Every single year, we are subjected to what I call the “Anniversary Wails” of the peaceniks — said anniversaries being those the destruction of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, etc. during the later stages of WWII.
“O how horrible!” they kvetch and moan, “We dropped big bombs on helpless pore civilians of the German / Japanese persuasion!”
I find it interesting that we never acknowledge, for example, the anniversaries of the flattening of Warsaw (September 25, 1939, in case anyone’s interested) or the bombing of Rotterdam by Hitler’s Luftwaffe (May 14, 1940, showing that Warsaw was no fluke). The Japanese never got into the mass bombing of cities to the same degree that the Nazis did, other than a few Chinese cities like Nanking, but they made up for it by other kinds of savagery, as did the Germans by, for example, strafing columns of civilian refugees in Holland, Belgium and northern France.
In any event, I find this annual breast-beating and clothes-rending about bombing the shit out of German and Japanese cities quite boring and tiresome, for one simple reason:
They started it.
As far as I’m concerned, they deserved every single bit of shit that rained out of the skies onto their totalitarian, barbarous asses.
Every time someone wails about Germans being burned to death by RAF or USAAF bombs, just cast your minds back to all those old black-and-white newsreels of Hitler parading through German city streets, said streets being lined by tens of thousands of cheering… civilians.
And make no mistake: had New York or San Francisco been closer to Europe and Japan respectively, and had the Nazis or Japs possessed nuclear weapons, they would have used them on us without a second thought. To believe otherwise is to be ignorant of history.
Once again, the simple rejoinder is: “Fuck ’em. They started it.”
Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there were several senior Japanese officers who did not want to surrender. They wanted to fight on. Meanwhile, the Japanese soldiers in China and other places were raping and murdering civilians by the thousands. If the Japanese had not surrendered, those crimes would have continued.
Also, the next target for conventional bombing were the bridges to the farmland. This would have led to mass starvation in the cities.
Read “Downfall” by Richard B. Frank.
Don’t forget the “medical lab” in Manchuko that the Japanese sent American flyer POW’s to who were experimented to death.
Dr. Mark Felton is a well-known British historian this is his take on the political situation in Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. His You Tube channel is full of interesting WW2 history that isn’t very well known.
https://youtu.be/I34pxr23Nhw
Thanks for pointing us at the Felton vid. I was somewhat aware of the Japanese military/political unrest. This is the first I’ve ever heard of the 3rd bomb waiting in the wings.
Speaking as half a Jap who believes Hirohito should’ve been hanged; whose grandfather lost everything when he was taken away and incarcerated under the provisions of executive order 9066; whose great uncle was blown apart serving in the segregated 442nd RCT, all I can say is amen. And amen.
Re the Japs: their conduct in Asia during the 1st half of the 20th century is the stuff of horror movies. Motherfuckers did their damndest to make the nazis look tame. I invite present day snowflakes to look into Unit 731. In the early 1930s the Empire tapped Shiro Ishii to lead its WMD program. Ishii held a PHD in microbiology, and he makes Mengele look like Elmer Fudd (not classic Elmer, but the contemporary iteration whose shotgun has been confiscated by the wokescolds).
Japan didn’t have the resources to go nuclear so their initiative was bio-chemical. They built an array of compounds in occupied Manchuria where no one could see what they were doing, and called it Unit 731 Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kwantung Army. Where, and from which, they subjected tens of thousands of men, women, & children to the most horrific of experiments, operations, and torture. Test subjects at Unit 731 were referred to as 丸田 – “maruta,” the Japanese word for “log.” Apparently that’s what many of them resembled when they arrived at the compound wrapped head to toe in something like burlap & secured by barbed wire.
If you were held in one of the compounds proper (as opposed to a peasant in a village infected by flea bombs or the water supplies they contaminated) you could expect to be infected with botulism, anthrax, smallpox, bubonic plague, etc. Meticulous records would be kept as the disease progressed. Finally it would be time to see what was happening inside the host. They had no interest in autopsying dead meat. They also believed that anesthesia would compromise their findings. So you’d be removed from your cell, stripped naked, strapped down and sliced open as you lay there shrieking and pleading. Once the initial internal exam was complete, they’d finish their notes and agree to return the next day and the next and continue the experiment. It might take you days to die on that table.
Men, women, & children. Pregnant women in various trimesters so they could evaluate the vertical transmission of whatever disease they were studying. If pregnant women were running low, female prisoners would be raped by staff or prisoners to replenish the supply.
The live vivisections are only the most lurid example. There are many, many, others that are no less horrific.
Ishii eventually saw the writing on the wall and secured as much of his research as he could. Our medical and scientific communities convinced MacArther we needed it. We got it in return for letting Ishii & Co walk. They all died comfortable old cocksuckers in their beds.
I think there are still youtube vids of interviews with some of the Unit 731 staff. The one that sticks out to me was the douchebag talking about a post war medical conference he attended. He bragged about how impressed his Western colleagues were with his knowledge of anatomy. He also talked about the daily grind of working at Unit 731; how distracting it could be when the maruta would shriek & squirm as they were being sliced and diced. But one buckled down and got on with the job.
There are rumors that American POWs wound up at Unit 731, but that’s not been confirmed as far as I know.
Any recommended reading on unit 731? I’ve heard of it and it was also mentioned on X Files in the early to mid 90s
Thanks
JQ
Honestly, I’ve never really looked. I 1st heard of it 25 years ago when I met a Chinese student in Osaka. Japan has done her best to bury it, and we’ve done our best to help, given that we’re responsible for setting the cockroaches free. There’s scattered info online. I just did an Amazon Unit 731 book search, and there are a handful of sources there.
Incidentally, I highly recommend The Making Of The Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes. An astounding & exceptionally well-researched account of the Manhattan Project & the people who made it happen. You really get to know the principals involved (Enrico Fermi only used real flys when fishing; he believed the condemned were entitled to an authentic last meal), and what a truly monumental undertaking it was. Rhodes is quite a good writer, and it reads like a novel from time to time. His account of the Allied raid on the German heavy water facility in Norway is something Tom Clancy could’ve penned. The final section of the book is the most horrifying reading I’ve ever done: first hand accounts of the the aftermath of Hiroshima & Nagasaki. But like Kim says – motherfuckers had it coming.
^^^^ Highly concur. Also, read Rhode’s sequel, Dark Sun, the Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Not only does it tell the story of the H Bomb, it also goes into detail about the extent to which the Soviets had riddled the entire US nuclear weapons program with spies (the Rosenbergs were the most well known but there were many, many more including some of the top nuclear physicists like Klaus Fuchs.)
Just yesterday, as I was going through some old stuff of my dads, I perused his AAF orders dated 6 August 1945 authorizing him 30 days rest and recuperation before reporting to San Antonio Tx. for further assignment. My dad had already flown 2 combat tours as a ball turret gunner in B 17’s in the 8th AF. He once told me he thought he was a goner, that he had run through all his luck in the skies over Germany in 1943 and 44. He was quite relieved when later in the month he received a telegram telling him not to report. Outside of his personal relief that he would live, he was quite certain that every bomb dropped on Germany and Japan was deserved. Three of his four brothers also were in the army in Europe and they believed they were toast if sent to the pacific.
If I have my history right, we were killing comparable numbers of Japanese with our fire bombings of Tokyo yet folks seem to have less problem with that. It’s real easy to monday morning quarterback an event that happened in the midst of a brutal war.
I sure don’t wanna be held responsible for the actions of this shitty assed gov’t.
Yeah, I did 4 years in that man’s army but I was young and stupid and will never do that again.
We are heavily armed here on the compound but when the shrapnel starts to fly we’ll be deep in the bolt holes til it stops. I ain’t no hero and will choose what fights to be in and will stay out of most.
My (Andrew) Jacksonian response: Don’t start nothin’, won’t be nothin’.
All four of my uncles who served in WWII returned home. Without the atom bombs, I doubt they would have.
In the first half of the 20th Century the two biggest assholes on the international scene were Germany and Japan. Since late 1945, not so much. Pain is a very effective teacher.
I’m one of the folks who likely wouldn’t be here today had the bombs not been dropped, since Dad was a Marine in the South Pacific, having survived both Peleliu and Iwo Jima.
As noted, screw ’em, don’t start nothing, won’t be nothing. You don’t get to cry “Mommy, Billy hit me back!”
Both Japan and Germany lost any hope of victory in WW II long before they surrendered, any additional death beyond that point is on them. Arguably Japan after the Battle of the Coral Sea and Midway, and Germany after the Battle of the Bulge.
The best way to prevent a fight is to make SURE the guy who might start it knows for certain you’re prepared to end it decisively.
I would argue Germany was finished after Stalingrad and Kursk. After those, even if the Bulge were a stalemate or German pyrrhic victory, Stalin’s millions were still going to overrun Berlin, maybe a little later than they did, but I don’t think there was any stopping them.
Obviously I was thinking Western front, and our involvement. After the Bulge Germany could’ve, and probably should’ve surrendered to the Allies and concentrated on fighting Russia, where things might’ve turned out better for them. Russia was bled dry by World War II too, they might not have fared well with further losses (and it also would’ve changed the post-war landscape considerably).
Our mutual chum Bill Whittle (PBUH) made this video 11 years ago and he still considers it among his best efforts. He’s not wrong. I posted this on Facebook last week to commemorate the 75th glorious anniversary of Japan’s baptism with the white-hot light of freedom.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ylMbvf3sn_g
(EDIT: here’s the non-mobile link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylMbvf3sn_g)
Estimates of US causalities if we had invaded are still debated but the highest number I have seen is 1M. Japanese causalities would have been an order of magnitude greater. So we actually did them a favor.
Some food for thought: every US service member who is wounded or killed in action is awarded the Order of the Purple Heart. Our best estimate for the land invasion of Japan WITHOUT using nuclear weapons was that there would be at least one million casualties. The War Department had more than one million Purple Heart medals struck. So here we are, 75 years and several “wars” later, and we’re still using the 1945 stash.
Don’t start a war if you can’t take a joke.
Something that does not come up often was that there was an Imperial General Staff order to kill all Allied POWs (including civilian internees) if an allied invasion force ever set foot on the Home Islands. Add that to the total of lives saved by the bombs.
Some have long memories. A Jewish doctor friend once noted to a colleague who arrived at work in a new Mercedes, that his car was made with “Pressed Jews”, and there are still people who refuse to drive or ride in Japanese cars, especially those made by Mitsubishi, or Fuji Heavy Industries (Subaru).
Let’s look forward a bit. Does anyone doubt there are massive battles coming with the Chicoms over their South China Sea expansion (and, possibly Taiwan) in the next three years? It’s coming, like an unstoppable freight train!
My family comes out of Paderborn Germany, which was one of the most destroyed cities in Germany. Only burned out ruins and mountains of rubble remained of the medieval city center after March 27, 1945, when 275 heavy British bombers accompanied by 115 American fighters dropped 200 aerial mines, 11,000 high-explosive bombs and more than 92,000 incendiary bombs.
My 4 aunts, 3 uncles and paternal grandparents lived through it.
They have all told me they deserved it, they held no grudges, they understood that the Brits and Yanks were doing the right thing in bombing the snot out of civilians to protect American and British troops.
Don’t forget the “inoculation effect” of two atomic bombs dropped on real cities. Thanks to seeing the damage and death, during the cold war neither side particularly wanted to actually use the nuclear option. That has to count for something. Seventy Five years of human existence and in spite of collecting huge amounts of the weapon, it is never used in war since?
And the more we talk about it, the more I want to send a book on 731 to the girl who thought it was terrible that Tokyo was firebombed and the two cities nuked to look like Tokyo, and so didn’t want to talk to me anymore.
As it happens, my current ride is a 2015 Mazda 5 wagon, inherited with the passing of my Step Mom in 2019.
I’ve noted with some irony, that it was manufactured in Hirsoshima, Japan. Fitting, ’cause driving it is a blast!
Aw, sorry. That joke kinda bombed. And now I’ll likely suffer a buncha fallout over it, here in the comments.
Jim
Sunk New Dawn
Galveston, TX
My birthday is August 9th. The only thing of real historical significance (aside from it being the birthdate of druggie “Witless Houston”) is the war ending dropping of the second atomic bomb (“Fat Man”) on Nagasaki!