Posted by
Bill Crawford on Sunday, August 08, 2010 10:12:38 PM
We have finally sent an Ambassador to the the annual memorial service at Hiroshima. Some sort of non-apology apology, I guess. Many of the countries in the region around Japan are still uneasy about Japan and this subject. Partially because Japan over the years has developed a stronger sence of abject victimhood over the whole thing, and partially because they all have memories of what the Empire did to them all in the fifteen years that preceded us dropping the big ones on them.
As time goes by, it becomes harder to see the moment. The moment in the Summer of 1945 was a frenetic one.
The war in Europe was over, and the intended target of the A-Bomb (Hitler and Germany) was gonzo. We had already lost 450,000 men in combat. Since we had broken most of their codes, we knew enough from Japan's communication traffic that the military was coming closer every day to actually being the government- meaning no surrender in sight.
The upcoming invasion of the Japanese Home Islands in November 1945, followed by the push on to the Tokyo Plain in 1946 (Operation Coronet) was predicted to waste up to a million Americans, and double that for the defenders. That is twice what we had lost in the entire war up to that point.
Harry Truman was told that he had two weapons for use, and they would kill up to a quarter million between them (which turned out to be accurate). We were already killing more than that in Tokyo with incendiary bombs.
Forensic history tells us that many influential military players in Japan were guessing that, after Hiroshima, we had no more weapons (the process of nuclear fission was not a big secret) and they thought they could recover. Even after Nagasaki three days later, there was a huge debate about what to do next. The Emporer knew that he was the only one who could make everybody involved back down, and he did so a week later.
With the luxury of peace, and the passage of years, many here debate the use and necessity of using the two bombs in warfare. I went through that years ago, as every thinking person should. It didn't take long for me to realize that the calculus was clear. The atomic bomb saved more Japanese lives than Americans. War is hell. Fighting it wrong is greater hell.