The Hiroshima Myth

by John V. Denson
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig2/denson7.html

Within the military, there was such opposition to the idea of surrender that a military coup was launched against the Emperor's government.

An analysis of the Japanese position is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_of_Japan

Hasegawa speaks Japanese, Russian, and English. As a result, his book benefits from the materials to be found in the archives of each nation.

I read it last year. I recall one very interesting fact: that though Harry Truman justified the atomic bombings on the basis that 1 million US casualties would result from invading the Japanese Home islands, the Report he commissioned to estimate casualties actually said it would be 100,000.

Use of the Russian archives makes the book, because the Soviets were the intermediary for Japanese peace feelers.

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Originally posted by Bobolink:
While an interesting read, this article completely ignores tha Japanese side of the equation. The Japanese had put significant conditions into their surrender position, including the continued occupation of parts of China, no Allied occupation of Japan, and no war crimes trials.

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Relying on Alperovitz's authoritative book on the subject, the article notes:

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The stark fact is that the Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the Emperor, were willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the Emperor could remain in place and not be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to President Truman as early as May of 1945.

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Today [August 7] is the anniversary of what did not happen. Sixty-one years ago yesterday, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. The scale of nuclear devastation was apparent at once. The next day, no decision was made to call off the bombing of Nagasaki. Why? Historians debate the justification of the Hiroshima attack, but there is consensus that Nagasaki, coming less than three days later, was tragically unnecessary. President Harry Truman's one order to use the atomic bomb, given on July 25, established a momentum that was not stopped.
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It is commonly said that war operates by the law of unintended consequences, but another, less-noted law operates as well. War creates momentum that barrels through normally restraining barriers of moral and practical choice. Decision makers begin wars, whether aggressively or defensively, in contexts that are well understood, and with purposes that seem proportionate and able to be accomplished. When destruction and hurt follow the outbreak of violence, however, and then when that destruction and hurt become extreme, the context within which war is begun changes radically. First assumptions no longer apply, and original purposes can become impossible. When that happens, what began as destruction for a goal becomes destruction for its own sake. War generates its own force in which everyone loses. This might be called the Nagasaki principle.

The Nagasaki principle comes in two parts. It can operate at the level of close combat, driving fighters to commit atrocities that, in normal conditions, they would abhor. It operates equally at the level of the commanders, leading them to order strikes out of desperation, frustration, or merely for the sake of "doing something." Such strikes draw equivalent responses from the other side until the destruction is complete. After the fact, massive carnage can seem to have been an act for which no one is responsible, like the result of a natural disaster.

That's when a second aspect of the Nagasaki principle comes into play -- the refusal to undertake a moral reckoning with what has been done.

Across the decades, the United States has had a case of what the historian Marc Trachtenberg calls ``nuclear amnesia," a profound forgetfulness about the context and consequences of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The context included the prior destruction of dozens of Japanese cities, most notably Tokyo, that relativized the damage done at the two atomic sites. The consequences included the mutation in human consciousness that now foresaw the end not merely of individual life, but of civilization itself. Shame and dread defined the deepest part of the American psyche, even if no explicit confrontation with these feelings was ever undertaken.

Thus, what I am calling the Nagasaki principle consists in momentum, which obfuscates responsibility before the fact, and denial, which prevents a necessary moral reckoning afterward.

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Of course, Canada has its own share of this momentum regarding its part in nuclear weapons proliferation as well.

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Thus, what I am calling the Nagasaki principle consists in momentum, which obfuscates responsibility before the fact, and denial, which prevents a necessary moral reckoning afterward.

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Originally posted by Bobolink:
While M. Spector shows his ignorance about recorded Japanese history it is interesting to speculate: had there not been a Pearl Harbor, would there have been a Hiroshima or Nagasaki?

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And if it weren't for the unjust Treaty of Versailles there might not have been a WW2 and if it weren't for WW1 there wouldn't have been such a treaty and if it weren't for imperialism before Then there wouldn't have been...etc etc.

At every step along the way political choices are made or not made, what went before doesn't excuse them, and in this case it now looks like Neither bomb had to be dropped. I'm just glad it's finally coming out. Before this the only question I knew of was whether the Emperor might have given a poorly translated surrender after the first that Americans misconstrued. Also that Einstein, I think it was, suggested dropping an A-bomb on an uninhabited area nearby, where the Japanese could see for themselves the overwhelming power of it without the great loss of life.

[ 17 August 2006: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]