Atomic Bombings
08-06-2014, 03:16 AM
#1
Libertarian Resistance
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Joined APC: Feb 2007
Position: 757 FO
Posts: 1,057
Atomic Bombings
Interesting notes from a history professor:
Barton J. Bernstein: American conservatives are the forgotten critics of the atomic bombing of Japan - San Jose Mercury News
"The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul," he wrote. "The only difference between this and the use of gas (which President Franklin D. Roosevelt had barred as a first-use weapon in World War II) is the fear of retaliation."
Those harsh words, written three days after the Hiroshima bombing in August, 1945, were not by a man of the American left, but rather by a very prominent conservative -- former President Herbert Hoover, a foe of the New Deal and Fair Deal.
In 1959, Medford Evans, a conservative writing in William Buckley's strongly nationalistic, energetically right-wing magazine, National Review, stated: "The indefensibility of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is becoming a part of the national conservative creed." Just the year before, the National Review had featured an angry, anti-atomic bomb article, "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe." Like Hoover, that 1958 essay had decried the atomic bombing as wanton murder. National Review's editors, impressed by that article, had offered special reprints.
Those two sets of events --Hoover in 1945 and National Review in 1968-69 -- were not anomalies in early post-Hiroshima U.S. conservatism. In fact, many noted American conservatives -- journalists, former diplomats and retired and occasionally on-duty military officers, and some right-wing historians and political scientists -- criticized the atomic bombing. They frequently contended it was unnecessary, and often maintained it was immoral and that softer surrender terms could have ended the war without such mass killing. They sometimes charged Truman and the atomic bombing with "criminality" and "slaughter."
Yet today, this history of early anti-A-bomb dissent by conservatives is largely unknown. In about the past 20 years, various American conservatives have even assailed A-bomb dissent as typically leftist and anti-American, and as having begun in the tumultuous 1960s. Such a view of postwar American history is remarkably incorrect.
JOURNALISTS
In mid-August, 1945, in the conservative United States News (now U.S. News & World Report), with a circulation somewhat under 200,000, that magazine's founder and longtime editor, David Lawrence, condemned the atomic bombing in a spirited editorial, "What Hath Man Wrought!" America, he asserted, should be "ashamed" of the atomic bombing. During the next 27 years, on some A-bomb anniversaries, Lawrence, a well known conservative who died in 1973, proudly republished his 1945 editorial.
Felix Morley, the former editor of the Washington Post and ex-president of Haverford College, felt similarly about the atomic bombing. A recognized conservative, he published in 1945 a strong anti-A-bomb editorial -- "The Return to Nothingness" -- in his small circulation, conservative newsletter, Human Events. He called Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor atrocities. the atomic bombing, he charged, was "an infamous act of atrocious revenge."
The right-wing journalist Walter Trohan of the conservative Chicago Tribune periodically contended that the atomic bombing had been unnecessary and that an early Japanese surrender could have been otherwise achieved. Charging a coverup, he implied there had been a Roosevelt-Truman conspiracy to prolong the war. Beginning in August 1945, Trohan's anti-A-bomb articles received front-page attention, and the Tribune in 1947 termed the bombings "criminality."
In 1948, the rightward-leaning Time-Life-Fortune publisher Henry Luce told an international Protestant meeting that "unconditional surrender" had violated St. Thomas' just-war doctrine, and that softer surrender terms in 1945 could have ended the war without the atomic bombing, which "so jarred the Christian conscience."
EX-U.S. DIPLOMATS
Truman's former 1945 Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew, who retired shortly after Japan's surrender, and two of his former State Department associates, Japan experts Eugene Dooman and Joseph Ballantine, later angrily castigated the atomic bombing. Recognized as conservatives, they sharply criticized the defense of the bombings by President Truman and the retired Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who had presided over the wartime A-bomb project.
Grew, Dooman and Ballantine all believed that the atomic bombing had been unnecessary, that softer surrender terms (mostly allowing a constitutional monarchy) would have ended the war, and that Truman had gravely erred. Dooman often charged that the bombing had been immoral.
Similar harsh judgments came from William Castle, a close associate of Herbert Hoover who had served as Hoover's Under Secretary of State when Stimson was secretary. Castle complained that Stimson's postwar, widely publicized A-bomb defense "was consciously dishonest." Japan, Castle believed, had been near surrender before the atomic bomb was used. He even suspected that Stimson and others had prolonged the war in order to use the A-bomb on Japan.
U.S. MILITARY LEADERS
Perhaps surprisingly, after V-J day, the right-wing Gen. Curtis LeMay, whose Air Force had pummeled Japan in the last months of the Asian war, periodically criticized the atomic bombing. In mid-September 1945, for example, he publicly declared that it had been unnecessary and that Japan would have speedily surrendered without it. the bomb, he asserted, "had nothing to do with the end of the war."
Public criticism of the atomic bombing also appeared in the postwar memoirs by two retired military leaders on the moderate right -- in 1949 by Gen. Henry H. Arnold, the wartime head of the Army Air Forces, and in 1952 by Admiral Ernest J. King, wartime chief of naval operations.
Shortly after the end of the war, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a fervent anti-New Dealer, had publicly contended that the atomic bombing was unnecessary. In 1960, in discussing that bombing with ex-President Hoover, MacArthur condemned it as unnecessary "slaughter."
MacArthur's 1945 psychological-warfare chief, Gen. Bonner Fellers (later Colonel) after retiring from the Army, wrote a widely read article contending that Japan had been near surrender and that the nuclear bombing had been unnecessary. A proud conservative serving as public relations director for the Veterans of Foreign War (VFW), he published his rticle in the VFW's monthly, Foreign Service," with a circulation of over a half-million. That month, the conservative-leaning Reader's Digest, with a readership probably exceeding 10 million, reissued it in slightly compressed form.
The strongest postwar criticism of the atomic bombing by a prominent American ex-military leader probably came from Admiral William Leahy, a conservative who had also been a top military adviser to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. In his 1950 memoir, the recently retired Leahy declared, "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of not material assistance in our war against Japan. " That nation, he contended, was defeated an ready to surrender before the atomic bombing. He likened the use of the bomb to the morality of Genghis Khan. the crusty admiral wrote about the 1945 bombing, "I was not taught to make war in that fashion." The United States, he asserted, "had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."
MEANINGS
Spirited contentions that the atomic bombing was unwise, unnecessary and immoral are not new, nor did they start in the 1960s. These charges appeared in much of the earlier post-Hiroshima criticism, which came substantially from conservative American publications and people. Such conservative support does not necessarily make those criticisms right or wrong, or good or bad history, but certainly an important part of an earlier postwar dissenting culture.
That is an important but mostly forgotten part of the past, which Americans today -- whether young or old, Republicans or Democrats -- usually do not know. Mistakenly, many believe that the loose conservative-liberal/radical divide of recent years on attitudes toward the 1945 atomic bombings and that prominent American conservatives in contrast overwhelmingly endorsed those atomic bombings. That history is far more complex, and is important to understand to gain perspective on American attitudes and values on war-fighting, forms of killing, and uses of nuclear weapons on enemies.
Barton J. Bernstein: American conservatives are the forgotten critics of the atomic bombing of Japan - San Jose Mercury News
"The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul," he wrote. "The only difference between this and the use of gas (which President Franklin D. Roosevelt had barred as a first-use weapon in World War II) is the fear of retaliation."
Those harsh words, written three days after the Hiroshima bombing in August, 1945, were not by a man of the American left, but rather by a very prominent conservative -- former President Herbert Hoover, a foe of the New Deal and Fair Deal.
In 1959, Medford Evans, a conservative writing in William Buckley's strongly nationalistic, energetically right-wing magazine, National Review, stated: "The indefensibility of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is becoming a part of the national conservative creed." Just the year before, the National Review had featured an angry, anti-atomic bomb article, "Hiroshima: Assault on a Beaten Foe." Like Hoover, that 1958 essay had decried the atomic bombing as wanton murder. National Review's editors, impressed by that article, had offered special reprints.
Those two sets of events --Hoover in 1945 and National Review in 1968-69 -- were not anomalies in early post-Hiroshima U.S. conservatism. In fact, many noted American conservatives -- journalists, former diplomats and retired and occasionally on-duty military officers, and some right-wing historians and political scientists -- criticized the atomic bombing. They frequently contended it was unnecessary, and often maintained it was immoral and that softer surrender terms could have ended the war without such mass killing. They sometimes charged Truman and the atomic bombing with "criminality" and "slaughter."
Yet today, this history of early anti-A-bomb dissent by conservatives is largely unknown. In about the past 20 years, various American conservatives have even assailed A-bomb dissent as typically leftist and anti-American, and as having begun in the tumultuous 1960s. Such a view of postwar American history is remarkably incorrect.
JOURNALISTS
In mid-August, 1945, in the conservative United States News (now U.S. News & World Report), with a circulation somewhat under 200,000, that magazine's founder and longtime editor, David Lawrence, condemned the atomic bombing in a spirited editorial, "What Hath Man Wrought!" America, he asserted, should be "ashamed" of the atomic bombing. During the next 27 years, on some A-bomb anniversaries, Lawrence, a well known conservative who died in 1973, proudly republished his 1945 editorial.
Felix Morley, the former editor of the Washington Post and ex-president of Haverford College, felt similarly about the atomic bombing. A recognized conservative, he published in 1945 a strong anti-A-bomb editorial -- "The Return to Nothingness" -- in his small circulation, conservative newsletter, Human Events. He called Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor atrocities. the atomic bombing, he charged, was "an infamous act of atrocious revenge."
The right-wing journalist Walter Trohan of the conservative Chicago Tribune periodically contended that the atomic bombing had been unnecessary and that an early Japanese surrender could have been otherwise achieved. Charging a coverup, he implied there had been a Roosevelt-Truman conspiracy to prolong the war. Beginning in August 1945, Trohan's anti-A-bomb articles received front-page attention, and the Tribune in 1947 termed the bombings "criminality."
In 1948, the rightward-leaning Time-Life-Fortune publisher Henry Luce told an international Protestant meeting that "unconditional surrender" had violated St. Thomas' just-war doctrine, and that softer surrender terms in 1945 could have ended the war without the atomic bombing, which "so jarred the Christian conscience."
EX-U.S. DIPLOMATS
Truman's former 1945 Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew, who retired shortly after Japan's surrender, and two of his former State Department associates, Japan experts Eugene Dooman and Joseph Ballantine, later angrily castigated the atomic bombing. Recognized as conservatives, they sharply criticized the defense of the bombings by President Truman and the retired Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, who had presided over the wartime A-bomb project.
Grew, Dooman and Ballantine all believed that the atomic bombing had been unnecessary, that softer surrender terms (mostly allowing a constitutional monarchy) would have ended the war, and that Truman had gravely erred. Dooman often charged that the bombing had been immoral.
Similar harsh judgments came from William Castle, a close associate of Herbert Hoover who had served as Hoover's Under Secretary of State when Stimson was secretary. Castle complained that Stimson's postwar, widely publicized A-bomb defense "was consciously dishonest." Japan, Castle believed, had been near surrender before the atomic bomb was used. He even suspected that Stimson and others had prolonged the war in order to use the A-bomb on Japan.
U.S. MILITARY LEADERS
Perhaps surprisingly, after V-J day, the right-wing Gen. Curtis LeMay, whose Air Force had pummeled Japan in the last months of the Asian war, periodically criticized the atomic bombing. In mid-September 1945, for example, he publicly declared that it had been unnecessary and that Japan would have speedily surrendered without it. the bomb, he asserted, "had nothing to do with the end of the war."
Public criticism of the atomic bombing also appeared in the postwar memoirs by two retired military leaders on the moderate right -- in 1949 by Gen. Henry H. Arnold, the wartime head of the Army Air Forces, and in 1952 by Admiral Ernest J. King, wartime chief of naval operations.
Shortly after the end of the war, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, a fervent anti-New Dealer, had publicly contended that the atomic bombing was unnecessary. In 1960, in discussing that bombing with ex-President Hoover, MacArthur condemned it as unnecessary "slaughter."
MacArthur's 1945 psychological-warfare chief, Gen. Bonner Fellers (later Colonel) after retiring from the Army, wrote a widely read article contending that Japan had been near surrender and that the nuclear bombing had been unnecessary. A proud conservative serving as public relations director for the Veterans of Foreign War (VFW), he published his rticle in the VFW's monthly, Foreign Service," with a circulation of over a half-million. That month, the conservative-leaning Reader's Digest, with a readership probably exceeding 10 million, reissued it in slightly compressed form.
The strongest postwar criticism of the atomic bombing by a prominent American ex-military leader probably came from Admiral William Leahy, a conservative who had also been a top military adviser to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman. In his 1950 memoir, the recently retired Leahy declared, "the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of not material assistance in our war against Japan. " That nation, he contended, was defeated an ready to surrender before the atomic bombing. He likened the use of the bomb to the morality of Genghis Khan. the crusty admiral wrote about the 1945 bombing, "I was not taught to make war in that fashion." The United States, he asserted, "had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."
MEANINGS
Spirited contentions that the atomic bombing was unwise, unnecessary and immoral are not new, nor did they start in the 1960s. These charges appeared in much of the earlier post-Hiroshima criticism, which came substantially from conservative American publications and people. Such conservative support does not necessarily make those criticisms right or wrong, or good or bad history, but certainly an important part of an earlier postwar dissenting culture.
That is an important but mostly forgotten part of the past, which Americans today -- whether young or old, Republicans or Democrats -- usually do not know. Mistakenly, many believe that the loose conservative-liberal/radical divide of recent years on attitudes toward the 1945 atomic bombings and that prominent American conservatives in contrast overwhelmingly endorsed those atomic bombings. That history is far more complex, and is important to understand to gain perspective on American attitudes and values on war-fighting, forms of killing, and uses of nuclear weapons on enemies.
08-06-2014, 05:11 AM
#2
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Dec 2007
Posts: 121
Total nonsense. The use of incendiary bombs on Tokyo killed more than either atomic attack. It was Lemay who ordered the switch to firebombing since the GP bombs were not getting the job done. Also, we had been bombing cities for years at this point... The "bomb" just made it easier.
And if Japan was ready to surrender before the bombing, why did it take two??
And if Japan was ready to surrender before the bombing, why did it take two??
08-06-2014, 05:43 AM
#3
Super Moderator
Joined APC: Jul 2006
Posts: 5,553
Unless Bart personally witnessed the horrors of Iwo Jima, Tarawa, Saipan, etc... then Mr history man can shove it! They may have been ready to surrender any time...but in the mean time, we were losing an alarming amount our national treasure (our young boys and girls). He is right about one thing, this didn't HAVE to happen...
08-06-2014, 06:08 AM
#5
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Joined APC: Mar 2008
Position: B757 Ca, Retired.
Posts: 195
This is a position that history has proven wrong again and again. Japan had three to four times more fly able aircraft at the time along with sufficent arms to resist a ground invasion at the cost of tens of thousands of American service men's lives. It was the right call at the right time.
08-06-2014, 07:27 AM
#8
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2014
Posts: 211
Spur is 100% correct. Maybe it is just our culture because we see the atomic bomb as the big bang in WWII, but we caused so much destruction in incendiary bombings in Tokyo.
There is a museum at ground zero in Hiroshima which is dedicated to the history of the causes/effects of nuclear war, along with historic artifacts such as replicas of the bombs, pictures, watches that stopped, etc. I really am glad I went.
However, there are many Japanese who are angry at the construction of the museum due to none being constructed in memory of the Tokyo victims. Where is their legacy?
So in my opinion (and that's all it is, an opinion), the nuclear bomb was the 'more' humane way to go.
There is a museum at ground zero in Hiroshima which is dedicated to the history of the causes/effects of nuclear war, along with historic artifacts such as replicas of the bombs, pictures, watches that stopped, etc. I really am glad I went.
However, there are many Japanese who are angry at the construction of the museum due to none being constructed in memory of the Tokyo victims. Where is their legacy?
So in my opinion (and that's all it is, an opinion), the nuclear bomb was the 'more' humane way to go.
08-06-2014, 10:10 AM
#9
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2006
Position: 767A (Ret)
Posts: 6,248
Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda
Hannibal: "It wasn't really fair to use elephants, but I thought the Romans were about to deploy some. We couldn't allow an elephant gap."
Gen. A. Jackson: "I should have guessed that a peace treaty had been signed, and just hid out in the swamps for a few more weeks. The British would have just partied in New Orleans."
Gen. W.T. Sherman: "A good spanking would probably have brought Georgia to its senses. War is heck, but there was no need to start fires."
Gen. G. Patton: "We should have let the Germans take Bastogne, rather than risk a lot of casualties on both sides."
Gen. A. Jackson: "I should have guessed that a peace treaty had been signed, and just hid out in the swamps for a few more weeks. The British would have just partied in New Orleans."
Gen. W.T. Sherman: "A good spanking would probably have brought Georgia to its senses. War is heck, but there was no need to start fires."
Gen. G. Patton: "We should have let the Germans take Bastogne, rather than risk a lot of casualties on both sides."
08-06-2014, 12:34 PM
#10
No Weekends For You!!
Joined APC: Jun 2013
Posts: 186
Originally Posted by bababouey
Call me old fashioned, but I miss the days when we brought the worlds two most powerful militaries to their knees in 4 years, versus present day when we have spent 13 years in Afghanistan and have accomplished what?
