By Lawrence Kadish

Written by Lawrence Kadish

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editor’s Note: The 80th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb has spawned a lot of ill-informed commentary.  The piece below is not one of them. It seems that both from progressive and libertarian circles, there is a great deal of Monday morning quarterbacking of President Truman, who had to make one of the most challenging decisions recent Presidents have ever had to make. Ralph Raico, a libertarian academic, sounds pretty much like a revisionist leftist when he writes, “The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime worse than any that Japanese generals were executed for in Tokyo and Manila. If Harry Truman was not a war criminal, then no one ever was.”  We completely disagree with that. The best way to stop the killing of both soldiers and civilians was to end the war.  Death by fire bombs raids is not preferable to death by atomic blast. The Japanese culture at the time preferred suicide to surrender. Both soldiers and civilians demonstrated this. The Japanese Imperial Army killed more civilians in its operations than any other army in World War II, especially if you remove the Holocaust, which was a separate effort by Germany to annihilate the Jewish people. In terms of the ill treatment of POWs, again, the Japanese come in first. There is no question that an invasion of Japan would have cost countless more lives than those lost to the two nuclear bombs that ended the war. Too many look at the horror of the dropping of the bomb and fail to see the horror had the war continued, and US soldiers and Marines would have had to take Japan inch by inch, like they did in Okinawa. How would Truman be viewed if it became known that he had the means to end the war, and he had the means to reduce American casualties in particular, yet failed to use them? We know Japan was working on the bomb. The Germans even sent a submarine (U-234) bound for Japan carrying uranium oxide, but it surrendered to the Allies before reaching its destination. Given the way both the Nazis and, particularly, the Japanese treated civilians, who would doubt they would have used the bomb had they obtained it first.

This month marks the 80^th anniversary of the use of nuclear weapons to end World War II. Two atomic bombs destroyed two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, sending shockwaves all the way to Emperor Hirohito’s bunker in Tokyo, where he told his military staff he would no longer sacrifice his country and its civilians in a war that was destroying his nation.

The debate continues to this day as to the morality of using nuclear weapons, with critics citing the enormous human cost. What they consistently fail to tally is the cost of not using atomic bombs to end the conflict.

Consider that more people were killed by the B-29 firebombing raid on Tokyo in March 1945 than by the nuclear strike on Nagasaki. No reference is made by critics to the naval blockade of Japan that reduced the daily calorie intake for civilians to starvation levels. Nor is there reference to the devastating attacks on America’s naval fleet by kamikaze suicide pilots, or the horrific loss of life among Marines to take just one hill on Iwo Jima.

The alternative to using atomic bombs was Operation Downfall, the planned invasion of Japan’s home islands. Military estimates projected catastrophic casualties: potentially one million American deaths and several million Japanese casualties, including civilians who were being instructed to fight the American invasion with sharpened bamboo sticks.

The invasion would have made the death toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like a minor footnote to a countrywide bloodbath.

The atomic bombs shocked the Japanese Imperial House into the unthinkable.

Hirohito’s surrender announcement specifically cited “a new and most cruel bomb” as a factor in Japan’s capitulation. In a radio broadcast just hours after a failed military coup that sought to prevent him from announcing Japan’s surrender, Hirohito told stunned listeners that “the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage, while the general trends of the world have all turned against her interest . . . we have ordered the acceptance of the provisions of the joint declaration of the powers.” In other words, we surrender.

Revisionist critics can argue that Japan was already defeated and would have surrendered without the atomic bombs, but the facts of history reveal otherwise. After the surrender, captured documents revealed that the Japanese had a very good idea where the American invasion would come and were prepared to expend lives to bloody those beaches. And that would be just the beginning.

There is no question that the atomic bombs dropped on Japan caused considerable suffering, but President Harry Truman knew he had the ultimate weapon to end World War II, and with it, prevent the deaths of more Americans – and many more Japanese. As we look back, on the 80^th anniversary of this final chapter of World War II, history’s judgment must weigh not only what happened, but what was prevented.

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This article was published by The Gatestone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons, Cpl. Lynn Walker, USMC

 

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