Hiroshima, The Bomb, And Revisionist History
Topic: Out of Flyover Land
As I was reading the post in Weekend Pundit for August 6
whose title I have "borrowed", I found myself nodding my head, yes, truth, yes.

There has been a long running debate about the message the Japanese government sent to the US and their allies after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Some believe that it was a poor translation of the message that led to the dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki. But Rhodes brings up the point that even after the bombing of Nagasaki, the Japanese military had no intention of surrendering. This was confirmed by communications intercepts between the high command and lower level units. They had been preparing the Home Islands for an invasion, working to convert every Japanese civilian into kamikaze troops. But the Emperor intervened, something highly unusual. He ordered the military to surrender, knowing that if they did not submit Japan and its people were doomed.
If we had not dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and had instead invaded the Home Islands, the death toll would have been in the many millions, with Allied troop deaths calculated as between 500,000 and 1,000,000 men. Millions of Japanese would be dead rather than a couple of hundred thousand from the two atomic bombs.
But none of that is relevant to the revisionists. All they know is that we were wrong to drop the bombs. Never mind that we could have just as easily fire-bombed those cities instead with the death toll no different. The firebombing of Tokyo on the night of March 9, 1945, almost 5 months before Hiroshima, killed 150,000 Japanese in the city. That's more than died in Hiroshima. But we don't revise the history of that bombing raid, do we?

My own thoughts exactly and in some part prompted by the History of the Invasion of Saipan. I recall the first time I read accounts of that Battle. I was stunned. I looked at the pages of the book and my mind leaped to what would have been the near Future for the men whose stories I was reading and I thought.

No WONDER Truman chose to Drop the Bomb.

I left a comment on this on Weekend Pundit, here I will repeat and expound upon it.

"Millions of Japanese would be dead rather than a couple of hundred thousand from the two atomic bomb"


Those who doubt this have never studied the record of the Invasion of Saipan.

Due to the effects of propaganda by the Japanese Government, the Civilian Population and the Common Japanese were convinced, that they would be subjected to horrific, torturous, annihilation.

The Japanese Army, fought a mistaken, but what can only be described considering what they believed, heroic last ditch stand to buy time while many women and children jumped off the cliffs to their deaths,

An invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, had it followed the Saipan model, could have resulted in the Extinction of the Japanese as a Nation.



Consider the Horror the Peace Party faced, neither the Nation, nor the military would be deterred by massive death and destruction, for the Fire Bombing of Tokyo alone had resulted in far more devastation.

It was the fact that THIS destruction, was accomplished by the means of only two bombs that gave them the Courage to gain access to the Emperor, inform him of the Reality they faced, and get his Imperial Decree out to the People to Surrender without Resistance.

Nations have been defeated and Survived, Nations have been defeated and ceased to exist as Nations and their People have survived.

What they faced was neither of the above, but the almost certainty that the Japanese Race would cease to Exist.

One wonders what the Revisionist History of an alternate Timeline, where the Atomic Bombs were never dropped, would be.

Might the "Suicide of the Japanese People" have evolved into "The Senseless Slaughter of the Japanese??"

Might Future Historians in that Alternate History have claimed.

"Truman had it in his hands to drop the two devices in his possession, and shock the Japanese into surrender, but he chose not to, in order to ensure the Complete Destruction of the Japanese as People"?????

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