Reactions to the Truth About Atomic Bombings Nearly 70 Years Later

Yesterday, I posted an article filled with quotes from high ranking US and Allied military leaders about their misgivings of the atomic bombing of Japan both before and after he event. I even posted quotes from Douglas MacArthur the top US Commander in Asia and Dwight D. Eisenhower the Supreme Allied Commander and former two time US president in that article.


Eisenhower was firmly against the bombings, MacArthur wasn't even consulted and many others were firmly against. Read that article, "Why did the USA drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?" here.


Even so, I got several comments and emails that completely missed the point and accused me of revisionism and called me not nice names (I've deleted those - if I want be be called names, I'll talk to my kids).... Besides the usual, "But they attacked us first!" nonsense that is the level of 5-year-old school yard argument that has fallen by the wayside from serious defenders of the bombings, some still think this and wrote that. I've deleted those too.

Remind me again of who this woman 

and child attacked in China or the USA?

As far as the "But they attacked us first" argument, here is a snippet from an article that I researched and wrote that appeared on Lew Rockwell in 2005 called "Dying for the emperor? No Way":

Japan attacked the United States first.

If you mean that the Japanese bombed the military base of Pearl Harbor, before the US bombed the Japanese, then this is a difficult question to answer (see #1 below). If you mean that Japan committed acts of war against the United States first, then the answer is a definitive, "No!" The United States committed at least two acts of war under international law against Japan before December 7, 1941. 

They were:

1. US military pilots — 40 from the Army Air Corps and 60 from the US Navy and Marine Corps — in a clandestine operation organized by and funded by the Whitehouse — flying bombing missions against Japanese forces in the famed Flying Tigers as early as 1937. These people did “volunteer” to fly for the Flying Tigers but they were paid employees of the US government. US pilots flying bombing missions for the Chinese was an act of war under international law by America against Japan. Even with the weak argument that these professional military men were “volunteers” (when they were actually sent by the US government), under international law, a nation is responsible for the actions of its nationals. To claim otherwise is hypocritical and completely irresponsible.
   
   
2. US initiated oil embargo against Japan. This is unquestionably an act of war under international law. The US was also totally hypocritical on this point as they forced the British and the Dutch to uphold the embargo, yet secretly allowed Japan oil from the United States as a way to spy on Japanese shipping. See: Day of Deceit by Robert Stinnett.

Counting the above two, then President Roosevelt had a total of eight plans to incite hostilities with the Japanese. The rest, as they say "is history." There are a great many excellent books and articles on what really happened in World War II. The serious student (and professor) would do themselves and their country good to seek out the truth. Things are not as black and white as US public schooling and US history books would lead us to believe. The true causes of the Pacific War were the clash of the US empire in Asia and the Japanese empire. 


Of course, the next important point to consider here is that Pearl Harbor was a military base. Hiroshima was a civilian city. Under international law, attacks on military bases are not crimes. Attacks on civilian targets were and still are war crimes.


Some other readers sent messages that, today, are actually the reason I am posting. Their arguments about my post yesterday are painfully inadequate and ill conceived. Here are two. First from a US citizen:

"Seriously Mike? Keep in mind that revisionist views of history usually cause bad things to be repeated. What do you suppose the Chinese view of this perspective would be?"

Seriously? What sort of convoluted logic is it that takes the discussion of bombing a civilian city with a nuclear weapon into the "well they deserved it!" argument. How is this logical? Are you saying that the women and children of Hiroshima committed war crimes in China? Extraordinary!

The insinuation here is that the atomic bombings of Japan are, in some sort, of revenge for China. Let me quote what the great historian Ralph Raico has to say about that in a quote from his book, "Hiroshima and Nagasaki":

Great controversy has always surrounded the bombings. One thing Truman insisted on from the start: The decision to use the bombs, and the responsibility it entailed, was his. Over the years, he gave different, and contradictory, grounds for his decision. Sometimes he implied that he had acted simply out of revenge. To a clergyman who criticized him, Truman responded, testily:

Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.

Such reasoning will not impress anyone who fails to see how the brutality of the Japanese military could justify deadly retaliation against innocent men, women, and children. Truman doubtless was aware of this, so from time to time he advanced other pretexts. On August 9, 1945, he stated: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

Seriously. This argument is so bad and illogical, that it would be nice to end it forever. If, say, in my commenter's post, I were to use the very same logic it would run like this: 

Japan had been at war with China since 1931 (well, actually, in recent times, on and off since 1894). If the USA were so concerned with Japanese actions in China, then why didn't they intervene earlier?

Secondly, taking it to an even more ridiculous extreme:

Japan had been at war with China on and off since 1894; continuously since 1931. The USA didn't intervene. But in early 1941, when the USA committed an oil embargo against Japan (an act of war under international law)... Japan had no choice but to attack the USA at Pearl Harbor. After all, what did the Japanese think about millions of native American Indians getting wiped out by US federal forces over the past 100 years - the most recent was a massacre at Wounded Knee in 1895 - where US forces exterminated nearly 300 native men, women and children? 

See? This argument doesn't hold water at all. What happened in China doesn't justify incinerating women and children. People, especially American people, deserve the title of Boobus Americanus if, after all this time of being lied to by our government, cannot see that they've been snookered. 

The next comment is just plain sad. She wrote:

"It's strange that it's not mentioned how many lives were massacred outside of Japan and my country suffered under the Japanese occupation. As for the dropping of the bombs, it remains controversial." 


No. It's not strange that the article doesn't mention Japanese atrocities. This was not an article about Japanese invasion and occupation. This was an article about use of a weapon of mass destruction on a civilian population.


If you want to read articles filled with vitriol that justify your racism and feelings for revenge, then, you've come to the wrong place. If you want to deal with those feelings, I'd suggest a counselor.


As a people, we're supposed to be getting smarter than the people of the past. When will people learn that it's not that country versus us. It is us versus our government. We as a people are supposed to be getting more forgiving and understanding to each other. 


The children are not guilty of the crimes of the parents. Racism, sexism and homophobia should not have anyplace in society today.


Frankly speaking, to the lady who wrote the comment above, I want to say, "Your racism is showing. It's 2011, get out of the 1940's." 


One more guy claimed that the bombings saved millions of lives: 

"I knew people that were part of our first occupying force in Japan. Even after the war ended, the japanese police were still hacking apart their own citizens that were happy the war was over.... Every single person I knew that was there, in actual combat, said they believed millions more people would have died if we had invaded." 

The idea that there was some sort of revolution against US occupation is not steeped in reality. In another Lew Rockwell article concerning this sort of propaganda, this time concerning Iraq, as some US commentators claimed such in early 2005 when the Iraq revolt was just getting off the ground. From Darkest before the Dawn:

I have heard before Rush Limbaugh claiming that Japan and Germany had a post-war insurrection. I do not want to make any claims about Germany — a subject that I am not well versed in — but I do consider myself much more of an expert on Japan than Rush Limbaugh or just about any person on American TV or radio and I can tell you for a fact: No postwar insurrection in Japan.

Which is it for Rush Limbaugh? Is he shamelessly lying or is he just ignorant on Japan's history and knows that no one will call him on it? Well, Mr. Limbaugh, I'm calling you on it now.

I have even heard Fox TV's Bill O'Reilly make the statement that "Postwar Iraqi is going better than Postwar Japan." With the insinuation that Japan's insurrection was worse than Iraq's.

Which is it for Bill O'Reilly? Is he lying again or is he just ignorant on Japan's history and knows that no one will call him on it? Well, Mr. O'Reilly, I'm calling you on it now.

Today, for the third time in the last few months, I heard this blatant lie — sans challenge to its validity — being made on CNN as Larry King interviewed a guest during his coverage of the Presidential Inauguration. I'm sorry, I didn't catch the name of the young man who made this absurd assertion, but he was wrong. There was no insurgency in Japan after the war. To claim that there was is out-and-out fabrication.

Which is it for CNN? Are they blatantly lying or are they just ignorant on Japan's history and knows that no one will call them? Well, CNN, I'm calling you on it now.

I have searched for months through Japanese language documentation and haven't found one single piece of evidence that there ever was any political violence against the U.S. occupation in Japan after World War II. There absolutely was no postwar insurrection in Japan.

Here are the facts from USA Today:

Iraq: 14-month occupation scheduled to end June 30 [2004]. Iraqis are to hold elections no later than Jan. 31, 2005, and write a constitution by the end of 2005. Occupation troops are attacked daily. There was no formal surrender by the former regime.

Japan: Adopted a constitution 15 months after the war ended, and put it into effect in May 1947. There was no postwar insurgency. Japan formally surrendered and was much more badly damaged than Iraq after the war.

Germany: Took three years to write a constitution and four years to hold elections. There was almost no postwar insurgency. Also badly damaged after the war and formally surrendered.

Certainly, from reading the above, it seems to me that I am not the one who is guilty of revisionism, but the one who is guilty of disseminating facts... Perhaps someone could show me where I am wrong.

Addendum! Excellent article today from the Boston Globe: 

Why did Japan surrender?

Sixty-six years ago, we dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. Now, some historians say that’s not what ended the war.

".... a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara - has marshaled compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan’s surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack. It also raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period. And it suggests that we could be headed towards an utterly different understanding of how, and why, the Second World War came to its conclusion.

“Hasegawa has changed my mind,” says Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” “The Japanese decision to surrender was not driven by the two bombings.”


More: Why did Japan surrender?


Thanks to Michael Di Stacio of Rock Challenge Japan

White Cultural Superiority Complex

The title of this article could very easily have been the saying, "People in glass houses should not throw stones." That is a very old saying and everyone knows it, but people do it all the time. Especially when it comes to foreigners criticizing Japan.


This is a post that will piss off a very many people, though it is not intended that way. This is just an observation that someone like me can make.

OMD - ENOLA GAY

First off, the title of this post is very racy. Let me state for the record that I am half-white and half-Asian. To white people, I look 100% white. To Japanese, some can tell that I am half. To half-Japanese / Americans, we all can recognize each other within seconds. There's a sort of "brotherhood" to being half.


I have lived on both sides of the fence of being white or Asian. I have even sat on top of the fence as a half when it was expedient (of course, whenever it benefited me to be "Japanese" I became one, If it benefited me to be white, I did that).


I found this magical transition to be very useful when I was, say, a high school student in California in a school that was populated by Hispanics, Whites and a few Asians. Unfortunately, and with often violent results, the racial tensions were often ripe between the Hispanics and Whites. 


I do understand being proud of ones heritage and think that it is healthy to do so, but to the point of fisticuffs? Well, that's another question. I suppose it is a question of tribes and savagery.

Take a look at those

Sailors fighting in the dance hall

Oh man! Look at those cavemen go

It's the freakiest show

Take a look at the Lawman

Beating up the wrong guy

Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know

He's in the best selling show

Is there life on Mars? 

- David Bowie "Life on Mars"

I played the field. I'd do anything to prevent myself from getting pounded or trodden upon by some savage regardless of the color of their skin. I was a wimpy white guy when it served me; I was a wimpy half-white half Hispanic when it served me; I was an extremely wimpy half-Japanese American when it served me well.


Being able to make these transitions like Spider-man was helpful in keeping a total woos kid like me from getting my ass kicked at school with regularity.


I did this for years. I still do it. This blog is a good case in point. I can attack Japan when I think something is wrong and I can attack the USA when there is something wrong. I think I have the right to do that.


Since this blog targets an native English speaking audience, it seems to also attract many people who have a dim view of Japan and her people. Many times it's because of a confused view of history. Though, I admit that Japan did a very many bad things in the past; I cannot say that Japan has done anything worse than the USA does.


In fact, no country in the world, today, is worse than the USA for being the Nazi Germany of the new century. Yes, I mean that the USA bombs, maims and kills brown-skinned little children and old men and women around the world everyday 24/7. 


Hitler wasn't as bad as that. Hitler only killed for 12 years. The USA has been bombing and attacking and invading countries on and off since 1840 or so.  The atrocities have  gotten much worse over these last 60 years. The USA averages bombing one country a year, every year, since 1945. 


But this blog is not about US atrocities. It is about what is going on in Japan. Specifically, what I mean is that, if I write an article or a blog post defending Japan's position - or attacking the views of someone who attacks Japan, invariably confused westerners will much too often write the nonsense knee jerk reaction "But the Japanese get what they deserve as they have never apologized for attacking China" (or some such nonsense or comment to that effect).


It also doesn't have to be a retort to an article that I've written. I also get many comments (that I always delete) from racists and fools who, for example, in response to the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident write nonsense things like, "Japan gets what it deserves...." (using the absurd rationale of not apologizing for China, etc., above).  


I've gotten lots of those kind of nonsense comments from people with western names. I never get them from people of the so-called third world. Specifically speaking, I have never once, in my life, ever gotten these kinds of racist comments from people with names of the so-called "colored" persuasion... Nope. Never. Of course, it is racist of me to judge that a person whose name is, say, Sallamadin, is not white, just as it is racist for me to judge that a person named Williams is white....


But that is not the issue here.


I've never ever received a letter criticizing Japanese xenophobia from a person named  Muhammed or Sabahi or Ali. That's just a fact.


Don't even bring up American apologists for dropping the two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that I have to deal with at the end of every summer of every year... You see, Japanese old men, women and children deserved to be incinerated by the atomic bomb because of:


a) They attacked Pearl Harbor first
b) The Japanese attacked China
c) The Japanese were savages and the bombing was the only way to stop the war


Of course, all three reasons are not an excuse to commit genocide and wipe out innocent women and children.

Yeah, we could nuke this lady and her 2-year-old (and 200,000 just like them) because 

she personally invaded China and the Japanese kill dolphins, right?

Recently, in a post entitled,"Critical and Analytical Thinking are Lost Arts Amongst Many of Today's Adult Population


 In an article I wrote last year that was published in several international online sites, Japan's Bans the Cove and Other Atrocities I had suspicions on the motivations of that film's producers. The producers of that film claimed that their motivations were pure and sincere. They said something to the effect of "If the Japanese people could see the movie, then they'd rise up and stop the senseless killing of these dolphins." (I'm paraphrasing here.)

From being a person who works in Marketing, the mass media and is intimately familiar with hype, I smelled a rat. I wrote:

"...if the makers of The Cove were truly sincere about their motivations in protecting the whales and dolphins, and how, if they truly believed that if the Japanese saw the movie, they'd demand the end of this whaling and dolphin killing, then they'd make the entire movie free on Youtube. Other people with a message have made theirs free, why doesn't the makers of The Cove do the same? Trust that Youtube has hundreds of millions more viewers than the movie theaters in Japan ever could hope to have. But, you know what? The Cove is not available on Youtube; only trailers for sales promotion are available. There goes their credibility.

And don't tell me that they can't give the movie away for free because then they won't make any money; just look at Google. Google gives away almost everything for free and they are one of the biggest money making companies in the world.

So just keep that in mind when you think about this problem and are bursting veins in your neck screaming about how evil these Japanese fishermen are." 


This post brought out the usual peanut gallery of abuse. People (with western names) came up with their usual litany of profanity and other intelligent logical discourse... They also kept up with the "Japan never apologized for China bit too."


The "Japan never apologized for China" notion is completely false. In an article that appeared on Lew Rockwell.com in Feb. of 2006 entitled, "Japan, Atrocities, Apologies and Atonement" I showed proof of all post-war deals and reparations that Japan paid (the article is filled with links and documentation check it yourself and see) and those agreements were negotiated and signed - with the blessing of the victorious western powers - by the respective, then-recognized governments of the Asian nations  that Japan had victimized. At the end of the article I posed a question:


In the case of the Korean victims, deals made by the former military government of Korea with Japan let Japan off the hook for non-state claims from those who suffered. The South Korean government received money from Japan, yet didn't compensate its own suffering people, and then suppressed claims by its own nationals against Japan. Why is Japan the only defendant in cases that involve financial retribution and demands for compensation? Why does Japan have to take all the criticism? Why don't these people sue their own governments and the United States too?

When Chinese sue the Japanese government for damages over the Nanjing massacre, or chemical and biological warfare injuries suffered, why do they sue only the Japanese government? Remember, Chiang Kai-shek forgave and dismissed all personal claims against Japan in return for financial help to fight the communists. Why don't they sue their own government in Taiwan? Why not sue the US government that prevented claims of this sort being heard during the Tokyo war crimes trials? 


But I digress....


The point of this post is hypocritical westerners who are hopelessly trapped in what I call White Cultural Superiority Complex when the complain about Japan yet fail to see their own disgraceful actions. They want to criticize Japan for, say, killing a non-endangered species of dolphins as featured in the movie the Cove, but they fail to recognize and address war crimes and atrocities that are being committed by their very own governments at this very moment. Hypocrites! Many of these people are self-professed Christians too. The bible talks about them:


Why do you see the speck in your neighbor's eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor's eye. (NRSV, Matthew 7:1-5)  


Then, when I take them to task, they knee-jerk the nonsense about World War II and Japanese invasion of Asia.


Yes. The Japanese invasion of Asia was a very bad thing. Japan committed war crimes in the past. If your countries are a part of NATO, you are committing war crimes right now.

Right! And some jerks are worried about dolphins?

Are you kidding me?

But let's say your country is or was not a partner in crime over the bombing of Afghanistan or the invasion of Iraq... How about history, then?


Japan apologized in the 1950's for World War II. How about the west's genocide of native peoples, killing millions of them?  


Canada? It took them 200 years to apologize for:


"...one of the darkest chapters in its history, formally apologised on Wednesday for forcing 150,000 aboriginal children into grim residential schools, where many say they were sexually and physically abused." - Reuters


The Americans? Still hasn't apologized for killing an estimated 12 million native American Indians since the 15th century.... Maybe they get around to it in the next millennium. One of the most recent atrocities against native Americans was about 100 years ago in December of 1890 at Wounded Knee when US troops gunned down 150 men women and children.

But! But! We did give them a decent burial and, you can't 

deny that the Japanese do kill dolphins!

Australia? No apology for genocide against Aboriginal peoples wiping them out into near extinction.


New Zealand? Extermination of 85% of the Maori population and the so-called Land Wars.


Do I even need to mention any European country? No? I didn't think so.... I think I already mentioned something about NATO killing kids daily.


With all this past history and the wars and killing still going on today, people from these countries sure have the nerve to complain about Japan killing several hundred non-endangered species of dolphins, when they are bombing brown-skinned children in the Middle East?


It's much more difficult to look into the mirror and see just how grotesque and ugly one's face is. It's much easier to look over the fence and complain about your neighbors yard... For many westerners, I reckon looking in the mirror is far far too much to bear.


So, because dolphins are cute and more intelligent than dogs Japan is the target?


Pardon me if I scoff.


Note: Of course not all Caucasians are guilty of this error in thinking. Usually intelligent people with common sense do not - or can control themselves so they don't exhibit these behaviors. But, alas, even one person being a racist like this is one too many.


----


This article was inspired by a correspondence with Jen Freespirit S. I'm sorry that I initially took your queries as an attack on my views on the Cove. Hopefully, as I get older, I become more patient and wiser. Also good luck and chin up to Allison Sane.