At 10:42 PM 11/8/2002, you wrote:
Perhaps there is good reason why a member of the First Presidency was critical of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:Steve,I still stay that all out war is always on the table when it comes to preserving ones country, religion, and liberties--notwithstanding what a church leader has said on the subject from the not so distance past. I'm not prepared to see my country go down for any reason even if it meant the entire destruction of other countries. Whatever it takes to preserve our rights and liberties must be considered. Now--you probably can guess that I don't want to see civilians killed because I don't. I think smaller tactical nuclear bombs are more prudent. But if that doesn't work than I think the full size bombs could be dropped if that is what it takes to save us from the destruction of American life and property. I'm quite disappointed to learn that any church leader from the WWII era opposed the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan. Paul O [EMAIL PROTECTED]
JOHN F. MCMANUS
Why did the U.S. unleash its terrible weapon? Prevailing
wisdom concerning the August 1945 atomic bombings of the Japanese cities
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki holds that those twin horrors were undertaken
to force Japan to sue for peace. Had the bombs not been employed (so the
"wisdom" goes), an enormous number of American troops would have
perished in an inevitable amphibious operation against the Japanese
mainland.
During much of 1995, controversy engulfed plans by Washington, DC's
Smithsonian Institution to exhibit the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that
delivered the A-bomb over Hiroshima. Incredibly, the exhibit's original
commentary intended to empathize with Japan and portray the United
States as perpetrators of a "war of vengeance." The planned text even
declared of the Pacific conflict, "For most of the Japanese, it was a
war to defend their unique culture against Western imperialism."
Veterans groups, angry citizens, and some members of Congress eventually
forced the Smithsonian to rewrite the text for the exhibit. What finally
emerged, not surprisingly, is now being targeted by an assortment of
pacifists and anti-nuclear partisans. A wall panel now informs viewers:
[The atomic bombs] destroyed much of the two cities and caused many tens
of thousands of deaths. However, the use of the bombs led to the
immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion
of the Japanese home islands. Such an invasion, especially if undertaken
for both main islands, would have led to heavy casualties among
American, Allied, and Japanese armed forces and Japanese civilians.
This current display, therefore, repeats the notion that the dropping of
the bombs by the U.S. brought Japan to the peace table and saved
countless lives on both sides. But this historical view, like the
original commentary intended for the exhibit, is not supported by the
facts.
Immediately after the war had ended, President Harry Truman publicized
the view of wartime Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall that
an invasion of the Japanese mainland would have required "a million men
for the landing and a million more to hold it, and ... half a million
casualties."
Much of the historical perspective on the era holds that the Japanese
were prepared to fight to their very last man, and that until the horror
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been visited upon their homeland Japanese
leaders had no intention of surrendering. But in fact the Japanese had
sent peace feelers to the West as early as 1942, only six months after
the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. More would come in a flood
long before the fateful use of the atomic bombs.
In her 1956 book, The Enemy at His Back, journalist Elizabeth Churchill
Brown supplied overwhelming evidence to counter the inaccurate views
about the close of the war. Beginning in 1949, she plunged into dozens
of wartime memoirs and congressional hearings dealing with the conflict.
The wife of noted Washington Star columnist Constantine Brown, Mrs.
Brown had access to many of "the men who were no longer 'under wraps,'"
as she noted. She wrote, "With this knowledge at hand, I quickly began
to see why the war with Japan was unprecedented in all history. Here was
an enemy who had been trying to surrender for almost a year before the
conflict ended."
In her book, Brown supplied abundant evidence about the immense perfidy
that kept the Japanese from surrendering until such time as the Soviets
were ready to enter the war against Japan and the American forces had
dropped the atomic bombs on civilian populations.
Divided Opinion Even before Japan started the war, its leadership was
divided into two sharply opposing factions. Those who never wanted any
hostilities between Japan and the United States were known as "the peace
party." They counted among their number Emperor Hirohito and several
high officers in the navy.
The other faction, the militarists led by Army leader Tojo, was known as
"the war party." It was this group's belief that Japan should rule the
Pacific and most of the lands touching it. These individuals were
responsible for launching the vicious attack on our naval base at Pearl
Harbor, Japan's only victory of any consequence during the entire war.
The next major event in the war, the famous naval battle occurring near
Midway Island in June 1942, saw the Japanese navy dealt a huge defeat.
While there were to be many other naval engagements in which the
Japanese navy was also routed, Midway was actually a dramatic turning
point in the war, a realization shared by many in Japan's leadership.
After Midway and prior to the U.S. assault on Guadalcanal in August
1942, as reported in his 1950 book Journey to the Missouri, * Toshikasu
Kase, an official of the Japanese Foreign Office, delivered a highly
confidential message to the interned British ambassador, Sir Robert
Craigi. It contained a "discreet hint regarding the eventual restoration
of peace." Emanating from Japanese Foreign Minister Togo, this message
stated, "Should it happen that the British Government became desirous of
discussing or negotiating peace they would find the Japanese Government
ready to be helpful."
Kase wrote that "even as early as the summer of 1942, we few in the
foreign office were endeavoring to lay the foundations for future
negotiations...."
In his 1952 book Fleet Admiral King, Admiral Ernest J. King reported
President Roosevelt's 1942 understanding that "by the application of sea
power, Japan could be forced to surrender without an invasion of her
home islands." This attitude, shared by most of our military leaders,
would quickly be abandoned by the President. Instead, the costly
island-by-island advance of U.S. forces northward through the Pacific
continued. Major land battles between U.S. and Japanese forces, marked
by fierce fighting and many casualties, included:
• Solomon Islands, June 1943. • New Guinea, September 1943. •
Bouganville and Tarawa, November 1943. • Marshall Islands, January 1944.
• Saipan in the Marianas, June 1944. • Leyte in the Philippines, October
1944. • Iwo Jima, February 1945. • Okinawa, April 1945.
The June 1944 American assault on the island of Saipan convinced even
some of Japan's hard-liners that their cause was lost. In his book,
Toshikasu Kase wrote that on June 26, 1944, Baron Kido, a close adviser
to the Emperor, "sent for Foreign Minister Shigemitsu and asked him if
he would work out some plan looking toward an eventual diplomatic
settlement of the war." The only unwavering stipulation sought by anyone
in the Japanese "peace party" was the retention of the Emperor and the
continuance of the monarchy.
But America's leaders began trumpeting the need for "unconditional
surrender" without ever spelling out exactly what that would mean. Many
Japanese feared that the Americans intended to force the termination of
their culture, even the denigration of their deeply revered Emperor.
They had good reason for such concerns. By July 3, 1945, the Washington
Post alluded to such a concern: "Senator White of Maine, minority
leader, declared ... that the Pacific war might end quickly if President
Truman would state specifically just what unconditional surrender means
for the Japanese."
Attacking the Monarch In his 1954 book The Untold Story of Douglas
MacArthur, Frazier Hunt reported that Owen Lattimore, the deputy
director in charge of Pacific Affairs of the Office of War Information,
"called on President Truman and remonstrated against the government
taking any position which would enable the monarchy to remain in Japan."
According to Hunt, Lattimore had violated policy by using his office to
attack the Emperor, even recommending that the Japanese monarch be
exiled to China. Attacking Japan's monarchy could only lead to
prolonging the war and opening the door to Soviet presence in Asia. As
would subsequently be revealed, Lattimore had reason to act as he did:
The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee would conclude a few years
later that Lattimore "was from some time in the middle 1930s a
conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy."
In his 1966 book No Wonder We Are Losing, wartime U.S. official Robert
Morris stated that the undefined demand for unconditional surrender was
"frightening" to the Japanese. Working for Naval Intelligence as an
expert in its Psychological Warfare Department, Morris reported that
careful interrogation of Japanese prisoners confirmed that "the Japanese
would yield most readily if they were assured that they could keep
Emperor Hirohito." Morris also stated that "intelligent prisoners ...
consistently reported that Japan would prefer to surrender before the
Soviet Union entered the war [because they] feared the Bolshevization of
the home islands."
Once Saipan was in American hands, President Roosevelt journeyed to
Hawaii to meet with our nation's top Pacific commanders, General Douglas
MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz. Both emphasized that Japan could
now be forced to surrender without an invasion of her homeland. In his
1950 book I Was There, Admiral William D. Leahy, President Roosevelt's
aide who was present at the meeting, confirmed that there was never any
consideration given during the meeting to an invasion of the Japanese
mainland.
In the fall of 1944, Emperor Hirohito attempted to make peace with
China, but his efforts failed because Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek
felt compelled to follow the lead of his wartime allies, Great Britain
and the United States, neither of which was planning for an early
Japanese surrender. The Emperor then made contact with a group of
Siamese and had them send peace proposals to Washington. By now, the
Japanese were aware of the alarming possibility that the USSR might be
invited into the war.
More peace overtures were being sent by Japan through various channels.
In No Wonder We Are Losing, Robert Morris stated that "the Japanese had
explored the possibility of a negotiated peace through the Vatican as
early as November 1944." Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn noted in his 1990
book Leftism Revisited that the Japanese had tried to arrange peace "in
April 1945 through the Vatican."
"The Army" In the U.S., the diplomatic element favoring a continuation
of all-out war with Japan was led by Harry Hopkins, President
Roosevelt's closest adviser, whose fanatical esteem for Soviet Russia
was legendary. Among the very few military officials who favored
continued fighting, the leader was Army Chief of Staff George Marshall
who, right up to the actual use of the atomic bombs, would listen to no
talk of a Japanese surrender and insisted on the need for a full-scale
invasion of Japan proper. Of President Roosevelt's military advisers, it
was to Marshall alone he looked for military perspective about the
Pacific war. The other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff might have
their say during meetings, but Marshall's view always prevailed. After
President Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, Marshall's influence
continued with the arrival of President Truman. Of Marshall's role,
Elizabeth Churchill Brown wrote:
I found that all final and absolute decisions of the war were taken by
the President and "the Army." Who "the Army" was, I discovered by a
process of elimination and a close study of the war. The Joint Chiefs of
Staff consisted of Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations;
General H.H. Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Force; General George C.
Marshall, Army Chief of Staff; and Admiral William D. Leahy, President
Roosevelt's and later President Truman's Chief of Staff who presided
over the meetings. Although the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs were
always unanimous, more often than not the two admirals disagreed with
General Marshall in private. And General Arnold, according to his
memoirs, also quite often did not go along with General Marshall's
views. Secretary of War Henry Stimson was so seldom consulted that he,
too, must be eliminated. Finally I discovered a passage in General
Arnold's book, "Global Mission," which summed up the picture. He wrote
-- "Usually, he [Marshall] was spokesman at our conferences." Arnold
referred to Admiral Leahy as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but to
Marshall as the spokesman. I therefore came to the inescapable
conclusion that, when I read that "the Army" or "the Joint Chiefs" had
decided upon such-and-such a strategy, the decision was invariably that
of General Marshall. *
The first atomic bomb was exploded over Hiroshima on August 5, 1945; the
second was detonated over Nagasaki four days later. On August 8th, the
Soviet Union declared war on an already beaten Japan. But other Japanese
attempts to surrender had been coming fast and furious prior to these
historically important developments.
One of the most compelling was transmitted by General MacArthur to
President Roosevelt in January 1945, prior to the Yalta conference.
MacArthur's communiqué stated that the Japanese were willing to
surrender under terms which included:
• Full surrender of Japanese forces on sea, in the air, at home, on
island possessions, and in occupied countries. • Surrender of all arms
and munitions. · Occupation of the Japanese homeland and island
possessions by allied troops under American direction. • Japanese
relinquishment of Manchuria, Korea, and Formosa, as well as all
territory seized during the war. • Regulation of Japanese industry to
halt present and future production of implements of war. • Turning over
of Japanese which the United States might designate war criminals. •
Release of all prisoners of war and internees in Japan and in areas
under Japanese control.
Amazingly, these were identical to the terms which were accepted by our
government for the surrender of Japan seven months later. Had they been
accepted when first offered, there would have been no heavy loss of life
on Iwo Jima (over 26,033 Americans killed or wounded, approximately
21,000 Japanese killed) and Okinawa (over 39,000 U.S. dead and wounded,
109,000 Japanese dead), no fire bombing of Japanese cities by B-29
bombers (it is estimated that the dropping of 1,700 tons of incendiary
explosives on Japanese cities during March 9th-10th alone killed over
80,000 civilians and destroyed 260,000 buildings), and no use of the
atomic bomb.
Countless thousands of Japanese civilians perished as a result of the
atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the world was
suddenly and violently brought into the atomic age.
Belated Revelations The U.S. government has never published MacArthur's
communiqué detailing Japan's willingness to end the war, even though its
existence first came to light in an article by Chicago Tribune
journalist Walter Trohan and published on August 19, 1945 in both the
Tribune and the Washington Times Herald. A military intelligence officer
with access to classified information had given Trohan a copy of this
peace proposal with the stipulation that he keep it confidential until
the war ended. Trohan honored his end of the agreement, and then wrote
his article immediately after Japan's August 14th surrender had been
announced.
Trohan's sensational revelations occasioned no response from the White
House and State Department. Nor did it attract the kind of attention
from the mass media it surely deserved. Historian Harry Elmer Barnes,
writing in the May 10, 1958 issue of National Review, supplied
additional credence to the Trohan report:
After General MacArthur returned from Korea in 1951, his neighbor in the
Waldorf Towers, former President Herbert Hoover, took the Trohan article
to General MacArthur and the latter confirmed its accuracy in every
detail and without qualification.
But the January 1945 attempt to end the war wasn't Japan's only move.
Robert Morris wrote in No Wonder We Are Losing:
... the Japanese made other overtures through the Soviet Union which
were not transmitted to us. But on June 1, Tokyo wired its Ambassador in
Moscow that the Emperor wished to make peace and told him to request
Soviet mediation. This information was decoded by the United States --
two months before the atomic bomb dropped and the Soviet Union entered
the war against Japan.
In his 1963 book How the Far East Was Lost, Professor Anthony Kubek told
of a July 6, 1945 message sent to the State Department by American
diplomats in Sweden which claimed "that Prince Carl Bernodotte, nephew
of King Gustov, had been told by the Japanese military attaché in Sweden
that Japan had lost the war and wanted to enter surrender negotiations
through the King of Sweden."
Kubek further reported on July 12th, "Prince Konoye was received by the
Emperor and ordered to Moscow as a peace plenipotentiary to 'secure
peace at any price.'" Despite the strong efforts of the Japanese
ambassador in Moscow to arrange for Prince Konoye's visit, however, the
Russian government rejected the proposal.
In his 1966 work The Death of James Forrestal, Cornell Simpson wrote
that Forrestal, the Secretary of the Navy at the time, "had originated a
plan to end the war with Japan five and a half months before V-J Day
[August 14, 1945] finally dawned." Simpson pointed out that, had this
plan been implemented, the atomic bombs would never have been used and
"the Russians would not have had a chance to muscle into the Pacific war
for the last six of its 1,347 days." Simpson added:
The last point, of course, is why the fellow travellers hurriedly
persuaded FDR to reject Forrestal's plan, and why they saw to it that
the American people heard nothing about this chance to save untold
numbers of American lives .... In May, another move to end the Pacific
war was similarly scuttled. The very same month that Germany
surrendered, Truman approved a peace ultimatum to Japan, subject to
endorsement by the military. But on May 29, General Marshall rejected it
as "premature."
General MacArthur's January 1945 communiqué containing Japan's detailed
peace proposal reached President Roosevelt two days before he departed
for his meeting with Churchill and Stalin at Yalta. With his mind
already made up about the need to continue the war, he completely
discounted the entire proposal and flippantly remarked to an aide,
"MacArthur is our greatest general and poorest politician."
At the conference in Yalta, with secret Communist agent Alger Hiss at
his side, Franklin Roosevelt agreed to everything Josef Stalin wanted --
and more. Plans previously discussed at a November 1943 Big Three
conference held in Teheran were finalized at Yalta.
The Soviets were to be welcomed into the Pacific war after Germany
surrendered. They were to be given rights to the port of Dairen, Port
Arthur's naval base, several Japanese island possessions, and both Outer
Mongolia and Manchuria, where huge stores of Japanese arms were
stockpiled. These munitions were later transferred to Mao Tse-tung's
Communist forces, enabling them to carry on the war with the Nationalist
Chinese forces and eventually seize control of mainland China.
Decisions reached at Yalta also gave the Soviet Union a green light to
take huge chunks of Poland, as well as Prague and Berlin.
Bomb at the Ready Just prior to departing for Yalta, President Roosevelt
also received confirmation via Secretary of War Henry Stimson that the
scientists working on the development of the atomic bomb expected it to
be ready for use in August. Possessed of this intelligence, he
nevertheless went to Yalta with the intention of prolonging the war,
welcoming the Soviet Union into it, and ignoring Japan's detailed peace
offerings.
President Roosevelt died on April 12th and was succeeded at once by
Harry Truman. After Germany surrendered on May 8th, President Truman
began making plans for the next Big Three conference to be held in the
German city of Potsdam in mid-July. This gathering would legitimize all
that had been decided at Yalta.
On May 28th, Stalin informed Harry Hopkins that Russia would move
against Japan on August 8th. On May 29th, as noted previously, President
Truman's plan to send Japan a surrender demand was scuttled by General
Marshall as "premature." Truman would then defer any further discussion
of Japan's surrender until after the Potsdam meeting. In Moscow, Stalin
brusquely told Japanese emissaries in Moscow that he saw no reason to
discuss an end to the war until after Potsdam.
On July 16th, President Truman received word that a successful test of
the atomic bomb had been completed in New Mexico. The Potsdam
conference, delayed a day because of Stalin's alleged heart attack,
began on July 17th. On July 24th, the President informed a not-surprised
Stalin about the bomb. * On July 25th, U.S. military officials were
ordered to drop the bomb "after August 3rd." The Potsdam conference
closed on August 2nd.
As has already been noted, the first atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima on
August 5th; the USSR entered the war on August 8th; and the second bomb
devastated Nagasaki on August 9th. Japan was finally permitted to
surrender on August 14th.
No good evidence exists to demonstrate that the atomic bomb was needed
to hasten the end of the war with Japan. While many Americans have been
persuaded that a full-scale invasion of Japan and its accompanying huge
number of casualties were avoided, no invasion was ever needed. Japan
was beaten and was trying to surrender.
Another argument to justify the use of the atomic bomb holds that the
demonstration of some awesome and terrible power would aid the United
States in future diplomatic confrontations with Soviet Russia. Norman
Cousins and Thomas K. Finletter offered this rationalization in an
article appearing in the June 15, 1946 Saturday Review of Literature.
Secretary of War Stimson proposed this same rationale in his 1948
memoir, On Active Service in Peace and War.
Of course, if the frightening power of the atomic bomb were to be
employed as a diplomatic weapon, such an advantage could have been
gained by a demonstration that did not consume hundreds of thousands of
defenseless human beings. If its effect was directed more at Russia than
at Japan, the victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki died for a mere
diplomatic edge. The incredible lack of morality in such a decision is
self-evident.
Authoritative Opposition Other more rational and moral voices spoke out
in opposition to what had been done to the Japanese people. One of the
first was Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, who had tried to end
the war months before the bomb. In his diary entry for August 10, 1945,
he wrote:
The Secretary of War made the suggestion that we should now cease
sending our bombers over Japan; he cited the growing feeling of
apprehension and misgiving as to the effect of the atomic bomb even in
our own country. I supported that view and said that we must remember
that this nation would have to bear the focus of the hatred of the
Japanese.
In 1946, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, headed by Rear
Admiral R.A. Ofstie, issued a report entitled The Campaigns of the
Pacific War. Among its many revealing passages can be found:
In June [1944] the loss of the Marianas had struck terror into the
hearts of responsible Japanese authorities and had convinced many that
the war was lost. By January 1945 Japan was in fact a defeated nation.
[P]rior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November
1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been
dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion
had been planned or contemplated.
In his 1950 work I Was There, Admiral William Leahy discussed his
reaction to the use of the bomb:
It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The
Japanese were already beaten and ready to surrender .... It was my
reaction that the scientists and others wanted to make the test because
of the vast sums that had been spent on the project .... 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.
In his 1967 book Utopia: The Perennial Heresy, Professor Thomas Molnar
put his finger on a major reason why the bomb was used:
In our times the portentous event is the atomic bomb which creates
general insecurity and is credited with effecting a total change in
mankind's destiny since it can no longer be called a "single event" but
a permanent state with which we shall have to live from now on.
Accordingly, voices are already heard that, living as we do "in the
shadow of the bomb," our traditional moral assumptions will have to be
reconsidered. Religious leaders declare that the existence of "the bomb"
has so activated our awareness of science that, as Paul Tillich says,
"we must forget everything traditional we have learned about God,
perhaps even that word itself." Political leaders, fearful of the final
cataclysm of nuclear annihilation, say that men must huddle together
under a world government .... (Emphasis added.)
Looking to the UN Almost immediately after the first atomic bombs had
been used, U.S. Communist Party chieftain William Z. Foster suggested
the need for United Nations control of atomic energy. In an article
appearing in the party newspaper Daily Worker on August 13, 1945, he
wrote: "If... the new atomic power which is a product of international
science is to be directed to constructive uses, the general military
control of it will have to be vested in the Security Council of the
United Nations." Foster, of course, knew that the Soviet Union would
control the military use of atomic power through the privilege it had
been granted to appoint the UN's Undersecretary for Political and
Security Council Affairs. That post has always had jurisdiction over all
military, disarmament, and atomic energy matters for the world body.
In September 1949, Mr. Truman announced that the Soviets had exploded
their own atomic bomb, and that America's monopoly on this awesome
weaponry had ended.
Only a few days after the U.S. had dropped the A-bombs on Japan,
President Truman sought to justify their use in a letter he sent to the
Federal Council of Churches: "I was greatly disturbed over the
unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of
our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the
one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a
beast you have to treat him as a beast."
Years later, Mr. Truman would again attempt to defend his decision to
use the bomb against Japan. As Harry Elmer Barnes reported in National
Review, May 10, 1958, the former President stated: "The need for such a
fateful decision, of course, would never have arisen had we not been
shot in the back by Japan at Pearl Harbor in December 1941." According
to Barnes, the Hiroshima City Council responded to Truman as follows:
Had your decision been based on the Imperial Navy's surprise attack on
your country's combatants and military facilities, why could you not
choose a military base for the target? You committed the outrage of
massacring 200,000 non-combatants as revenge, and you are still trying
to justify it.
Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians did perish in the raids on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But their deaths had nothing to do with either
forcing Japan to the peace table or gaining a diplomatic edge over the
Soviet Union. Their deaths did, however, usher the world dramatically
into the age of atomic weaponry -- where the threat of nuclear terror
has been effectively used to propel mankind -- especially the United
States -- to the brink of world government.
The very existence of atomic weapons, and especially their use against
Japan, has been cited ever since 1945 by enemies of national sovereignty
and promoters of the United Nations as a prime reason why nations can no
longer be independent and peoples can no longer expect God-given
freedom.
Current commentaries about the events surrounding the use of the atomic
bomb are appearing virtually everywhere. The summer 1995 issue of
Foreign Policy offered "Hiroshima: Historians Reassess." And the
January/February issue of the Council on Foreign Relation's journal
Foreign Affairs contained "The Atomic Bombings Reconsidered."
Both articles disregard fundamentally important matters such as the
MacArthur communiqué of January 1945, Japan's many attempts to
surrender, and the pro-Soviet treachery accomplished at Yalta and
Potsdam. The articles promote the notion that only through the
reflections of modern scholars may we come to understand that there were
alternatives to the bomb. In reality, those alternatives have been a
matter of conspiratorial history for five decades.
From at least January 1945, the many thousands of dead and wounded on
both sides of the Pacific war must be counted as victims of the
treacherous determination to extend the conflict in order to benefit the
Soviet Union and use the bomb. Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and all
who supported this perfidy must be held historically accountable.
No one can blame the horrible killing and maiming at Iwo Jima, Okinawa,
Hiroshima, and Nagasaki on our nation's military forces whose leaders,
with the prominent exception of George Marshall, tried to stop the war
prior to each of these events.
Without doubt, war is hell. But World War II in the Pacific was hell for
at least six months more than was needed. And when it was finally over,
the real winners were the conspirators who had done their very best for
Josef Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and world government.
(The New American Magazine, August 21, 1995)
--
Steven Montgomery
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