Sunday marks the 78th anniversary of the Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets, dropped the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Three days later, we dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The Japanese warlords still voted 3-3 on surrendering. Intervention by the emperor ended the war and the Japanese told the allies it planned to surrender, which it did on September 2.
War is such a wasteful and inefficient way to impose your will on a people. Regrettably, we haven't found a better way to prevent foreign aggression. But people who sigh in dismay over our use of atom bombs on Japan apparently don't realize we had little choice, and in fact might have saved lives by using "the bomb". And as for the bomb having killed so many people all at once apparently haven't read about bombing raids that created fire storms in Japanese cities and killed as many people with a single raid.
The immorality of using the bomb is a straw man created by the Soviets, who have always wanted to disarm us without firing a shot. It is looking more and more as if they succeeded, through our teachers unions.
Surber pens A good Appolonian response to an expected childish Dyonisian outcry by liberals regarding oure use of the bombs to end the war. Our mistake was in forming the United Nations afterward
I am 50ish, and I don’t ever remember learning about the Japanese death marches in school. We learned, of course, about Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. I’m convinced we only learned about Iwo Jima because of the famous photograph of the flag raising. I learned more about the war with Japan from Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken than I did in school.
Pondering this now makes me look anew at the failures of our education system. Why were we not taught about the death marches, and the savage brutality against the Chinese? I didn’t know about Nanking until now. Why is that?
In the late 1980s, my high school made everyone participate in a mock congress and debate a bill. We were assigned roles and political parties, and I remember it as the highlight of my secondary education. My son graduated from the very same school but there was no mock congress. Instead, he was taught only the liberal side of history and civics. He had many arguments with his teachers. By graduation he was bitter, and they had stolen the joy from his favorite subject.
Our children are being taught what to think instead of how to think. I now homeschool my youngest. Where I live in NJ, there is no hope for any meaningful debate or change. But we must fight when and where we can.
Thank you, Don, for another perfect response to liberal nonsense du jour.
This is personal for my family. My father was in the WWII Coast Guard. He served on a converted ocean liner that transported troops into battle and shuttled captured POWs back to the states to labor camps. After VE day, his ship was transferred to San Francisco where it was being outfitted as a hospital ship to transport the wounded back to the States. They were preparing to support a long, tough fight. Work was immediately stopped, and the converted ocean liner scrapped after Nagasaki, his enlistment was over!
My father was in an assisted living facility the last years of his life. He was on the navy and there were lots of military people at the facility, including a Pearl Harbor survivor and a former resident or the Hanoi Hilton.
Among the residents was a Japanese woman who was born in the US. Her and her two sisters were sent to Japan by her parents to attend high school. When WWII started and her parents were among the first interred out west, the sisters remained in Japan and stayed there throughout the war. They lived in Hiroshima. Two survived the bomb. One did not. Other family members did not.
She said the bomb was necessary and had no bitterness about the US using it, even though it cost her a sister and other relatives. She and her husband, another Japanese American went on to distinguishably serve this country in the military and in intelligence positions.
Mean stupid Perv grifter of 50 years working w Marxist Preezy and Uniparty ‘We all get filthy rich as War Pigs’ got to activate their 10 year old grifter Proxy war with 2nd strongest nuclear Power. Ukrainians get to be ground meat and everyone in DC gets richer! Same idiots hate the idea of zero-carbon-emission nuclear power - reason has to be billions more grift w Green Energy Solyndra shams, vs GE or Westinghouse contracts. Truly satan and his evil spirits are running our nation - reads like Chronicles. Thanks AG Jeff Sessions.
War is hell and the Japanese were brutal enemies - ask the Koreans, Chinese and any POW. We had a more powerful weapon of war and we used it. It worked astonishingly well.
I've been a lay student of Hiroshima and Nagasaki since I first learned about them. While the atom bomb is undeniably powerful, we know very little about radiation and after-effects.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki - direct hits - are now large, bustling, modern cities. The genetic deformities of future generations predicted never materialized. I've read nothing about higher cancer rates in their populations. The soil, rocks, surviving buildings don't seem to be giving off poisonous radiation.
Chernobyl appears to be thriving with none of the predicted mutations. Older people who refused to leave their nearby homes were largely unaffected.
What's the condition of the atolls in the Pacific used to test atomic bombs? Where did the radiation from the bombs spread and with what result?
The human body is very resilient - as is all of nature.
It appears that, once again, there's a lot the "experts" don't know and use fear to cover their ignorance. Beyond here there be dragons.
Not suggesting I want to see atomic bombs used in war. Just questioning how much the government has told us about radiation is really true. Maybe nuclear power IS the cheap, clean safe energy solution?
My Dad was a trained M.D. destined to be in a MASH unit if we had to invade Japan. They understood the U.S. casualties from the invasion could be in the order of 500,000 dead or injured. The Japanese mindset back then was to kill whatever/whenever an enemy was alive as you noted for Iwo Jima, China and their death marches. The second was only necessary because they didn't get the message with #1.
So, what do We the People do in our current war against the DC cartel that has established itself as Public Enemy Number One? We need a new Greatest Generation to fight this evil in our midst. In theory it should be quite easy. There are no beaches to storm but there are towns that must be retaken. Unfortunately, it requires a lot of people to "man up." Where will we find such people? Trump is one. Where are the rest?
Sometime in the '80s a Japanese film company wanted to make a comprehensive documentary on this subject. They had access to previously classified documents and one of them was a report created by an army colonel who had been tasked with calculating our likely losses should we invade Japan, and also what we would need to establish an occupation force as had already been done in Germany. He concluded that, due to the inevitable resentments felt by both sides, it would take about a million troops to keep lawful order, and America had neither the resources no the will to do that alone. Consequently, we would have to allow the Soviets to participate, as they manifestly wanted to do, and that would require a partitioning scheme, with a Soviet zone of occupation.
So this film crew tracked down this colonel and interviewed him about his report. They asked him whether, decades after the war, he still stood by his assessment, and he said, "Yes."
At this point they stopped filming and had a huddle, with the interpreter sharing everything that had passed between him and the colonel. After a few minutes he returned to the colonel and said:
When we had obama in the white house and now with fellow idiot Biden in there, The risk of nuclear war moved out of the realm of possibility to probability. It is true that neither Russia nor China have the ability to have a trans-oceanic invasion of The United States, but with the very real possibility of war with nuclear war being 'likely.' I can't help but wonder how people can buy a missile silo or can think they can survive at sea. As our creator once said "I will find you." I want to know where in the hell are our patriots are. You know, the ones who swore to defend our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Enemy #1 is sitting right there in the white house with his hand on the launch codes.
Maybe off the point a bit, but looking at the sanction operation against Russia after it invaded Ukraine, I wondered what if that coalition of nations had organized before Russia invaded and promised immediate sanctions if they invaded. Perhaps some of the sanctions could have been a bit more painful? Would Russia have invaded?
Well, what about Taiwan? If the world agreed and built a powerful, nearly total, coalition with extreme sanctions if China invades Taiwan, would it make them behave? Wouldn't it be worth it to try rather than react to an invasion or some type of blockade? I don't see the downside.
Perhaps this could be done through the UN? Oh....I crack myself up. Hey Sam, where did you put that opium pipe?
My dad was a corpsman attached to several Navy units in the Pacific campaign. My mother was a lieutenant jg RN who ran one of the Marine Corps amputee wards at Muir Island. My father-in-law was on the Raleigh at Pearl Harbor and earned 3 other battle stars in the Pacific. I could go on and list all the relatives and friends who fought in the Pacific (I knew none who fought the other facists in Europe, strangely) but it would be lengthy. The ferocious fighting ability and fanaticism of the Japanese was something we could not understand but was real and they would have fought to the last. Louis Zafirinni, the great runner who was captured and spent time in Japan as a POW, recalls in his autobiography watching children being drilled on how to fight invaders...with sharpened bamboo sticks. If we would have invaded, scores of millions of Japanese would have died and we would have lost as many as a million casualties. I agree completely that dropping the two bombs saved tens of millions of lives, mostly Japanese. The revisionism is just more anti-American trashing by the left, all of who have very comfortable sinecures in universities and business, and don't ever have to deal with real world issues, just academic ones. Truman would have been guilty of war crimes had he not used the bombs.
Thank you Many today, especially among our educated elite who look down on the atomic bombing of Japan as something horrendous and unforgiveable, are likely who would have rejected the call to duty. You're right in illustrating the horrors that were unleashed upon just one of the many people's whom the Japanese conquered. Estimates of American causalities of an amphibious invasion of Japan then were in the millions. In China, a popular pastime of Japanese soldiers was to decapitate innocent people to see who could run up the greatest tally before tiring. Some fun, eh? After the very "reluctant surrender" of the Japanese the US battleship Missouri steamed into Tokyo harbor along with other support vessels. Having firsthand knowledge of the sinister nature of the Japanese war mind, the conquered enemy was instructed to place white sheets over the artillery guns that were concealed. Lo and behold everyone observing the hillsides were amazed at the vast numbers of guns that an amphibious landing would have faced. Amazing how people can conveniently and SAFELY criticize history with undue righteousness and security. Had your love one's been there, well?
“With the new movie Oppenheimer’s debut last month and the end of the teaching of American history in a positive light, lefties have resurrected the argument against using the A-bomb to end World War II. “
Congratulations, Don. In this one paragraph, using a perfectly clear example, you have exposed the agenda, the method & the means of execution of the commie/commie lite/socialist/leftie agenda.
War is such a wasteful and inefficient way to impose your will on a people. Regrettably, we haven't found a better way to prevent foreign aggression. But people who sigh in dismay over our use of atom bombs on Japan apparently don't realize we had little choice, and in fact might have saved lives by using "the bomb". And as for the bomb having killed so many people all at once apparently haven't read about bombing raids that created fire storms in Japanese cities and killed as many people with a single raid.
The immorality of using the bomb is a straw man created by the Soviets, who have always wanted to disarm us without firing a shot. It is looking more and more as if they succeeded, through our teachers unions.
Surber pens A good Appolonian response to an expected childish Dyonisian outcry by liberals regarding oure use of the bombs to end the war. Our mistake was in forming the United Nations afterward
The third atomic bomb detonated when China dropped Joe Biden on us
You’re so smart, Don!
I am 50ish, and I don’t ever remember learning about the Japanese death marches in school. We learned, of course, about Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. I’m convinced we only learned about Iwo Jima because of the famous photograph of the flag raising. I learned more about the war with Japan from Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken than I did in school.
Pondering this now makes me look anew at the failures of our education system. Why were we not taught about the death marches, and the savage brutality against the Chinese? I didn’t know about Nanking until now. Why is that?
In the late 1980s, my high school made everyone participate in a mock congress and debate a bill. We were assigned roles and political parties, and I remember it as the highlight of my secondary education. My son graduated from the very same school but there was no mock congress. Instead, he was taught only the liberal side of history and civics. He had many arguments with his teachers. By graduation he was bitter, and they had stolen the joy from his favorite subject.
Our children are being taught what to think instead of how to think. I now homeschool my youngest. Where I live in NJ, there is no hope for any meaningful debate or change. But we must fight when and where we can.
Thank you, Don, for another perfect response to liberal nonsense du jour.
This is personal for my family. My father was in the WWII Coast Guard. He served on a converted ocean liner that transported troops into battle and shuttled captured POWs back to the states to labor camps. After VE day, his ship was transferred to San Francisco where it was being outfitted as a hospital ship to transport the wounded back to the States. They were preparing to support a long, tough fight. Work was immediately stopped, and the converted ocean liner scrapped after Nagasaki, his enlistment was over!
My father was in an assisted living facility the last years of his life. He was on the navy and there were lots of military people at the facility, including a Pearl Harbor survivor and a former resident or the Hanoi Hilton.
Among the residents was a Japanese woman who was born in the US. Her and her two sisters were sent to Japan by her parents to attend high school. When WWII started and her parents were among the first interred out west, the sisters remained in Japan and stayed there throughout the war. They lived in Hiroshima. Two survived the bomb. One did not. Other family members did not.
She said the bomb was necessary and had no bitterness about the US using it, even though it cost her a sister and other relatives. She and her husband, another Japanese American went on to distinguishably serve this country in the military and in intelligence positions.
Mean stupid Perv grifter of 50 years working w Marxist Preezy and Uniparty ‘We all get filthy rich as War Pigs’ got to activate their 10 year old grifter Proxy war with 2nd strongest nuclear Power. Ukrainians get to be ground meat and everyone in DC gets richer! Same idiots hate the idea of zero-carbon-emission nuclear power - reason has to be billions more grift w Green Energy Solyndra shams, vs GE or Westinghouse contracts. Truly satan and his evil spirits are running our nation - reads like Chronicles. Thanks AG Jeff Sessions.
War is hell and the Japanese were brutal enemies - ask the Koreans, Chinese and any POW. We had a more powerful weapon of war and we used it. It worked astonishingly well.
I've been a lay student of Hiroshima and Nagasaki since I first learned about them. While the atom bomb is undeniably powerful, we know very little about radiation and after-effects.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki - direct hits - are now large, bustling, modern cities. The genetic deformities of future generations predicted never materialized. I've read nothing about higher cancer rates in their populations. The soil, rocks, surviving buildings don't seem to be giving off poisonous radiation.
Chernobyl appears to be thriving with none of the predicted mutations. Older people who refused to leave their nearby homes were largely unaffected.
What's the condition of the atolls in the Pacific used to test atomic bombs? Where did the radiation from the bombs spread and with what result?
The human body is very resilient - as is all of nature.
It appears that, once again, there's a lot the "experts" don't know and use fear to cover their ignorance. Beyond here there be dragons.
Not suggesting I want to see atomic bombs used in war. Just questioning how much the government has told us about radiation is really true. Maybe nuclear power IS the cheap, clean safe energy solution?
My Dad was a trained M.D. destined to be in a MASH unit if we had to invade Japan. They understood the U.S. casualties from the invasion could be in the order of 500,000 dead or injured. The Japanese mindset back then was to kill whatever/whenever an enemy was alive as you noted for Iwo Jima, China and their death marches. The second was only necessary because they didn't get the message with #1.
So, what do We the People do in our current war against the DC cartel that has established itself as Public Enemy Number One? We need a new Greatest Generation to fight this evil in our midst. In theory it should be quite easy. There are no beaches to storm but there are towns that must be retaken. Unfortunately, it requires a lot of people to "man up." Where will we find such people? Trump is one. Where are the rest?
True story here.
Sometime in the '80s a Japanese film company wanted to make a comprehensive documentary on this subject. They had access to previously classified documents and one of them was a report created by an army colonel who had been tasked with calculating our likely losses should we invade Japan, and also what we would need to establish an occupation force as had already been done in Germany. He concluded that, due to the inevitable resentments felt by both sides, it would take about a million troops to keep lawful order, and America had neither the resources no the will to do that alone. Consequently, we would have to allow the Soviets to participate, as they manifestly wanted to do, and that would require a partitioning scheme, with a Soviet zone of occupation.
So this film crew tracked down this colonel and interviewed him about his report. They asked him whether, decades after the war, he still stood by his assessment, and he said, "Yes."
At this point they stopped filming and had a huddle, with the interpreter sharing everything that had passed between him and the colonel. After a few minutes he returned to the colonel and said:
"Thank God you dropped the bombs."
When we had obama in the white house and now with fellow idiot Biden in there, The risk of nuclear war moved out of the realm of possibility to probability. It is true that neither Russia nor China have the ability to have a trans-oceanic invasion of The United States, but with the very real possibility of war with nuclear war being 'likely.' I can't help but wonder how people can buy a missile silo or can think they can survive at sea. As our creator once said "I will find you." I want to know where in the hell are our patriots are. You know, the ones who swore to defend our country from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Enemy #1 is sitting right there in the white house with his hand on the launch codes.
Maybe off the point a bit, but looking at the sanction operation against Russia after it invaded Ukraine, I wondered what if that coalition of nations had organized before Russia invaded and promised immediate sanctions if they invaded. Perhaps some of the sanctions could have been a bit more painful? Would Russia have invaded?
Well, what about Taiwan? If the world agreed and built a powerful, nearly total, coalition with extreme sanctions if China invades Taiwan, would it make them behave? Wouldn't it be worth it to try rather than react to an invasion or some type of blockade? I don't see the downside.
Perhaps this could be done through the UN? Oh....I crack myself up. Hey Sam, where did you put that opium pipe?
My dad was a corpsman attached to several Navy units in the Pacific campaign. My mother was a lieutenant jg RN who ran one of the Marine Corps amputee wards at Muir Island. My father-in-law was on the Raleigh at Pearl Harbor and earned 3 other battle stars in the Pacific. I could go on and list all the relatives and friends who fought in the Pacific (I knew none who fought the other facists in Europe, strangely) but it would be lengthy. The ferocious fighting ability and fanaticism of the Japanese was something we could not understand but was real and they would have fought to the last. Louis Zafirinni, the great runner who was captured and spent time in Japan as a POW, recalls in his autobiography watching children being drilled on how to fight invaders...with sharpened bamboo sticks. If we would have invaded, scores of millions of Japanese would have died and we would have lost as many as a million casualties. I agree completely that dropping the two bombs saved tens of millions of lives, mostly Japanese. The revisionism is just more anti-American trashing by the left, all of who have very comfortable sinecures in universities and business, and don't ever have to deal with real world issues, just academic ones. Truman would have been guilty of war crimes had he not used the bombs.
Danny Huckabee
Thank you Many today, especially among our educated elite who look down on the atomic bombing of Japan as something horrendous and unforgiveable, are likely who would have rejected the call to duty. You're right in illustrating the horrors that were unleashed upon just one of the many people's whom the Japanese conquered. Estimates of American causalities of an amphibious invasion of Japan then were in the millions. In China, a popular pastime of Japanese soldiers was to decapitate innocent people to see who could run up the greatest tally before tiring. Some fun, eh? After the very "reluctant surrender" of the Japanese the US battleship Missouri steamed into Tokyo harbor along with other support vessels. Having firsthand knowledge of the sinister nature of the Japanese war mind, the conquered enemy was instructed to place white sheets over the artillery guns that were concealed. Lo and behold everyone observing the hillsides were amazed at the vast numbers of guns that an amphibious landing would have faced. Amazing how people can conveniently and SAFELY criticize history with undue righteousness and security. Had your love one's been there, well?
“With the new movie Oppenheimer’s debut last month and the end of the teaching of American history in a positive light, lefties have resurrected the argument against using the A-bomb to end World War II. “
Congratulations, Don. In this one paragraph, using a perfectly clear example, you have exposed the agenda, the method & the means of execution of the commie/commie lite/socialist/leftie agenda.
Crystal clear. Thank you.
On to the ways and means to combat it.