Liberals
spent the anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs explaining
how American intelligence thought the Japanese would have surrendered without
them. It's funny how the left thinks intelligence is gospel when it backs their
point of view, and garbage when it says Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass
destruction.
The
casualty estimates for the invasion of Japan included 500,000 to 1,000,000 dead
Americans and at least twice that number of Japanese dead. The military
believed the casualties for the invasion would be so high that they ordered
500,000 Purple Hearts, the medal awarded for wounds sustained in combat.
Because the Japanese surrendered after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we luckily
didn't need them. Today, we still have 120,000 of the Purple Heart medals made
for the invasion of Japan in inventory. The number of Japanese killed by the
two atomic bombs totaled about 225,000. My father was in the US Army in the
Philippine Islands when the war ended. He knew he was going to Japan. Links are
to invasion casualty estimates and atom bomb deaths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/cab/2...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/cab/2...
My personal
opinion is that the Emperor would not have been able to force the Imperial
Japanese Army to surrender without the Nagasaki bomb. Accounts I've read, and
I've read quite a few, all say that resistance to surrender from Japanese Army
commanders was very strong until Nagasaki made their position crystal clear.
The Japanese Navy had no doubt it was beaten, but the Japanese Army had not
seen defeat that closely. Remember that naval units could flee a lost battle in
the Pacific without losing face. Japanese Army units fought until everyone was
dead, so the Japanese Army had no first hand reports of their defeats.
You should also
note that the reason Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was in charge of planning Pearl
Harbor in 1941 was that the Army had threatened to assassinate him. Yamamoto
had been the Japanese Naval Attache in Washington, DC, spoke English well and
had traveled extensively in the US. Yamamoto predicted that Japan would lose in
a war with the US, so the Japanese Army wanted to kill him for being so defeatist.
The Navy ordered him to sea duty to keep Yamamoto alive, which is how he became
the Japanese fleet commander. The Japanese Imperial Army really was an
organization of war mongers who would kill anyone who got in their way. Many
historians have speculated that the Army would have gotten violent with the
Emperor, perhaps imprisoning him, if he tried to surrender before the Army
wanted to quit fighting.
When
considering the death toll from the bombings, remember it wasn’t just American
lives at risk in a potential invasion. Almost the entire Japanese population
was going to fight. Their defense plan in 1945, named Operation Ketsugo, called
for the use of the Civilian Volunteer Corps, a mobilization not of volunteers
but of all boys and men 15 to 60 and all girls and women 17 to 40, except for
those exempted as unfit. They were trained with hand grenades, swords, sickles,
knives, fire hooks, and bamboo spears. These civilians, led by regular forces,
were to make extensive use of night infiltration patrols armed with light
weapons and demolitions. See the link.
http://fas.org/irp/eprint/aren...
http://fas.org/irp/eprint/aren...
Even in
the face of all of the facts, some folks are upset about the civilian death
toll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese didn’t recognize much of a
distinction between soldiers and civilians. If you want an example of how the
Imperial Japanese Army viewed enemy civilians, consider the Rape of Nanking.
See the link.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Stubborn
liberals say the second bomb dropped on Nagasaki was not necessary. Here’s a link to the play by play of the
Japanese cabinet deliberations that shows the second bomb was necessary. The Japanese had doubts about surrendering
until after the second bomb.
Read "Downfall". It recounts the last months of the Japanese Empire and gives details of the planned coup d'etat and assassination of the Emperor given the fact that the army had over a million soldiers still under arms in China, Korea and in Southeast Asia. It was the discovery of this plot and overthrow of the generals that lead to the surrender. Not the declaration of war by the Soviets.....as the Left would have us believe.
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