Just before dawn on that morning in 1945 a light called flashed across the desert. It was bright in the pre-dawn darkness, but had it been high noon on a clear day, the flash of light would have eclipsed the sun. With that flash, atomic explosions moved from theory to reality. Within two weeks the light flashed two more times thousands of miles away. This time they were not in a test range, but above two Japanese cities. They were both devastated, destroyed in an instant. The controversy that surrounds these events has burned hot at times, even till today there are questions. I would like to address a few of them including one that I have not seen in print.

We did not need to drop the bomb.

Let us look at that question. But let us base our thinking on what our leaders knew at the time the decision was made. Let us go back and make the decision as they did, without the supposed wisdom of 20/20 hindsight and without the filter of political correctness. In mid-1945 we were planning an invasion of Japan to end the war. It would be a repeat of the campaign in Europe that began on June 6, 1944 at Normandy and ended in May 1945 with the surrender of Germany. Aircraft would bomb and strafe the landing area. Heavy guns of battleships would blast the hardened fortifications. Landing craft would approach the beach. The enemy would return fire. The landing would be forced at great cost on both sides. There was no reason to think Japan would capitulate, the suicidal divine wind of the Kamikaze was just additional proof of an impending fight to the death. The islands of the South Pacific would only be the prelude to the final invasion. The Allied planners looked back to landings at Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Tarawa and Leyte as well as the ones in Europe. In Europe resistance was often stronger as we approached the end. The Battle of the Bulge and the bitter fights for the Remagen and Ahrnem bridges were recent memories as were the hedgerows of Normandy. Based on these landings they expected hundreds of thousands of casualties unless the Japanese did not defend the homeland. Nobody in their right mind thought there was any chance they would capitulate without being defeated on the field. In the Pacific, our combatant kill rate, Japanese to Allies was about ten to one. We killed about ten of their soldiers for each one of ours. Had we lost 100,000 men in the landings, not an impossible number, and continued that kill ratio, we would have killed nearly one million Japanese soldiers. More realistic numbers based on Normandy would have been 30,000 American deaths mapping to over 300,000 Japanese Soldiers killed. Notice I am careful to use the word soldiers. We would have killed a significant number of Japanese civilians, easily more than one quarter of a million, had they not resisted the Americans, based on the losses of French and Dutch. Had they resisted, the toll would have easily doubled or tripled. Once civilians started resisting killing civilians on suspicion would have become a norm. Remember we were into the fifth year of a war that was bleeding American lives. The pre-invasion air assault and shore bombardment would also have taken its toll of civilians. Even if those numbers are high, the losses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were still much lower!

Why did we first use the bomb in Japan? I have heard racist reasons raised. These are blatantly not true, in fact the Japanese were given a bye on war crimes trials that were not afforded the Germans. But then the most of their victims of genocide were yellow! Let’s look at the timetable. The first bomb existed in August 1945 after a crash program. When Germany fell earlier in the year it was still being fabricated. At the time of VE day there was not enough bomb material to make even a single bomb and the engineering to make it go bang was not complete. Even in early August, there was only enough for three bombs, one gun bomb using U-235 and two implosion bombs using P-239. When the bomb fell on Nagasaki, the American nuclear weapon cupboard was bare. Additional weapons would not be available for several more weeks. Making U-235 and P-239 was a painstaking and slow process then, and still is today. The scientists were sure as they could be that the Uranium gun bomb would work without a test but it was an expensive bomb in terms of the fissionable material needed. They felt the Plutonium implosion weapon, which used less material per bomb must be tested before a drop. So the P-239 for one bomb must be used on the desert. The day of that test the psychologists were concerned for the mental states of the scientists if it failed, such was the gloom. That left two for Japan, one U-235 gun bomb and one P-239 implosion weapon. Based on the fire bombing of German cities in early 1945, I have no doubt that had an atomic weapon been available in August 1944, it would have been used. A British Lancaster would have delivered it if the B-29 was not available, it had a much larger bomb load than the B-17 or B-24. War had hardened the Americans and British. We had no problem burning German cities to the ground and killing its citizens.

This was an act of Genocide

The charge that this was an act of genocide has surfaced often but with no foundation. The usual argument is that we didn’t drop on Germany because they were like us. The answer is simple, there was no bomb to drop on Germany unless we wanted to drop it on a defeated and surrendered enemy. Japan was still fighting when it became available.

The charge that it was unnecessary is interesting at best, calls for a judgement by someone who was not there. I agree that we could have defeated Japan without it, but at what cost. Would you like to be the one to tell the wife or mother of a dead soldier, “Your husband (son) died because we extended the war six weeks (or months or years) instead of dropping a bomb on Japan in August that would end the war in days?” Politically this was not possible. Remember; this country was still hot for blood, Italian blood, German blood or Japanese blood. Remember; German soldiers that broke the peace by invading Poland. Forget the crap that it was Hitler’s orders, the men who marched were German soldiers. German soldiers killed surrendered Americans at Malmedy. Italian soldiers added to the instability by invading Ethiopia. And in a day of Infamy, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and killed thousands of American sailors. Add to that the Bataan and Corregodor death marches and the slaughter after the surrender of Wake. The American people had paid dearly because of the actions of criminal governments and they would have countenanced no quarter, in fact our leaders may have suffered physical harm had the bomb not been used. Let’s face it, some of the horrors were not known even then. Some were just being revealed. Some have been kept hidden to this day. Had it been put to a national referendum it would have won easily.

Those who lived that day knew it was necessary. It is only those who ignore history who think it should not have been done.

Did any good come out of the bombing

But let us look at another aspect. The research of the Manhattan Project brought in the age of Atomic Warfare. We built bomb shelters. We trained in Civil Defense. We built an Interstate Highway system to evacuate our cities. We passed out literature on how to survive an atomic attack. Our government built a “pentomic” army that was to survive atomic attack on the battlefield. We designed planes to bomb anywhere in the world. We devised systems of command and control to make Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) certain. And the Soviet Union made the same preparations.

The two powers stood facing each other many times, tempers ran hot, patience ran thin and yet nobody ever pushed the button. Why? I believe that in the minds of the men who could have pushed it were the pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those pictures of incinerated cities may have stayed a hand a few minutes. It may have caused someone to wait one more day to see if the situation could be resolved. It graphically set the price of Atomic Warfare for everyone to see. It was obviously one hellish price.

Its use against Japan was wrong, Germany was the aggressor

True, I would be remiss if I were to not acknowledge the initial aggression of NAZI Germany or its terrible acts of genocide. But let us balance the scales. The Japanese invaded China before the Germans invaded Poland. The Japanese were defeated by Douglas McCarther a man who LOVED the Japanese. In his occupation he allowed them to keep their Emperor because as he put it, “To take away the Emperor would break the spirit of a proud people.” How different from the treatment of NAZI Germany where the leaders did not escape the war crimes trials.

Had the Emperor been tried he too would have been easily sentenced to hard labor for his part in the conflict. He was not blameless. And he not only retained his throne till the nineties, his son has succeeded him. Imagine a son of Adolf Hitler even sitting on a throne of honor in Germany today. Imagine the outcry! But it is so in Japan. And even during the hostilities the Imperial Palace was off limits to Allied bombers. Imagine Hitler’s bunker being off limits to Allied Bombers!

What is Japan’s humanitarian record? Since the war it is good. Japan has become a nation that cares. But this was not so in 1945. We see many movies of German Prison Camp atrocities and scenes depicting the holocaust. How does Japan’s record stack up? By comparison to the Japanese camps, German POW camps for combatants were nearly Country Clubs. Less than one fifth of Americans taken prisoner by the Japanese were repatriated at the end of the war. This is a nice way to say that over 80 percent died. By comparison, over 90 percent of the Americans captured by the Germans were repatriated. In fact the rate was only 2 percent worse than Germans being repatriated by the Americans. And we took pride in our good treatment. Admittedly both Japan and Germany were being bombed regularly from the air and we certainly killed some of our own men. But the disparity indicates some systematic and drastic mistreatment of prisoners. If you wish to read about it from someone who was there, I suggest reading, “Reach for the Sky” by Douglas Badder and “Baa Baa Black Sheep” by Douglas Boyington. Bot Baddar and Boyington were pilots who spent time in German and Japanese camps respectively. Although Baddar’s treatment by the Germans was far from cordial it in no way compared to Boyington’s. I assure you that Boyington would have gladly traded places with Badder. Japan should have fared no better than Germany in the war crime trials related to mistreatment of combatants. The Germans even contacted the British through a neutral to have a spare set of Baddar’s artificial legs air dropped for his use while in prison. (He was a double amputee before the war from an aircraft accident, RAK, LBK).

“But what about the holocaust?” is the cry of the media. That is the watch-word of those who would white wash the Japanese. Let us look at the holocaust. The murder of over 6 million Jews is contested by none with any sense of history. It violates every bit of decency in me. And I burn with anger because we ignore the systematic genocide of over 22 million Chinese by the Japanese. And to this day we hear continually of the 6 million Jews and nothing of the Chinese deaths. And the Chinese were not alone. Malays, Phillipinos, and others who were considered inferiors to the Japanese Race were killed too. And the Japanese even today consider those races inferior. Unlike the Germans who still engage in self-flagellation for their excess, the Japanese still see little wrong with what was done except that they lost the war.

Maybe the dropping of the bombs were directed by a higher power who decided that in the long run there would be more justice and less killing? The Japanese leaders escaped the justice of man. The Japanese people were not so lucky.

Footnote: Had the war continued, Hiroshima (manufacturing) and Nagasaki (Military Naval Base) would have certainly felt the fire bomb raids that had gutted Tokyo and other cities. They were selected for the Atomic attack because they had not been heavily bombed and the extent of the devastation would be more easily seen. For those not aware of these raids, the devastation of these fire-bomb attacks often was nearly as great as the Atomic attack, but was delivered by hundreds of planes, not one.