Surely It Can't Be True That Not a Single Civilian Died in the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?!

What would you say if someone were to come up to you and make the following statement: that during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not a single civilian was killed? What would you think of the person, what would be your conclusion as to what kind of person could possibly be making such an inane statement?

That the person was mad? That he was delirious? That he was an extreme example of a conspiracy theorist? Surely, that he must be American (and an American conservative to boot)?!

In fact, there is only one conclusion to make, and that is the following: that the person was a member of the Japanese government in the 1930s and 1940s.

As I mention in several of my plethora of Horoshima quotes, the Tokyo government did not recognize civilians — elderly, women, or children — and certainly did not recognize them as noncombatants. (As paradoxically, its successors have been doing — incessantly — in the following seven decades, harping on their status as innocent victims…)

Japan's plans for defense against invasion involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the customary suicidal battle tactics [Thomas Sowell]

Testified one Japanese-American:

Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing. My uncle, who was disabled, had been sent to a mandatory training camp to practice with wooden bullets and makeshift weapons to do his civilian share in greeting American forces.

An article by Jonathan Soble reinforces this, in spite of the fact that, obviously, the New York Times is (as usual) horrified by America's actions and firmly in favor of the victims:

Hiromi Hasai was being trained to make machine gun bullets when the flash from the atomic bomb that destroyed his city lit up the already bright morning sky. Just 14, he had been pulled from school a week before to help Japan’s failing war effort.

So, a young teenager of only 13 or 14 ("just 14"), and already working on weapons?

It confirms — if need be — everything we knew about Japan's plans for the war to continue — to the very last man, woman, cripple, and child.

Related: Witnessing the A-Bomb, but Forbidden to File

Smiley face fascism is here: These days we can count on the MSM to be several steps ahead of the government in its zeal for violating our most basic freedoms

The first clue that Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine is afraid of religious liberty is that she writes for the New York Times Magazine

quips Benny Huang in his piece on The New Liberalism (Their Hurt Feelings Trump Your Constitutional Rights).

The second clue is that the headline of her column places religious liberty in sneer quotes: “What are the Limits of ‘Religious Liberty?’”

As in, so-called religious liberty. Religious liberty exercised by people she doesn’t like. Therefore, not real religious liberty.

And to think that journalists used to act as bulwark against governmental tyranny. These days we can count on the press to be several steps ahead of the government in its zeal for violating our most basic freedoms. If Emily Bazelon actually cared about our constitutional rights she would ask the opposite question—namely, what are the limits of government coercion? The fact that she doesn’t tells us a lot.

Why exactly does she believe that the right to decline a business transaction is somehow not protected by the free exercise clause of the Constitution? What makes this kind of exercise different than say, refusing to serve in the armed services during wartime, or refusing to serve ham in a kosher deli? I think the substance of her objection can be found in two sentences—“Women who have been refused abortion services report feeling judged and mortified. Gay couples turned away by wedding vendors say the same.”

And we wouldn’t want anyone to feel “judged and mortified!”

 … Either religious freedom includes the right to make other people feel bad or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, then neither the florist nor the pastor is safe.

Another problem is that anyone declined service for any reason could claim to be “judged and mortified.” I’m sure Chuck Netzhammer felt “judged and mortified” when he ordered a confederate flag cake, superimposed with the words “heritage not hate,” from Walmart, and was refused. In fact, I know he was. “I am highly offended, distraught, and in tears…”said Netzhammer.

 … The third problem with Emily Bazelon’s argument is the most troubling. Never in a million years did I believe we would get to the point that actual adults—Americans, no less—would make a serious argument that hurt feelings trump constitutional rights.

… Louise Melling [of the ACLU] essentially argues that religious freedom must never include the right to engage in economic transactions on a voluntary basis because people are somehow harmed when they are turned away. … Melling argues that there is real harm done…to people’s feelings! “People turned away by an inn or bakery suffer the harm of being told that their kind isn’t welcome,” she writes.

Um…so? She’s clearly implying that we as Americans lack the right to tell someone else that their kind isn’t welcome. Her statement represents a sea change in the ACLU’s philosophy which used to take a strong stance in favor of our first amendment rights, even if it hurt people’s feelings. A telling example is the one they always trot out to prove that they aren’t a bunch of left-wing hacks. In 1977, the ACLU took the side of a Nazi group that was denied a permit to march through Skokie, Illinois, a city with a substantial population of Holocaust survivors. The ACLU maintained that supporting the Nazis’ constitutional rights in no way amounted to supporting their abhorrent ideology. I agree.

But I’m not sure that today’s ACLU would take that case and if they did they would be hypocrites.

Why? Because the clear message of the march was “Your kind is not welcome.” The ACLU used to believe that conveying such a message was within our rights but they’ve recently had a change of heart and decided that we all have a right to feel welcome. That right cannot be secured without the kind of heavy governmental coercion heretofore found only in novels about the dystopian future. And Canada.

Not everyone has this right, of course. Chuck Netzhhammer can still be made to feel that his kind isn’t welcome because he’s a poor white southerner. But homosexuals’ delicate feelings are always and everywhere protected.

This trend of elevating some people’s feelings over other people’s rights is absolutely terrifying. The government can’t make us be nice to each other and it shouldn’t try. All of our rights are on the chopping block. Expect hate speech laws in the British or Canadian tradition, an end to parental rights, and a governmental invasion of your church. As the late George Carlin once said,

“When fascism comes to America, it will not be in brown and black shirts. It will not be with jackboots. It will be Nike sneakers and smiley shirts.”

Smiley face fascism is here and it’s up to us to fend it off.

How the Welfare State Begins and What the Welfare State Evolves Into

The welfare state starts with small programs targeted at a handful of genuinely needy people

writes Dan Mitchell, referring to the artwork of Cato's Silvia Morandotti.

But as  politicians figure out the electoral benefits of expanding programs and people figure out the that they can let others work on their behalf, the ratio of producers to consumers begins to worsen.

Eventually, even though the moochers and looters should realize that it is not in their interest to over-burden the people pulling the wagon, the entire system breaks down.

Then things get really interesting. Small nations such as Greece can rely on permanent bailouts from bigger countries and the IMF, but sooner or later, as larger nations begin to go bankrupt, that approach won’t be feasible.

Hiroshima, 70 Years Later

Discussing the means that brought the War in the Pacific to an end:
Erik Svane: Unlike the endgames of the majority of wars, World War II in the Pacific grew increasingly bloody as U.S. forces approached the Japanese homeland (read more)…

Lt. Paul Fussell:

On Okinawa, only weeks before Hiroshima, 123,000 Japanese and Americans killed each other … the very idea of more combat made me breathe in gasps and shake all over (read more)…

Thomas Sowell:

the atomic bomb spared us (and the Japanese) a bloodbath that would have dwarfed the death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (read more)…

Charles de Gaulle:

Les trois cent mille morts d'Hiroshima ont épargné bien davantage de Japonais, qui auraient été écrasés sous des bombes ordinaires (read more)…

The Wall Street Journal:

The Japanese army was expected to fight to the last man, as it had during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Since the ratio of Japanese to American combat fatalities ran about four to one, a mainland invasion could have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths—and that's not counting civilians (read more)…

Thomas Sowell:

Japan's plans for defense against invasion involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the customary suicidal battle tactics (read more)…

A Japanese-American:

Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing (read more)…

The New York Times's Martin Fackler on Some Facts About Hiroshima and World War II That You Hear Neither From America's MSM, University Élites, and History Books, Nor From Japan's:

…most Japanese are shocked to hear that their nation also tried to build an atomic bomb. “I have no doubt Japan would have used it if it succeeded,” former schoolteacher Kiwamu Ariga, 81, said (read more)…

Bret Stephens:

Whatever side one takes here, the important point is that the debate fundamentally is about results. … In other words, the question here isn't about the intrinsic morality of the bombing. It's about whether the good that flowed from the bombing outweighed the unmistakable evil of the act itself (read more)…

Le Monde's Philippe Mesmer:

Although it is not said so openly, Hiroshima also played a purifying role, i.e., the baptism of a new Japan, the event that put an end to fifty years of crimes (read more)…

Paul Fussell: Thank God for the Atom Bomb (essay; available for download)

Victor Davis Hanson:

Post-facto critics never tell us what they would have done instead — lay off the German cities and send more ground troops into a pristine Third Reich; don’t bomb, but invade, an untouched Japan in 1946; keep out of WWII entirely; or in its aftermath invade the Soviet Union? (read more)…

Japan's defense minister forced to resign for having the gall to admit that

dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 "ended the war," adding, "I think that it couldn't be helped" … Fumio Kyuma [added that] he did not resent the United States because the bombs prevented the Soviet Union from entering the war with Japan [and that] if Japan had not surrendered, northern Japan could have been occupied by the Soviet Union (read more…)

S L Sanger:

In my interviews with some 60 physicists, engineers, military men and ordinary working people who had been closely connected with Hanford and the Manhattan Project, the consensus was that both bombs were necessary, with a bit less consensus on the Nagasaki bomb (read more)…

Erik Svane: A critical examination of some common charges against the Americans regarding the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (racism, intensification of the war, war on civilians, and the peace feelers ignored) (read more…)

Robert Maddox: the veteran historian ("I regard Hiroshima [revisionism] as the greatest hoax in American history") is interviewed by Victor Fic on every Atomic bombing subject imaginable (read more)…

Father Wilson Miscamble:

Truman's use of the bomb should be seen as his choosing the least awful of the options available to him (4:04, thanks to Instapundit)

Bill Whittle:

But the Japanese were warned … Over one million of these [Office of War Information warning leaflets] were dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities on the 1st of August, 1945 — that's five days before the Hiroshima bombing (01:10, aligato to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit)

Glenn Reynolds: 

the fact is that hand-wringing over Hiroshima is just so much virtue-signaling by people who probably never said a bad word about Stalin or Mao’s mass murders.  (read more)…

In addition, check out the information below the subhead "Watching for the 'Fool-Proof' Cards", about two thirds to three fourths down the drag zone of the AA page…
PJTV - Jon Stewart, War Criminals & The True Story of the Atomic Bombs - Bill Whittle from adrv on Vimeo.