Obama Tried to Apologize to Japan for the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Let’s replace the American president with someone who goes out of his way to humiliate the country and see if anyone notices. Oops, it looks like Japan did notice.
One stop on his tour was Prague in August 2009. There he spoke of “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” ignoring that before 1945 we lived in such a world and it was neither peaceful nor secure.
Another stop on the tour was in Japan, where Obama in November 2009 bowed to the emperor, something no American president had ever done. It could have been worse if plans to visit Nagasaki and Hiroshima to apologize for winning the war with the atom bombs had come to pass.
A heretofore secret cable dated Sept. 3, 2009, was recently released by WikiLeaks. Sent to Secretary of State Clinton, it reported Japan’s Vice Foreign Minister Mitoji Yabunaka telling U.S. Ambassador John Roos that “the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a ‘nonstarter.’”
The Japanese feared the apology would be exploited by anti-nuclear groups and those opposed to the defensive alliance between Japan and the U.S.
Yes, that’s exactly what the anti-nuclear activists would do. As an old anti-nuclear activist himself, Obama may have known that. Or he may just be an idiot. Let me tell you a military story.
I joined the US Air Force and got sent to Japan in 1993. I was a military reporter, and wound up spending much of my time with the US Navy. At one point, I deployed aboard the USS Blue Ridge, the 7th Fleet’s flagship, for a cruise down the coast from Yokosuka to Nagasaki. The visit was the ship’s first ever to that city, and took on many of the trappings of a state visit. It was a big deal, and I was privileged to be a part of it.
Imperial Japan invaded its Asian neighbors in 1931, ten years before Pearl Harbor. In those ten years it murdered and enslaved millions of its fellow Asians. That Japan, Imperial Japan, was begging to be nuked. It was lucky it had picked a fight with us. The Soviets would have exterminated them.
That war ended a long time ago. Only a credentialed idiot like Ebola would think to apologize.
Right on. It was war, plain and simple. Nothing to apologize for.
Just as the conventional bombing of Tokyo killed more people than the atomic bombings did, a conventional invasion of Japan in lieu of atomic weapons would have incinerated all of Japan and killed millions, not only in Japan, but throughout Japanese occupied China, Southeast Asia, and the East Indies. Moreover, the financial cost of which would have made the Marshall Plan for the recovery of Europe impossible. And of course implicit in an apology is a promise not to do it again, which would be a comfort only to our enemies.
No wonder the Iranians decided to blow up the Saudi Ambassador in America. The president will apologize for the inconvenience and offer reparations.
This is a brilliant post and don’s comment was so right, alas.
Congratulations, Bryan, on a post brimming with insight, historical perspective and — to be sure — the excruciating ignorance and lunacy of the incumbent.
What is he thinking? Does he think? Does he reflect on the fact that he’s not Barry the Community Organizer (if he ever was that) but President Obama, representing all of us?
If he thinks he doesn’t represent all of us, he’s right on that score when it comes to PJM readers. He no more represents .000000000000000000000000000001 percent of my mind, heart or soul than does the man in the moon.
$50 says Obama could find a way to apologize for Hitler’s death. I can hear it now, “What could the world have learned if not for our impatient, petty thoughtlessness? What would we know now that would have changed the planet and forever advanced our understanding of the human condition? Instead, our leaders needlessly discarded our very futures to prejudice, malice and our eternal shame.”
…yea,I think that ’bout covers it.
I wrote a haiku for Hirohito, just because.
Hey Look, Hawai’i
We should blow it the hell up
Hey what could happen
My Mom was a POW in Indonesia during WWII, courtesy of the Japanese. When I told her about this Obama initiative, she was spitting mad. The only reason she survived the war was because Truman ended it expeditiously. Had he not dropped the bomb, the war would have ground on for months more, ended up on the Japanese mainland, and seen the loss of tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Japanese. (D. M. Giangreco has a lengthy list of articles he’s written on the subject: http://www.waszak.com/giangreco_bibliography.htm)
Obama has proven once again that he’s pig ignorant. (And I apologize for insulting pigs.)
I dont know what you people are complaining about. Obama’s policy of apology and appeasement and communication has worked brilliantly with the Iranians. We have been so mean to the Iranians in the past. Being nice to them has gotten them to be nice back. See how that works? Why cant we all just get along?
That the Japanese Vice Foreign Minister is the one calling an apology a bad idea speaks volumes!
Obama went out of his way to show lack of respect to Japan by sending as his ambassador a campaign contribution bundler and entertainment lawyer. Recent holders of that post include Walter Mondale and Howard Baker. Don’t think the Japanese didn’t notice.
A study done by the War Department had the estimated U.S. casualties for an invasion of Japan at between 1.7 and 4 million American soldiers. We should all be grateful to know that this was Obama’s preferred option.
One of whom very likely would have been my father. I can’t argue with Truman’s decision.
And another who likely would have been my father, who was scheduled to be part of the invasion as well.
Nuking Japan was the right thing to do. Were we to do it all over again, I am sure we would nuke them again as well.
Me too, dad was a Seabee on Tinian the day Paul Tibbets took off for Hiroshima. The orders for a mainland invasion were already cut, millions were going to die on both sides.
By apologizing for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Obama is really saying “I’m sorry we didn’t kill more of you.”
Those casualty* estimates were based on bitter experience at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. As a historical footnote, I’ve read that someone ordered the production of several hundred thousand Purple Heart medals for those projected casualties. When the war ended without the invasions, those medals were warehoused. All of the Purple Hearts awarded for decades afterwards came from that stockpile – Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War, etc. I think they finally ran out or started producing new Purple Hearts sometime in the past 5-10 years.
*A casualty is someone who is no longer able to perform. It includes those killed In action, wounded and missing in action.
We’ll never know how accurate the estimates were. I’m fine with that. I’d rather it be speculation than actual American dead.
And that purple heart story is dumbfounding. The anticipated casualties being as much as all the casualties from from the end of the war to almost the present.
While you should always take Wikipedia with a grain of salt, here is their entry on the Purple Heart:
During World War II, nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the estimated casualties resulting from the planned Allied invasion of Japan. To the present date, total combined American military casualties of the sixty-five years following the end of World War II — including the Korean and Vietnam Wars — have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there were still 120,000 of these Purple Heart medals in stock.[3] There are so many in surplus that combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan are able to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to wounded soldiers in the field.[3]
The “History” section of the November 2009 edition of National Geographic estimated the number of purple hearts given as below. Above the estimates, the text reads, “Any tally of Purple Hearts is an estimate. Awards are often given during conflict; records aren’t always exact” (page 33).[4]
World War I: 320,518
World War II: 1,076,245
Korean War: 118,650
Vietnam War: 351,794
Persian Gulf War: 607
Afghanistan War: 7,027 (as of 5 June 2010)
Iraq War: 35,321 (as of 5 June 2010)
Reference [3] is to this article.
From what I’ve read (and not in Wikipedia as I recall) it was MacArthur who ordered the medals but only 1/4 of the order was filled by the time the war ended or whatever.
When I was in graduate school many years ago I was sitting the lounge where several professors were going at it on the aniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. My advisor, who was Japanese was sitting at the other end of the long table trying to read some jounral article. You could tell he was getting madder by the moment. After listening to the every increaing rancor at the other end he finally broke his silence. He picked up his coffee cup and banged on the table. “We deserved it” was all he said. End of argument.
Few recall or seem to know that the Philippines were an American territory scheduled for independence in 1946 when Japan attacked in 1941 and occupied it. Even fewer know what the Japanese did to stop its liberation. Any apology for this -
http://battlingbastardsbataan.com/som.htm
Don51
one of the “old guys” that taught me to shoot pool as a 21 year old, was a young Marine on Baatan the day it was captured. His name is Ray VanCamp. He was 6 foot 5 inches tall, wieghed in @ 300+ pounds, a big guy. When he was released from Japanese prison camp he weighed 120 pounds. HE is a SUPER mellow guy, but HATES Japanese to this day. He was mistreated it seems. There is NOTHING he has to apologise for. He spent the entire war in a camp, starving.
I taught English in Japan in the early-mid ’90s. One of my students, an elderly woman, remembered the neighborhood police teaching people how to wield sharp sticks, and the children to carry backpacks and run towards a foreigner. The purpose was to have them become suicide bombers, but they had an instinctive fear of the foreign face that the secret police had trouble overcoming. She believed the atomic bombs saved millions of Japanese lives at the cost of tens of thousands.
Unfortunately the Japanese Ministry of Education has taught the Japanese were victims of the War. Consequently later generations are unable to place the bombs in context. There is no mention of the forced suicides of Okinawans during the Battle of Okinawa, nor the preparations the country made to defeat a conventional invasion using suicide tactics.
“They saved Japan from her own militarism and from potential Soviet invasion and partition.”
From the Japanese point of view, I believe that no greater truth can be expressed. The loss of two cities is no small matter but Japan today is prosperous and unified (unlike North Korea) thanks to the manner in which the atomic bombings brought the war to a unbelievably swift end.
This is another glaring example of how the current administration’s “smart diplomacy” isn’t ready for prime time.
Could one find better examples of societies moved by the will to power than Nazi Germany or Japan in WW II? Yet now these countries are peaceful, almost pacifist. What changed?
They were taught the cost of causing trouble. Their wills were broken as their armies were defeated and their cities were destroyed–in Germany with napalm and thermite (Dresden) and in Japan with nuclear weapons.
Failing to crush the will of an antagonist and leaving him sulking in his (he hopes temporary) defeat is a sure fire recipe for more trouble down the road. We will be having continued trouble with our present enemies until we teach them the hard lesson that the Germans and Japanese learned in 1945.
My father, with whom I share a name, was a radio/radar technician aboard the USS Zeilin off the coast of Okinawa when the bombs were dropped. He was a replacement for one the the sailors lost when the ship was kamikazied off of Luzon. I’ve seen the plans for the invasion of Japan scheduled for November. I’ve always thought that I owe my existence at least partially to the use of those two weapons. Apologize? I think not.
Eventually we Americans will be forced to apologize to the world for having elected Obama president.
Obama showed his roots in the ignorant academic left with this. Every two or three years, some revisionist group of historians or other Marxists try to reignite this old argument that was settled long ago. No wonder such expense and effort has gone to keeping Obama’s academic records secret. Pushed along from one private college after another for his presumed awesomeness, he never had to read anything not written by Howard Zim or approved by Saul Alinsky.
Another bad Obama idea that needs to go into the catalog of really stupid things he wanted to do.
But stop and think for a moment why Obama would want to apologize to the Japanese. It certainly was not for them; it was for domestic consumption, especially with people like Bill Ayers and his friends. How revealing that Obama would have come up with a stupid foreign policy idea in order to shore up a domestic political base that would support him no matter what, because he’s their best hope. Anyone in elective politics should know that you don’t make a major effort to win your base — they’re already yours. You try to win the undecided voters. This would have done nothing to improve his following with undecided voters, nor would it have done anything to improve relations with Japan (as the Japanese vice minister clearly saw immediately). Leave it to Obama to come up with a gesture that serves no useful purpose.
That early in his presidency I don’t think Obama felt any worry about the loyalty of the base. But he saw himself as the first Citizen of the World. As such, he meant to redress the historical grievances the left and Third World still nursed by bowing and scraping to anyone who would receive him. I think Fidel’s was the only shoulder he didn’t slobber on.
Maybe he’s waiting for the funeral. He can attend and apologize there, and announce massive reparations.
To be paid for by a tax on “the rich”, of course.
Another point here is that official apologies, like any diplomatic action, have consequences. Obama may have figured that this was yet another chance for him to make an “inspiring” speech about what a bunch of beasts Americans are who aren’t named Obama, but this would have caused all manner of domestic headaches for Japan’s government, and likely would have triggered demand for reparations from the US by some political groups in Japan.
Perhaps someone should take this DOOFUS in the White House by the hand and give him a history lesson of Japan’s depradations in China and Far East prior to Pearl Harbor. Perhaps Ostupid could use a bit of historical data on the treatment of American prisoners by the Japanese during the war.
This President is simply no damned good; a worthless apologist. He simply does not believe in the America I have known. He is a Leftist-leaning, Socialist-Marxist incompetent occupying the White House.
Who is to blame: the ill educated, miseducated, under-educated drones and socialist-Democrats who voted for him. Lice infecting American. Time to delouse the political scene in 2012.
I’ve been all over the world over the past 30 or so years, and the most anti-American sentiment I encountered was in France, while the most pro-American sentiment – far and away – was in Vietnam.
So if Obama were really smart he’d get to the heart of the issue, and apologize directly to the French, the domineering conscience of the world, for America’s historical sins.
“… the French, the domineering conscience of the world …”
Well, that’s a pose France strikes to draw attention away from the fact that they wouldn’t even EXIST w/o America. (American to Frenchman: “Do you speak German? Frenchman: “No.” American: “You’re welcome!”) Evidently there is no French equivalent for the word gratitude. The French have only one actual fighting war hero, Joan of Arc, and they turned her over to the enemy.
The French have had that attitude about everyone but themselves since forever (they didn’t even really like selling Worth fashions to us in the 1890s). I was there almost 40 yrs. ago and that you-stupid-rude-Americans mindset was definitely in force then as well.
Japan should send us thank you cards every August 6th and 9th. We saved the Japanese people from extinction. If we had had to invade, or what was becoming the preferred option of Blockade and Bombard, we wouldn’t have left a breeding population alive. Halsey would have been right, the Japanese language would only be spoken in Hell.
The bombing and blockading would have included tens of thousands of tons of poison gas, mostly Mustard and Lewisite, directly attacking Japanese food production, and possibly use of Anthrax, in addition to destroying their transportation infrastructure, and bouncing the rubble in what was left of their cities.
The Japanese, themselves, had planned to starve a third of their own population to death, to free up food for the troops.
As it was, the capitulation almost did not happen. There was a coup attempt to prevent it.
Two points for any atom bomb appologists:
1. The war was not ended by the atom bomb, but, rather, by two atom bombs. Historical documents clearly show that after the first the Japanese government was still trying to figure out how to protect themselves from future bombings instead of surrendering. They also clearly show that even after the second there was an attempted coup that nearly prevented the Emperor’s surender speech from being broadcast.
2. The swift end of the war saved an order of magnitude of Japanese civilians as well as probably the character of the entire nation. No doubt Truman would have called on the USSR to give its soldiers to the effort and they would have taken Hokkaido in return at a minimum, and probably IMHO pushed as far south as Sendai.
It defies dear Mr. Occam to conjecture that the surrender could have been effected as well without use of these terrible weapons.
You’re exactly right. Over the years, I’ve heard some people argue that we should’ve dropped the first bomb as a demonstration on an uninhabited location. However, if the bombing of Hiroshima wasn’t enough of a demonstration to get them to surrender, I fail to see how dropping one of the very few nuclear weapons* we had on an uninhabited location would’ve done the job.
I visited Nagasaki last March. While touring their Peace Park, I couldn’t help but notice how many of the memorials were donated by communist countries during the 1980s at the height of the Nuclear Freeze movement.
*Several years ago, I read this interview with Paul Tibbets. Apparently, there was only one more bomb available for use after Fat Man (Nagasaki).
Studs Terkel: Why did they drop the second one, the Bockscar [bomb] on Nagasaki?
Paul Tibbets: Unknown to anybody else – I knew it, but nobody else knew – there was a third one. See, the first bomb went off and they didn’t hear anything out of the Japanese for two or three days. The second bomb was dropped and again they were silent for another couple of days. Then I got aphone call from General Curtis LeMay [chief of staff of the strategic air forces in the Pacific]. He said, “You got another one of those damn things?” I said, “Yes sir.” He said, “Where is it?” I said, “Over in Utah.” He said, “Get it out here. You and your crew are going to fly it.” I said, “Yes sir.” I sent word back and the crew loaded it on an airplane and we headed back to bring it right on out to Tinian and when they got it to California debarkation point, the war was over.
Studs Terkel: What did General LeMay have in mind with the third one?
Paul Tibbets: Nobody knows.
An excellent book is Japan’s Longest Day.
It provides a detailed chronology of the 24 hours leading up to the Emperor’s surrender broadcast, as well as background. Translated from Japanese, this was based upon extensive interviews with all major living participants, with the exception of the Emperor. It gives the most accurate portrait of Japanese political thought at that time.
Thank God the Japanese have sensible people in their government. Diggs is right, we owe the world a huge apology for electing Obama, especially at a time when the world needs competent leadership.
We really should stop and thank the Japanese government for being mature and strong enough to stop this idiocy in its tracks.
The GoJ, like all governments, jealously protects its own interests, but it has been my experience that MOFA genuinely recognizes the importance of the US-Japan alliance in not only ensuring regional stabilty in NE Asia, but also recognizes the key role the alliance has had over its history in the economic development of Japan.
I don’t care if Obama’s live birth was filmed on a beach with Don Ho crooning in the background surrounded by Hula dancers and Mt Kilauea in the distance. He is still the most un-American President to ever occupy the White House and is essentially a resident alien.
Except for the (literal) fallout and the decades of terror they inaugurated, the nuclear attacks on Japan barely merit a footnote in the atrocities of World War II.
War is hell. Total war is hell everywhere. Japan was never going to surrender before the bomb. They weren’t going to surrender *after* the bomb. They wouldn’t have surrendered after the *second* bomb, except that they thought we had a third and fourth and fifth bomb.
That being the case, it means that Barack Obama literally wanted to formally apologize for winning World War II. Thank God that Japan and Great Britain have been so far willing to forestall this insanity. I guess this is something Democratic Presidents do? Tragedy (Clinton apologizing to the Indians) becomes farce.
Having served a couple of tours in Japan and Okinawa during the late 60s/ early 70s I learned the last thing the people of Japan want is to be reminded of the war. They are deeply ashamed of their actions during WWII and just want to put it all behind them. An apology by Obambi would not only confuse them but would probably be taken as an insult.
The atomic attacks on Japan killed 210,000 people and ended the war. A conventional invasion would have killed millions of Japanese, millions of Asians, and hundreds of thousands of Americans. How is that a morally superior course of action? When anti-nuke activists condemn the atom bombings, they are implicitly endorsing the far deadlier conventional war. While anti-nuke protestors pose as pacifists, their view is in substance a war mongering position which reasonable people should reject as immoral.
One other important point to consider: An invasion was not the only alternative to the atomic bombs. Admiral Nimitz, among others, believed that Japan could be forced to surrender by a naval blockade. It might have worked, but not before a huge portion of the Japanese population had starved to death.
A naval blockade would have been an even deadlier option than atom bombings. Japan depended on the sea for food and transportation. Cut them off from access to the sea and the Japanese would die by the millions for lack of food. Think Stalingrad with no Lake Ladoga but on a national scale.
I believe that you are referring to Leningrad, not Stalingrad. Otherwise, however, I completely agree with you.
Keep in mind that disease would have probably killed as many as starvation had a blockade been used.
Cato: Sorry about that Cathago delenda est.
Punic Apology Tour 203BC
As an old anti-nuclear activist himself, Obama may have known that. Or he may just be an idiot.
It’s the latter. With 100% certainty.
To me, the urge to apologize for the atomic bombs shows the magical thinking of those in the academic left who imagine a world without trade-offs or evil (outside of what Americans do, or hegemony, or some other BS).
We were at war, the largest armed conflict in history. We dropped the bombs after agonizing deliberation regarding alternatives and costs. We dropped those bombs on an aggressor, which had a long series of conquest and horrific war crimes across the Pacific. Dropping the bombs seemed, after much deliberation, to be the most moral option, compared to the slaughter of an invasion, the starvation of civilians under a blockade, or leaving Japan to the tender mercies of the USSR.
I think it’s only appropriate that we send the Japanese Government our apologies for sending Obama, and our eternal gratitude for helping to alleviate his innate ability to universally embarrass every American with free will.
Byron,
Adm Halsey’s threat about Japanese “…being spoken only in Hell” was only averted by the good offices of the Atomic bomb. It took both A-bombs and the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria to get the Japanese Military to obey Emperor Hirohito’s surrender order.
If the A-bombs were not used, WW2 would have gone on. Without that surrender, Operation Zipper, the planned for 09 Sept 1945 British Invasion of Malaya would have occurred. This invasion would have set off a chain of events that would have seen hundreds of thousands, if not millions, murdered and killed before the Allies put down the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces, starting with Allied Prisoners of War.
The word of that atrocity would have prevented a later Japanese surrender as the British and American public’s rage would have left the American President and British Prime Minister no other options.
Avoidance of this is mass killing of allied prisoners was a very near run thing as Britain’s ambassador to Japan Hugh Cortazzi (1980 to 1984) said here: [http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fb20060423a2.html]
On Aug. 15, 1945, the Japanese authorities “announced that although Nippon had agreed to unconditional surrender, Field Marshal Count Terauchi, Commander in Chief of the Southern Army, did not associate himself with it and intended to fight on. What we did not know then was that a plan existed at Count Terauchi’s Saigon headquarters to execute all prisoners in case of invasion.”
President Truman was well aware of this “Kill all Prisoners” order from the Allies Ultra and Magic code breaking, which let Allied leaders know this was on the table. This is from Truman’s August 9, 1945 Radio Report to the American People on the Potsdam Conference.
I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb.
Its production and its use were not lightly undertaken by this Government. But we knew that our enemies were on the search for it. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we knew the disaster which would come to this Nation, and to all peace-loving nations, to all civilization, if they had found it first.
That is why we felt compelled to undertake the long and uncertain and costly labor of discovery and production.
We won the race of discovery against the Germans.
Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.
We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us.
This passage on page 573 of “Tennozan: The Battle of Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb“ by George Feifer, makes clear the minimal outlines of the human cost of that Imperial Japanese military “Kill All” order being executed:
“After the fall of Okinawa, Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchin issued an order directing his prison camp officers to kill all their captives the moment the enemy entered his southeast Asia theater. That would have been when those 200,000 British landed to retake Singapore, less than three weeks after the Japanese surrender. There was a real chance that Terauchi’s order would have been carried out, in case up to 400,000 people would have been massacred.”
Singapore would have been much worse than than anything seen in WW2 including the storming of Manila in Feb 1945.
The Japanese did not start killing Filipino civilians in Manila until the 1st Cavalry Division was in the northern part of the city. Of the 100,000 civilians that were killed in Manila, the “general accepted estimate” was 60,000 were murdered by the Japanese and 40,000 more were killed by either American artillery or cross-fire between the Japanese and American troops.
MacArthur didn’t allow any air strikes at Manila at all nor artillery for the early part of the battle and American troops did their best not to fire on civilians and protect them when they could. The surviving Filipinos surprisingly did not begrudge Americans the use of artillery afterward, because it kept the Japanese from killing even more civilians!
In Singapore, the Japanese had an island shaped killing jar they controlled the access too, and would have had weeks of time. There was no way civilians could run away from their murderers and the Japanese military controlled the entrance and exits. It would have had far more time to do its killing _unopposed_.
That puts Singapore in the high end death range for the “Rape of Nanking.”
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rape_of_Nanking_(book)
Death toll
Chang wrote of the death toll estimates given by different sources; Chinese military specialist Liu Fang-chu proposed a figure of 430,000, officials at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall and the procurator of the District Court of Nanjing in 1946 stated at least 300,000 were killed, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE) judges concluded that more than 260,000 people were killed, Japanese historian Fujiwara Akira approximated 200,000, John Rabe, who “never conducted a systematic count and left Nanking in February”, estimated only 50,000 to 60,000, and Japanese author Ikuhiko Hata argued the number killed was between 38,000 and 42,000.[28]
The book discussed the research of historian Sun Zhaiwei of the Jiangsu Academy of Social Sciences. In a 1990 paper entitled The Nanking Massacre and the Nanking Population, Sun estimated the total number of people killed at 377,400. Using Chinese burial records, he calculated that the number dead exceeded the figure of 227,400. He then added estimates totaling 150,000 given by Japanese imperial army major Ohta Hisao in a confessional report about the Japanese army’s disposal efforts of dead bodies, arriving at the sum of 377,400 dead.[29]
Chang wrote that there is “compelling evidence” that the Japanese themselves, at the time, believed that the death toll may have been as high as 300,000. She cited a message that Japan’s foreign minister Kōki Hirota relayed to his contacts in Washington, DC in the first month of the massacre on January 17, 1938. The message acknowledged that “not less than three hundred thousand Chinese civilians [were] slaughtered, many cases in cold blood.”[30]
The American invasion that would have followed those atrocities would have occured under a fog bank of poison gas.
See:
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (PA)
August 4, 1995
POISONOUS INVASION PRELUDE
Author: THOMAS B. ALLEN AND NORMAN POLMAR, NEW YORK TIMES SPECIAL
Page: A-1
>snippage<
While most known documents discussing U.S. use of poison gas in the war addressed tactical operations, the newly disclosed report of June 1945 raised the killing of enemy civilians to a level far beyond anything seen in World War II. No known military document from World War II recommends such wholesale killing of civilians.
To reach the magnitude of 5 million deaths, historians must turn to the Holocaust, the killing of nearly 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany. By comparison, the German bomber blitz of London in 1940-1941 killed 40,503; Allied bombing killed about 45,000 in Hamburg, Germany, in July 1943 and 135,000 in Dresden in February 1945; and the firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 killed more than 83,000.
On Pacific major battlefields, the death tolls had been: Okinawa (1945) 12,000 Americans, 100,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians; Iwo Jima (1945) 7,000 Americans, 23,000 Japanese soldiers; and Saipan (1944) 16,500 Americans, 51,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians.
Three officers of the U.S. Army’s Chemical Warfare Service wrote the study and on June 9, 1945, submitted it to the chief of the Chemical Warfare Service, Maj. Gen. William N. Porter, who approved their plan.
On June 14, other documents show, Fleet Adm. Ernest J. King received a secret report on poison gas from Marshall. These two men were the principal advisers of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his successor, Harry S. Truman, who had become president on April 12, 1945.
Truman had announced a sweeping endorsement of Roosevelt’s war policies — including a demand for the unconditional surrender of Japan. But he had not publicly spoken on the subject of use of poison gas.
But in June 1945 — with Marshall and King considering use of poison gas — Truman met with his principal military and civilian advisers in the White House to discuss the future of the war. The principal topic of the June 18 meeting was Operation Downfall, the overall plan for the invasion of Japan.
The minutes of that meeting refer to other, undisclosed topics that were discussed behind closed doors in the White House. It is now known that the atomic bomb was discussed.
It appears that the gas attack proposal had reached the highest level of government. On June 21, orders went out to step up production of several types of poison gas to bring stockpiles up to the massive amounts urged in the study.
The largest poison-gas raid would be on Tokyo because an “attack of this size against an urban city of large population should be used to initiate gas warfare.”
The planners targeted 17.5 square miles (45.5 square kilometers) directly north of the Imperial Palace and west of the Sumida River. In that area were 948,000 people. Within two miles of the target area were another 776,000 more people; they would probably be in the path of wind-carried gas.
The plan was to launch the gas attack on Tokyo at 8 in the morning, when the greatest number of people would be concentrated in the city.
Bombers would drop either 21,680 gas bombs weighing 500 pounds or 5,420 bombs weighing 1,000 pounds, depending upon the availability bombs. All of the bombs would be filled with a gas known as phosgene.
It is very clear that Pres. Obama is ignorant of that history.
It should be noted that one of reasons we drew up such plans was that we realized that the first part of Operation Downfall, the invasion of the southern third of Kyuushuu, the southern most home island, was just not going to work. The Japanese had moved too many troops and too much equipment to the island and had way too many kamikazes ready to strike (compared to the 2,000 used at Okinawa, the most costly US Navy battle in history, they had 10,000 by August and were building more, plus the flight to the target area was much shorter).
Everyone but MacArthur had given up on the original plan and redraftings including the liberal use of poison gas and atomic bombs (by those few who knew of their existence) were well under way by the time the two bombings ended the war.
It’s worse than you think. If Obama and his ilk had their way back then, there would have been a negotiated surrender with the US providing aid to the Japanese.
It seems to me that in addition to the all the American lives saved, the bombs saved hundreds of thousands of JAPANESE lives. How many would we have had to kill in an invasion? Would Japan exist as a country or as a culture today at all if we had?
My father was a sailor on a DE operating off the coast of Japan. At night, in small boats crew members including my father would row in and take sand samples from potential landing beaches. Very dangerous work obviously. During the day, they’d serve as a kamaikaze picket radar warning ship. Those bombs let by father come home and start our family.
What’s missing, at least from what Mr. Preston has reported here, is firm confirmation that it was the Obama Administration that proposed the visit and its purpose.
Mr. Preston, my father was a junior officer on the USS Zeilen, a troopship that had landed troops under fire in the battles of Guam, Luzon, and Iwo Jima. Steaming away from Iwo Jima, it had been damaged by a direct hit from a kamikaze, but those damages had been repaired, and the Mighty Z had returned to the western Pacific to prepare for the invasion of Japan when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Since the Zeilen would have been prominently featured in every troop landing on the Japanese mainland, my father would have faced some very stiff and chilling odds. From 1945 until his death in 2009, my father was convinced that those bombs saved his life. So from a very selfish and microscopic perspective, as well as from a broader one, I certainly agree with your conclusion that the U.S. had, and has, nothing to apologize for.
I wonder if our allies are secretly hoping Obama loses next election. I guess 2008 is a lesson in ‘be careful what you wish for’.
Another example of the despicable nature of Obama’s flawed character. The pathetic toady just can’t get off of his apology kick.
The best thing about not being an American is … never having to feel bad about the campus radical community organiser you people inflicted on the world as an experiment in new-age leadership.
How much longer will it take for America to figure out that Obama and Congress are our ENEMY? EPA, ATF, DOJ all included. Elected politicians and professional administrators are all our Enemy.
Nuclear bombs would have been used by now anyway in another war and by another country. Much bigger ones. Time was ripe to Bomb Japan and safe American and Japanese lifes. Their military heads where worse then Hitler. Maybe we should pay attention to our government and not wait for 2012. Impeachment can start any day. Where is the Million men march to DC when we really need it. All colors and races are welcome.
WTF
My parents and older brothers were prisoners of war in Santo Tomas, a Japanese camp in Manila. Obama’s attempt, thankfully aborted, to apologize for the bombings, is nothing short of a personal insult to our family.
Japanese Imperial Army killed over 80,000 people including baby, children, women and old folks in Malaysia. Countless women raped and used as comfort women. Thank you American for dropping the atomic bombs otherwise I wouldn’t be here writing. President Obama, don’t make a fool of yourself by apologizing.