“The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part from a purely military point of view in the defeat of Japan. The use of atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”
– Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
Last week marked 78 years since the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan. Even from a young age, I remember squirming at the idea of killing a couple hundred thousand civilians. I remember placating my patriotism with the idea that it saved a full-on invasion of mainland Japan. There’s a big problem with that narrative, though. It’s simply not true, and none of those WWII heroes believed it.
“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.”
– Admiral William D. Leahy, 1950
Especially at the time, Japan was very much an honor/shame culture. They needed an off ramp which could save face even in surrender. One of the sticking points was their request to keep the emperor, which the US refused at the time. Ironically, they would end up being allowed to keep the emperor anyway after the surrender.
When refuting this, some will comment that this wasn’t the United States’ fault. It’s not our job to save their leaders from shame, so their people should have stepped up to stop the war. Of course, this is absurd. None of the civilians killed in either bombing had an ounce of influence on the emperor. Furthermore, this is exactly the same reasoning that Osama Bin Laden used to justify targeting Americans on 9/11. If average civilians “are the government”, then everyone becomes a legitimate military target when at war. I reject this reasoning.
“When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the Emperor.”
– Norman Cousins, consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan.
Although no serious historian actually believes that the atomic bombs ended the war, let alone prevented a full-scale invasion of Japan, let us, for the sake of argument, say it did. Instead of a bomb, let’s say the plan was to round up those 200,000 civilians (plus or minus a few tens of thousands) and execute them into a mass grave, and then burn the cities to the ground. Would that be justified in order to “prevent a full-scale invasion”? No? Then how is accomplishing the same thing with a giant bomb somehow more justified? More humane?
And just so you know, the Nagasaki bomb was so far off target it landed 500m from a Christian Church which was holding services at the time. It killed everyone there.
“I told him I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”
– General Eisenhower during a July 1945 meeting with Secretary of War Henry Stimson.
“In being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
Today, the world is once again flirting with nuclear weapons, only this time the stakes are orders of magnitude higher. Other than biblical events, the most important thing in human history is that the United States and Russia don’t go to war. Right below it sits that the United States and China don’t go to war. All three countries have nuclear weapons capable of killing everyone you know.
“The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment…. It was a mistake to ever drop it…. [The scientists] had this toy, and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it…”
– Admiral William “Bull” Halsey Jr., the commander of the US Third Fleet, 1946
Often people think since nuclear weapons haven’t been used in 78 years, then the chance of them being used now is basically negligible. Of course, the problem is that all it takes is one misstep, one misunderstanding, to set off the chain of events cascading to nuclear war. And since the whole world seems to be a tinderbox, the triggers could come from nearly any continent, not just eastern Europe. War planes are buzzing each other over the Black Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Military units are having standoffs in Africa and Syria in addition to Europe. Foreign Navies are parading off of Alaska, returning the favor for US ships constantly cruising off of their coasts. Even though it’s lost flare in the mainstream media, tensions with Iran also couldn’t be higher.
It’s like May 1914 except it’s the whole world and there are thousands of ICBMs, each dwarfing Fat Man and Little Boy.
“The war would have been over in 2 weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”
– Major General Curtis LeMay
“The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.”
– Henry H. Arnold, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces
For anyone not receiving bonuses or stock dividends from Raytheon or Lockheed-Martin, there is zero benefit from any potential war. Debt, inflation, less liberty, a lower standard of living, and of course potential vaporization is all you will receive from yet another US foreign conflict. For all 8 billion of us humans on Earth, we should unanimously be doing anything possible to end the hostilities between these great powers. It’s as insane as it is stupid. LORD have mercy.
“We didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.”
– Brigadier General Carter Clarke, military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables.
My intent here wasn’t to open old wounds. I believe this is an extremely important (and hopefully sobering) event in our history to reflect on, particularly in light of current events. The War Party and their friends in the mainstream media who regularly interview military-industrial-complex-funded think tank “experts” would have us once again go to war. Once again the narrative is filled with lies. But this time it’s different if for no other reason than the size of the bombs. The latest dividend checks to General Dynamics shareholders could cost you way more than any of the recent wars have—a lot more.
“War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”
– Medal of Honor recipient Major General Smedley Butler
Jonathan Grotefendt was a 1st Class Petty Officer, Nuclear-Trained Electrician’s Mate on the USS Nevada, an Ohio-Class Submarine. After his 6 years in the Navy, he moved his family to Central Texas where they built a house and homeschool their 4 beautiful children. You can read his other pieces here.
The atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a warning to the Soviet Union. There is no doubt the atomic bombing of civilians was a crime against humanity. On a much smaller scale in an earlier time, the New England Yankees did the same thing to aboriginal Americans at Sand Creek in Colorado in 1864 (Cheyenne and Arapaho) and on then on Washita River in Oklahoma in 1868 (again, Cheyenne and Arapaho). George Custer was planning a similar massacre at the Little Bighorn in 1876 to celebrate the 100 Anniversary of the United States but things didn’t turn out so well for him and his command.
Mar 5, 2022 Nuclear Winter Nightmare | Doomsday: 10 Ways the World Will End (S1, E4) | Full Episode
World War 3 breaks out and a nuclear nightmare becomes reality as thousands of hydrogen bombs destroy the world’s greatest cities. A deadly fallout of ash and debris creates a Nuclear Winter.
https://youtu.be/EtNqzGofn8U
World War 3 would be a much bigger nightmare than the one on Elm Street and a much bigger disaster than opening Pandora’s Box. That would end all wars because humans would be extinct.
Biden should negotiate with Russia and Ukraine to end the war going on there but he wants it to go on till the end of time.
He should end it but won’t. He should also negotiate with China and Taiwan to reduce tension between the countries.
He wants the US and the world to treat him and Zelensky as if they’re heroes.
You know it friend. Biden is a closet Neocon for certain!