Americans Were Too Delicate to See the Truth

[Blaise (imported)]

This morning, the CBS Sunday Morning News broadcast an well done documentary about the Los Alamos National Laboratory.The short piece covered several topics.

A current concern is for the aging weapons and for maintaining or upgrading them.For the first time (I think), the contract for managing the Los Alamos Laboratory is up for bids. There are members of congress and others who have begun to question whether the labs still serve a purpose.

An interesting bit of information about the Manhattan Project was that then Senator Truman discovered the hidden two billion dollars used to pay for the project. Secretary Stimson talked him out of pursuing discovery of how the government spent the money. Secretary Stimson later was the one who told the then new president about the bomb.

[docs (imported)]

Had to have been there to really make a decision.

If you lived through the war as millions of us had, we cared not one wit about what happened to the Japanese. We cheered loudly when we heard what had happened because we knew the war was going to be over and a new generation of Americans were going to be allowed to be born because their Dads weren't going to die in a bloodbath due to last until at least 1948. Truman, had he not used the bomb, would have been impeached for not using it. Americans were scared, sick and tired of the war, and just weren't ready for this to go on another three years. Also we have since learned of the ungodly atrocities the Japanese warlords unleashed on people whether they were white ot oriental. You can not fight a war without a position of power. Otherwise you loose.

In 1953 I took a three week course in Biological, Radiological and Chemical warfare. (CBR for short) I went TDY and no one knew what this course was about. I guess I got into it because I had enough Chemistry and Physics in my record so someone decided I should go. Even my CO didn't know what the class was about. Fifty years later I have forgotten the C and B part of the course. I still remember, however, vividly the radiological aspect of it. I remember the pictures seeing Ground Zero and seeing a shadow of a human burnt into the side of the bridge. The poor soul was bent over as if he were trying to evade whatever had just happened. He/she was gone. The shadow remained. I remember seeing a woman's back in which the print of her dress was burned into her skin. I remember the long lines waiting to get some medical relief and the horrible shape they were in. I saw over 60 minutes of motion picture footage that I am sure few people saw until the 1980's. When I got out of the service I went to college on the GI Bill and became history teacher. My 1970, the Revisionists were at work. Blaiming Truman for causing the Cold War and of course, for dropping the Bomb. Such hogwash! Our willingness to drop the bomb probably kept USSR from ransacking half of the Orient. Truman's courage to use the airplanes to break the Berlin Blockade is a case in point. The fact that he used the bomb had to be in the back of the minds of the Soviet psyche all the time. When I taught US History I always made sure that my comfortable suburbun students of the 70's and 80's always knew of the "real" conditions of WWII.

Yes, my CBR class was quite sobering. No one cheered. No one mocked the dead. But our belief was that most of us would have been dead by 1948. Most of us thanked God and Truman. And not neccesarily in that order.

[Blaise (imported)]

Had to have been there to really make a decision.

If you lived through the war as millions of us had, we cared not one wit about what happened to the Japanese. We cheered loudly when we heard what had happened because we knew the war was going to be over and a new generation of Americans were going to be allowed to be born because their Dads weren't going to die in a bloodbath due to last until at least 1948. Truman, had he not used the bomb, would have been impeached for not using it. Americans were scared, sick and tired of the war, and just weren't ready for this to go on another three years. Also we have since learned of the ungodly atrocities the Japanese warlords unleashed on people whether they were white ot oriental. You can not fight a war without a position of power. Otherwise you loose.

In 1953 I took a three week course in Biological, Radiological and Chemical warfare. (CBR for short) I went TDY and no one knew what this course was about. I guess I got into it because I had enough Chemistry and Physics in my record so someone decided I should go. Even my CO didn't know what the class was about. Fifty years later I have forgotten the C and B part of the course. I still remember, however, vividly the radiological aspect of it. I remember the pictures seeing Ground Zero and seeing a shadow of a human burnt into the side of the bridge. The poor soul was bent over as if he were trying to evade whatever had just happened. He/she was gone. The shadow remained. I remember seeing a woman's back in which the print of her dress was burned into her skin. I remember the long lines waiting to get some medical relief and the horrible shape they were in. I saw over 60 minutes of motion picture footage that I am sure few people saw until the 1980's. When I got out of the service I went to college on the GI Bill and became history teacher. My 1970, the Revisionists were at work. Blaiming Truman for causing the Cold War and of course, for dropping the Bomb. Such hogwash! Our willingness to drop the bomb probably kept USSR from ransacking half of the Orient. Truman's courage to use the airplanes to break the Berlin Blockade is a case in point. The fact that he used the bomb had to be in the back of the minds of the Soviet psyche all the time. When I taught US History I always made sure that my comfortable suburbun students of the 70's and 80's always knew of the "real" conditions of WWII.

Yes, my CBR class was quite sobering. No one cheered. No one mocked the dead. But our belief was that most of us would have been dead by 1948. Most of us thanked God and Truman. And not neccesarily in that order.

I very much appreciate your post. I believe that being the target of the bomb might well have been more beneficial to the Japanese than enduring what part of Germany and Eastern Europe endured from the Soviet Union.

One does not have to embrace the revisionists to criticize President Truman. One does not have to reject all that he did to criticize him. I believe that good American military historians have agreed with the leftist journalist I. F. Stone that President blundered into the Korean War even though the communists did initiate it.

President Truman, however, did face a deadline with the use of the second bomb. The Soviet Union was about to enter the conflict. They were about to be able to make claims on Japan. By the way, Japan had an ambassador in Moscow during the war. Secretary Stimson did use that mode to warn the Japanese. Still, how do you warn about something completely new?

I can grasp why President Truman might have decided to use the second bomb, but my impression is that, when he authorized the use of the bomb, the military and he assumed that the military would determine when, where, and how often to use nuclear weapons. There were not many of them. There was a built-in limit for use in August, but more were in production that the military could have used in September.

Richard Rhodes and other have written in detail about these matter

s. I have not read about this in a long time. I

do not recall the details and have no time to research the topic just now.

[bobov (imported)]

Docs is very right.

These WW2 casualty figures (historians' estimates) shed some light on what happened: China 3,832,000 military + 3,949,000 civilian; Australia 34,000 military + 21,000 civilian; Phillipines 27,000 military + 91,000 civilian; India 36,000; New Zealand 17,000; Mongolia 3,000; United States (Pacific Theater only) 92,010. Many of the 400,000+ British WW2 casualties were in Asia. So the Japanese were responsible for at least 8,102,010 deaths during WW2. Japan suffered about 1,926,500 military casualties + 393,000 civilians, for a total of about 2,319,500. Despite the two atom bombs, Japan killed 3.5 times as many people as it lost. That's with an early end to the war because of the bombs. So no tears for Japan.

[Blaise (imported)]

Docs is very right.

These WW2 casualty figures (historians' estimates) shed some light on what happened: China 3,832,000 military + 3,949,000 civilian; Australia 34,000 military + 21,000 civilian; Phillipines 27,000 military + 91,000 civilian; India 36,000; New Zealand 17,000; Mongolia 3,000; United States (Pacific Theater only) 92,010. Many of the 400,000+ British WW2 casualties were in Asia. So the Japanese were responsible for at least 8,102,010 deaths during WW2. Japan suffered about 1,926,500 military casualties + 393,000 civilians, for a total of about 2,319,500. Despite the two atom bombs, Japan killed 3.5 times as many people as it lost. That's with an early end to the war because of the bombs. So no tears for Japan.

I have never noticed shame from the Japanese about what they did to other people. I am not concerned that much with the Japanese.

[bobov (imported)]

Well, no one's saying "two wrongs make a right," but the U.S. decision to drop the bombs is properly understood within its historical context. For those who say that use of the bombs was immoral, my reply is that everything about war is immoral. One should either not fight at all, which implies permanent victimization by those will, or fight to win. Too many Americans wring their hands about it all - they feel they mustn't sully themselves by doing the dirty jobs it takes to win, but their assumption that America will always have a choice of what to do means they can't accept the lack of choice imposed by loss. The freedom to fuss about ethics is a privilege conferred by victory.

The new technology marked neither a difference in degree nor kind. The deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were small relative to Japan's population. Far greater massacres have occured throughout history, up to and including total extermination / enslavement.

Violence against civilians has been common throughout military history. It was a brief affectation of the colonial era to think that war could be limited to a few designated disposables, leaving the affluent to spectate at their leisure. One might argue that placing the population at risk is a greater deterrent than "leaving war to the professionals." There was nothing odd or unprecedented about the a-bombs except the technology.

[SplitDik (imported)]

I have never noticed shame from the Japanese about what they did to other people. I am not concerned that much with the Japanese.

Umm, the Japanese have a very deep collective shame, as do most Germans. The Japanese are very unlikely to militarize again any time soon.

[bobov (imported)]

I've read in the NY Times that the Japanese government has for many years minimized and concealed knowledge among the Japanese about wartime atrocities. This has repeatedly been a source of friction between Japan and the Asian nations it once occupied. Japanese school curriculums whitewash the whole thing, and formal statements of regret stop well short of admitting what happened. I remember a long Times article interviewing elderly Japanese veterans who expressed their deep shame for what they did, and their chagrin that their stories were unwelcome among younger people - they were actively discouraged from speaking up. Just last week, newspapers discussed the growing antagonism between Japan and China because the Chinese feel the Japanese are systematically denying what they did in China.

Taken together, all this makes me doubt that the Japanese feel "a very deep collective shame." No one can feel ashamed of crimes unknown, and the average Japanese knows almost nothing about how his country fought the war. Rather, the notion of a contrite peace-loving nation is clever PR, intended to lighten the yoke of occupation while Japan was down and struggling to rebuild. If it were anything else, Japan would be unique among nations - the only place where the Christian ideal had actually replaced human nature.

Germany is in many ways a different case, so we should be wary of assuming that the Japanese feel as the Germans do. After the war, the Allied powers jointly administered Germany; the U.S. alone administered Japan. Germany's victims were its citizens and neighbors - people within the moral scope of Germany and the Allies; Japan's victims were across far seas - people largely outside the moral scope of Japan and the U.S. The Allied administrators insisted on German reparations and remorse; Douglas MacArthur, who ruled Japan after the war, insisted on Japanese Americanization - he downplayed Japanese guilt because he knew it would complicate Americanization.

The Japanese began to remilitarize a few years ago. They're preparing for possible war with China, and also renewing their sense of national pride. During Japan's decades of rebirth, the U.S. military umbrella was convenient - protection without cost, and all the savings could be plowed into the economy. Now the U.S. may be over-extended, and the Japanese don't like the U.S. military in Japan any more than Americans would like the Japanese military in the U.S.

There's nothing especially wrong about any of this, but we Americans have a lamentable tendancy to compound our ignorance of the world by creating fantasies about other countries and turning them into heavens or hells of our devising. This is fun until it distorts foreign policy. Oz may be "somewhere over the rainbow," but not Japan.

[jab (imported)]

Actually, if Hitler hadn't made the stupid mistake of declaring war on the USA shortly after Pearl Harbor, we might have stayed out of the European war -- at least until we had finished off Japan.

Actually, the Axis Powers existed as a unit prior to Dec 1941. When one of

the Axis Powers attacked the US, all three (Japan, Germany, Italy) were

officially the aggressors. We were in the fight, and mad-as-hell about

the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. (If we retaliated against Japan, we

would be attacked by Germany and Italy because of their own treaties

with Japan. That's the Tripartite Pact of 1940, signed by those Axis

powers.)

We can second-guess all of this until the cows come home, but unless

you were in Truman's shoes in 1945, you cannot have the complete

perspective. The points made here (in this thread) echo what I've

read: that the Japanese had made it clear that there would be

hundreds of thousands of bodies we'd have to wade through, to get

to Tokyo and end the war. The Japanese leaders did not seem to mind

that that many of those deaths would be be Japanese civilians.

The destruction with the new weapons was the lesser of two evils,

at least initially. It caused less deaths than the alternative, and

the deaths were the enemy's. (Civilians, admittedly, but they would

also die in bombings of the cities.)

Letting the nuclear genie out of the bag, that was the problem. It has

taken us 60 years (and counting) to deal with that.

[SplitDik (imported)]

I've read in the NY Times that the Japanese government has for many years minimized and concealed knowledge among the Japanese about wartime atrocities. This has repeatedly been a source of friction between Japan and the Asian nations it once occupied. Japanese school curriculums whitewash the whole thing, and formal statements of regret stop well short of admitting what happened. I remember a long Times article interviewing elderly Japanese veterans who expressed their deep shame for what they did, and their chagrin that their stories were unwelcome among younger people - they were actively discouraged from speaking up. Just last week, newspapers discussed the growing antagonism between Japan and China because the Chinese feel the Japanese are systematically denying what they did in China.

Taken together, all this makes me doubt that the Japanese feel "a very deep collective shame." No one can feel ashamed of crimes unknown, and the average Japanese knows almost nothing about how his country fought the war. Rather, the notion of a contrite peace-loving nation is clever PR, intended to lighten the yoke of occupation while Japan was down and struggling to rebuild. If it were anything else, Japan would be unique among nations - the only place where the Christian ideal had actually replaced human nature.

Germany is in many ways a different case, so we should be wary of assuming that the Japanese feel as the Germans do. After the war, the Allied powers jointly administered Germany; the U.S. alone administered Japan. Germany's victims were its citizens and neighbors - people within the moral scope of Germany and the Allies; Japan's victims were across far seas - people largely outside the moral scope of Japan and the U.S. The Allied administrators insisted on German reparations and remorse; Douglas MacArthur, who ruled Japan after the war, insisted on Japanese Americanization - he downplayed Japanese guilt because he knew it would complicate Americanization.

The Japanese began to remilitarize a few years ago. They're preparing for possible war with China, and also renewing their sense of national pride. During Japan's decades of rebirth, the U.S. military umbrella was convenient - protection without cost, and all the savings could be plowed into the economy. Now the U.S. may be over-extended, and the Japanese don't like the U.S. military in Japan any more than Americans would like the Japanese military in the U.S.

There's nothing especially wrong about any of this, but we Americans have a lamentable tendancy to compound our ignorance of the world by creating fantasies about other countries and turning them into heavens or hells of our devising. This is fun until it distorts foreign policy. Oz may be "somewhere over the rainbow," but not Japan.

I think people often confuse issues by lumping people and multiple generations in a country together. A young Japanese person should NOT feel any shame about what happened before he was born. The people who were in Japan during the war do for the most part feel deep shame (as you noted above).

Hiding something proves that it is a point of shame! I doubt if much about Guaranatamo Bay will be in American school books either.

The reality is that Japan today has very little chance of posing a military threat for a long time (several decades if they start investing now). The average young Japanese person may be sheltered from some things, but they are also not particularly interested in expansionism. I'm not being idealistic here, but we have other more pressing, dangerous, expansionistic adversaries to worry about.