Wednesday, August 06, 2008

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Ralph Raico: "(...) Hiroshima was a city, inhabited by some three hundred thousand people, which contained military elements. In any case, since the harbor was mined and the U.S. Navy and Air Force were in control of the waters around Japan, whatever troops were stationed in Hiroshima had been effectively neutralized.

On other occasions, Truman claimed that Hiroshima was bombed because it was an industrial center. But, as noted in the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, "all major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the city – and escaped serious damage."90 The target was the center of the city. That Truman realized the kind of victims the bombs consumed is evident from his comment to his cabinet on August 10, explaining his reluctance to drop a third bomb: "The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible," he said; he didn’t like the idea of killing "all those kids."91 Wiping out another one hundred thousand people . . . all those kids.

Moreover, the notion that Hiroshima was a major military or industrial center is implausible on the face of it. The city had remained untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home islands, and never figured in Bomber Command’s list of the 33 primary targets.92

Thus, the rationale for the atomic bombings has come to rest on a single colossal fabrication, which has gained surprising currency: that they were necessary in order to save a half-million or more American lives. These, supposedly, are the lives that would have been lost in the planned invasion of Kyushu in December, then in the all-out invasion of Honshu the next year, if that was needed. But the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost.93 The ridiculously inflated figure of a half-million for the potential death toll – nearly twice the total of U.S. dead in all theaters in the Second World War – is now routinely repeated in high-school and college textbooks and bandied about by ignorant commentators. Unsurprisingly, the prize for sheer fatuousness on this score goes to President George H.W. Bush, who claimed in 1991 that dropping the bomb "spared millions of American lives."94

Still, Truman’s multiple deceptions and self-deceptions are understandable, considering the horror he unleashed. It is equally understandable that the U.S. occupation authorities censored reports from the shattered cities and did not permit films and photographs of the thousands of corpses and the frightfully mutilated survivors to reach the public.95 Otherwise, Americans – and the rest of the world – might have drawn disturbing comparisons to scenes then coming to light from the Nazi concentration camps.

The bombings were condemned as barbaric and unnecessary by high American military officers, including Eisenhower and MacArthur.96 The view of Admiral William D. Leahy, Truman’s own chief of staff, was typical:

the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. . . . My own feeling was that 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 wars in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.97 (...)"

4 comments:

Miguel Madeira said...

Algo que escrevi há 2 anos sobre isso:

«sem a rendição do Japão provocada pelos bombardeamantos (...) teria sido necessário uma campanha prolongada para expulsar os japoneses dos territórios que estes ainda ocupavam - ou seja, a guerra teria continuado nas "Indias holandesas" (Indonésia), na "Indochina francesa" (Vietname, Cambodja e Laos), na China, na Coreia, etc. Assim, graças ao uso da bomba atómica, esses territórios ganharam a paz e a tranquilidade (em vez de terem ainda mais uns anos - décadas? - de guerra pela frente, como teria acontecido sem a bomba atómica).»

«Numa prespectiva puramente "norte-americana", temos que assinalar que esta poupou aos EUA o envolvimento numa guerra terrestre no Extremo-Oriente: sem a bomba atómica, provavelmente montes de soldados norte-americanos teriam morrido em territórios como a Coreia ou o Vietname, a expulsar os japoneses. A bomba atómica salvou essas vidas, já que graças a ela nenhum soldado norte-americano morreu nesses sitios.»

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CN said...

MM

Isso já foi refutado ou argumentado em sentido cotntráirio por muitos.

E de resto, para quê invasão?

Só para impôr uma "vitória total", mas com toda a probabilidade teriam aceitado uma paz negociadas, mantendo o Imperador (coisa que fizeram depois, mas que no momento o que estava em cima da mesa era a sua destituição).

E ainda que os pressupostos fossem crediveis, é na mesmoa um "war crime" matar tantos civis apenas pela expectativa que as baixas de soldados seriam elevads (mas mesmo um expectativa é apenas uma expectativa).

Teste Sniqper said...

Pedindo antecipadas desculpas pela “invasão” e alguma usurpação de espaço, gostaríamos de deixar o convite para uma visita a este Espaço que irá agitar as águas da Passividade Portuguesa...