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pseydtonneIt's starting to dawn on me. I realize I'm thinking about this sixty years after the event but it's only because I'm revisiting the evidence.
The argument I had heard was that the Japanese would have fought until they all died, so we dropped the bomb to close the war and still have civilians left to run the place. This made some sense: the B-29 Low-Drop campaigns over the cities of Japan (see "The Fog of War" to learn more about those) were doing a shitload of damage but they were not bringing the Japanese to negotiations. However, our national policy toward Japan was so hostile that we interned Japanese-Americans in camps because we assumed they were a fifth column. Did we really care whether they survived?
Then I heard the story of the medical officer investigating deaths from radiation in Nagasaki. His report got hushed up because it conflicted with the official bullshit we were giving (there was no such thing as radiation sickness; it was just a big bomb). It later came out that General MacArthur wanted to make it look like he'd conquered Japan as a military leader so that he could run for office later. (Truman later sacked him for offering to bomb Manchuria and start World War III, thus MacArthur ruined his chance at a political career and freed up the space for Eisenhower.) Admitting the bombs's horrors were the real reason Japan said "fuck it, the Emperor isn't God so come heal us" would mean some geeks ended the War but MacArthur didn't.
This leads me to wonder: the generals wanted to keep the ground war going. They were happy to keep on fighting as is. Why drop the atom bomb? Were we really just showing off to the Russians what we could do with our atomic program? Was Hiroshima merely the first slap of the Cold War and incidentally the end of the war in the Pacific Theater?
I realize I'm blurring a lot of lines above. Please reply to clarify.
The argument I had heard was that the Japanese would have fought until they all died, so we dropped the bomb to close the war and still have civilians left to run the place. This made some sense: the B-29 Low-Drop campaigns over the cities of Japan (see "The Fog of War" to learn more about those) were doing a shitload of damage but they were not bringing the Japanese to negotiations. However, our national policy toward Japan was so hostile that we interned Japanese-Americans in camps because we assumed they were a fifth column. Did we really care whether they survived?
Then I heard the story of the medical officer investigating deaths from radiation in Nagasaki. His report got hushed up because it conflicted with the official bullshit we were giving (there was no such thing as radiation sickness; it was just a big bomb). It later came out that General MacArthur wanted to make it look like he'd conquered Japan as a military leader so that he could run for office later. (Truman later sacked him for offering to bomb Manchuria and start World War III, thus MacArthur ruined his chance at a political career and freed up the space for Eisenhower.) Admitting the bombs's horrors were the real reason Japan said "fuck it, the Emperor isn't God so come heal us" would mean some geeks ended the War but MacArthur didn't.
This leads me to wonder: the generals wanted to keep the ground war going. They were happy to keep on fighting as is. Why drop the atom bomb? Were we really just showing off to the Russians what we could do with our atomic program? Was Hiroshima merely the first slap of the Cold War and incidentally the end of the war in the Pacific Theater?
I realize I'm blurring a lot of lines above. Please reply to clarify.
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Date: 2005-07-22 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-25 02:13 pm (UTC)