The dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remains the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history.
No one knows exactly how many Japanese citizens were killed by the two American bombs. A macabre guess is around 140,000. The atomic attacks finally shocked Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese militarists into surrendering.
John Kerry recently visited Hiroshima. He became the first secretary of state to do so — purportedly as a precursor to a planned visit next month by President Obama, who is rumored to be considering an apology to Japan for America’s dropping of the bombs 71 years ago.
The horrific bombings are inexplicable without examining the context in which they occurred.
In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on the unconditional surrender of Axis aggressors. The bomb was originally envisioned as a way to force the Axis leader, Nazi Germany, to cease fighting. But the Third Reich had already collapsed by July 1945 when the bomb was ready for use, leaving Imperial Japan as the sole surviving Axis target.
Japan had just demonstrated with its nihilistic defense of Okinawa — where more than 12,000 Americans died and more than 50,000 were wounded, along with perhaps 200,000 Japanese military and civilian casualties — that it could make the Americans pay so high a price for victory that they might negotiate an armistice rather than demand surrender.
Tens of thousands of Americans had already died in taking the Pacific islands as a way to get close enough to bomb Japan. On March 9-10, 1945, B-29 bombers dropped an estimated 1,665 tons of napalm on Tokyo, causing at least as many deaths as later at Hiroshima.
Over the next three months, American attacks leveled huge swaths of urban Japan. U.S. planes dropped about 60 million leaflets on Japanese cities, telling citizens to evacuate and to call upon their leaders to cease the war.
Japan still refused to surrender and upped its resistance with thousands of Kamikaze airstrikes. By the time of the atomic bombings, the U.S. Air Force was planning to transfer from Europe much of the idle British and American bombing fleet to join the B-29s in the Pacific.
Perhaps 5,000 Allied bombers would have saturated Japan with napalm. The atomic bombings prevented such a nightmarish incendiary storm.
The bombs also cut short plans for an invasion of Japan — an operation that might well have cost 1 million Allied lives, and at least three to four times that number of well-prepared, well-supplied Japanese defenders.
There were also some 2 million Japanese soldiers fighting throughout the Pacific, China, and Burma — and hundreds of thousands of Allied prisoners and Asian civilians being held in Japanese prisoner-of-war and slave-labor camps. Thousands of civilians were dying every day at the hands of Japanese barbarism. The bombs stopped that carnage as well.
The Soviet Union, which signed a non-aggression pact with Japan in 1941, had opportunistically attacked Japan on the very day of the Nagasaki bombing.
By cutting short the Soviet invasion, the bombings saved not only millions more lives, but kept the Soviets out of postwar Japan, which otherwise might have experienced a catastrophe similar to the subsequent Korean War.
World War II was the most deadly event in human history. Some 60 million people perished in the six years between Germany’s surprise invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the official Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945. No natural disaster — neither the flu pandemic of 1918 nor even the 14th-century bubonic plague that killed nearly two-thirds of Europe’s population — came close to the death toll of World War II.
Perhaps 80 percent of the dead were civilians, mostly Russians and Chinese who died at the hands of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Both aggressors deliberately executed and starved to death millions of innocents.
World War II was also one of the few wars in history in which the losers, Japan and Germany, lost far fewer lives than did the winners. There were roughly five times as many deaths on the Allied side, both military and civilian, as on the Axis side.
It is fine for Secretary of State Kerry and President Obama to honor the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims. But in a historical and moral sense, any such commemoration must be offered in the context of Japanese and German aggression.
Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan started the respective European and Pacific theaters of World War II with surprise attacks on neutral nations. Their uniquely barbaric war-making led to the deaths of some 50 million Allied soldiers, civilians, and neutrals — a toll more than 500 times as high as that of Hiroshima.
This spring we should also remember those 50 million — and who was responsible for their deaths.
Discussion (10)
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In 1969 Minoru Genda, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, visited the U.S. Naval Academy as part of the Forrestal series of Sunday evening talks. It was well attended by midshipmen and senior military and diplomatic people from Washington, D.C. His speech was on Pearl Harbor but, during the question-and-answer period thereafter, a midshipman asked him about the atomic bombing of his birthplace; Hiroshima. He undoubtedly expected such a question and said that, while he regretted the loss of lives, we were at war and that he thought that they would have used it had they possessed it. Answering an unrelated question, he also said that he had recommended an invasion of Hawaii along with the Pearl Harbor bombing but that he was turned down by higher headquarters. I was there and also have these remarks on video tape (BBC Pathe). Genda’s Annapolis visit was to be the first of several weeks’ stops but he was whisked out of the country about 3 days later- never to return.
sirs: as usual, obama plays the idiot. there are no reasons of substance for the u.s. to apologize for dropping the atomic bombs on japan. ask the chinese. ask the filipinos. or, any of the island peoples that were the object of japanese conquest. or, the koreans. or the u.s. and british troops taken prisoner by japanese forces. the japanese were savage wherever they went, and richly deserved the retribution of the people they conquered and/or attacked. you say the japanese had 2 million troops by which to defend the homeland. i have read the figure put as high as 6 million troops, when one considers the troops spread out over the pacific, indonesia, southeast asia along with those troops and assets on the islands of japan. i have seen films of japanese civilians training with pitch forks and farming implements to defend the home islands. i have seen films and read accounts of the costs of the u.s. invasions of okinowa and iwo jima, in terms of u.s. lives and the loss of japanese life, military and civilian. it is likely the an invasion of the japanese homeland would have cost far more than 1 million u.s. & allied lives, and one can only speculate on the loss of japanese life, but it would have been in the high millions, perhaps as high as 10 million lives or so. who knows? the japanese would have brought their troops in the field all over asia and the pacific home, and in so doing would have suffered incredible loss to american naval and submarine forces, not to exclude american air power. as the experience in the pacific islands and okinowa and iwo jima demonstrated nearly all of japan's military forces opposing the americans would have been killed opposing an invasion of the homeland, and the number of civilians is truly incalculable. the dropping of the bombs, as counter intuitive as it may seem, was truly a humanitarian act, considering the lives saved. so, as stated initially, for obama to apologize for the dropping of the atom bombs is incredibly stupid. and, i would remind your readers, that japan never has formally apologized for its atrocities in world war ii, surely the equal of any committed by germany or italy in that war. (and, those who do not recognize the italian contribution to those sums are idiots, as well.) but, stupid is as stupid does, and obama and others will apologize because they are ignorant, or simply playing "to the crowd." either way, a great disservice to those who died at the hands of the japanese in wwii will be done. john jay
Excellent! I think about these things every time I'm admonished these days for saying "Japs" when I refer to Japan. There's evidently something wrong with saying "Jap" or "Japs". I think about what they did during WWII and I figure I'll call them anything the Hell I want.
What ever damage the bombs did back then, today both are major Japanese cities. So when the Iranian mullahs promise to destroy Israel within 25 yrs, I believe them. Death to the infidels, martyrs to paradise, and within 50 yrs...a complete Muslim middle east. No Judeo Christian holy land.
I've always been amused by the Progressive desire and ability to grab defeat from the jaws of victory. Less amusing is the Progressive zeal to apologize for things that are both unnecessary to apologize for, or things that they had absolutely culpability for. Hiroshima happened over a decade before Obama was born, but I have no doubt we'll never hear an apology for him for the mess in Iraq and Syria for which he has great culpability. As for America's use for the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: As you well pointed out, in the days leading up to Hiroshima American bombers had been killing many times more people on a daily basis with conventional bombs than were killed by a single nuclear one. Quite frankly, the only difference between the firebombing of Tokyo and the nuclear drops on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was in "efficiency"; It took a single plane and crew to do what had previously taken hundreds. So I've always been confused by the moral arguments against the use of the nuclear bomb presented by Progressives. So why was bombing Hiroshima with a single nuclear bomb any less moral than the firebombing of Tokyo? During my childhood, I had the fortune and privilege to meet and know many men who fought in the war. Many were preparing to invade the Japanese mainland, well knowing what those who had already fought during the island-hopping campaigns had gone through. They all expressed relief when Japan finally surrendered. In my younger years, I had thought that the more objective historians of the future would consider the deployment of our two nuclear bombs a massive life-saving decision. So far, I've been wrong.
Dear Professor, please allow me a thought about your statement: "The Soviet Union, which signed a non-aggression pact with Japan in 1941, had opportunistically attacked Japan on the very day of the Nagasaki bombing" "By cutting short the Soviet invasion, ... kept the Soviets out of postwar Japan, which otherwise might have experienced a catastrophe similar to the subsequent Korean War." The Soviets were despicable declaring war athe japanese in their final days, but at least they waited for the treaty's end to act; on the other hand the western allies during the war constantly requested that the USSR declared war on Japan breaking the pact without regards to the international law. Sometimes when the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
"Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan started the respective European and Pacific theaters of World War II with surprise attacks on neutral nations. " I'm reminded of a recent Trump interview by Anderson Cooper. The topic was the wife pic war between Cruz and Trump. Trump said Cruz "started it". Cooper responded "that's the argument of a five year old.... Every parent knows a kid who says 'he started it' ". And this encapsulates one clear left right divide. Cooper models morality with Mommy values. All moral agents are children, who should be obeying all powerful Mommy. Mommy doesn't care who started it, Mommy doesn't care about Justice, Mommy just wants her kids to stop hitting and shut up. "What difference, at this point, does it make?" Obey and behave. Be nice. No more hitting. Trump models morality with Daddy values. In the world at large, where there are no All Powerful Mommies to love and protect us, it *matters* who hits first, and it *matters* what you do, or fail to do, in response. Tit for Tat retaliation is almost always about the best you can do in game theoretic terms. Failing to hit back simply validates the initial attack, and invites more of them. Boys know this on the playground. Men know this in the community. And the Right knows this internationally. "President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on the unconditional surrender of Axis aggressors." Once upon a time even the Left in America knew that you won a war when you *defeated* the enemy, and not when you could get him to agree to an armistice while he was at a tactical disadvantage, so that he could negate that disadvantage. To temporarily "stop the hitting" doesn't resolve the conflict, it only delays resolution of it, and again, only encourages another attack, by demonstrating that the consequences of a failed attack will be minimal. Any chance that Obama understands either of these things? Any chance that Obama asserts Daddy values in Japan, the right to strike back with our full force, the right to fight to victory? I doubt it. Almost certainly, Obama will assert moral equivalency between the attacker and the attacked, and the "moral imperative" to "stop the hitting". The US was not "nice". Obama will apologize that we didn't "stop the hitting" earlier. Mommy values. The end of security internationally. The end of freedom domestically.
Hanson has not kept up with the history of World War II and information about it released over the ensuing seven decades. Japan did not surrender because of the atomic bombs; they were only among the factors leading to the decision. Japan decided to surrender because the Soviet Union, formerly neutral in Pacific Theater of the war, declared war on Japan on Aug. 9, hours before the bomb on Nagasaki, as prearranged in Yalta the previous February. Japan had lost all of its Asia empire by that point, except for Manchuria, adjacent to Russia. The million-man Soviet army amassed at the border crossed it, easily defeated the under-supplied 600,000 Japanese defenders, leaving Japan with nothing left to fight for on the mainland. All that was left was the homeland and they, and we, knew they had to surrender to save that much. It's all in recently published "Tommy's Wars: Paradise to Hell and Back". Don't be surprised if Obama not only visits Hiroshima, he apologizes.
It is a relief to read someone who actually makes sense and knows western history..Thank You Mr. Hansen
A telling factoid - every Purple Heart issued to American soldiers in the 70 years since the end of WWII was manufactured in anticipation of of the invasion of Japan. That is to say, such an invasion was expected to cause more American casualties than the Korean War, Vietnam War, the two Gulf Wars, the war in Afghanistan, and every other American military action carried out since the end of hostilities with Japan. That certainly seems like ample reason to unleash such terrors on an enemy.