For now, if you have 16 minutes of free time, I think you’ll find this one rewarding.
It’s free, with Flash player, here.
More later.
[UPDATE]
Well, Jon Stewart apologized for calling Truman “a War Criminal,” and good for him. Everyone says things they regret, but not everyone is big enough to step up and admit they were wrong. And the following is meant in no way to diminish his apology, but the fact is, after he called Truman a War Criminal, he explained in some detail why he thought the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act. I saw nothing in the apology that led me to believe he changed his mind about the atomic attacks, and to be honest, if you honestly do believe that they were in fact criminal acts, its hard to see how you could not consider Truman a war criminal. But as someone who has had words put in his mouth, I certainly do not wish to do that to Mr. Stewart. I can’t undo the references to what he said, just as he can’t unsay what he did in fact say, but I am glad that he apologized to Truman if nothing else and I certainly think more highly of him for it.
With all of that said, hundreds of millions do in fact consider the bombings a criminal act, and to that degree the video is as timely and necessary as ever.
Sometime this week, I hope, I will provide the text of the video. There are a great many visual elements in the piece, and I hope to include as many of those as I can in the body of the text. But I really do feel that the video format is powerful under certain circumstances, and more of this kind of thing is coming. If you’d like to support this work in the future, my insect overlords would be thrilled — simply thrilled — if those of you that liked the piece would go to PJTV and simply register. It’s fast, it’s free, and your email address will not be used for any other purpose that notifying you of our content, including continuing commentaries such as this one. We’re capitalists here. These things cost money, and if people simply register because of them they will take that as a good sign and give me the means to keep them coming.
Thanks for the support, and good for you, Jon Stewart.
Well said, Bill. John Stewart is just like some of the ‘kids’ I go to school with who say that killing of any kind is bad and try to say our soldiers are just as evil as the jihadists they are fighting.
When I point out all the differences between our men and women (uniforms, not firing from hospitals, schools or mosques, and not using civilians as shields) and the terrorists the response is usually along the lines of “Well, they have to fight like that because look at all the equipment the military has..”
I’ve realized that these people care nothing about facts or reality, they will justify anything with whatever half-baked reasoning sounds good at the moment, and as soon as I tear holes in it they will throw up another one. Nothing gets through to them because they ignore anything that doesn’t fit their hopey-changey world view.
Interesting video Bill. I do not watch The Daily Show, prefering to get my news from more reliable sources, but many of my contemporaries do. I was unaware of the air force dropping the warnings on those cities. Thank you for providing me with some hard information I can use to combat these individuals.
Great video Bill. I just finished “Iwo Jima” by Larry Smith. The book is an oral history of men who fought on the island and it was clear to them, based on the ferocity of the Japanese defenders there that the homeland would be depopulated before they surrendered. They know that the Bomb saved Japanese lives as well as American lives. As and aside, I had the honor of meeting and talking with Col Tibbets. I cannot presume to know what he feels in his deepest heart, but I am absolutely convinced that his actions were necessary, honorable, and in the end – life saving.
Bill,
Thank you.
Another well-reasoned, well-spoken, and hard-hitting essay that should be heard by all Americans. You have a gift.
I just checked out the Daily Show forum on the CC where his minions stroke and cuddle him and even some of them find it beyond the pale. He’s also already back-pedalled per one poster who evidently watches that dreck nightly: “There is a reason Stewart retracted his Truman = war criminal comment at the beginning of Thursday’s episode by trying to wave it off as an impulsive statement made without sufficient contemplation. It was a dumb thing to say and reflects poorly on the person who said it.”
Impulsive? At his age he’s not sure how he feels about WWII? He’s going to honestly claim he doesn’t understand how brutal the Japanese imperial regime was? And is he going to next claim FDR and Churchill are war criminals for Dresden and Bill Clinton a war criminal for carpet-bombing Bosnia so as not to endanger our cowardly troops by sending them in on the ground? Hey Jon, don’t take a puff and then say you didn’t inhale. The guy’s not a comedian. He’s an activist with no guts that hides behind comedy. At least Al Franken stands up and makes a total ass of himself and doens’t claim he was just kidding.
An estimated 42,000–150,000 civilians were killed at Okinawa. Truman saved hundred of thousands if not millions of Japanese lives. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa
That settles it.
I’m subscribing to Pajamas TV.
Thanks, Bill.
Bill Whittle: thank you sir, your story is mine , as well…my Dad served with the Welsh Guards on the shoulder of Europe, up against three SS divisions, one at a time -and Hitlerjungen , as well, speaking of fanatics.Aside from observing at Nurenburg , he was slated to ship out to Japan for the final assault-it vexed him greatly-they knew re: Japanese militarism…I am here today thanks to the Truman vision-thing and elemental conviction, something in short supply with the say anything ( ’cause they do not believe in anything) Left. Americans do not travel and really sample the world- it’s easier to be multicultural by patronizing the local sushi bar, eh!Thank you- astonishing that Stewart is a Jew…he probably believes the religion of peace nonsense too- he has not read the Koran? Jefferson did…..just sayin’.
Bill, I have dial-up so I won’t be able to view your video. I hope what I have to say isn’t redundant. In Ronald Spector’s excellent book “In the Ruins of Empire: The Japanese Surrender and the battle for Post War Asia,” he states that at the end of the war there were three million Japanese occupiers spread throughout Asia; two and a half million were soldiers who had never experienced a single defeat in battle.
If after a bloody invasion of Japan the emperor had been killed or changed his mind in any way about surrender huge areas—Indonesia, Viet Nam, large portions of China, Korea, etc.—would have continued to be occupied. I do not see us willing to extend the war for many more years with the ensuing casualties to free these nations.
Since Japan had, several times, toward the end of the war sought Soviet intervention with the US it would not seem beyond the pale that the Japanese generals occupying these countries would seek Soviet assistance giving the latter a huge influence over tens of millions of people with all the mischief that would have caused.
There was an essay written in 1947 (author’s name forgotten) by a former infantry officer wherein he stated that he had never met anyone who was in the infantry or had any prospects of being in the infantry who was against the dropping of those two bombs.
Who’s John Stewart?
Again, thank you.
This is why history is not taught anymore. If someone knew the facts, knew timeline of events, knew the costs, and knew what was at stake…
then the question of dropping the bomb becomes a lot clearer.
We are dealing with people that consider ignorance virtue and a defense of their beliefs.
They can make these claims and these equivalencies because they refuse to learn facts (or if they know deliberately ignoring them).
I’m reminded of your essay where the cartographers spend their time inside lovingly gazing over their prefect and ideal maps, afraid to go outside and face reality.
Thank you Bill. Jon Stewart ought to be publicly horse-whipped but your expose of his hypocrisy and ignorance is probably the best we can expect in our effete society. Keep on keepin’ on and God bless you.
P.S. My Old Man was one of those sailors who came home because of Truman’s righteous decision. To question that decision in his presence risked violent ejection from our house.
That was outstanding. Absolutely riveting. And I already knew all those individual data points beforehand… I’d just never seen them all tied together so seamlessly, passionately, and FINALLY.
Brilliant.
Now… how to shove this up John Stewart’s ass… sideways… hmmmm…
GHS
An additional warning was Churchill’s formulation of the Potsdam Declaration two weeks earlier (26 Jul) promising “quick and utter destruction” to those who had brought Japan to the “very edge of catastrophe”..a declaration which would “brook no delay”–since Potsdam was a suburb of Berlin it should have had some impact in terms of warning being signed by Truman and Churchill. Stalin was still neutral at the time. Paul Fussell’s “How I Learned to Love the Atomic Bomb” records contemporary reaction to the bombings–”I would live..”.
We have forgotten what all out war is like. Mr. Steward and his like could profitably read some history. Sometimes there are no optimal clean solutions, just nasty dirty effective ones.
Excellent video Bill, I too would probably not be alive either if my Dad had to invade Japan – or my cousins because my uncles would have been thrown into that invasion too. The Japanese were strengthening their coastal defenses many miles inland and like you said civilians were trained to fight to the death. It would have been a blood bath on both sides. I learned this history from my mother and can still remember her looking off into the distance and saying they deserved it when the Bomb was discussed. I understood her sentiments since her brother was killed in the war.
Mr. Stewart is a lightweight and an ignorant hack. He is not worthy of carrying a vets dirty underwear. Never forget the sacrifice of so many for us.
Terrific.
That should put that smug little prick in his place. At least it should if he had an ounce of decency and anything resembling a conscience.
My dad was in the infantry in France when the bomb was dropped.
He never voted for a Democrat in his life, but not one bad word was allowed to be spoken about Democrats in his house. Because Truman was a Democrat.
My father spent most of WWII on the USS Enterprise (CV6). At the time of the A-Bomb drops, he was slated to return from a month’s leave and head back out to the Pacific; this time on an LST to run soldiers and marines to the beaches. I may still have been born, but the odds improved tremendously after the use of atomic weapons. He had a very clear understanding of the carnage that would have been part of an invasion of the Japanese homeland.
Both my grandfathers were headed to Japan. I can’t say I’m sorry that they, and my parents, and my uncles, and my cousins, and my siblings, and I, am alive.
Call me insensitive.
Mr Whittle,
That was possibly the most impressive piece – written or video – that you’ve ever done. I am stunned. What greatly saddens me, though, is that not a single person who holds Stewart’s views (and there are many of them, here at home and across the globe) will change their minds, even after listening to your message (assuming they can actually summon the courage to do so.)
You carry the torch of Logic, Reason and Honesty like very few can. Shout out to ya, man.
Bill,
I’ve been a reader since Maklin(IIRC), referred me to something that turned out to be Tribes. Wept often. Still do.
Serious question, absolutely no insult intended:
Have you and Klavan considered collaborating on something? I think the combination of superb essayist/polemicist and superb showman would be very interesting. I also think it might reach into some corners that neither of you reach alone.
His comments on Truman are a logical progression of carrying his ridiculous beliefs to their (il)logical conclusion.
He had not choice to say what he said or else he’d have to confront the problems with his own beliefs.
Fantastic rebuttal, but it’ll have no effect on someone who’s brains are so wrapped up in lies and outrageous beliefs.
Jon Stewart Liebowitz is a physically small guy, a tiny monkey crouching in a basic cable niche. He briefly had a shot at big network stardom, but it passed him by. Now in his late forties, Jon Liebowitz will never be David Letterman. According to interviews, “Stewart” lives in mortal fear of losing the modest success he’s gained, and he may be right.
Cannot watch it as the player says stream not found. I have found Bill’s essays to be spot on and VERY worth the time. He does not quibble nor beat around the bush. He tells the facts, his take on the facts and what can be done about them if needed. I agree with everything I have ever seen or read by him. His essays should be required reading in high schools – but never will because of the idiots running them. Teachers are the crux of the problem and too few of them REALLY have a clue what the TRUTH is. Hope the stream gets fixed because I am sure this is another gem from my hero. Salute Bill!
Most people don’t realize that Imperial Japan, like Nazi Germany, was facing starvation in their last months. Had the war not been ended quickly, more Japanese would have died of starvation (many of them children) than were killed in the two bombings.
Stuck it out and BOY you hit it out of the park again Bill. Of course this sniveling little prick will never acknowledge it because he is a vacuous, insignificant snot. Keep the good work coming – I love it and you do so much good.
I’m with Howard Roark, Tribes brought forth all of my emotions. It’s time to fix the archives and bring the complete essays back.
Bill,
That was a very impressive rebuttal of Jon Stewart’s nonsense. It’s exasperating that the facts of history are on the wane while such lefty counterfactual history waxes full. The irony of the witless Left’s perspective is that they condemn the atom bombings for killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese while implicitly endorsing conventional warfare that would have killed millions.
According to historians, the Japanese were killing 400,000 people in their occupied territories outside of combat. In other words, the Japanese were killing enough people to populate Hiroshima every two weeks. Had the atom bombings not prompted Japan’s surrender, and it nearly didn’t, Japan would have killed a million people by the time the first GI hit the beach at Kyushu in Operation Olympic, the invasion of Japan, scheduled for November 1st. If it took a year to conquer Japan, that would imply another five million dead in the occupied territories, six million total. Why do liberals value the lives of 300,000 Japanese aggressors more than six million of their victims?
Of course, we would have suffered direct casualties from combat. MacArthur estimated a thousand casualties per day in the first 120 days of combat in Kyushu. The experience of Okinawa was that forty of our guys died for every square mile. The estimates of casualties for conquering Japan ranged from 400,000 to four million US military members. If you accept the low figure, why would liberals trade the lives of 400,000 of our guys for 300,000 Japanese? How is that a superior moral trade?
Millions of Japanese would have died in a conventional war of conquest of Japan. The example of Okinawa shows that about ten Japanese soldiers and ten Japanese civilians died for every US soldier. We had better air and naval support which whittled down Japanese troops. Many civilians were combatants, committed suicide, or were killed by their own troops who thought they were doing them a favor by sparing them the shame of surrender and captivity. If you accept the low figure of 400,000 US soldiers KIA, that implies eight million Japanese dead. The US War Department estimated five to ten million Japanese dead. Let’s accept the low figure of five million. Why do liberals like Jon Stewart think that killing five million Japanese in conventional warfare is more moral than killing 300,000 in nuclear warfare? I suspect it is a product of ignorance and a treasonous prejudice.
Prolonging the war would have allowed the Soviet Union to invade Hokkaido, perhaps splitting Japan into North and South Japans. Maybe we would have had to fight another Japan War along with the Korean War and Vietnam War. Maybe that appeals to the Left, who think one, two, or many Vietnams is a good thing.
As an aside, the third atom bomb was on its way to Tinian, caught at Mather AFB, CA at the end of the war. It was to be dropped on Kokura a couple weeks after the Nagasaki bomb. The casing for that Bomb may be the Fat Man on display at the excellent National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, TX.
http://www.nimitz-museum.org/mission_history.htm
For those who want more than Bill’s fine summary:
The greatest and most important documentary of our time “The World at War” includes an entire episode on “The Bomb” interviewing Japanese and American diplomats, foot soldiers, and generals speaking about the dropping of the bombs.
You can view the episode, “The Bomb” at YouTube (it is about 50 minutes). It provides the context of all the was happening in WWII at the time, not from historians, but from those who lived it.
“The World at War” is our history. Those who were there bear witness to all that occurred. I believe it is the duty of everyone to watch the entire series and it is the most important series to have in your history collection.
Excellent video with lots of info I didn’t know–thanks so much for the history lesson! Keep up the good work!
That was magnificent.
I’d elaborate further, but I can’t find the words.
A wonderful presentation. As the daughter of a now 85 year old WWII veteran (who was stationed in France), I know how relieved he was when he knew that he should not be shipped over to the Pacific. Thanks for spreading light & clarity, instead of the PC claptrap our nation’s youth is being fed.
Bill, I have a nit to pick. Your otherwise excellent video essay was marred by the use of an unnecessary “straw man” argument, a debate technique that seriously annoys me when employed by those on the left, and I find it equally objectionable when employed by those of my own ideological stripe, especially one of your talent.
You mocked (correctly, in my opinion) Stewart’s suggestion that the U.S. should have detonated one of the atomic weapons offshore as a demonstration. In doing so, you added elements to Stewart’s alternative that he never included. Specifically, Stewart never suggested, as you implied, that the U.S. advise Japan of the exact date, time, and location of the proposed detonation. To be fair to Stewart, he could have been suggesting that the U.S. drop the bomb, unannounced, a few miles offshore from Tokyo or some other coastal city where the explosion would have been observed by many in the Japanese government and military.
I’m not trying to take up Stewart’s standard and second-guess the decision to drop the weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It’s just that your inclusion of this unnecessary straw man only weakens and distracts from a strong argument.
Keep up the good work!
For about nine years, I had the honor of living with a U.S. Marine who served in the 22nd & 15th Mar Regiments and finally the 6th MarDiv during WWII. Dubbed “Tweet” as a kid, the name stuck throughout his ordeal in the Pacific and through the rest of his generous life, until we laid him to rest at Arlington in 1999. The following is transcribed as it appears in his service record:
- “arr KWAJALEIN ATOLL, MARSHALL ISLANDS, on 31Jan44 … 31Jan44-14Feb44, member task force assaulting that Atoll;”
- “arr ENIWETOK ATOLL, MARSHALL ISLANDS on 17Feb44; 17-23, participated in the assault on, and capture and occupation of ENGEBI and PARRY Islands, ENIWETOK ATOLL, MARSHALL ISLANDS.”
- “21Jul44, arrived and disembarked at GUAM, MARIANAS ISLANDS; 21Jul44-10Aug44, participated in the Assault and Liberation of GUAM, MARIANAS ISLANDS;”
- “Wounded in action JUL 27 1944″
- “Embarked aboard APA 172 USS GRIMES at Guam, M.I., 14 August, 1945 sailed therefrom 15 August, 1945, arrived 30Aug45 and disembarked at Yokosuka Naval Base on 30Aug45 participating in the initial occupation of the Japanese Empire.”
- “Participated in the initial landing of the occupation forces of the Third Fleet Landing Force, landing at Yokosuka Naval Base, and Yokosuka Air Station, Tokyo Bay, Japan and participated in the security of that base from 30 August, 1945 to SEP 15 1945, 1945 [sic].”
Many American fighting men were relieved beyond measure when they learned they would not have to participate in a suicidal invasion of the island of Japan. But no one I’ve ever met was more directly and intimately acquainted with the nature of Japanese military fanaticism in 1945, or knew better what such an invasion would entail.
Tweet told me several times about his experiences as a member of Task Force 31 – destroying the batteries around Tokyo Bay and going house-to-house to secure weapons. He saw with his own eyes how the Japanese Empire had prepared its citizenry to resist, without question, any invasion by allied forces – to the very last man, woman and child.
Somewhere men yet live who saw what my Father-in-law saw and know what he knew. Stewart needs to avail himself of their experience – HIS history. We all need to do that, before it is lost forever.
Thank you Bill for answering this whore’s insults and insanity with such direct and devastating truth. My wife and I appreciate your efforts.
Tweet appreciates it too, I have no doubt.
Once again, Bill, you do us proud! Clear, concise thinking, well referenced data. My father explained much of this to me when I was growing up in the 50′s and 60′s. I never thought I would EVER hear anyone on TV, comedian or otherwise, call Harry Truman a war criminal. And, would have the gall and egocentrism to think that they, as a comedian, could call Harry Truman and his terrible decision an act of war criminality.
Once again, Bill, you know the right thing to do and you followed through. There’s nothing more any of us can ask of you. Time for Jon Stewart to sit at the feet of you, the master, and take lessons.
To paraphrase Rick Santelli of CNBC: Are you listening, John Stewart?
It is my understanding that Bill Whittle does not claim to possess an advanced degree in American history. And yet, his knowledge regarding the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably far surpasses that of many fully tenured professors. This video is truly spectacular. Congratulations.
Well, some credit where credit is due: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDI3YjgxNDJiY2QyODY1OWU0MmZjNmIyMTUwMTQyYTI=
A fine rebuttal to an ignorant comment by a horse’s ass. Dropping the bombs killed fewer people in those cities than fire bombing Tokyo or Dresden. Invasion would have been a slaughter on both sides. The Japanese would have lost more people (estimates run into the millions) but we would have lost tens of thousands (or more). The other plan at the time was to blockade Japan, denying them anything – oil, medical supplies, food, while continuing to carpet bomb their cities. Starvation and untreated diseases are horrible ways to die. A couple hundred thousand vs. millions of deaths seems like a good trade. And there was no question of leaving Japan’s empire to revive and plunge the world into war again.
Good job Bill!
Bill, your video was very moving. My grandfather served in the 5th Army Air Force during WWII as a radioman. I could imagine if there was an invasion of mainland Japan, he would have gone as well as thousands of others who were already in theater.
My husband and I would like to thank you for this amazing video. It seems the more time that goes by, the easier it is for lessons learned to be forgotten and history to be rewritten according to today’s politics and moral equivocation.
Why is the presumably well educated Jon Stewart such an historical illiterate? Needless to add, he represents the typical left-winger. He most certainly is not the exception to the general rule! Why are our schools failing their students? This is the question that cannot be ignored.
Devastating. No pun intended. I think what I love most about Mr. Whittle is, if you go and get him mad about something, he’ll come after you with… facts. Lots of facts.
Thank you. Thank you for taking this cynical jerk to task, the way lots of us wish we could.
@36. LL: - Well, some credit where credit is due…
Credit for what? Getting caught? Admitting he said something stupid AFTER it’s been pointed out to him by the useful idiots at his network that Truman was a Democrat? AFTER the blogosphere went postal on his comment? AFTER he had time to “reflect”? AFTER he realized his statement was a flat out LIE??
Here’s the thing: if “Stewart” had 1/5th of Bill’s command of history, the correct answer to that question would have been obvious to him. But he doesn’t. In place of moral maturity and a proper education, “Stewart” has adolescent narcissism and a jealously guarded ignorance. That ignorance is supported by an ideological, left-leaning retaining wall which tells him any attack on Evil W. Bush – any attack on conservatism, in fact – is justified. And it doesn’t matter how inane that attack is, as long as it inflames the mob. The ends always justify the means.
We saw this same insulting, willful ignorance spewed by Susan Roesgen last month. We saw it spewed continually by BHO’s idolaters in the entrenched, Fifth Column media throughout the campaign last year, and still see it today as they ignore his laundry list of broken promises and celebrate his self-serving, anti-American policies. That insulting, willful ignorance has dominated the media-moderated public narrative 24/7 since the day Al Gore failed to carry his own home state in the 2000 Election.
Sorry, empty non-apologies offered in the form of a page A20 correction – after the meme has been cast and the damage has been done – don’t cut it. And useful idiots like “Steward” won’t earn “credit” by demonstrating that for the umpteenth time.
Magnificent, Bill.
I have only a little to add.
There is one other factor that affected the Japanese decision to surrender. On August 8, one day before the bomb drop on Nagasaki, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. This was three months to the day after the surrender by Germany, and it fulfilled the promise to do so that Stalin made to Truman at Potsdam. Soviet troops immediately began grinding over Japanese troops in China like an M1A2 Abrams over a ripe banana. The two bomb drops pushed the Japanese to the edge, but this pushed them over it. Why? Because immediate surrender would keep Uncle Joe out of Japan.
So, there were three great benefits to using the bomb that you didn’t cover:
1) Stalin was kept out of Japan.
1) Stalin was kept out of Western Europe (regardless of whether or not he intended to, he was never able to because US troops were able to stay on occupation duty in Germany).
2) It’s just a weapon, albeit a BIG weapon, and NONE have been used since, in part because everyone KNOWS what it can do.
One more comment: This shows just how important it is for us to tell our children the truth and to train them to fight off the non-stop propaganda that they will get in the government schools and the Leftist universities. Jews have survived as a people because they do teach their children. We must do the same, lest the shining city bequeathed to us perish from the earth.
Tremendous rebuttal, Mr. Whittle. I have met entirely too many people – inevitably leftists – who share Jon Stewart’s opinion of President Truman and our use of atomic weapons.
Jon Stewart is a liar and a fraud. Watch the segment with Mr. May again. Stewart pauses to consider his answer, then says “yes”. His statement was not off-the-cuff. His only concern is for potential loss of advertisers.
njcommuter–
I’m old enough to remember when the University of California (except Berkeley) WAS a conservative institution of higher education. In fact, many univesities, like Harvard and Columbia, were conservative. We had professors who had obtained their PhDs before WW II, and many who had gone to school on the GI Bill of Rights AFTER WW II. They were conservative professors, mostly. But, the “liberal” ones were liberal about things like racially based civil rights. In other words, getting rid of segregation for blacks. But, since they, too, had fought in WW II or had family who did (after all, anyone who was anyone or nobody was in WW II–yes, it was THAT big of a deal!), they simply understood that it WAS a war to preserve civilization and ways of life that were not Nazi or Fascist or Japanese Militarist, as those terms were being applied by the Nazi Party of Germany, the Fascists of Italy and the Japanese military leaders. There was no second guessing and gut wrenching. It was live or die. Conquer or live as a conquered nation until the victors decided what was to be done. Many, many Jews and non-Jews (Gentiles of all types) found out what this meant in Europe, and many non-Japanese discovered what this meant in the South Pacific. Stories that are discarded far too often, today.
Mrs. du Toit is right. Our youngsters must understand the horrors of war, but also must understand why we chose to fight. And, why some very hard and difficult decisions had to be made for survival of ways of life that we considered more important than Nazi-ism, Fascism and Japanese Militarism.
Thanks for the thoughtful video. This is a useful short-term response to one of Stewart’s many inane arguments.
However, we conservatives need to address the root causes for why such foolishness exists — and exists so prominently — in the minds of our youth.
There are two things often overlooked that we really must find a way to address.
The first is what happens in our humanities and social sciences departments in our universities. In such departments sophistry and discredited Marxist (and Marxist-inspired) ideologies have taken root. And they shape what material is taught, how it is taught, and, thus, how our next generation (generally) thinks.
This is why Stewart has a steady crowd of drones who cheer (rather than laugh) at his most ideological pronouncements. (Personally, I suspect they are mostly out of work “cultural studies” majors.)
Conservatives need to infiltrate the ranks of these departments and help ensure that history, literature, art, psychology, sociology, and other disciplines are protected from the specious reasoning that gets promulgated (often through inflated, opaque rhetoric) in such places.
The second matter is that we need to infiltrate pop culture. This video above is well-reasoned and absolutely on-target. As such, it’s a great start.
But we ALSO need to have people who work in television, news, film, and other forms of popular entertainment who are willing to introduce such clear thinking in a way that will reach the masses and will help win them over.
I’m thinking here of the ancient dictum — most popularly articulated through the Roman poet Horace — that the arts must teach and delight. Here, we’re teaching but not delighting as much. And somehow we need to add that second component.
Pajamas Media is a GREAT start. But the bottom line, it seems to me, is that conservative think-tanks need to address the humanities and social sciences departments in our universities.
We need to focus not just on science departments or on how politics is taught, studied, and practiced. We need to think about these other fields.
The majority of students go through English departments (for writing if nothing else) and so many who go into entertainment fields or into media professions go first through humanities programs. Likewise, many who set the terms of “normal” and “abnormal” or “healthy” and “unhealthy” go through social sciences programs.
We ignore these at our peril. And when we do, we get a mindless populace ready to think like Stewart and cheer people like Stewart simply because they don’t know any alternative.
Very well done Bill Whittle! Many many people, on both sides of the conflict, lived at war and in a hard world that Jon Stewart has no clue about. Growing up I heard the echoes of WWII, into which I was born. My mom used to take me up on the apartment roof to watch the V1 flying bombs come over. During air raids, my granny would retreat under a stout oak table with a supply of bread pudding and beer.
Jon Stewart’s flippant, ignorant remarks insult an entire generation who fought for and desperately preserved our freedom. Those were men and women from the US, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Poland, India, Nepal and many other countries.
Because of them Jon Stewart is free to be a fool.
Also, please consider the effect on the cold war *after* the bomb was used. Would the Soviet Union have really believed in the aptly named MAD (Mutual Assured Destruction) business that prevented them from launching a preemptive nuclear strike on the U.S. if we hadn’t proven to the word that we had what it takes to actually use the device? Consider: We were involved in a war for our very existence against the single most hated enemy in our history. If we had the bomb and didn’t use it then, would we use it against Russians? Would Khrushchev and his generals been as utterly convinced of that as they actually were (because we *had* used it)? I think Truman prevented World War III by ending World War II as he did.
How many people out there (present company excluded) do you think have the motivation to actually discover the truth or will take the time to learn some actual History? My guess is not many.
That is a huge contributing factor as to how we are where we are now.
Look at the U tube vids after the 2008 elections where voters exiting were asked SIMPLE questions regarding our basic American political structure. And many were, I am sad to say, college age young people. (what the F do they learn I wonder?)
All too many voted their emotional convictions and had little or no real factual understanding of much of anything. but it made them “feel good”.
Which is why the left has, and always will, appeal to the younger or uninformed types.
The left deals in emotional feel good utopian scenarios. So for the most part the younger crowd is still living in that leftist la la land and has not had to come to grips with the facts of life that will eventually force its way into their lives.
The crowd that worships a John Stewart have no interest in digging for the truth of the matter. Why should they? They feel good listening to him now and he’s cool, they think, and everybody wants to be cool and hip.
They still think Free Health Care means it is free.
It is plainly obvious why the leftist first took over the educational system in this country. They understood that by taking over the institutions that built the minds of our young they would eventually win the war.
Now they are very near reaping the rewards of that campaign.
Bill, your rebuttal of Stewart is right on target,(my father was a B-17 crewmember in the Pacific in WWII) I only hope there are enough Americans out there who still have the intelligence and the desire to protect what we all are close to losing here.
Thank you for your contribution for the truth.
Bill:
Superb job. I almost teared up.
I too had no idea that we had warned the Japanease repeatedly before the bombings, and days after they would still not surrender to spare their population, though they had not done us the same favor at Pearl Harbor.
Yet I thought my ignorance in most matters re WWII was a deficiency of my early commie upbringing, especially in middle school, when we were taught propaganda /lies, not history. I rememeber spending a whole term rehearsing for a hack piece that lamented the fate of Hiroshima’s children at the hands of the U.S. imperialists (I don’t remember any lamentation about the fate those same children at the hands of Japanese Imperialism).
As soon as I arrived here I realized that higher education in the U.S. was following the same path, leftist propaganda, lies and “re-education.”
I just didn’t know how deep that willful, planned obnubilation and brainwashing about history went.
#21 pd walker:
I’m more with # 22, I’m still a Liebowitz.
Stewart is ignorant all right, but his igorance is cunningly scripted, hyperbolized, a schtick designed to get giggles out of ignoramuses like him, to flatter their sense of superiority over the “old foggies,” of being “cool” and “hip.”
DJ (43):
I’ve always thought that an excellent alternative-history story (ala Harry Turtledove) would be to explore what might have happened if, somehow, the Japanese had surrendered and the nuclear bombs never used. I suspect that we’d all be radioactive cinder by now; one side or the other in the Cold War would have thought: “well, it really can’t be that bad”.
while truman was not a war criminal, FDR was. the creation of incendiary bombs designed to burn and murder japanese civilians in paper homes killed more civilians than the 2 atomic bombs combined. FDR committed this murder despite the objections of the military that it was unnecessary and wrong to specifically target nonmilitary civilian targets. add that to dresden and ask yourself why this is rarely mentioned and never covered by the dem press.
FDR, in addition to his communism, was duplicitous, a liar, lengthened the depression, and responsible for the socialist ponzi schemes shackling every american and driving us to bankruptcy.
however nothing is ever said about the crimes of this vile beast. he was a dem after all.
Jon Stewart said that Harry Truman was a “War Criminal” for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan.
Given that every month Jpanese atrocities killed more Chinese than died in Hisroshima and Nagasaki, he would have been awar criminal had he not done it. But for Mr Stewart Chines lives are as worthless as Vietnamese and Cambdian lives were to Jane Fonda and John Kerry once they were no longer useful.
Great response, I’ve sent it to everyone I know.
After watching that video, I have ready to open the Whittle for President Dallas HQ. Just say the word!
Operation Olympic was going to happen. If there had not been some sort of way to get the Japanese to quit fighting, there was going to be no way to avoid the invasion.
Peaceniks do everything in some sort of bleary eyed hindsight (it is rarely 20/20 -BTW).
The summer of 1945, the anti-war movement in the US was growing. It was still in its infancy, but it was gaining momentum. Then war in Europe had concluded. The people were tired of rationing, tired of old cars… tired of building olive drab and gray things… Americans wanted to return to NORMAL…
The Truman administration, and the military planners in general knew three things:
1) the Japanese could not be let off the hook for starting the war. If they were not absolutely defeated they would be faced again at some time in the future. Japan still held territories in Manchuria and Korea. It still had an industrial base, and the skill and know how of its population. If Washington sued for peace, instead of defeating the Empire, the Empire would have taken the long view and looked at the war as a temporary setback. There is no way to predict what specific events would have occurred if we had abandoned the war effort. What I do know is that the Japanese would have looked at it as a sign of extreme weakness, and they would have done their level best to rebuild their power.
2. The Philipine, Saipan, and Okinawa invasions had taught the American war planners one very bitter lesson. The Japanese had no intention of quitting, and would fight to the death. They had no qualms about involving civilians, and they willingingly used mass suicide attacks to do whatever damage (which was immense). The US Navy was losing a ship a day in the Okinawa campaign. Without finding a way to convince the Japanese (in particular the Emperor himself) that the continuation of the war was fruitless, and that he, himself, could be directly threatened, an invasion was impossible to avoid.
3. Given the combat losses of the last year 1944-1945, the Olympic planners were convinced that the American losses of KIA’s would exceed 300,000, and approach 500,000. The total casualties for an invasion would be a demoralizing million plus. How long could the Truman administration have sustained a casualty rate of that level without the rapidly tiring American public begin to demand a halt to the blood letting, regardless of the political costs?
The unsaid, but definitely relevant estimates of Japanese casualties were grotesque. Millions… perhaps 10s of millions of Japanese conscripts, civilians, and military were expected to die in the invasion. At some point, fundamental western humanity dictates that some other way of winning without such an attrocious infliction of death be found.
Tokyo had been firebombed into a cinder. Over the course of a few days, the city had structurally ceased to exist. It was a charred mark on a map.
So, Harry Truman was forced into a decision few people ever want to take. He was given the choice of using a new powerful weapon, that would potentially convince the Emperor of Japan that he was suddenly directly threatened from aeral-bombing attacks… thus giving him an excuse to surrender with some modicum of honor… or he(Truman) could start the invasion of the home islands of Japan… knowing that he would lose armies of men, and kill millions of Japanese.
That was a brutal decision. He took the right path. The Japanese surrendered, and we are blessed to have them as firm friends, instead of a virtually empty chain of islands once populated by a people who we were forced to annialate.
What was done, was done. What is, is to our benefit. It was the right decision, and no amount of Lefist/Pacifist Bleeting with change that.
r/John
According to this site:
http://www.psywarrior.com/OWI60YrsLater2.html
The warning leaflet Bill depicts on his movie was NOT dropped on Hiroshima nor Nagasaki. I don’t read Japanese and can’t confirm it, but apparently the cities on the picture do not include either of the targets of the Atom bombs.
Other than that, it’s a superb movie.
Excellent! This ought to be shown in schools just once instead of Al Gore’s movie which my 15 yr old has been required to see 6 times.
Jon Stewart’s moral preening–based on arrogance and ignorance–is despicable. The sheep-like audiebce that follows him is pathetic. But how do you talk to stupid people who have a moral certainty about things they know nothing about?
Well said, Bill.
Please keep up the great work.
I was a First Lieutenant in the U S Marine Corps who was among those who participated in the Okinawa campaign from start to finish. I was stationed aboard the USS Portland, a heavy cruiser. Marines on the Portland manned half of its 5 inch anti aircraft battery. I was a 5 inch anti-aircraft gunnery control officer. The Portland participated in the entire Philippine campaign, concluding with the recapture of Corregidor in February 1945. However, preceding Corrregidor was the invasion of Luzon by way of Lingayen Gulf, a narrow long body of water precluding ship maneuver. On January 6th, 1945 the Portland along with other cruisers, battleships an destroyers entered Lingayen Gulf early in the morning. The whole fleet was taken under attack by Kamikazes. Search radar could not detect them because they flew low over the land mass. When a Kaikaze became visible he was close at hand. The attack began about noon and lasted without interruption until after sunset (about 8 PM). At least a dozen ships took Kamikaze hits that day with a great number of casualties. The Portland, fortunately, was not one of the ships struck although we were taken under attack sveral times. The air was quiet that day. At sundown the black bursts from 5 inch shell explosions dominated the sky in all directions.
The assault on Okinawa began on April 1, 1945. It was a costly effort. Army, Navy and Marine Corps casualties equalled exceeded those at Iwo Jima. The Japanes brutalized the civilian population on Okinawa during the campaign. What is almost never mentioned is that our closest supply bases were in Leyte Gulf (Philippines) and the Marianas (Guam, Saipan, Tinian), all appproximately 1500 to 2000 miles from Japan. The Okinawa campaign was an extraordinary logistical accomplishment. Supply ships and reinforcements were under way even before the April landing occurred at Okinawa. The Kamikazes had to fly 300-400 miles to get from Kyushu to Okinawa. If the invasion of Kyushu occurred (scheduled for November 1, 1945) all the Kamikazes would have to do was to get in the air, as was the caase in the Lingayen Gulf. Their targets (troop transports, supply ships, and naval warships) would be at hand in confined waters where search radar was of little value. All ships would have been exceptionallly vulnerable to Kamikaze attack but supply ships and troop transports particularly so, because they had little or no effective anti-aircraft weaponry and little or no radar fire control for what anti-aircraft weaponry they had. Confined waters, as was the case in Lingayen Gulf, would have prevented evasive action on the part of naval warships, but troop transports and supply ships would have been especially vulnerable because of their slow speed. Finally, The Kamikaze atttacks had become more sophisticated since they were first used in the Philippines. Rarely did a single plane attack. They attacked in numbers and took evasive action. On April 6th and April 12th 1945, the Kamikaze flights leaving Kyushu numbered in the hundreds of planes. Combat air patrols intercepted and shot down many of these planes but still a large number got through. Combat air patrols would have had limited effectiveness at Kyushu. It is safe to say that the invasion of Kyushu would have been extraordinarily costly in American lives. Stand back if you mention to me or any of my comrades in arms at Okinawa that the atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima was unnecessary.
Thumbs up. Great piece.
Jon Stewart (real name: Jonathan Leibowitz) always takes the anti-Western position. If it is in our interest, then it must be evil, right? But thanks to America’s response thousands of my fellow Australians are alive today. One word: Narcissist.
To: Jon Stewart
From: All of us here
Re: Your asinine comments
Ouch!
You better put some ice on that…
Best 16 minutes I’ve spent on the net in a long time. The delivery was equally as competent as the content.
Didn’t Obama just enjoy a lovely dinner with some other fine American comrades over Kobe beef?
Yep, Bill put the hurt to that liberal weasel.
I have to say these are some of the best comments I’ve ever read on this blog. To all of you who shared thank you very much.
Well done Bill. Wish you the very best. Thanks from all of us out here in the “Heartland of America”.
Great job, Bill. Thanks. Jon Stewart brought a jack knife to this gun fight.
My father was on a ship headed for Japan when the bombs were dropped. I was already in the hopper, but had the invasion gone forward, chances are excellent I never would have known him. My husband’s father was also on a ship headed for Japan. Had the invasion gone forward, chances are excellent he never would have been born. God bless you, Harry Truman.
This is why true history is so fascinating. Unfortuantely the young folks are only exposed to leftist bull in our schools. I must be honest, I am a little disappointed that none of the liberals out there had the courage to try to counter Mr. Whittle’s brilliant piece. Come on guys, not enough courage to try to stand up for your hero Jon Stewart?
Is anyone familiar with the argument that Japan was well on its way to surrender before the bombs were dropped? The emperor was supposedly considering (not an unconditional?) surrender at the urging of his closest advisers. The approaching Russians were nudging him closer to giving up – or so the argument goes.
lee–
Yes, I remember seeing a documentary that covered that topic. However, it was information that became known AFTER the surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri. I don’t know how much time passed, but the important point was that the information was not known or completely known or considered reliable before the atomic bombings. The point is, the U.S. military was estimating a million U.S. casualties, alone, to invade and defeat Japan. Given that the U.S. military estimated it would cost 80,000 U.S. casualties to take Berlin, which is one reason why we let the Soviets take it, the Soviet Army had 100,000 casualties. I’d say our military was prone to underestimation of casualties. So, a million U.S. casualties may have been short. The number of Japanese casualties? Probably at least as many. And, Bill is right. There are many of us here today, because the men who were to become our fathers lived through the last battle front. Thank you for life, Harry Truman. Lots of lives.
I believe Whittle addressed that point, Lee. What’s yours?
It’s typical of liberals like Stewart to think they can second guess the people who were actually involved and had to make the decision…a decision Stewart will never have to make…
63. Paul M Hupf: Semper Fi
There were references to what Japan did China to during WW2. I live in Shenyang, Northeastern China for the last 3 years. When we travel to some cities, mostly in outlying areas, locals buy me beer and whiskey, and start telling me stories about their families and what the Japanese army did to them.
Then they talk about the americans that came to fight alongside Chinese regulars long before American entered WW2. ( flying tigers and related groups). They bring pictures and how american soldiers fought to save their village, etc. They will not allow me to pay for food or drink, and these are peasants, not
Then they describe what Japanese did to the Chinese…these are brutal sadistic and terrifying stories of mayhem and savagery run amok. There are books on the subject ( rape of Nanjing) to read and understand the context of why Japan needed to be stopped dead in its tracks.
Thanks Bill for a great write-up! This is the kind of “tool” I use to try to educate my kids and counter the liberal education and social pressures young people face with a biased media. Everyone should share this information with young people they know. This is one definite way conservatives can fight the left. So, thanks again, and keep passing the ammo!
Don, thanks for the follow up.
About the casualty estimate – I’ve read that by the time the atomic bombs were considered, Japan was basically broken, and could not have inflicted much damage to the invading forces. They lost too much skilled pilots and technicians to wage war effecitvely. Of course, it’s all moot point if it was known after the surrender.
Couple years ago I’ve read a LAT article that alleged that Americans refused to drop leaflets onto hiroshima and nagasaki warning Japanese civilians to flee. Confirm?
Don’t get me wrong, I think the decision to use the atomic bombs was the correct one. But apparently some history teachers in our schools are teaching that Japan surrendered becasue of the Russians and not the atom bombs, and that they were overkill since Japan was all but defeated already.
lee
The notion that the Japanese were ready to surrender before the atomic bomb was dropped is utter nonsense.
The Japanese did send out peace feelers through Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the Soviet Union. But they would not accept unconditional surrender.
Japan proposed that they would only surrender if they could retain all the home islands and the colonies of Korea, Manchuria and Taiwan and that the Emperor and the military government would remain in power. Essentially Japan would only yield territory it had already lost and Japan would be in the same position it would be in before they attacked Pearl Harbor.
These terms were completely unacceptable to the Allies.
http://hnn.us/articles/52502.html
The notion that the Japanese military was depleted and incapable of any major offensive operations by the time of the dropping of the atomic bomb is also without basis in history.
Virtually unknown in the West are the offensive military operations the Japanese carried out in China in the last six months of the war.
In early 1944, B-29 bombers were operating from Chinese bases before the capture of the Marianas Island. In order to capture these bases the Japanese amassed a force of over 400,000 men in Operation Ichi-Go. The operation lasted until Jan 1945.
The Chinese counter attacked during the summer of 1945 with a force of 100,000 men. Facing them, the Japanese had over 80,000. Major combat was still underway when the Japanese surrendered. Both sides lost about 40,000 men each during the Chinese counter attack.
One of the reasons the Japanese collapsed when attacked by the Soviets in August 1945 was that several major Japanese units were moved south to fight the Chinese.
It is estimated that in just 1945 alone, Chinese civilian deaths numbered around 500,000 due to combat, starvation, illness and abuse caused by the Japanese.
Thus Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs saved not only American and Japanese lives it saved countless Chinese lives as well.
very interesting account. according to my source (historian of Japan, was in the US army at the time), the emperor never left the palace and made his recording there, but the cllique tried to intercept the tape on its way to the radio station. impt detail.
I’ll do you one better, Bill. $5 a month is the best cost / benefit internet subscription I have yet to discover. I know its not much, but it is the least I can do to support true conservatives and an attempt to counter the pervasive liberal media. Tremendous rebuttal to Stewarts casual dismissal of the historical context of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Bravo.
I guess fools like Jon Stewart (and the people who get their news from him) are yet another good reason to homeschool your child…
FDR may have started us on the road to socialism with his stacking of the Supreme Court and the New Deal (meaning, there is much to be critical of FDR), but he was not a war criminal.
This nonsense really needs to stop. You can wear out the meaning of a word with this crap. You do a GRAVE disservice to those who WERE the victims of war criminals when you use that term so carelessly.
A thorough understanding of what was going on and what WAR means is necessary here.
There is no way to fight a bloodless war, and there is no way to fight a conventional war without bombing civilians. War is ugly. War is HELL. The sooner this generation learns this, the sooner we can unleash the dogs of war and win the wars we fight today.
Japan invaded China for the purposes of imperialist expansion. That is why there were sanctions against them, sanctions that they rejected by bombing Pearl Harbor. They could have withdrawn from China and escaped the sorry mess, but they didn’t.
When the world had an embargo against South Africa because of Apartheid, South Africa eventually capitulated. They didn’t respond by bombing the countries participating in the embargo. If they had, I’m sure that some group of morons would spread similar means that “we forced themmmmmmm.” It’s bullshit.
Similarly, Germany had every intention of world domination. Their people had been brainwashed for a decade to prepare them to fight the ultimate battle. See “Nazi Youth” for more information. They loved their Fuhrer and it was their will to fight that was attacked at Dresden.
German military and Hitler’s cabinet and ministers were not dragged before a war crimes committee for the Blitz, even though thousands of civilians were killed by it. Killing civilians in a bombing are not war crimes. That’s not the litmus test. It is much more complicated than that, and this simplisme that “civilians died = war crimes” is just ridiculous. People who were taught that and who parrot those memes need to get their head out of the asses and into a few history books. You can’t blame your inferior education forever. At some point you need to take responsibility for your opinions and educate YOURSELF.
What IS a litmus test for war crimes is the intentional extermination of large populations and groups–relocating them with the purpose of murdering them, not achieving a military objective. Even “military objective” has to be used broadly.
This is also why one of the first targets during war is a country’s communications and propaganda organs. The willingness of a people to fight is a fair target and a military objective.
War is not a lady’s tea and this gnashing of teeth and whining about people dying in war is the kind of thing that needs to be eradicated from the mind of boobs and idiots. War affects everyone and that is why nations should avoid wars and those things that would cause nations to declare war against them.
Argh. Sorry about the typos!
The hypocrisy of that man knows no bounds. Stewart will bring Cramer in for a flogging as a representative of an irresponsible financial press–just as he himself was part of the broader press that refused to ask Obama ANYTHING during his candidacy. It was Stewart’s press that propagated the understood threat that if you asked Obama a tough question, you were a racist. Then, Stewart slinks away from his responsibility in the “press” by claiming to be a comedian. So in Stewart’s mind, he can say incendiary things and attack real politicians and make meaningful political points…..but if he says something wrong, it was a joke! The joke is Jon Stewart and anyone who buys into his hypocrisy.
The point is, the U.S. military was estimating a million U.S. casualties, alone, to invade and defeat Japan.
In preparation for the invasion of one of the Japanese island (Operation Downfall, scheduled for around November of 1945), the military ordered several hundred thousand Purple Heart medals. Those medals were kept in the inventory and were used all through the Korean War, Vietnam, and the 1991 Gulf War. That inventory wasn’t used up until around the year 2000.
About the casualty estimate – I’ve read that by the time the atomic bombs were considered, Japan was basically broken, and could not have inflicted much damage to the invading forces. They lost too much skilled pilots and technicians to wage war effecitvely. Of course, it’s all moot point if it was known after the surrender.
After Japan surrendered, US occupation forces helped demilitarize the country. They found elaborate and well equipped forces right in the expected invasion areas. Planning works both ways. While the Allies were planning the invasion, the Japanese correctly determined where the invasion was likely and prepared their defenses. Rooting them out during an invasion would’ve been very difficult and costly as was learned at Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
FDR may have started us on the road to socialism with his stacking of the Supreme Court and the New Deal (meaning, there is much to be critical of FDR), but he was not a war criminal.
This nonsense really needs to stop. You can wear out the meaning of a word with this crap. You do a GRAVE disservice to those who WERE the victims of war criminals when you use that term so carelessly.
I agree completely, just as when a liberal throws around the term “nazi”, whenever we or them carelessly throws around the term “war criminal”, it cheapens the horror suffered by the real victims of war crimes (e.g. Unit 731, Mengele, the Holocaust, etc).
I wrote this up in an article, “‘Gifts from Heaven’: The Meaning of the American Defeat of Japan, 1945″ at “The Objective Standard:
http://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2007-winter/american-victory-over-japan-1945.asp.
Far from criminal acts, the atomic bombs were moral acts: they ended a suicidal war, saved thousands of Americans and millions of others, and prevent a Soviet occupation of northern Japan.
If one wants to read what Nagasaki was really like, see “First into Nagasaki,” by George Weller. These are his dispatches from Japan, in the weeks after the bombings. Nagasaki was a major war armaments center–and the civilians were vital to it. The brutal, inhuman treatment of American POWs was Weller’s main focus–the bombs saved these men from certain death.
The invasion of Japan would not have been a disaster – it would have been a MEGA-disaster. Not mentioned in this discussion are two facts:
1. Science knew little about the destructive effects of radiation to the human body. All those pictures you’ve seen of ships and buildings being destroyed near the atomic (or fusion) blast, with troops further away, occurred after WWII.
2. Additional atomic bombs would have been used (as fast as they could have been produced) prior to the amphibious landings. They would have been used to clear the beachheads, followed by the marine landings.
Kids with bombs throwing themselves under tanks wouldn’t have been the half of it. Millions of Marines and infantry would have been crawling through radioactive rubble in house-to-house fighting to clear out those cities.
i watched the whole interview on comedey central.com.his apology was a lie,he did not just say truman was a war criminal,he elaberated in detail why he thought this.i would have prefered if he had stuck to his original idiotic comment.the guy is truly gelded.
Great work, Mr. Whittle! Can I suggest a new gerund for the blogosphere, “Whittling” — akin to “Fisking”?
The one thing that Jon Stewart got right is that the moral calculus is complicated, though. I side with you in thinking that Truman has been vindicated many times over, but I submit we should never take a decision like deploying an atomic bomb lightly. For in the final analysis, it is the slaughter of innocents as a means to an end. Sober reflection of all the costs and considerations, such as you have provided, is what is needed.
And though I respect the opinions of all the highly-informed commenters here, I don’t think the issue is nearly as cut-and-dried as some would have.
I’d like to toss a couple of considerations into the mix. First, though much of the blame for Japan’s aggression can be laid at Hirohito’s door, ultimately it was his decision — at great personal risk — to end the war, stop resistance, and call home the millions of Japanese soldiers deployed throughout Asia. Truman provided Hirohito the leverage to overcome the objections of the fascists who really ran the government, but in point of fact Japan had already suffered so mightily at the hands of the firebombers that it took some period of time for the Emperor to take note of the quantum leap in violence that the Americans had made, and to figure out how to exploit it to achieve his intention to end the war. Bill, you portray this delay as a sign of unyielding fanaticism, but I submit that it was merely the case that the atomic bomb, albeit more efficient for the attacker, produced carnage hardly distinguishable to the defender from ordinary incendiaries. (Only the later development of the hydrogen bomb changed significantly the nature of nuclear holocaust).
Second, a couple of commenters have reiterated the notion that the entire Japanese population was fanatically devoted to the Emperor and was ready for bloody resistance. No doubt true to some extent, but my own personal insight into this is through my mother, who was a young Japanese woman living in Tokyo at the time of the atomic bombings. She hated the fascist government. She lost her fiance to the battle for Saipan, and her best friend to the firebombing of Tokyo. And she blamed the government for its foolish imperialism. So though it may suit our self-justification to promote the image of a ruthless, fanatical resistance, the real story is more, well, “complicated”.
BBB
Like many others said upthread, my father came home from WWII in one piece, thanks to the wisdom and courage of Harry S. Truman.
Jon Stewart is an idiot. Consider the source.
‘A couple of nights ago, Jon Stewart said that Harry Truman was a “War Criminal” for dropping the atomic bombs on Japan.’
Yeah, well he’s right about that.
The Japanese refused to fight by the rules, so we gave them a taste of their own medicine. They intentionally slaughtered millions of innocents civilians in China (and other places) and routinely tortured and murdered captured Allied POWs, so we deliberately attacked their civilian population with napalm and atomic bombs, in flagrant violation of the laws and customs of war, in order to bring them to their knees.
People have a problem with that?
Tough.
Same principle applies today. Terrorists don’t play by the rules…we don’t play by the rules. Just like in the 1940s, we should do whatever we have to do to win.
Odd how the usual loud mouthed Libs are totally absent on this article.
No good excuses for your smug Icon Stewart Liebowitz? Anyone ? Bueller? Bueller?
Outstanding, Bill.
Bill –
God Bless ya, it’s that perfect a statement. Hits EVERYTHING that needs to be said about the A-Bomb and surrounding circumstances.
Now, I know you guys here at PJTV have to pay bills, but this is one vid I really, really think you should un-tether and place in public locales like Youtube. You want to see something go viral? This is it.
Plenty of libs out there who don’t realize how lemming-like their movements are. I can easily see many of them seeing this video and having a “Matrix RedPill” moment. It’ll make them ask questions they’ve never asked before, like “why was taught so much about this that’s not true?” – questions which will lead to other questions, thence an awakening???
But only if unfettered access to it is enabled. ‘Cause right now, my dear Bill, I’ll bet you a 10spot against a donut that at least 90% of the viewers who’ve seen this vid are Conservatives… and we already agree with you.
Let’s get this out to the public domain, Bill! Set this puppy free!
regards,
JG
In my view, dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not only beneficial in the short-run, in that it ended a war poised to take hundreds of thousands(perhaps millions)of more lives; but also in the long-run by potentially saving millions more.
Here’s what I mean by that. Let’s assume the bombs were not dropped. Aside from the carnage that would have followed in an invasion of the Japanese home islands, we would have still had nuclear weapons, and others would have still been working feverishly to get them. The genie was already out of the bottle – and there was no putting it back. The only difference is, we would not have had direct evidence of the effect of such a weapon on people. With the end of WWII and the onset of the Cold War, the use of atomic weapons in that conflict would have been far more likely, and far more destructive than anything the bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki could demonstrate. Instead, we settled into a protracted struggle that, thankfully, never went nuclear. I believe that one important reason it didn’t happen is because we had the far more containable and restricted experience of August, 1945 to help keep the lid on. And it has done so to this day. Maybe not for much longer – but that is another story.
Why do put so much effort into Stewart, Colbert, letterman, leno etc…They are satirist, comedians, late night entertainment before we go to sleep crap…Since when to we take them seriously for god’s sake! They are COMEDIANS…Idiots to entertain us and nothing more!
Greg Hart,
“Why do put so much effort into Stewart…?”
Because, unfortunately, as my mid-twenties son tells me, for many of his generation, Jon Stewart is the primary source of news. Laughable and sad though it is.
I get angry when the use of the atomic bombs in conversation becomes a negative against my country. My father was a navy signalman and watched 2 others die at Okinawa before he was sent ashore. He strongly believes he was to be in the first wave of the invasion of Japan. He visited one of the bombed cities and to this day, even after seeing the destruction the bomb caused, has no regrets about us dropping it. Neither do I. And if the story about giving a warning to Saddam about us using nuclear weapons if he used chemical agents was true, I would agree with that too. Being PC in war can be suicidal for those doing the actual fighting, IMHO.
#99-My twin sons, now 27 say the same thing about their peers. They have given up talking about politics with their age group.
A couple or so years ago I read on the internet a piece claiming that Hirohito was counseled by one of Japan’s own atomic scientists, who examined the residue of the bombs. According to the article, after Hiroshima (uranium bomb), the scientist told the emperor that since it was a uranium bomb the US couldn’t have that much more uranium, because it is so difficult to refine. The article claimed that Hirohito was only moved to consider surrender after Nagasaki (plutonium bomb) because the scientist told him we could easily make as much plutonium as we wanted.
Did anyone else happen to see that article? I have searched since then and haven’t found it again.
94. Well Educated Cad:
Odd how the usual loud mouthed Libs are totally absent on this article.
No good excuses for your smug Icon Stewart Liebowitz? Anyone ? Bueller? Bueller?
I noticed that also. No sign of David S., or Sheeeesh, or everyones favorite, Pastor of Muppets? Where are ya guys (or gals)?
#99 Highlander
I fear that many many more of todays youth follow your sons path. MSM news would even be better. MUCH more sad than laughable in my opinion.
Richard
Thanks for the great response. I feel properly educated on the subject.
If the use of atomic bombs meant freedom for Korea and other colonies, I’d say it was especially worth it.
I literally clapped and gave you a bravo yell for that video. Absolutely well done, well researched, spoken and felt.
I was absolutely mortified when Stewart said what he did. I don’t think his apology was honestly legitimate…I think he was told that he’d better say it, not that he really regretted it.
I very much hope he sees this and feels as absolutely small and uneducated as he REALLY is.
I’ll have to agree with MacArthur about the bombings.
Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, “MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed.” He continues, “When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”
Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.
I would have survived WWII.
I was born before Dad completed his training as a P47 fighter pilot. He had orders to “ship out for the invasion” when Truman stopped the war.
My best friend survived WWII also. Conceived before his Dad shipped out.
His Dad is buried on Leyte. He has no brothers or sisters.
Dad went on to have three more sons. He started as a biology teacher and coach.
He ended up developing and running a special educational unit for NW Kansas.
I asked the Kansas funeral director in 2006 if he could get a “military burial” group. I was retired in Arizona at the time. I had never lived in Dad’s town. He said sure. I expected an American Legion Honor Guard. They do it VERY well around here in AZ. And, way too often.
When we got to the graveside, there was a blue military van 50 yards away. Two non-coms and three enlisted. After the Pastor had his say, they took over. The bugler used a trumpet. No problem. Did you know we are running low on “live Taps” folks ?
Afterwards, I followed the non-coms and personally thanked each soldier. They had driven all the way across Kansas from Ft. Riley, around 350 mils one-way ?
I didn’t even know they had “some kind of unit” whose job was “burial ceremonies”. The best letter I ever wrote was to their commander.
I have the tri-folded coffin flag on a living room bookshelf. Three 5.56 NATO “empties” are visible through the blue fabric. Next to the “final portrait” at the end of his training. A handsome young man. Sheepskin lined leather helmet. Glass goggles pushed up on his forehead. A white silk scarf done “just so” around his neck, and tucked into his sheepskin-lined leather jacket. Wings proudly pinned to the left side. I have those wings.
The military knows how to take care of their own. I was honored. Totally.
Now, I cry when we are “putting away” another vet. I did not cry at my Father’s.
Harry Truman made sure Dad’s ceremony could take place 61 years after “that photo”.
Thank You, President Truman.
A “little man” who rose to greatness during our country’s time of need.
It still bugs me that Stewart concedes it was a tough decision to nuke 2 cities to end a war, but he still won’t grant the same concession to the guys who decided to pour water on a terrorist’s face to prevent another 9/11. Guess I’m just nitpicky that way.
Brilliant riposte. Stewart and those who use him as news source are nincompoops of the highest order. However, Stewart does know better. That’s why he paused, more than briefly, before responding with a yes. He did a lot of triangulating in those few seconds and came up with the “right” answer. I think this makes him even worse than a nincompoop. It makes him a liar and a propagandist.
Mr. Whittle, Thank you for your “disproportionate” response to Jon Stewart.
Why does Jonathan Leibowitz insist on calling himself “Jon Stewart?”
I thought being ashamed of one’s Jewish heritage went out with Tony Curtis.
Why does Jonathan Leibowitz want to appear so WASPy?
Highlander,
I hear ya, your point and other blogs well taken. I also have a mid-twenties son but does not share the same view as your sons friends…Guess I’m lucky he and most of his friends are conservative.
I watch Stewart (for cheap entertainment and lack of falling asleep.Many good conservatives go on his show knowing their going to be berated and minimalize by him just to get the press…Comments like Stewart made last week is just one of the many peices of shoe leather he has eaten over the years…However, this last one tops the list of uber-stupid. I hope Stewart and the rest of his fellow idiot entertainers watch Bill Whittle’s excellent educational tutorial and maybe learn correct history before shooting off their mouths again…
d
I knew a lefty moonbat gal some years ago who was crying on August 6 for those poor Japanese people who died when the USA dropped the bomb on them on that date in 1945.
I asked her if she also cried for the sailors on the USS Arizona who are still at the bottom of Pearl Harbor as the result of the Japanese sneak attack on 12/7/41. I also asked her if she cried for the Americans and Filipinos who were slaughtered by the Japanese during the Bataan Death March. I also asked her if she cried for the “comfort women” of various Asian countries who were forced into prostitution by the Japanese, many of whom were eventually killed. I also asked her if she cried for the Chinese victims of the Rape of Nanking. She just gave me a blank look. That’s what happens when folks are brainwashed and don’t have any knowledge of history or chronology.
–chicopanther
In Japan the caves were already being dug to house the government and critical factories inside of mountains. A German sub had delivered advanced designs for jet aircraft and other equipment just weeks prior to the bombing. And for the invasion the US Mint had worked overtime to produce the Purple Hearts for those wounded in the upcoming invasion.
We have not run out of those Purple Hearts.
It would have been a helluva shock during the invasion to find small numbers of jet fighter/bombers going after our landing craft, suicide subs going after our Navy, and factories that could not be taken out by the final atomic bomb. When you see plans for building a landing strip inside a mountain, you see one of the nastiest invasions that would ever be scaled. Tens of thousands dead would have been ‘good’, and no plan expected that, and a knife edge of a few, very advanced aircraft going after our ships and supply lines would have been a shock to the logistics chain.
Truman saved millions of lives. And the Emperor was very, very lucky to have not been caught by his military and executed before he could surrender. We all dodged a bullet, there, of a generation wiped out to finally win the war.
The Emperor was not captured by his military and executed. He died of old age long after the war. The Japanese Military leaders were ready to launch a coup after the Hiroshima bomb because they were afraid the Emporer would surrender. Only after Nagasaki, did the military finally back down.
A short but very well done piece in one of the “What If” books points out that the most likely alternative to the use of nuclear weapons was blockade and destruction of Japan’s rather poor road network, limited rail system, coastal sea traffic, and fishing fleet. The Japanese would have starved to death, with the probable result that the surviving population would have been too small to recover. The alternative to the bombs was not simply massive deaths, but genocide.
Jack Okie 102: As to what the Japanese thought of the bombs, I have a book that describes Japan’s own nuclear program, which was in fact far more advanced from the theoretical aspect than was Germany’s. I recall nothing in the book that says that the lead Japanese physicist thought that further Uranium bombs were not feasible. In fact, with the Hiroshima bomb the B-29’s dropped an instrumentation package to record effects and inside it was a letter to that same physicist, explaining what had occurred.
But even before he received the letter that physicist knew what had occurred. In a book by the lead designer for the Japanese Zero, he says that before the war Japanese engineers and scientists held a conference to discuss what sorts of weapons the U.S. could develop and employ against Japan. The possibility of atomic bombs was brought up, but dismissed as being infeasible for another 100 years. When he heard of the attack on Hiroshima, the engineer called the lead physicist and told him of it. The physicist replied “We will have to gather more data, but it sounds like an atomic bomb.”
Thank you Mr Whittle for this wonderfuly intelligent, fact filled, video.
Jon Stewart is not funny. But he sure is stupid.
Thanks to Bill W & commenters for great history lessons in this thread.
RWE wrote:
I have a book that describes Japan’s own nuclear program, which was in fact far more advanced from the theoretical aspect than was Germany’s. I recall nothing in the book that says that the lead Japanese physicist thought that further Uranium bombs were not feasible.
Spring ’45 U-234 was dispatched to Japan with 560 kg of uranium oxide as part of her cargo. Was it for building bombs?
The scientist in question was Hideki Yukawa, Nobel Prize (Physics) 1947(!) for the prediction of the meson. YUkawa was Japan’s leading theoretician in the thirties and forties and had published work on nuclear transformations.
He had enough knowledge to realize that U-235 would be fissile and when specimens of radioactive materials from Nagasaki were analyzed (Mass Spectrometer) he knew that Pu-239 could be made plentifully from U-238 (neutron bombardment) and be equally fissile.
Hence his expert’s opinion…be prepared for a bomb a week. At least.
I heard this when a student from Shin-Ito Tomonaga, who was a student of Yukawa and also a Nobelist.
#104 Steve,
You misunderstand me Steve. My son is aghast at the superficiality and cluelessness of many of his peers. He too has given up trying to explainthings to them.They don’t want to hear it.
“It still bugs me that Stewart concedes it was a tough decision to nuke 2 cities to end a war, but he still won’t grant the same concession to the guys who decided to pour water on a terrorist’s face to prevent another 9/11. Guess I’m just nitpicky that way.”
FDR orders Japanese cities firebombed, tens of thousands of Japanese CIVILIANS are burned alive…and he’s a hero. Bush orders a few TERRORISTS waterboarded…and he’s a great villain.
Only in Liberal-land.
Thank you, Bill Whittle for you concise and accurate explanation of the events of 1945. One piece of corroboration: My mother-in-law was in Miyazaki and was one of those Japanese civilians who were training to fight US Marines on the beaches with bamboo spears.
It made me think of an elderly Japanese gentleman I met back in 1985 on my first trip to Japan. He said “I think atom bomb was good thing. Because if it were not for atom bomb, I would be dead now. All Japanese would be dead fighting in the streets.” I have no reason to doubt the truth of this.
One correction: The island of Kyushu is pronounced kyu-shu (like cue-shoe) not kai-ushu.
Bill,
Very nice job. I enjoyed the video quite a bit.
My dad was a 23 year old bombadier on a B-29 flying from Tinian between May and August, 1945. As you mentioned, he continued to fly missions beyond August 6, until August 14. He was quite happy that the war ended so quickly with the A-bombs. They were like a miracle to him. No more 13-hour roundtrips with the fear of kamikazes and anti-aircraft fire.
My man, HST, previously derided as a passive tool of the Kansas City political machine, probably saved a million lives by this act.
And let us not forget FDR, who quickly dispatched Nazi saboteurs to the electric chair, after a brief proper trial.
FDR and HST put the USA and freedom first.
They got respect throughout the world then because we won the war, not because we were particularly kindly in doing so.
Still, our record was a whole lot better than that of the bad guys.
Bill, I was overwhelmed when I saw your video and forwarded the url to many in my address book. I also made two or three comments at PJTV’s blog story.
Just wanted to say how much I appreciated your video comments and respect you for what you have done and what you stand for.
And, oh yes…I have registered with PJTV. Hope to see more of your input there.
Warmest Regards. I salute you sir!
It’s kind of sad that we still need to teach liberals why using nukes in WWII was necessary. That’s something I learned when I was 15 and I was even still a liberal back then. Just goes to show you just how far to the left people in hollywood, academia, and the media are. They live in bubble worlds where they go their entire lives without hearing another point of view. Almost all serious WWII historians would agree that nuking Japan was necessary in order to preserve even more lives by avoiding a land invasion of Japan. It reminds me of the other hilarious liberal point of view on WWII controversy where they believe we were responisble for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor because we were selfish and wouldn’t sell Japan more oil and other war materials. Only to be embarrassingly exposed for their ignorance and put in their place by historians who remind them of what the Japanese empire was doing to China during that time. Liberals will do whatever they can to blame America somehow.
#117 Highlander
Good for your son…..Bad for his peers. I hope his good sense rubs off on them.
bbb said, “Second, a couple of commenters have reiterated the notion that the entire Japanese population was fanatically devoted to the Emperor and was ready for bloody resistance. No doubt true to some extent, but my own personal insight into this is through my mother, who was a young Japanese woman living in Tokyo at the time of the atomic bombings. She hated the fascist government.”
I won’t try to tell you how your mother felt, and I don’t know if all the population was fanatically devoted to the Emperor, but I DO know, because the effects of it were filmed, that the civilian population had been so propagandized that American soldiers were inhuman monsters, that many of them chose to commit suicide rather than be captured. And I’m not talking about the “classic” rip-your-guts-out-with-a-sword suicide. What I saw on a documentary of the invasion of one of the islands (can’t remember if it was Okinawa or not), was dozens, if not hundreds, of people, mostly women and children, jumping off cliffs into the ocean to avoid being captured.
The reports said that it absolutely broke the hearts of the soldiers to see women jumping off the cliffs holding babies in their arms. I’m certain similar things would have happened on the mainland if we had had to invade.
The silly nay-sayers such as Stewart always stick their foot in their mouths because they do not know the historical facts. These lefties forget that, in addition to the countless Allied(mostly American) servicemen that would perish as well as Japanese military and civilians,a million prisoners were present in Japan. They were used as slave labor, and preparations were being made by the Japanese military to kill them if Japan was invaded.
I watched this video yesterday and gathered my four children and husband around to watch it again in the evening. They were enthralled. We discussed the history of WWII (as a fourth grader, my daughter is just learning about the war) and talked just a bit about Pearl Harbor and the war in the Pacific.
Please, Bill, continue making these videos and not just as a response to leftist idiots like Jon Stewart. A fifteen minute video on “Tribes” (for example) would give parents, schoolteachers and homeschoolers a great teaching tool. You could gather them together in DVD form after a while, just as you gathered your essays into “Silent America.” Then you could sell them and get rich, while helping to educate America in real history. Capitalism and patriotism! Free markets and history!
I have to echo Mrs du Toit’s comment (No 28) that the 26-part documentary “The World at War” is absolutely essential viewing for anyone who wants/needs to gain some real understanding of the events of WWII.
This series will also demonstrate to all those twits who like to compare Bush to Hitler just how silly that nonsense is.
Mr Whittle’s video is excellent. Just excellent. It’s just a shame that such a response had to be made in the first place – the lack of understanding as to why the A-bomb was dropped is both astounding and disheartening in equal measures.
They say that history is written by the victors but it would appear that history is also subsequently rewritten by the victors children who have grown arrogant, lazy, stupid and spoiled by the blood, sweat and tears of their parents.
Mr Whittle,
Good research, good history. Thank you.
Had Truman not ordered the two bombs dropped, he would certainly have been impeached in the House (and probably convicted in the Senate) for having a weapon that was not used to save the American men that would have to go ashore during the invasion of Japan.
In effect, the bombs the USA dropped caused the Japanese to abandon a Medieval frame of mind and develop a modern democratic society.
Hesitation by the Japanese government after the two cities were destroyed was due to the Hirohito’s cowardly requirement to survive the war he caused. When he was assured of his continuation as ‘Emperor,’ constitutional or not, he was prepared to do anything the US government wanted. The Soviets would have publicly executed him, and he knew it.
Ken Fairbairn
To paraphrase one of the other comments, you put that smarmy little prick in his place. Well done.
I’m reminded of someone who once said, “Harry Truman may look like a school teacher, but you can hear his balls clank together when he walks by.”
My father volunteered in WW II. He went in when he was 35 and didn’t really have to. He kept secret the knee he had badly injured in high school football. My hero.
Jim
Excellent piece Bill. I always look forward to your essays. I remember reading about a discussion of inviting the Japanese high command to view a detonation on an island to demonstrate the bomb. It was decided not to due to the lack of total confidence in the bombs triggering. Does this ring a bell with anyone else?
Sammy
Jon Stewart is a hot steaming turd.
Very good article. I agree with about everything you said. However you did have at least one factual inaccuracy I noted. You stated that the first bomb, detonated over the army parade grounds. That is not true. It is noted to have detonated over a hospital. While the area you mention was very close by, and was no doubt the intended target, the actual location of detonation was directly above a hospital, as has been noted from some of the pillars of that hospital having been shoved directly into the ground, rather then having been toppled. While mentioning this would probably undermine your point, it is important from a factual standpoint. You would have been better off stating that the bomb went off right by the army facility.
One sees Stewart pause when asked if Truman was a war criminal.
The Hubris builds visibly as he utters his pronouncement, ignoring reality in favor of his Olympian mantle of judgment….Yes, he is a war criminal!!
What an oblivious fool.
Thank you for this video. i would gladly pay for a CD of it–or a text with pictures. My father lived this war in the Pacific, and helped General MacArthur pick the landing beaches in the second half of the war. He was badly shot up doing so. What you said here was what I heard all my life, but my leftist ‘acquaintances’ always poopooed the fact that we did warn the Japanese. Also, my father always said that the loss of American lives would have been astronomical if we had had to storm the Japanese mainland. None of this is taught in today’s schools by our liberal educators. RIP, Dad, I always knew you were right!
Just to put things into perspective, the European Invasion (Operation Overlord) involved 160,000 Allied troops.
Operation Downfall, the proposed invasion of Japan, called for 1,800,000 troops, mostly green recruits just out of boot camp.
Operation Overlord’s casualties were around 10,000 even though the Germans had been fooled about the actual location of the landing.
Operation Ketsu-Go, the Imperial Army’s plan for the protection of the Japanese homeland, correctly predicted which beaches the invading forces would use.
At that time, there were NO civilians in Japan; everyone was mobilized and expected to fight. Given the propensity for the Japanese to willingly die for their emperor, their level of preparedness, and the loss of surprise by the invaders, can anyone seriously doubt that Nagasaki and Hiroshima were worth the sacrifice?
Thank you Mr. Whittle. This was a very well done video. I have passed it along to the high school history teacher.
Thank you again for your articulate and impassioned articles.
Addendum to my previous remarks; Neither the U.S. nor Japan had signed any protocols against the use of chemical or biological weapons and both sides had huge stockpiles of anthrax, chlorine, phosgene, etc. that they were fully prepared to use.
In addition, Operation Downfall planners had factored in the use of up to seven atomic bombs and tactical weapons. They planned to locate large concentrations of Japanese, drop a Fat Man or Little Boy bomb on them, then send in American infantry to hold that ground – without any understanding of just what that meant. Radioactivity was a concept that only a few scientists truly understood in 1945.
In addition, the Soviet Union declared war and invaded Manchuria, the Kuril Islands and Korea immediately after the bombing of Hiroshima. Had we run into the Red Army coming down from the north, and found ourselves in a shooting war with both the Japanese and Russian forces, that entire debacle would have lasted much longer and the devastation would have been even less imaginable.
Lon #144
Um, the Russians were our allies in WWII.
bbb: “First, though much of the blame for Japan’s aggression can be laid at Hirohito’s door, ultimately it was his decision — at great personal risk — to end the war, stop resistance, and call home the millions of Japanese soldiers deployed throughout Asia.”
Hirohito had no choice but surrender. Had Hirohito been truly courageous, he would have taken the blame for the war on himself and committed suicide like his lieutenants. Yet, he chose to save himself and let his people do the dying.
Hirohito’s decision to surrender came shortly after his request for a better bomb shelter was denied. After the effect of the atom bombs had been seen by Hirohito, he asked for a bomb shelter to withstand them. The military told him that his existing bomb shelter was sufficient. Hirohito may well have surrendered because he was finally intimidated by the bombing that he feared could snuff out his own miserable life.
bbb: “Second, a couple of commenters have reiterated the notion that the entire Japanese population was fanatically devoted to the Emperor and was ready for bloody resistance. No doubt true to some extent, but my own personal insight into this is through my mother, who was a young Japanese woman living in Tokyo at the time of the atomic bombings. She hated the fascist government. She lost her fiance to the battle for Saipan, and her best friend to the firebombing of Tokyo. And she blamed the government for its foolish imperialism. So though it may suit our self-justification to promote the image of a ruthless, fanatical resistance, the real story is more, well, “complicated”.”
Many of the kamikaze pilots had lost friends and family, hated the war, and didn’t want to die. Yet they went. Had they not, their families would have suffered at the hands of their neighbors. So, yes, the real story is more complicated.
What individual Japanese thought mattered little in their conformist shame culture. Yes, the Japanese were prepared for fanatical, ruthless resistance. We know this from the Japanese resistance on Okinawa. The Japanese even killed themselves and their families. There are sons who survive who killed their mothers and tried to kill themselves and botched it. The Japanese had stockpiled boats, planes, and vehicles for a giant suicide campaign when the invasion began. That’s the gold standard for fanaticism.
I read Hiroshima Doctor many years ago. He wrote from the unique perspective of one in humanitarian profession who had just been nuked. He wrote words to the effect “How will we be able to resist?” show how difficult and bloody an invasion would have been. The bombs saved many lives. The only contrary aguement is that they may have been used differently ie demonstration on a landmark.
Kathy #145,
You will want to do a little research into our deteriorating relations with the Soviets after 1945, particularly with regard to Germany, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Those same points of contention would have translated to Japan and Stalin’s desire to turn that country into a Communist Satellite. If we had still been in Japan, fighting a protracted Japanese guerrilla war after the fall of the Imperial Japanese Military, there is every reason to believe that an encounter with the Soviets, however insignificant, would have quickly turned our Soviet “allies” into yet another enemy.
131. WayneB. The island you are thinking of was Saipan, and yes that happened. My uncle was there and saw it happening. He said there was nothing you could do to stop it, the Japanese civilians would not listen and just kept jumping. At low tide they would hit the the rocks, and at high tide would swim out to sea til they drowned.
Thanks Lon, that makes sense considering confrontation with the Sovs over Berlin, etc only a few years later.
We know how those last minute invasions in Asia turned out for Uncle Joe & Co. Good point.
Guess Sept ’45 as ‘the endpoint’ is where my thinking got stuck, not even considering when Operation Downfall might start & how long it might take to complete, never mind ‘fighting a protracted Japanese guerrilla war’ for the Islands or how much more time that might take.
Wasn’t it Patton who advised that we ought to go after the Ruskies right away & not wait for them to cause trouble in the future? Too bad he didn’t live long enough to get to say I Told You So
Unfortunately, the word “whittle” already has a meaning: to carve away a little at a time. Bill’s approach is more like explosive demolition: taking out the fallacy’s supports in rapid succession so that the whole thing collapses in on itself in a blink.
#140 Airfoil,
Stewart could be seen deciding that it was more important to avoid falling into the immediate trap his antagonist had set for him, than accusing a long dead president of war crimes. Rather than admit to the weakness of his arguments, he chose to save face with the ignorants that largely make up his audience, by kicking the can down the road. It illustrates how little thought went into his position in the first place, as well as the flaws of that same position.
Highlander- Right, he also was weighing his response with the Liberal’s burden of “Never admit you’re wrong, always attack”, and decided as you say to sacrifice reality for “cred”, forgetting that not everybody watching was going to support whatever he said. He also exemplifies the (quite Liberal) position of “WE are the smart ones.” What is amazing is that he didn’t hide, post-gaffe, but owned up; it was very un-liberal of him.
WOW! This is great information. My father served in WWII and also photographed atomic explosions for the Los Alamos National Lab (http://johndanielelliott.com/rangerfox.html). He was active in defending the use of the atomic bombs in WWII to end the war and save lives. I understood some of this but with Bill’s information is become so clear to me why he believe it and why I have even more of a stronger case to believe it as well. Great job Bill!
Many heartfelt thanks to Bill Whittle for his post and his PJTV video. Like Bill, millions of Baby Boomers owe their lives to Harry Truman’s decision to drop the bomb, a decision that allowed their American fathers to come home from the war alive. To all of us, the living descendents of America’s WWII soldiers, sailors and Marines, Harry Truman should be a hero. Anyone who says HST is a war criminal is saying that the world would be better off without us. But Mr. Truman did his job; he defended American lives and property.
My own father served as a radar-man on USS LSM (landing ship medium) 384 in the Pacific Theater. Among other things, the 384 landed troops on Okinawa and came under Kamikaze attack. Fortunately, the Kamikazes missed. Later, the 384 was stationed in the Philippines for further amphibious landing training. According to my father, the ships’s crew and Marines knew they were training to be in the first wave of landing craft leading the invasion of Kyushu. They knew what their assignment meant. They were not coming home. These young men greeted the announcement of the atom bomb attacks with cheers.
Jon Stewart and his ilk fail to understand the psychology of war. After four years of battling across the Pacific, the American fighting man had no illusions about his Japanese counterpart. The Japanese were hard, brave and merciless. To fight them, the Americans had to match their resolve. To gain victory, they had to become as relentless as their enemy. By the time of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the American fighting man had resolved to end the conflict by any means necessary.
The Japanese High Command actually believed that, by inflicting massive casualties on the American invasion force, they could demoralize the American military and force a negotiated end to the war. But in so thinking, blinded by racial bigotry and the code of the bushido, they had once more radically underestimated their enemy. The experience of combat against the Japanese had convinced the American military, from the boots on the ground to the general staff, that the worst possible of all outcomes was one that left the Japanese military intact. Massive casualties suffered in an invasion would only have led to redoubled American attacks. The Japanese willingness to die would have been met by an increasing American willingness to kill.
The most frightening of all facts is that, knowing they were going to die, my father and his compatriots were determined to see the thing through, to grapple with their enemy, and to sell their lives as dearly as they could. These men were the sword the Pacific War had forged for Harry Truman. To have sent them against the Japanese home islands would have led to the extermination of the Japanese people. Truman’s decision to drop the bomb can only be weighed against the bloodbath that was his only alternative.
Toward the end of his life, my father became involved with an association of WWII LSMers and, consequently, did some research on Operation Downfall. Among his papers, I have found in pamphlet form a book by James Martin Davis entitled “Top Secret: The Story of the Invasion of Japan.” Checking Amazon.com shows that the book itself is out-of-print, but a condensed version of the pamphlet is available at http://www.waszak.com/japanww2.htm. Davis reveals that American intelligence had seriously underestimated the ships and aircraft the Japanese had reserved for home island defense and that the Japanese defenses would have inflicted ONE MILLION American casualties. (Bill, if you would like to have a copy of the pamphlet itself rather than the abbreviated internet article, I have a few extra. Let me know by email.)
Also among my father’s papers is an article by Lee Fleming Reese entitled “Japan Was Building An Atom Bomb, Too,” published in the magazine “Science,” vol. 199, January 13, 1978. I have not been able to find this article on the internet, but it recounts Japan’s efforts to build a fission weapon starting in 1940. Under orders from War Minister Hideki Tojo, the Imperial Army directed Riken Laboratories to investigate the possibility of building such a weapon. The Imperial Navy also sponsored similar work by a research group named “F-Go” (“F” for “fission”) at Kyoto University. Both of these organizations built working cyclotrons, as did Osaka Imperial University. Ultimately, all these efforts were overtaken by the American victory, but it was not for lack of effort that Japan’s militarists were denied the atom bomb. We would not be here debating Harry Truman’s morality had they succeeded in getting one.
Didn’t anyone notice that this was just Bill Whittle – and no one else to debate or represent another view point or fact base? Of course he came away shining with his reflection being only that of a mirror. With a captive audience (us) and One perspective, Each of our opinions would be so touted. IMHO
I just checked with a friend of mine. The leaflet does NOT refer to Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Dear Mr. Whittle,
With all due respect, you are completely, utterly, and verifiably incorrect on this matter. Your ignorance of the historical military situation is obvious to anyone conversant on the subject; the exhaustive hours of research you put into Google have only served to help you demonstrate that ignorance. It’s not that the facts you cite are incorrect, it is that they are irrelevant. You obviously know nothing of the MacArthur memorandum published by Walter Trohan, and it is clear that you have not read the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946 either. And just to give you one of many examples where your interpretation of the facts has led you awry, your citation of the threat posed by 20 million kamikazis is downright risible, considering the fact that Japan produced only 11,100 planes in 1945, 2,000 of which had been destroyed at Okinawa. Links to the relevant original texts can be found here.
I strongly suggest you begin research on a second video disavowing your conclusions of this one after actually reading the RELEVANT material, which conclusively demonstrates that A) there was no need for a military invasion of Japan, B) the atomic bombings did not force Japan to surrender, C) Japan had been trying to surrender for months on the same terms that were ultimately accepted by the Allies on September 2nd, 1945. Doing so would demonstrate an admirable commitment to historical fact and intellectual honesty.
While the text of the leaflet,Office Of War Information Notice #2106, does not specifically mention any Japanese city, many of these were dropped over both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the weeks leading up to the first atomic bomb attack more than five million “LeMay Leaflets” were released above thirty-five Japanese cities. Based on the then-recent history of the Army Air Corps in that part of the world, any Japanese who didn’t believe that a serious conflagration was soon coming to their city was simply not paying attention.
the “Japs” of 1940′s Imperial Japan deserved what they sowed. They sowed massive destruction across Asia and the greater pacific. Untold millions of Japanese civilians were spared death in a ground invasion. To say otherwise is a slap in the face of humanity and to the victims. Yes I used a racial slang term fitting of 1940′s Japan.
Far and away more people were killed in the fire bombing than by the atomic bombs.
The leaflets were “checklist” items, no one expected any migration to occur. Don’t get diverted by arguments about how horrible War should or should not be. Leave the navel lint to Jon Stewart and his anal retentive cohorts.
airfoil,
Nobody will be diverted by factual information. I simply buttressed Mr. Whittle’s arguments by placing a few salient bits of historic record into the context this particular discussion.
Buying into Stewart’s assertion that a warning was not given is the problem. Honoring it with a response even to clarify it grants it credence of which it is unworthy.
I disagree, Lon, people will be distracted by the attention paid to a gratuitous and erroneous claim re: leafletting. It is a tool of insincere discussion to complicate an irrelevance in an attempt to “cape job” the opponent. Not you, but Mr. Stewart; It is my claim that answering a nincompoop’s charges conveys credence.
airfoil
By that logic, Mr. whittle should have kept his mouth shut and let Stewart’s faux-apology stand on its own merits. Keeping quiet when this nation’s enemies speak out is never a smart idea.
I would like to recommend to all of you an excellent novel by Alfred Coppel, probably his best work.
It is entitled “The Burning Mountain” and describes a U.S. invasion of Japan when a mishap delays deployment of the atomic bombs. The horror of the bombings would have been far outstripped by the horror of the alternatives.
The one thing that I have never figured out is this: Japan was an Island. Our Navy and subs could have easily blockaded it. The Jap merchant marine was gone and we were essentially sinking their small-craft fishing fleet. Without fish, Japan starves. Without oil, Japan shuts down. How would they supply their foreign troops? Why would we need to invade. Of course the bombing would have continued and the Atom Bombs would have been dropped as well, but what was the need to invade? Time was on our side. My uncle was headed for the Panama Canal when Hiroshima was hit, coming from Europe. He diverted home and had alot less European combat than my father but was home with his wife within days of Nagasaki. My father not til March ’06. Uncle Ted always needled Dad about that. But we all knew the Bombs saved Uncle Ted’s life and maybe my father too. No arguments in our house about that, but no one ever told me why we needed to invade Japan, after what we learned on Iwo and Okinawa about the Jap willingness to surrender.
156. airfoil
I, for one, find this comment thread at least as rich in content, interesting, informative & useful, if not more so, than Bill Whittle’s or anyone else’s ‘rebuttal’ of Jon Stewart’s blatherings. To my mind, it is about much more than ‘winning’ an argument with a bonehead like Stewart. Who cares: Stewart as ‘opponent’ is laughable, however many ignorants listen to him.
I greatly appreciate Lon & others here sharing their knowledge & clarifying minutiae such as Leaflets. I want to know the Truth, the Facts, the History – and the wonderful personal stories that came out on this thread in response to Bill’s video. All of those have more value than anything Jon Stewart has said, or will ever have to say.
RWE
Thanks for the heads-up on the book. I ordered a copy today.
Please, I merely meant that pursuing what amounted to a red herring offered by Stewart without any evidence loses the sting of Bill’s rebuke.
Kathy, I agree about arguing with Stewart, and adding “clarification” to Bill’s reply does it no good.
That is what I mean by “pursuing the shiny object” offered by a deceitful pundit. What happens too often on threads like this one is the wandering into the “Drift Zone”. It is so like the Left’s style to distract when a blunder is made by one of their own; I rue the result of taking his bait. That said, carry on about leafletting as a weapon of War throughout history.
Kathy
Here’s one more bit of trivia that has nothing and everything to do with this entire discussion; after Japan’s surrender, a fifteen-year-old high school girl, Yakiko Kasai, reported that after mobilization a teacher had issued her a sewing awl as a weapon. “You must aim at the enemy’s abdomen, understand? The abdomen!” the teacher instructed. “If you don’t kill at least one American soldier, you don’t deserve to die.” The atomic bomb that struck Nagasaki saved her life.
VD’s comments — above — were held for moderation as were many others (and the criteria for which is never obvious, but that is WordPress’ decision and not mine)
Since he cites speifics, I will respond.
The McArthur memorandum is one person’s interpretation of the events of the end days of the war. Simply citing the existence of the memorandum is not evidence of Japan’s willingness to surrender. I supplied extensive and repeated quotes (and ommitted countless others) of high-ranking Imperial Japanese Army and Navy officers who repeatedly said that they had no intention of surrendering. A refutation to this charge would not be to state that there was a document called the McArthur memorandum. The only refutation to the argument would be for VD to show evidence that the JAPANESE military planned to surrender and he has provided no evidence of that whatsoever.
Second, VD states that “it is clear that you have not read the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946 either.”
Sir, I not only read the survey you mentioned, I QUOTED IT IN THE VIDEO. Did you actually watch the video, or did you simply have a problem comprehending it? The survey states, AND I STATED THAT IT STATES, that Japan would have LIKELY surrendered before the invasion — but only because of the continuing horror of the firebombings, which you do not referernce at all in your retort and therefore it is dishonest of you to quote the conclusion of the Bombing Survey without acknowledging WHY they reached that conclusion. Furthermore, this was a post-war survey. The information it contained was not available to the decision-makers of the time. The willingness to sit in judgement of people’s decisions, based upon information available to you and not to them, is an act of intellectual dishonesty and of preening moral superiority that is unearned.
Your third claim is that I let “my mistaken interpretation of the facts lead me astray” in that I claimed there would be 20 million kamikaze airplanes. I SAID NOTHING OF THE SORT. If you had been paying attention to what the Japanese admiral said, he was discussing the use of “primitive weapons” — bamboo spears mostly — and when he spoke of 20 million kamikaze attacks he meant — clearly — man-on-man suicide attacks from 20 million civilians. You are the first person among the 130,000+ to see this videa to make that straw man assumption. I never said kamikaze aircraft, and neither did the Japanese High Command source, which again, I hold to be more credible than your personal assertions.
Finally, as I showed quite clearly in the video, the final decision to surrender was Hirohito’s, and I have used HIROHITO’S OWN WORDS where he says without ANY ambiguity whatsoever that the nuclear weapons were the reason he was finally forced to surrender. Against this we have your opinion, in contravention of the evidence.
Against the mountain of direct quotes from the Japanese command authority, you respond with a post-war American opinion, the assertion that I did not read a document that I in fact QUOTED IN THE VIDEO, a transparent and unique misreading of a statement from the Imperial High Command and your simple claim that the direct quote from Emperor Hirohito means nothing when set against the personal opinion of an American asserting a conclusion for which he has provided no evidence, sixty-four years after the event.
So upon reflection I do not believe I will do a new video retracting my position. I do think you might perhaps re-load and try again, although I suspect this is the best you have got.
Lon,
Don’t get me wrong here. I merely felt that Bill’s movie suggests that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings were specifically warned against, when this doesn’t seem to be the case. It’s the only error I could find in his wonderful movie.
Interestingly, the research I did about the leaflets was quite educational. Apparently the bombing leaflets did in fact work quite well at getting the cities shut down. The military held a stranglehold on the radio and the press, but there was nothing they could do to stop people from reading the leaflets.
Also, the cities mentioned in the leaflets were changed from time to time.
To be fair, there were 2 sites I found that addressed this issue. One was a CIA research paper that actually supports Bill’s point. The other site I found (at psywarrior.com) asserts that there was never any warning about Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I found the psywarrior site more compelling because he uses more primary sources.
I have a copy of Curtiss Lemay’s memoir “Superfortress.” Make no mistake. If Curtiss Lemay dropped notes saying that a city was going to be toasted, it was going to be toasted. Even without the atomic bomb the XXI bomber command had the resources to reduce the entire country of Japan to rubble in a remarkably short time. This was with a mission fleet of approximatly 450 B29s. According to the memior the XXIst was going to get more B29s. About 4000 more. Also the air forces from Europe were going soon to be operating from Okinawa. Lemay expected to have 15000 heavy bombers available for the invasion.
Another thing that was about to change was the targeting. Heretofore the bombing raids had concentrated on war production and left transportation alone. That was going to change in the near future. If you haven’t already seen it, rent “Grave of the Fireflies.” Consider how much worse it would have been if the railroads had been bombed into nonexistence. Ending the war as fast as possible was the best alternative.
There are many things to knock Harry Truman for, but the way he ended world war two is not one of them. I fault Truman for going to war in Korea without obtaining a declaration of war, which is a power we delegate to the congress, not the president. Secondly, his attempt to steal the US steel industry from its rightful owners should have landed him behind bars.
Re: #172 Peter: I also went to the psiwarrior site, and unless I misread, the author states that there is no record that these leaflets were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He does not assert that there was never any warning.
The site actually states: “Richard Hubert, chief of OWI saipan outpost said in a handwritten note that warning leaflets were delivered specifically to Hiroshima and Nagasaki but we have found no record of such a leaflet unless it was placed on leaflet 2106A.”
Hugh,
Thanks for the correction.
MORE! We want MORE! Give us MORE, please!
Okay, enough drama. Seriously, when is your next post?
-I wanted to comment on this a couple of days ago but couldn’t use the work computer.
-RE: the Strategic Bombing Survey. It was a flawed document prepared under Air Farce guidance to support the need for an Air Farce independent of the Army. I went through the Air Farce Air War College & the study wasn’t given much credence by their own historians.
-Once upon a time I wanted to do some articles or a book on Downfall. I was a professional grunt and that was my point of view. During my research I came across a few things that don’t seemed to have played well in history. Let’s assume that the Allies did make the decision to invade and we ended up in a slug fest from Kyushu to Sakhalin. The total number of Allied casualties doesn’t matter; the total destruction of Japan and the demise of unbelievably huge portions of its population does. What would also matter are the perceptions and attitudes of the Japanese and the Allies towards themselves and each other. When would Japan have recovered and to what extent? Would Japan ever have become the economic and political Allie it is today? Where would Japan be in world affairs? Would Japan ever have trusted the US or the US Japan? What are the odds that we would have allowed Hirohito to live or the monarchy remain after the war?
-These are questions; form your own answers.
Why the need for the invasion? The Japanese at the time were killing hundreds of thousands of Chinese and other asians and were holding some 270,000 American, Australian, British and French soldiers and civilians-all of these people were to be killed the moment the home islands were invaded (we had all the Japanese military and diplomatic codes so we knew about the orders even before a hard copy was captured in the Philippines.)
This is probably the finest, most inspiring thing I will see this year. Thank you.
I only wish that those who think and beleive the kind of stupid, ignorant, evil, arrogant crap that Stewart consistently spews could ever be convinced by facts. But they won’t.
Keep up the good work, and help us remember the facts and the truth.
GClarke: “The one thing that I have never figured out is this: Japan was an Island. Our Navy and subs could have easily blockaded it. The Jap merchant marine was gone and we were essentially sinking their small-craft fishing fleet. Without fish, Japan starves. Without oil, Japan shuts down. How would they supply their foreign troops? Why would we need to invade.”
We would need to invade even if we limited our assault on Japan to a naval blockade because such a blockade lacks the shock value of the atom bomb which broke the will of the Japanese to fight, the ultimate goal of the war. It’s just like the old saying that a frog stay put in a pot where the temperature is raised by degrees but will jump out if pitched straight into boiling water.
The naval blockade would have been more devastating than the atom bombs, though its effect more diffuse. Japan was a nation of 65 million people which could just about feed itself. However, the blockade would interfere with fishing, as you said, and with distribution of rice and foodstuffs within the islands. Japan is separated into compartments by mountains which were traversed by rail lines. The Allied command of the air would sever the railnet at critical spots, stopping the internal flow of supplies, just as Sherman’s March disrupted the Confederate railnet, wreaking havoc on the economy. Tokyo was backed by rice fields to the interior, so it would probably would have survived with difficulty. But the rest of Japan would have slowly starved, killing millions.
It’s not likely that would have forced the Japanese to surrender. For an equivalent example, North Korea endured a famine in the late 1990s which killed two million out of its twenty-five million without losing political control. In fact, the scarcity of food gave the government more life and death power over its people by controlling rations. If you apply the North Korean example to WWII Japan, it suggests that Japan could take over four million dead from famine without buckling.
Of course, all that time you spend waiting for the naval blockade to work would allow the Japanese to expend every weapon they had against the Allied forces at their convenience. Historians say that Japan was killing 400,000 people in Asia and Oceania outside of combat in their occupied territories. If you waited a year for the naval blockade to work, that’s five million dead.
As Sherman said, war is cruelty and you can not refine it. Bringing a war to a swift and authoritative conclusion is the best result you can wish and the most economical in lives. Seeking to moderate it in hopes of sparing bloodshed only draws the conflict out and chews up more lives.
Bill Whittle: “Second, VD states that “it is clear that you have not read the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946 either.”
The USSBS for Japan is much inferior to that for Germany. It went in with a preconceived conclusion, an inadequate number of interpreters, and neglected to interview most of the key Japanese players. The survey of Japan lacks the intellectual heft of the German survey and consequently makes an erroneous conclusion. It’s particularly noteworthy that the USSBS declared strategic bombing to be decisive in Germany but not so in Japan, which surrendered immediately after the atom bombs were dropped. Its conclusion is unsound and should be rejected.
http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2008/February%202008/0208bombing.aspx
From the video, Mr Whittle pointed out the following which might or might not be true and i will get into the details later in this discussion.
Lets just assume what Mr Whittle is saying is true and that :
(1) Hiroshima was given adequate warning
(2) Hiroshima was of military value
(3) Japanese resistance was not crumbling
(4) Japan was not trying to surrender
And lets say Al-Qaeda had the same policy of the Truman Administration and Al-Qaeda did the following :
(1) Warned the Pentagon of a pending attack
(2) Only targeted the Pentagon
(3) US government’s resistance to withdrawing troops from Saudi Arabia was not crumbling
(4) the US government was not wanting to surrender its bases in Saudi Arabia
My Question is : Would the US government then say that Al-Qaeda was not a terrorist organization if all four points above took place ? off course not.
Background to the atom bombing :
Even though the US government forced Japan at the “point of a gun” to sign unequal treaties in the late 1800s, the Japanese people, even as late as 1937, were sympathetic to the plight of five American civilians who were wounded due to an unintentional attack by a Japanese naval aircraft on a US gunboat in China.
Numerous christian Japanese students sent christmas cards including letters, profusely apologizing for the unfortunate incident, on top of the millions ( in today’s dollars) sent by the Japanese government to compensate the US government. Other letters from Japanese individuals and organizations contained gifts of money along with expressions of regret.
Even the people of Nagasaki (recipients of the second atom bomb) were sending money to the US embassy in Nagasaki for the USS Panay incident.
It is apparent that radical elements within Japanese society who wanted to drive the US out of China, due to US gun boat diplomacy, were behind the attack on USS Panay and other incidents in order to draw the US into greater conflict with Japan.
Addressing Mr Whittle’s points :
(1) Hiroshima was given adequate warning.
No matter how many warnings Hiroshima was supposedly given, the US government should have known, as in the case of Katrina, thousands of people might not be able to move due to illness, being handicapped and the poor and destitute would not have been able to evacuate or realize the seriousness of an atomic attack because no warnings were given about radiation poisoning.
(2) Hiroshima was of military value.
Hiroshima was of military value ? while Tokyo which planned the Pearl Harbor attack was not ?
The reason Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing is because it did not have prime military installations; and having the bomb explode above the city was to cause maximum damage to as much of the city as possible where school children were in school learning while the bomb was dropped and the Nagasaki bomb was dropped over a church: St. Mary’s Cathedral.
In April 1945, US General Groves was instructed to pick targets for the nuclear bombs. “To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids.” Four cities were chosen, including Hiroshima and Kyoto. War Secretary Stimson vetoed Kyoto, and Nagasaki was substituted. ( Leslie Groves, Now it Can be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, 1962 : Page 267 )
(3) Japanese resistance was not crumbling
Resistance to an invasion of Japan ? off course, the Japanese would resist an invasion on their homeland, just as Americans would resist if Japan invaded the US homeland.
One wonders why the Japanese did not surrender unconditionally after the fire bombing of Japanese cities.
Would the US government have surrendered if the Japanese fire bombed US cities ? off course not.
So by the same reasoning, fire bombing Japanese cities only made the Japanese government more determined to not surrender.
The US government makes it difficult for the enemy to negotiate because the US government is more interested in crushing the enemy than negotiating.
If the US government had accepted the conditional surrender of the Japanese instead of insisting on unconditional surrender, millions of lives could have been saved by the war coming to an end quickly.
As for those Japanese who committed war crimes, its very difficult to prosecute those when the US government deliberately fire bombed numerous Japanese cities knowing fully well that hundreds of thousands of civilians., children and babies would be burned alive.
(4) Japan was not trying to surrender
Other than the fact that if the roles were reversed and Japan was fire bombing and atom bombing US cities, would the US government have surrendered ? off course not, due to the concept of pride and an honorable surrender if surrender was ever contemplated as in the case of Vietnam and even then it took over 50000 American lives for the US government to finally surrender in Vietnam.
But even with the humiliation of defeat and wanting an honorable end to the war, the Japanese government did want to surrender conditionally.
What if President Truman, on the night before the atom bomb was dropped, dreamt of screaming Japanese children and babies being burned alive and dying in agony; do you think President Truman would have accepted the conditional surrender of the Japanese, instead of demanding unconditional surrender ?
As I stated before, tremendous job Bill.
Thank you for such an awesome retort.
Addressing your points. First let me send a few leaflets your way.. your about to be fire-bombed into oblivion. Probably and not in this particular order,
Muscle daddy, Silverback, airfoil, and probably Bill himself. I’ll let them hit you with the heavy stuff you deserve. I’ll consider this to be a FILO mission. Sort of an Ironhand mission to suppress some of the flack and soften up the target.
Addressing Mr Whittle’s points :
(1) Hiroshima was given adequate warning.
No matter how many warnings Hiroshima was supposedly given, the US government should have known, as in the case of Katrina, thousands of people might not be able to move due to illness, being handicapped and the poor and destitute would not have been able to evacuate or realize the seriousness of an atomic attack because no warnings were given about radiation poisoning.
NO warning would be adequate to get all the people out of the city. TRUE, But a warning is not necessary and I would point out that the Japanese leaflets that were due to be dropped on the Arizona must have been back ordered. Because they sure as Hell never arrived. And A warning would allow some people who took heed to escape, the warning were to try and reduce the amount of civilian casualties, not totally eliminate them.
(2) Hiroshima was of military value.
Hiroshima was of military value ? while Tokyo which planned the Pearl Harbor attack was not ?
The reason Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing is because it did not have prime military installations; and having the bomb explode above the city was to cause maximum damage to as much of the city as possible where school children were in school learning while the bomb was dropped and the Nagasaki bomb was dropped over a church: St. Mary’s Cathedral.
In April 1945, US General Groves was instructed to pick targets for the nuclear bombs. “To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids.” Four cities were chosen, including Hiroshima and Kyoto. War Secretary Stimson vetoed Kyoto, and Nagasaki was substituted. ( Leslie Groves, Now it Can be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project, 1962 : Page 267 )
TOKYO didn’t attack us. Evil men with no honor, launched a sneak attack killing over 2000 American citizens and plunging us into a WW. Nowhere does Bill or anyone claim that Tokyo as a city had no military value, and indeed bill points out that much of Tokyo which was worth bombing was already being bombed.
(3) Japanese resistance was not crumbling
Resistance to an invasion of Japan ? off course, the Japanese would resist an invasion on their homeland, just as Americans would resist if Japan invaded the US homeland.
One wonders why the Japanese did not surrender unconditionally after the fire bombing of Japanese cities.
Would the US government have surrendered if the Japanese fire bombed US cities ? off course not.
So by the same reasoning, fire bombing Japanese cities only made the Japanese government more determined to not surrender.
The US government makes it difficult for the enemy to negotiate because the US government is more interested in crushing the enemy than negotiating.
If the US government had accepted the conditional surrender of the Japanese instead of insisting on unconditional surrender, millions of lives could have been saved by the war coming to an end quickly.
As for those Japanese who committed war crimes, its very difficult to prosecute those when the US government deliberately fire bombed numerous Japanese cities knowing fully well that hundreds of thousands of civilians., children and babies would be burned alive.
Theres a difference between being attacked and being shown there is NO Way you can win. America thank God has never been placed in such a situation. By Gods grace may she NEVER find herself in that situation. THEY started the war . Unconditionally surrender was the only surrender that would have been allowed. Funny that you have no concern for the children and babies that the Japanese put to death daily. War is a terrible waste, and nothing will make it less so. Children die in wars. what’s your point here? the Japanese were not looking to negotiate at all. They had made no effort to make ANY kind of surrender. They were still talking about how they could win for GODS sake. Your an idiot or your being willing ignorant.
(4) Japan was not trying to surrender
Other than the fact that if the roles were reversed and Japan was fire bombing and atom bombing US cities, would the US government have surrendered ? off course not, due to the concept of pride and an honorable surrender if surrender was ever contemplated as in the case of Vietnam and even then it took over 50000 American lives for the US government to finally surrender in Vietnam.
But even with the humiliation of defeat and wanting an honorable end to the war, the Japanese government did want to surrender conditionally.
What if President Truman, on the night before the atom bomb was dropped, dreamt of screaming Japanese children and babies being burned alive and dying in agony; do you think President Truman would have accepted the conditional surrender of the Japanese, instead of demanding unconditional surrender ?
Again where do you get the idea that the Japanese wanted to surrender? Conditionally or not? OUTSIDE your diseased imaginary world you live in?
Give me ONE scrap of historical evidence that they wanted to conditionally surrender, but we refused. BTW when your LOSING the war as badly as the Japanese were you don’t get to dictate terms, when you STARTED the war.
Brian Boatman, your ill-informed and erroneous argument is what we’ve come to expect from the Left, thinly disguised America-bashing.
First, your comparison of the atom bomb attacks and Sep 11 is wildly wrong-headed and strained. Sep 11 was the equivalent of Pearl Harbor, an unprovoked and immoral sneak attack. The atom bombings of Japan were, by comparison, the necessary defensive reaction to such an unprovoked attack. We did not bomb Japan out of religious bigotry as Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, but to snuff out a racist tyranny that killed at least twenty million people.
Particularly obtuse are your assumptions that the US has military in Saudi Arabia against the will of the Saudis. In fact, we are there at the invitation of the Saudis, who America has placed in the lap of luxury with little effort of their own. By contrast, the Japanese invaded the countries where they installed their bases by force against the will of the people, impoverishing them.
Brian Boatman: “Even the people of Nagasaki (recipients of the second atom bomb) were sending money to the US embassy in Nagasaki for the USS Panay incident.”
Meanwhile, other citizens of Nagasaki were building the torpedoes dropped in Pearl Harbor.
Brian Boatman: “The reason Hiroshima was spared conventional bombing is because it did not have prime military installations; ….”
Hiroshima was a military city and had been for a century. It was proud of its samurai tradition. One eighth of its population were uniformed soldiers, some 19,000 of which were caught in the open by the Bomb performing morning physical exercise en masse. Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Japanese 2nd General Army, tasked with the defense of southern Japan. Much of the civilian population was engaged in military industry to support the army.
What is remarkable about your argument is that you make such an utterly wrong assertion with such confidence. Where does this confidence come from?
Likewise, your assertion that Japanese resistance was weakening flies in the face of history. 90% of the Japanese population of Saipan committed suicide when invaded. The Japanese were committed to an ideology of “the crushing of the jewel,” in which their mass death would be the ultimate expression of Japanese values. Japanese soldiers continued to fight on for decades after the war, the last of them surrendering in the 1970s. There is no equivalent example in history of a people so little disposed to surrender.
Brian Boatman: “… the Japanese government did want to surrender conditionally.”
No, they didn’t. They were indoctrinated to see surrender as unbearably shameful. The Japanese government made no effort to surrender until after the Bombs fell, refusing to even answer US demands they do so. The ruling military faction of the government did not change its position even after the atomic bombings, still believing they could get an armistice on their own terms if they bled the invasion force enough. Those terms included leaving the Japanese government intact. To implement their resistance to surrender, the Japanese had amassed the bulk of their military might in Kyushu to resist the coming invasion, including suicide vehicles of every kind and the militarization of the civilian population. When you are giving kindergartners bayonet drill with instructions to kill the invaders, that is not preparation to surrender in any form.
Brian Boatman: “What if President Truman, on the night before the atom bomb was dropped, dreamt of screaming Japanese children and babies being burned alive and dying in agony; do you think President Truman would have accepted the conditional surrender of the Japanese, instead of demanding unconditional surrender ?”
Even with the atom bombings, Truman allowed the Japanese to surrender conditionally, leaving Hirohito as emperor, rather than pay the price necessary for the unconditional surrender we demanded of Germany.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=givZsEAW80k
A quick comment about those who thought a blockade would bring Japan to it’s knees and forced a surrender.
You’d think it would, given Japan is an island nation importing near ninety percent of needed raw materials. But the cold, hard reality is that the US Navy had Japan under a near airtight blockade for at least a year prior to the bombings, and there was no sign of surrender. The US submariner force was infinitely more effective than the far better known German u-boats. We sunk the biggest aircraft carrier ever built by the Japanese in it’s own harbor. Small fishing boats trying to bring supplies in from Korea were routinely sunk by our submariners. Much as it was self evident that a demonstration blast would not have convinced the Japanese surrender (self evident because it took two real blasts, substantially wrecking two cities to eventually convince them), it is self evident that merely blockading the Japanese home islands would not have succeeded, since it had already been effectively done for arguably sixteen months minimum.
It takes a willing suspension of disbelief, to borrow a phrase, to argue that the blockade would have ended the war. Self delusion amongst those revisionists who can’t comprehend that most basic of realities is obviously far too common an affliction.
Your thoughtful commentary is a joy to watch on PJTV or read here. Thank you!