Alperovitz: On the Sixty-Sixth Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima

[Karmadillo]

Interesting quotes from Marshall, Nimitz, LeMay, Eisenhower, and others.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/08/06-3

Published on Saturday, August 6, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
On the Sixty-Sixth Anniversary of the Bombing of Hiroshima
by Gar Alperovitz

Today is the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Though most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American military leaders in all three services in the years after the war ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of “liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following World War II.

By the summer of 1945 Japan was essentially defeated, its navy at the bottom of the ocean; its air force limited by fuel, equipment, and other shortages; its army facing defeat on all fronts; and its cities subjected to bombing that was all but impossible to challenge. With Germany out of the war, the United States and Britain were about to bring their full power to bear on what was left of the Japanese military. Moreover, the Soviet Union—at this point in time still neutral—was getting ready to attack on the Asian mainland: the Red Army, fresh from victory over Hitler, was poised to strike across the Manchurian border.

Long before the bombings occurred in August 1945—indeed, as early as late April 1945, more than three months before Hiroshima—U.S. intelligence advised that the Japanese were likely to surrender when the Soviet Union entered the war if they were assured that it did not imply national annihilation. An April 29 Joint Intelligence Staff document put it this way: “If at any time the U.S.S.R. should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable.”

For this reason—because it would drastically shorten the war—before the atomic bomb was successfully tested (on July 16, 1945) the U.S. had strongly and repeatedly urged the Soviet Union to join the battle as soon after the defeat of Hitler as possible. A target date of three months after Germany’s surrender was agreed upon—which put the planned Red Army attack date at roughly August 8, the war in Europe having ended on May 8. (In late July the date was temporarily extended by a week.)

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[LiberalLoner]

1. Support the Hibakusha: Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki!

[pretzel4gore]

2. quote: "the Red Army, fresh from victory over Hitler, was poised to strike...."

this is sheer idiocy. The USSR had suffered losses of 25 million people, a 3rd of its economy was ruined and chaos was the rule on every front, yet a baldface statement like the one above can be made as if no one looks at history! The rightwing reactionary re-vising of history is bull shite....the atom bomb was dropped in order to scare USSR into keeping troops in europe, to justify the 'iron curtain/cold war' and ultimately the vast fraud carried out against the 'free' people of democratic west. It's obvious, yet still the liars keep on trucking!

taken from Gore Vidal’s ‘Dreaming War, Blood For Oil and the Bush-Cheney Junta' pg 77/78:
“…But let me quote from a letter by the historian Kai Bird, which, to my amazement, the New York Times published (usually they suppress anything too critical of themselves or their Opinion makers):
‘Twice the reviewer dismisses as “silly’ Vidal’s assertion that Harry Truman’s use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was unnecessary because Japan had been trying for some months to surrender.
Such assertions are neither silly nor….a product of Vidal’s ‘cranky politics’ Rather Vidal has cleverly drawn on a rich and scholarly literature published in the last decade to remind his readers that much of what orthodox court historians have written about the Cold War was simply wrong. With regard to Hiroshima, perhaps Vidal had in mind Truman’s July 1945 handwritten diary reference to a ‘telegram from Jap emperor asking for peace’”

in other words, Japan had tried to surrender before the bombings, and there is actual physical telegram from Hirohito to show it, yet....the big lie keeps on rolling!