Comments on: THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ATOMIC BOMBS (PRINT VERSION)

By: Matt Woods

Matt Woods — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 20:09:33 +0000

My uncle, John L. Woods, who has since deceased would have been one of those 19 year olds to land on Japan’s shores. I thank God for the men who carried out the atomic bombings. Their courage lead to my uncle’s career of 40+ years of teaching and scouting. Hundreds of young people crossed my uncle’s path and are better for it!!

Not all of generation X has forgotten or refused to learn our proud, noble American history.

By: PFN

PFN — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 04:07:28 +0000

Thank you, sir. Perfectly stated and informative. And sadly, none of this is being taught in history classes (not even mine which were 20 years ago!)

By: Geneva Conference (1954) » Blog Archive » Second Sino-Japanese War

Geneva Conference (1954) » Blog Archive » Second Sino-Japanese War — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 17:11:23 +0000

[...] Eject Eject Eject » THE TRUTH ABOUT THE ATOMIC BOMBS (PRINT VERSION) [...]

By: Windy Wilson

Windy Wilson — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 02:26:28 +0000

Excellent essay, another one out of the park!

Lissa, in your defense as a pedantic, fat-headed sophomore (Latin or Greek for wise fool, I forget which), most of this information was not widely known when you were 15 years old. Residual security classifications and that odd, sanitized version of the war prevented this from being widely known.

Shortly after making an ass of himself, Jon Stewart apologized. How shortly after? A day? A commercial break? The length of time it took for David Letterman to make his anaemic “apology”?

By: Rich Rostrom

Rich Rostrom — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:43:05 +0000

Please correct “four” to “five” in the preceding comment.

I really don’t want to imitate the Spanish Inquisition.

By: Rich Rostrom

Rich Rostrom — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:41:15 +0000

Coming in very late with four points.

1) Hiroshima held the HQ of II Area Army, which commanded the defenses of southern Japan (and for some reason Hokkaido). I’ve heard estimates that about _half_ of the people in Hiroshima were military personnel.

2) The largest nuclear bomb ever built was the Soviet “Tsar Bomba”, which was about 45 MT (3,000 times the Hiroshima bomb). The largest bombs in operational service were about 20 MT. The vast majority of large H-bombs were on the order of 1-2 MT – about 100 times bigger than the Hiroshima bomb, not “thousands of times more powerful.”

3) The Japanese hardliners had plans (and were about to issue orders) for the massacre of all Allied prisoners, including civilians. There were several hundred thousand such prisoners.

4) By summer 1945, public health measures were collapsing in Japan. Typhus, cholera, and typhoid had appeared in places, and epidemics were imminent. It is probable that millions of Japanese would have died.

5) The Japanese hardliners did not see the Soviet declaration of war as a reason for surrender. They had deluded themselves that the U.S. would agree to preserve Imperial Japan as a military counterweight to the USSR. Then the Soviet army erupted into Manchuria and Korea, conquering large areas. The hardliners now claimed that with the USSR showing such power, the U.S. would _have_ to deal with Japan!

By: Jane

Jane — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:28:04 +0000

This was the most amazing thing I have seen in a while. I watched it several weeks ago – five times. Thank you so much. You are extremely articulate and well informed. I wish this could be shown in High schools across the country. I am so glad to be able to tell you on your blog how much I enjoyed and cheered you for doing this. I hope it was viewed by many.

Take care.

By: Horace Wells

Horace Wells — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 06:30:05 +0000

When the west first went to war against the Nazis and Bushido heads, we condemned them for mass aerial bombing of cities and unrestricted submarine warfare against non naval ships.
Funny, but by the end of the war, we were the best at both. Is this moral relativism or not?

By: Susan

Susan — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:20:46 +0000

Wonderfully researched and written. Great work, Bill!

By: Séín

Séín — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:21:46 +0000

I still think Truman was a war ciminal.
As regards the warning that was given, can you really expect the Japanese to listen to what must have obviously seemed American propaganda? They didn’t know what they were dealing with, and had no reason to believe us.
The emperor of Japan had a point – if you are at war with a nation, do you really have the right to wipe its entire population off the face of the Earth? There’s aggressive bombing of strategic targets, and then there’s the obliteration of a population centre. Even if it is more costly for ourselves, we must still discriminate between military and civilian targets as much as possible, and not just annihilate everything. How many citizens of another country would you kill to save the life of one of your own soldiers? 1,000? 10,000? 1,000,000? More? I find any such answers to be monstrous, and we should never sink to such callous disregard for human life. Even if more of our own soldiers will be killed, we must be humanitarians in warfare. That is what makes Western nations so great.
Also, it was not just inhabitants of those cities that suffered. The children and descendants of those people suffered from cancer and radiation. Is it right to punish people WHO HAVE NOT YET BEEN BORN, to save the lives of American soldiers?
And come on, Hitler?! Hitler-comparisons are so over used. The man was much more than a war criminal and we all know it. And no, by neither Jon Stewart’s standards nor anyone else’s, should every war criminal be on par with each other. I doubt that is his opinion, for starters. And secondly, you cannot put them all on par because a war crime is not just a war crime. Nothing is that clear-cut and simple. What about motivations, moral standards and so forth? I still think Truman was a war criminal, but you cannot perfectly equate any war criminal with any other.