Was Dropping the Atomic Bomb Necessary for Ending the War with Japan?

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by Jason G

Here's a little factiod that most folks don't know....the US gov't, in preparing for this mass casaulty operation, ordered enough Purple Heart medals made that this stockpile lasted until the Gulf War!

Actually that little "factoid" has already been mentioned several times in this very thread.

[Jason G]

Oops. Sorry about that, I thought I read the thread more carefully.

[salinator]

Originally Posted by Jason G

Really?

Yes.

"Being a god is western propaganda"???? What is your source for that particular statement?

How about this one:

As the U.S. pivoted its great war effort from Europe to the Pacific, it came face to face with a startling fact—it was waging war against a god. Its sea armada had already crushed his island outworks. Its planes were pulverizing his cities. Now its armies were preparing to invade the sacred soil of his homeland.

To the god's worshipers this would be a sacrilege such as the desecration of a church would be to the invaders. Most Americans were unaware of the sacrilege.* To them this god looked like a somewhat toothy, somewhat bandy-legged, thin-chested, bespectacled little man. But to 70 million Japanese he was divine. He was the Emperor Hirohito.

Time Magazine May 21, 1945

if that be the case, then why when Hirihoto spoke on the radio to order the immediate surrender was it the first time most/many Japanese had ever heard his voice?

So if you heard my voice for the first time right now, that would make me a god?

The Showa's speech to the people was validation that he was not god. He was in fear for his life from Japanese that did not want to recognise the surrender. The recording of the Showa's declaration of surrender was safeguarded by Yoshihiro Tokugawa. Why would the voice of a god be under fire and need protection from a descendent of the longest line of Shoguns?

The casualty estimates for the invasion? I think if anything, the 'total' casualties were understated. Here's a little factiod that most folks don't know....the US gov't, in preparing for this mass casaulty operation, ordered enough Purple Heart medals made that this stockpile lasted until the Gulf War! WWII issue 'hearts were so common in their 'unissued' packets that most collectors weren't that interested in them. If you run across one, look at the 'manufacture' date. Most are from spring/early summer of 1945.

You missed a few posts. I talked about the purple hearts and the body bags on order.

[R. Evans]

Salinator, are you saying that Hirohito was or was not viewed as a 'god'? Your above post makes the case that the Japanese people looked at Hirohito as a 'god'.

Also, the plotters in the last attempted coup, did not plan to kill Hirohito, only to lock him in room and make him see that surrender was not an option. There was talk of removing him from the throne by forcing him to abdicate in favor of his brother, Chichibu, but at no time did they contemplate killing him. These officers did not believe that Hirohito was ever wrong only that he got bad advice from those around him. Now, those advisors were in danger of losing their lives.

[salinator]

Originally Posted by R. Evans

Salinator, are you saying that Hirohito was or was not viewed as a 'god'? Your above post makes the case that the Japanese people looked at Hirohito as a 'god'.

Also, the plotters in the last attempted coup, did not plan to kill Hirohito, only to lock him in room and make him see that surrender was not an option. There was talk of removing him from the throne by forcing him to abdicate in favor of his brother, Chichibu, but at no time did they contemplate killing him. These officers did not believe that Hirohito was ever wrong only that he got bad advice from those around him. Now, those advisors were in danger of losing their lives.

My point is that being revered is not the same as being a God. You do not hold a God hostage or go against his will. Keep in mind that the Shogunage ruled Japan for centuries until the Meiji era. To question whether a god is correct or not by a mere mortal is to challenge the validity of the godhood itself.

The word of the Emperor meant a lot to the Japanese people, and they are a people who throughout most of history were taught to appreciate, respect, and accept authority. But not even the least educated of bamboo farmers would have expected the Showa to throw lightling bolts from Fujiyama.

[Kiwiguy]

Some points to consider:

#1) Purple decrypts from 1943 made available under the US Freedom of Information Act made it clear to Western Allies that japan had a project to develop an Atomic weapon. It was already known that uranium oxides were being shipped by U-boat and I class submarines from France in 1944.

If you doubt this read Wikipedia about I-52.

Point #2) Stalin promised at Potsdam to enter the war on 8th August 1945 and Stalin would surely capture the 8th Imperial Army's nuclear laboratory at Hungnam where Japan was preparing nuclear weapons.

Point #3) Dr Yoshio Nishina who headed the Japanese A-bomb project visited Hiroshima the day following it's bombing. He confirmed to Japan's leadership that it had been caused by a nuclear weapon, but also told Japan's leaders not to surrender because USA could not possibly have enough nuclear material to build a second one [Nishina's post war memoirs]

Nagasaki proved Nishina wrong.

Point #4) On the same day Russia attacked Manchuria and Korea Japan successfully test blasted it's first A-bomb on an island near Hungnam.

[Jim O]

Originally Posted by Kiwiguy

Point #4) On the same day Russia attacked Manchuria and Korea Japan successfully test blasted it's first A-bomb on an island near Hungnam.

You've written this unsubstantiated "fact" on other sites but writing it a lot of times and not producing the documentation doesn't make it so.

Let's see the source documents to which you refer on other sites ["Proof of the August 1945 blast are on record with Army G-2 intelligence files of Major Furman (previously an ALSOS investigator in Europe) which are now held in the NARA archives at Suitland, Maryland. I can't recall the file box numbers, but I could look them up." is what you wrote at The Manhattan [Engineering] Project, page 1]. Look it up and produce the documents that prove this to be fact or call it what it is: supposition.

(Oh, and BTW, Ethel's husband was Julius, not Marcus. They were guilty of passing secrets and deserved the punishment that they got; whether the information that they passed was "useful" or not, it was still classified and it was passed to an enemy of their nation. That's the law of our nation irrespective of your interpretation of it. I could mention that a friend of my father's grew up with them on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and she declared them guilty based on her own personal knowledge of certain facts, but that would be about as relevant as mentioning an alleged box or boxes at the NARA and not producing the documents.)

Now I am not arguing that Japan was working on nuclear weapons. She was, and Japan was not the "innocent victim" of atomic warfare that political correctness and the passage of time has made her out to be. That is well known. How close they came is the question. The simple answer is not close enough. The Soviet archives probably hold more answers than anything in US possession.

[salinator]

Originally Posted by Jim O

You've written this unsubstantiated "fact" on other sites but writing it a lot of times and not producing the documentation doesn't make it so.

Let's see the source documents to which you refer on other sites ["Proof of the August 1945 blast are on record with Army G-2 intelligence files of Major Furman (previously an ALSOS investigator in Europe) which are now held in the NARA archives at Suitland, Maryland. I can't recall the file box numbers, but I could look them up." is what you wrote at The Manhattan [Engineering] Project, page 1]. Look it up and produce the documents that prove this to be fact or call it what it is: supposition.

(Oh, and BTW, Ethel's husband was Julius, not Marcus. They were guilty of passing secrets and deserved the punishment that they got; whether the information that they passed was "useful" or not, it was still classified and it was passed to an enemy of their nation. That's the law of our nation irrespective of your interpretation of it. I could mention that a friend of my father's grew up with them on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and she declared them guilty based on her own personal knowledge of certain facts, but that would be about as relevant as mentioning an alleged box or boxes at the NARA and not producing the documents.)

Now I am not arguing that Japan was working on nuclear weapons. She was, and Japan was not the "innocent victim" of atomic warfare that political correctness and the passage of time has made her out to be. That is well known. How close they came is the question. The simple answer is not close enough. The Soviet archives probably hold more answers than anything in US possession.

I'll buy that.

[Kiwiguy]

David Snell was an investigator for the 24th Army Intelligence Corps. His source was a Japanese officer Capt. Wakabayashi of the 8th Imperial Army's Laboratory at Hungnam who was in charge of security at the facility.

http://www.reformation.org/atlanta-constitution.html

Captain Wayabashi noted that the Japanese nuclear test was scheduled six days before it happened on 12 August 1945. Snell noted that Wayabashi was only a psudonym. He gave a physical description of the man which matched that of Prince Chichibu Yasuhito. Snell noted that the US Army required him to use the psudonym and not identify the man. Who in Japan at that time was a VIP of such significance that the US army required his name be kept secret ?

Members of the Japanese Royal family were well known to masquerade as army officers with common names. For example Prince Takeda masqueraded as Colonel Miyata in Unit 731. Prince Takeda in fact was at Seoul in mid August 1945 and fought the Russians. This places the Japanese Royal family in close proximity to Konan (now Hungnam) at the time of the nuclear test.

Several Royal princes were involved directly with the Mukden incident of 1931 and the Rape of Nanking in 1937. After the war the US Government directly participated in a cover up of the Japanese royal family's culpability in WW2 and continue to this day to classify evidence of the Japanese nuclear bomb project as part of that wider cover up.

Prince Chichibu told Snell about the concealment of nuclear activities by the blowing up of mines. He was the only person in Japan in the business of blowing up mines or tunnels to conceal things. This was precisely what Prince Chichibu did in the Philippines concealing Yamashita's gold at 172 underground locations. After the war the Japanese Royal family worked with the US governent to recover stolen booty.

Some of that gold was British from Singapore. Some of it was French hidden near saigon. Some of it was stolen from Buddhist temples in Thailand and Burma. Some was Dutch gold. The US government took no steps to repatriate the gold after the war but rather entered into an arrangement to exonerate war crimes by Japan in return for plundering Prince Chichibu's hidden gold.

That is why you will never get anywhere near evidence of Japan's A-bomb. Because if you unravel the Japanese A-bomb story you also unravel concealment of war crimes by the US government.

Author and radio operator on U-234 Wolfang Hirschfeld has made similar claims about a successful Japanese test blast.

[Kiwiguy]

I also came across this quotation from a medical technician who had a chance discussion in Tokyo with an OSS officer about the Japanese A-bomb. Leon Thompson was a medical technician in Tokyo, Japan. He described a diagram of the Japanese atomic bomb and it was exactly like the U.S. bomb:

While reading the article by William B. Breuer entitled "Hiroshima bomb saved lives" (Military Magazine Oct. '94, pg. 39), I had to chuckle to myself, because he is on the right track, but doesn't know the half of it; the bomb saved two nations!

I was a Medic Surgical-Medical Technician from 1947-49 in the 237th Med. Disp. where we headquartered in the Meiji Building on Avenue A in downtown Tokyo, Japan and we took "cell slides" from victims of the Hiroshima bomb. I saw mutated vegetables grown in contaminated soil after the bomb and flew over Hiroshima two years after the bomb—it still looked like a garbage dump. I saw the Navy ships used in the Atoll tests when I was in Hawaii on my way home in 1949... but the best was yet to come.

One hot summer day in the park outside Japan's Imperial Palace, I met up with Mr. Papps, an OSS Officer. His office was just a few yards down the hallway from Gen. MacArthur's office and he invited me to see his office. As I walked into his office, I saw three top American atomic scientists going over a large diagram of some kind of device. I asked Mr. Papps what it was and he said it was the actual diagram of the Japanese atomic bomb. I asked him if it was workable. He said, "Yes." It was just like ours and very workable. He also showed me some Japanese orders to use the bomb on the Allies when they came into Japanese waters; how they would do this was not explained.

Military Magazine, Sacramento, CA, Dec., 1994.