Tag: Atomic Bomb

Without Remembrance There Can Be No Redemption  

George Noga

If remembrance is the key to redemption, the Japanese people are unredeemed

By: George Noga – August 9, 2016

     This post is on the anniversary of the Nagasaki bomb. It is a post I never should have to write and one in which I take absolutely no satisfaction. But it must be written and presented to a candid world. A former German president (Richard von Weizsacker) speaking of German war crimes said, “The secret of redemption lies in remembrance“.  By that standard, Japan has failed utterly and abjectly and deserves no redemption.

    It was only a few months ago (75 years after the fact) and following several decades of legal effort that Japan apologized for and settled its WWII slave labor claims. Only in late 2015 did Japan come to grips with its sexual slavery of young Korean girls; they had to be dragged kicking and screaming and settled only under duress. Japan has yet to accept responsibility for the Rape of Nanjing in which its troops, in a frenzy of racial hatred, slaughtered 300,000 Chinese civilians in a gruesome depraved manner.

    Nanjing was but one episode in a long train of Japanese atrocities. Other Japanese holocausts include the Bataan Death March, subhuman POW treatment, massacres in Shanghai and Hong Kong and the Yellow River flood when Japan destroyed dikes and murdered 1 million civilians. During Japan’s occupation of the Philippines, there were 72 documented massacres leaving over 120,000 dead. The list goes on and on; it includes Laha Airfield, Bangka Island, Parit, Sulong, Tol Plantation, Balikapan, Chekiang, Sandakan Death March, Truk, Manchuria, Pingfan and 40 more wretched massacres, holocausts, ethnic cleansings and atrocities by the Empire of Japan.

    In willful and flagrant disregard of the unambiguous historical record of the past 75 years, the Japanese people remain in denial. They refuse to teach in their schools about the Rape of Nanjing and exclude it from their history books. They persist in ignoring, downplaying and obfuscating their atrocious record of racism and terror. Japanese children are not told the ugly truth about their fathers’ and grandfathers’ actions.

    To anyone who now wants to give Japan a pass on its WWII atrocities, my response is straightforward: Remember Pearl Harbor! Remember the Bataan Death March! Remember Nanjing! Remember the POW camps! Remember all the other horrors Japan promulgated and about which it has national amnesia! Above all, never grant the Japanese people redemption until their collective memory improves and all their children learn the truth about their ancestors. Finally, on this 71st anniversary of Nagasaki, let’s pledge to remember the 3 million lives saved by the atomic bombs.

The next post August 14 addresses Obama’s overtime and payday loan rules.

Hiroshima Revisited 

George Noga

American opinion about the use of atomic weapons on Japan has changed since 1945. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” (George Santayana).

  By: George Noga – August 6, 2016

    Today marks the 71st anniversary of the US attack on Hiroshima. We reexamine the wisdom of using atomic weapons on Japan and include recently declassified top secret US war plans for the invasion of Japan. The next post on August 9th, the anniversary of the Nagasaki attack, is titled Without Remembrance There Can Be No Redemption; it catalogues Japanese WWII atrocities and the Japanese people’s ongoing refusal to face up to their past horrors like the Rape of Nanjing, slave labor and comfort women.

    There were many casualties in Hiroshima (65,000) and Nagasaki (45,000); the exact number is disputed (some believe they were much higher) and may never be known. For perspective, the conventional US bombing of Tokyo killed 100,000; the allied bombing of Hamburg, Germany 50,000; and the battle of Stalingrad saw 1.5 million killed. In all of WWII, 80 million people perished. Finally, in Nanjing the Japanese Rape brutally slaughtered 300,000 civilians – nearly triple the atomic deaths in Japan.

    Americans’ attitudes have changed. In a nationwide 1945 Roper poll, 53% agreed with the atomic bombings; 14% believed we should have dropped them on an unpopulated area; 4% believed they should not have been used; and 23% favored using even more atomic weapons. The Roper poll was replicated in 2016; this time 28% agreed with the bombings; 32% favored a demonstration; 15% would not have used the bombs at all; and only 3% would have used even more bombs.

    Today, progressive revisionists claim the bombs were unnecessary because: (1) The Japanese already had decided to surrender and had so communicated that to the US via Sweden; (2) the bombs were dropped to intimidate the USSR; (3) it was a racist act and we would not have used such weapons against Germany; and (4) it was a genocidal war crime similar to what the US did in Vietnam. All of these assertions have been thoroughly disproved before; however, they are once again shredded by the recent release of top secret US war plans for the invasion of Japan.

    Only recently have the war plans for Operation Downfall been declassified. They provide compelling evidence that without the atom bombs, Japan would not have surrendered and there would have been 3-4 million additional casualties – 2 million Japanese, 1 million American and up to 1 million Chinese as the war in China was still ongoing and the Japanese were continuing to slaughter Chinese at an alarming rate. Following are but a few snippets of data from the Operation Downfall war plans.

  • General MacArthur estimated 1 million American casualties; his staff placed the number much higher. Initially 1,000 men would die per hour.
  • Japanese forces would vastly outnumber Americans unlike in all prior battles; Japan had 28 million men remaining in its combat forces.
  • It was expected to be the biggest blood-bath in modern warfare.
  • Russia would have invaded northern Japan and partitioned it just like Korea.
  • Japanese casualties were estimated (including by Japan) at over 2 million.

     Use of atomic bombs saved at least 3 million lives – mostly Japanese. The casualties that resulted from these attacks represented .0014 of all WWII deaths and, to repeat, only about 37% of the Chinese civilians that were massacred by Japan in Nanjing – which really was pure racism. As shown by the 2016 Roper poll, many Americans cannot remember the past; let’s hope we are not condemned to repeat it.

The next post is August 9th – the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing.