Today Marks the 65th anniversary of the largest single terrorist attack in history—perpetrated by the United States Government.
On August 6, 1945, the first of the only two nuclear attacks ever carried out resulted in the deaths of 125,000 people (the vast majority being civilians) in Hiroshima, Japan. The second was carried out three days later in Nagasaki.
This is state terrorism pure and simple. If any other country did it to us, we would call it terrorism. We need to be able to judge our ourselves by the same standards we judge others if we are to call ourselves rational.
This “my country right or wrong” mentality is dangerous and bullshit. Just because America did it doesn’t make it okay.
I don’t buy that this was the only possible way to avoid even more people being killed. We can never know how things might have turned out had the US not dropped the bombs. But we can see what those in the know had to say (emphasis added):
General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower
“During [Secretary of War Stimson's] recitation of the relevant facts…I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.’”
Mandate For Change, p. 380
“…the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”
- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63
Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman
“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”
I Was There, p. 441
President Herbert Hoover
“I am convinced that if you, as President [Truman], will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan – tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists – you’ll get a peace in Japan – you’ll have both wars over.”
May 28, 1945
“…the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945…up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; …if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs.”
quoted by Barton Bernstein in Judgment at the Smithsonian, p. 142
“I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria.”
The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb pp. 350-351
General Douglas MacArthur
“…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, pp. 65, 70-71
And even if it were true that more lives would have been lost (and I’ve yet to be presented with solid evidence to support this), it’s simply not enough to say the ends justify the means and that’s that. We rarely accept that the ends justify the means when the means constitute murder.
For the record, I was of this opinion prior to having ever decided to live in Japan. So you can save the snide remarks about the Japanese “getting to” me.
(quotes provided by doug-long.com)
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