August 6, 1945, it is a normal morning in a medium sized Japanese city.
Until 8:15.
When the City of Hiroshima is bombed by the first atomic weapon used in war.
At least 80,000 are killed in the initial blast, and by the end of one year, the total of deaths from blast, burns, injuries and radiation is more than 140,000.
I believe (and have argued) that dropping the bomb actually saved, in the end, thousands, and possibly millions of lives.
But that does not lessen the horror.
What many people do not know is that after Hiroshima, after Nagasaki, it was a conventional bomb attack about a week later that ended the war.
ReplyDeleteLeaders of the Japanese military had heard that the Emperor was planning to surrender. The military planned a coup. They had just started to put their plan into action when a conventional bombing mission flew over Tokyo, resulting in a blackout.
The blackout caused the plan to go awry and to ultimately fail. If not for that mission, the military would have taken control and the war would have continued.
The atomic bombs were necessary to end the war, and the continued conventional bombings afterwards were necessary. We could not give up until the job was done.
But that does not lessen the horror. And I pray they are never needed again.
I remember a long discussion with Aridog regarding this. He went along with the fact the bombing saved a further huge loss of lives and I with the thought that the war was near enough over already anyway.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I still think it shouldn't have happened however, one benefit has been that the whole world saw what an atomic bomb can do and thus learned not to use them.
Hi mauretto - good to see you "stop by"!
ReplyDeleteFrom what I know of Japanese culture (which is at least partially sourced from my wife and in-laws - my wife is third generation) and the history of the war, I'd have to disagree with the "near enough over" thing. I'm pretty sure Japan would have fought on.
I think your argument is closer to the mark with respect to Dresden. Even so, in Feb 1945 the war was very much still "on". They got bombed because we still had bomber squads. It's what they do. They bomb stuff. Nobody told them to stop.
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(In order to provide an abundance of clarity, I will state explicitly that my further remarks are _not_ directed at mauretto)
My mother's family lost people in Dresden. My mother in law's family lost people in Hiroshima.
I think its possible to express sympathy for the people who died without collapsing into a pathetic heap of moral-equivalent flavored jello pudding.
Submariners would have mixed emotions on hearing the sound of their enemy submarines' hulls implode from the detonation of a torpedo.
They were happy that they prevailed, and that it wasn't them.
They were somber at the thought that the enemy too were submariners, and that it could have been their boat imploding.
In these ages of total war and terrorism, we are all submariners now...
...but that doesn't mean we can afford to be equivocal in our allegiance.
Hi mauretto! rsrsrs... :X
ReplyDeleteLewy, this isn't the age of "total war". We've been playing at war since we dropped the bombs in 1945. Our government is reluctant to even NAME an enemy, let alone utilize all of our vast resources to ensure victory.
Total war (first experienced during the American Civil War) makes my blood run cold. Scorched earth. Annihilation.
Was it necessary in 1945 (or even in 1864)? I don't know. Probably.
*shudder*
lady red - yes, I understand about the current modality of actual kinetic war (which is to say its full lethality is seldom, if ever, unleashed).
ReplyDeleteHowever, the Cold War - over almost twenty years now - was, in it's non-kinetic aspects, a Total War.
Back in the day, Sting could write an ode to Mutually Assured Destruction and sing I hope the Russians love their children, too.
So in the '80's, wiping your enemy off the face of the earth wasn't a pathological proposition, it was an appeal to reason and common sense - even within the fashionable "equivalence" mindset of the pop artist crowd.
I count the Cold War as "total", cold though it was. It isn't even really over, just dormant.
it's -> its.
ReplyDeleteActually, total war has been around for far longer than the 1800's.
ReplyDeleteAsk any peasant or denizen of a small village or even a walled city during the middle ages.
"Total War"...actually used as far back as the Battle of Jericho by Joshua.
ReplyDeleteToday we have ROE's like those in Afghaniland...you may shell and fire on a building with 3 walls and no roof, but you may NOT shell or fire on a building with 4 walls and a roof...might be "civilians" in there, even if you are taking fire regularly from same.
We, the most powerful military in the world, have, in this regard, unilaterally castrated ourselves.
Given that, either commit to a full on heavily staffed full court "civic action" (troops living in the villages, etc.) press as counter insurgency requires, or quit the field. Sinking back in to the enclave strategy (which you must do with short staffing) and sending out patrols to get shot up is pointless....and leads to unauthorized "reconnaissance by fire" out of necessity.
I should have been clearer with my comment about "total war". I was referring to our country's experience.
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