Sir, – Your editorial ("Honour the dead, ban the bomb", August 6th) and an article by Eamonn McCann ("Use of atomic bomb on Japan a crime against humanity", Opinion & Analysis, August 6th) both condemn the decision by the US government to drop the atomic bombs on Japan to end the second World War. The editorial says that the US military estimated that an invasion of Japan would cost 40,000 American dead. In fact, estimates varied widely; one by US air force general Lauris Norstad estimated half a million American dead, which sounds plausible considering that 20,000 had been killed to capture the small islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
It is true that most of the top military brass opposed President Truman’s decision to drop the bombs, but that was not because of concern for the Japanese or because they believed Japan was going to surrender soon, it was because of professional jealousy.
Senior admirals and generals were worried about what slice of the smaller postwar military budget their services would get, and so they all wanted their own service to have the glory of beating Japan on its own – the navy wanted the blockade to continue indefinitely, the air force believed conventional bombing could do it, while the army and marines wanted a ground invasion.
As for the claim that the Japanese were going to surrender shortly anyway, there is not a scintilla of evidence for that. On the contrary – the Japanese had made massive preparations for suicidal defence, including millions of heavily armed soldiers, thousands of kamikaze aircraft, and a militia of tens of millions of civilians armed with everything from rifles to bamboo sticks, with little children trained to blow themselves up under tanks.
Even after the atom bombs were dropped and the Soviet Union’s declaration of war, and despite even Emperor Hirohito’s plea, barely a majority of the Japanese cabinet agreed to surrender, and even then there was an attempted coup. Thus it is fallacious to suggest that a Japanese surrender was imminent before August 1945.
Moreover, the US invasion was due to begin in November and once that started there would have been no stopping a fanatical Japanese last-stand defence which would have seen the country immolated and millions killed through combat and economic annihilation. – Yours, etc,
Dr FRANK GILES,
Ballsbridge,
Dublin 4.
Sir, – While remembering the horror of Hiroshima it is worth recalling another war crime whose 70th anniversary passed unnoticed without official commemoration on March 9th this year, that is the firebombing of Tokyo when 100,000 civilians, mainly old men, women and children, were incinerated by 500,000 M69 bombs dropped by B-29 bombers by the US military.
The methodology of the bombing raid was designed specifically by Gen Curtis LeMay to consume the largely wooden residential structures of Tokyo.
This war crime, along with that of Hirsohima and Nagasaki, are all the more callous because the American leadership knew as early as January 1945 that the continuation of the war by Japan would soon be materially impossible.
The US had broken the Japanese cipher machines and the US naval blockade of vital raw materials was seriously hampering the Japanese war efforts. A low rice harvest in 1945 threatened starvation. Not only were there, as you note in your editorial, “strong suggestions that a Japanese surrender was imminent”, the Japanese leadership had already offered peace terms in January 1945 almost identical to those finally accepted by the US in September of that year, which were ignored by the US government.
Forced to withhold this story for seven months, these proposals were finally exposed by journalist Walter Trohan on August 19th, a few days after VJ Day.
Horrific war crimes were committed by all of the major powers involved in the second World War, including Germany, Japan, the US (Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki) and Britain (Dresden).
We need to expose the true history behind these war crimes, which might better inform how we can prevent both the proliferation of nuclear weapons and future wars. – Yours, etc,
JIM ROCHE,
Irish Anti-War Movement,
PO Box 9260,
Dublin 1.