A different take on the lives saved by the bomb

The Japanese ex-patriates I worked with for years, all extremely educated people, were never instructed about WW II (in school) except for brief mentions of the ETO. Those who learned about the war mainly did so via their own research. My friend Itakura was a huge armor expert and modeler.

He had nightmares about a Great Great Grandfather who had been a Samurai for one of the old warlords. The G G Grandfather had led a massacre in Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu, back in the day.

 

I have read other similar accounts. However, I would argue that what is left out of history books is "writing history" as much as what is included. Perhaps there is an understandable sociological reason for leaving it out, but I was only interested in demonstrating that the defeated do write and sometimes rewrite history.

 

This is similar to another thread on another bombing issue... Just so I understand...Lets say The axis won ww2... WW2 Forums is running today...Someone asks the question...was Goering a war criminal for his bombing of civilian cities...I don't know Who would ask that in Britain because the males would have been long gone..
Someone else asks...Was the Rape of Nanking real...or a what if? We then stand back and wait for the knock on the door..or the jackboot through the cat flap...

Just checking as Sosabowski said to RAF meteroligist before his drop at Arnhem...Who's uniform your wearing.

 

Lets keep in mind that it was the Luftwaffe, as well as the Japanese, that first bombed civilian targets, first in Spain and then in Warsaw. They did it in the first days of war, esentialy made it a policy to kill thousands of civillians. The Allies at least did it only in the later stages of the war, after years of fighting, in response to the Axis refusal to surrender.

And there were thousands if not millions of good guys during WW2 and thousands of bad guys. I would say the thousands of Canadian and US troops fighting to liberate Europe and Asia, would count to be the good guys.

 

The other thing to remember is that we should not conflate the ideologies with the individuals. The ideologies of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were bad. That does not mean that all Germans and Japanese were bad. However, their suffering or death ultimately must be laid at the feet of their respective governments.

If a criminal is eluding police and causes a traffic accident in which someone is killed, who is to blame? The police or the criminal? If you think it's the police, don't tell that to them. They just might decide to finish their coffee before answering any 911 (USA emergency phone number) calls from your residence.

 

We are in complete agreement, Lou. The point that I did not make very clear is that there is a tendency to say that the Allies were not good guys because some of their soldiers did bad things. Of course there were individuals who were just patriotic and didn't buy into the ideologies of the Axis. However, they must be judged individually. The existence of good, patriotic, non-ideological German soldiers doesn't mean Nazi Germany wasn't the bad guy in the War. And you are right, Lou. There were a whole lot of folks who "went along to get along", or worse, approved of that twisted ideology.

 

You kick the Dog - Expect to get bitten!

Bravo.....

 

These discussions could go round and round thru time, but the fact is -- once the bomb was tested, Truman was going determined to drop it on somebody and couldn't wait to do it. Even at a speaking engagement, when asked - "How long did it take you to make the decision to drop the bomb?" he said, "That quick!" and he snapped his finger.

 

I will always come back and state some facts:

1. Based on the assessment of the likely casualties on all sides of the conflict that was made by the allied powers which we can read about if we take enough interest, our leadership made the best decisions they could within the fog of war and happened to be pretty accurate with what they expected to happen.

2. This leadership based on those figures that cannot be refuted but may be in small numbers adjusted based on more accurate post war assessments that did not alter the conclusive facts of the first figures.........therefore our leaders made nothing but HONORABLE decisions with what was done with the nuclear bombs. They could have used more bombs to be more persuasive and didn't. After you know the FACTS, perhaps a snap of the finger can easily bring you to the same conclusion. The decision was not made based on snapping fingers but on those assessments.

3. Because I view war as a failure of civilized society to reach acceptable negotiations to solve a conflict you will always enter the arena of war with the conditions of war-- war is not defined by civilized actions that are agreed to ahead of time---it is defined by what is done in the particular conflict. What we did in the last war may not be what we do in the next war---what gets results is probably what we will do. That is the fact of war. I propose let us all learn as much as we can about the people we are likely to have differences with and see how many problems we can solve that way before we are taken to the brink of war where such activity is too late and too little. We are all better off if we do all that we can do in the prevention of war as very often war does not solve the causes of the differences but it may postpone the resolution of differences instead.

 

Of course that "snap" included the months of study and conferences between the military, the production lines, and the scientists who developed it. The actual decision by Truman had probably been made long before the first one was tested as "proof of concept" for the implosion plutonium style.

 

As the US was averaging over a thousand casualties a day at the point in time when Truman made his decision a long period of introspection on his part could not be defended to the families on the homefront making the sacrifice. Emotionally we might wish he had to plumb the depths of his soul before giving his approval, but we elect* leader's to make these kind of choices for us when time and complexity make them unanswerable by referendum.

*(Yes he was not elected President, but was elected as Vice President to a man who's health was visably failing and was a potential war-time leader)