Every year at this time, there's much discussion in the newspaper about the anniversary of the last atomic bomb. This typically is a pretty one-sided discussion, as you'd expect from the poorly educated, leftie inhabitants of the MSM.
Offered for your consideration, and in the spirit of the subtlety and nuance that we're constantly reminded by that same MSM always tells us we need to exercise (*cough*Cowboy Bushitler*cough*), here are three exhibits that (a) you never read about in your newspaper, and (b) entirely explain the decision to drop the bomb. Entirely.
Exhibit A: 10,000 Japanese civilians commit suicide on Saipan, rather than surrender to the Americans. Not Japanese soldiers, almost all 30,000 of whom fought to the death. Civilians.
Exhibit B: Okinawa civilians were used as human shields by the Japanese army, and then ordered to kill themselves. Between 42,000 and 150,000 died as a result. The largest political protest in Okinawa history occurred three years ago, when the Japanese education ministry tried to airbrush this from school textbooks. Over 100,000 people took to the streets.
Exhibit C: The War Department ordered the manufacture of 500,000 Purple Heart medals in 1945, in preparation for the invasion of the Japanese home islands. There are still well over 100,000 in government warehouses: two thirds of a century of war has not exhausted this stock.
My biggest problem with the modern education system (up to and including the Universities) is that so many people emerge from the system entirely uneducated.
UPDATE 6 August 2010 11:45: More here. And here. And here.
8 comments:
I have always thought that if you look at Japanese military history prior to the dropping of the bombs and then afterward you would see how well it worked. And I am cold-blooded enough that "It worked, didn't it?" is enough justification for me. I don't think they've made any Korean women into sex slaves in a while.
I've been citing the purple heart information for a number of years since I first heard it. I was planning to add it as a comment to your blog until I found exhibit C. That simple number says more to me than anything else I've ever read.
Google "The Rape of Nanking" if you want to see how the Japanese treated civilians.
BP,
Pick up a copy of Last Train from Hiroshima. I found it both fascinating and horrifying at the same time. Some of the book has been successfully disputed, while some if it still holds true. It looks at the bombings from the other side. I'm not advocating that Truman made the wrong decision 65 years ago . . . on the contrary. If we had three, I think he should have ordered the use of all three. Still, I offer "Last Train" as a means of adding an alternate perspective to the discussion. And yes, I too knew about the stocks of purple hearts.
- Brad
W.V. -'pansive'
- thinking about bread?
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Great post, Borepatch. Simple, succinct, superb.
And yes, "The Rape of Nanking" is required reading for Hiroshima apologists. IMHO.
They say History is written by the victors. That may well be true in the immediate aftermath of an event.
However, often history books are written by people who have the luxury of being monday morning quarterbacks. Elitist, pacifist, tenure hugging snobs who never had the discomfort of slogging through a malaria infested jungle while zealots willing to sacrifice everything, including themselves, to kill you hide behind every tree and rock.
I've seen film footage of the suicides by civilians that you mentioned. People so brainwashed by the propaganda from the Japanese Military that they would rather leap from a sea cliff (sometimes tossing their children first) than surrender into US custody.
Thanks, Borepatch.
Excellent post.
My father fought against the Japanese in the Pacific. He would have been among those that invaded had the Japanese not surrendered. To his dying day he was convinced Truman did the right thing. Who knows what might have happened had he made another decision but I am convinced I’m here today with my brother and sister because Truman made the decisions he did. These modern revisionists that preach otherwise don’t have a fricking clue. The fact that it took two atomic bombs after the devastation brought to their cities by conventional bombing to get them to even consider surrender should be evidence of that.
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