Comments on: Hiroshima Day: America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years

By: Steve Steckel

Steve Steckel — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 21:17:39 +0000

In my opinion, President Trumans decision to use the Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was correct. The people of Japan were quite prepared to fight to the last woman and/or child. Had the bombs not been dropped and we would have had to invade Japan it would have made the Atomic bombings seem like a church ice cream social. It would, probably, have been the end of the Japanese race. It would have meant over ONE MILLION allied casualties. I recently read a book by Mitsuo Fuchida, the air commander at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, in his fine book, “Gods Samurai”, Fuchida comments on the atomic bombings. He stated that, in war, ALL means to inflict damage and death on the enemy should be deployed. He further stated that had Japan, who was working on the bomb themselves, developed it first they would have used it without doubt and he would have been very glad to deliver it. Fuchida also stated that, had Japan won the war, there would have been NO second guessing over whether it was or wasn’t the proper thing to do. It is my opinion that had President Truman NOT ordered the bombs deployment, had kept it in reserve, and a costly, in terms of human life, invasion occured President Truman would have been tried and executed, quite properly, for treason.

By: Democracy in Israel: Mordechai Vanunu Arrested for “meeting with foreigners” | America at War

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 05:22:39 +0000

[...] The cult and culture of secrecy in every nuclear weapons state have endangered humanity and continues to threaten its survival. Vanunu’s challenge to that wrongful and dangerous secrecy must be joined worldwide. [...]

By: Daniel Ellsberg on Mordechai Vanunu’s Arrest « Patrick J. Buchanan

Daniel Ellsberg on Mordechai Vanunu’s Arrest « Patrick J. Buchanan — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:56:38 +0000

[...] in every nuclear weapons state have endangered humanity and continues to threaten its survival. Vanunu’s challenge to that wrongful and dangerous secrecy must be joined worldwide [...]

By: Nuclear Hero’s ‘Crime’ Was Making Us Safer « Dr Nasir Khan

Nuclear Hero’s ‘Crime’ Was Making Us Safer « Dr Nasir Khan — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 12:31:59 +0000

[...] cult and culture of secrecy in every nuclear weapons state have endangered humanity and continues to threaten its survival. Vanunu’s challenge to that [...]

By: Scholars and Rogues » Will Obama show more backbone on disarmament than health care?

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 02:09:58 +0000

[...] new book, American Doomsday Machine, will soon appear free on his Website. If this excerpt, Hiroshima Day: America Has Been Asleep at the Wheel for 64 Years, is any indication, it recalls James Carroll’s House of War (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). Both [...]

By: Will Obama Show More Backbone on Disarmament Than Health Care? | Nukes and Other WMD

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:32:14 +0000

By: Dan Hand

Dan Hand — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:20:50 +0000

When they thought that it could be used to annihilate the Germans en masse, Einstein, Szilard, et al., thought that the atom bomb was a moral imperative, and implored President Roosevelt to order its development. Once the Germans were defeated, however, these selfsame European refugees from Hitler, and their like-minded American colleagues, suddenly held their very own creation, with only the Japanese left to face its sublimely monstrous power, to be a pure anathema. Well, go figure…!

By: The Power of No | All In One Boat

The Power of No | All In One Boat — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 23:07:18 +0000

[...] [I know I don't have to plead with you to read the whole of Dan's post, here.] [...]

By: Troy Dawson

Troy Dawson — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 21:29:22 +0000

Comparing different levels of bombing is ridiculous.

The people living in Hiroshima in 1945 were going to be killed by LeMay’s B-29s, atom bomb or no. This is indisputable. The only city the USAAF “saved” within its bombing range was Kyoto. The USAAF were sending missions to Japan in the hundreds of B-29s each; the only operational limit was their supply of firebombs coming from the factories.

And yet the Japanese refused our terms of surrender.

At one point, the enemy is going to surrender

yes, and in 1945 it took the Russians marching all the way into Hitler’s Berlin bunker before the Nazis surrendered to our terms. Nobody who had fought against the quite suicidal Japanese resistance that was demonstrated by them from mid-1943 could have expected any less of a last-ditch fight. There were still Japanese infantrymen fighting on in the jungles of Asia in the 1960s!!

The Versailles peace after WW I left militarists in place to restart the conflict. The Allies were not going to make that mistake again, which required the US to fully occupy Japan, something even the weak-ass “Peace” faction of the Japanese power structure was not comfortable yielding to.

Now, I fully agree, as McNamara later said, that LeMay’s terror bombing of Japan from mid-March 1945 through the atom bombings were, in isolation, war crimes. Their only defense is a utilitarian analysis of how many people were saved by changing the rules of how we were going to engage in taking down the Japanese militarists so we could attempt to reorganize Japanese civil society more to our liking.

The militarists themselves didn’t have a moral leg to stand on. Their predations in China had killed up to 20 million people.

While two wrongs don’t make a right, international law is really a collection of treaties, and once a nation begins ceases to observe these treaties its counterparties are no longer morally bound by them.

Apparently some people have no ethics and will justify being evil to feel good about themselves.

I feel no need to justify my joy that I got to know my Grandfather, who had survived Peliliu and Okinawa, and was scheduled to participate in the landings off Chiba later that year.

And name-calling is not an argument, but an avoidance device. The diplomatic and military challenges, not to mention domestic politics, involved into getting the Japanese to surrender to our terms in 1945 were incredibly complex.

Perhaps LeMay’s bombing was necessary, perhaps not. Perhaps more enlightened diplomacy by FDR’s minions could have finessed a surrender sooner from the dysfunctional Japanese state.

In this world, though, the first and last rule of war is kill the bastards before they kill you.

Note that the Vietnam conflict was an intervention into civil war and not a war in the total war sense, and I honor Dr Ellsberg’s heroic actions to bring sunlight and sanity into our government policymaking.

LeMay wanted to retry what worked in Japan in SE Asia, and the USAF had something of a free hand in Cambodia, which backfired immensely.

By: Will Kirkland

Will Kirkland — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 20:01:21 +0000

Dan
Thanks again, as so many times. I’ve been thinking a good deal lately about the little used power of NO — how, despite such loud American claims of independence and “don’t boss me,” attitudes, few actually say No to evil. When the hard question comes it’s way too easy to justify our doing what we know we shouldn’t. It’s good to know your Dad was able to do it, perhaps giving you example without either of you knowing it, before you. And how important to teach widely of the regrets of men like Eugene Rabinowitch for not saying No, and of the pride we should all have in the young war resisters like David Harris and Randy Kehler in the 60s against fighting in Vietnam and Aidan Delgado and Joshua Casteel in recent years against fighting in Iraq.

Looking forward to your further revelations.