Among the many things we are not conversant with regarding World War II is the sheer number of Chinese civilians wiped out subsequent to the Doolittle raid on Tokyo. Try to imagine the number of Chinese "rebels" punished (killed) for providing solace to 80-some American stranded airmen whose war exploit they knew nothing about, and said exploit having in any case resulted in less than 90 Japanese deaths (although plenty of humiliation for the Land of the Rising Sun).
Do you think it might be about 25 Chinese civilians? 250? Perhaps 2,500? Certainly not 25,000? The answer is perhaps ten times that: close to a quarter of a million! Yes, you read that right: the Japanese army killed an estimated 250,000 Chinese civilians as punishment for aiding the escape of Doolittle’s Raiders from Chinese territory.
Indeed, Jimmy Doolittle himself opined that
“That was perhaps the greatest tragedy of our mission. All of that horror was retribution against the Chinese for helping us…. They also exacted their revenge against our captured men, which I learned of later… The loss of those men has always stayed with me. When people ask about the atomic bombs and their justification, they come to mind.”
Is it any wonder that any number of World War II experts would come to the following conclusion: "The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal"? Indeed, said Victor Davis Hanson during a lecture, During WWII, Japan Killed 7 Times More People (Most of Them Civilians) than They Lost.
Speaking of China under the Japanese Reign Of Terror, inhabitants in the Northern part of the Middle Kingdom would get to know firsthand that a Japanese army medical officer named Shiro Ishii was the Josef Mengele of Japan.
Moreover, while scientists North of Tokyo were working on Japan's own atomic bomb in Ishikawa, General Ishii's Unit 731 was using its biological weapons experiments on Manchurian and Chinese prisoners to prepare equally horrific weapons against America. Although not for use on their immediate foe, i.e., not on Uncle Sam's armed forces.
Ishii’s master plan, “Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night,” intended to use these weapons against the United States.
If this plan would’ve succeeded, about 20 of the 500 new troops who arrived in Harbin would’ve been taken toward southern California in a submarine. They would’ve then manned an onboard plane and flown it to San Diego. And plague bombs would’ve then been dropped there in September 1945.
Thousands of disease-riddled fleas would’ve been deployed, as the troops took their own lives by crashing somewhere onto American soil.
However, America’s atomic bombings happened before this plan came to fruition.
More details in Inside Japan’s Plan To Bomb America With Bubonic Plague during World War II. In any case, the Firebombing of Tokyo killed more Japanese than the atomic bombs did. (Aligato to Ed Driscoll-San).
Let Sgt. Mom, the author of the WWII novel My Dear Cousin (obrigado to Sarah Hoyt), sum it up:
As for wartime feelings, Americans, Britons, Australians, Chinese and other participants, even the ‘inadvertent by reason of geography’ had no reason to think well of the Japanese who made bloody, brutal, and imperial war upon them and plenty of excellent reasons to think ill. A brief list of those reasons begins with the war in China, including the ‘rape of Nanking’ and similar atrocities, the attack on Pearl Harbor while diplomatic negotiations were underway, the opening of aggressive hostilities throughout the Pacific theater of operations, extreme brutalities inflicted on those with the misfortune of living in Japanese occupied countries, and the horrific treatment of interned civilians and captured military by the Japanese. The most charitable comment which one can make on this all is that at least they were ecumenical in administering barbaric treatment to all those unlucky to experience the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere at first hand.
Americans are, or at least used to be, conversant with the Bataan Death march, but that was just one of the gruesome atrocities against Allied POWs during the war front in the Pacific. Even ghastlier than the Bataan forced march of POWs was the Sandakan Death March, a series of forced marches which took place towards the end of the war on Borneo. Internees and POWs were forced by the retreating Japanese Army to abandon a massive camp at Sandakan airfield and retreat 160 miles through the jungle with them. Of 2,500 British and Australian POWs at the start of those marches, only six men survived by escaping during the confusion.
Ritual cannibalism, medical experimentation on living prisoners, mass forced prostitution of women, the deliberate sinking of the AHS Centaur by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Brisbane, massacres of medical personnel and patients at the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Singapore, mass executions of native military there and in Hong Kong, the execution of civilian and military personnel on Bangka Island, the executions of American POWs at Palawan towards the end of the war when all seemed to be lost for the Japanese, the horrific treatment and the death rates of impressed civilian laborers and POWs on the Burma-Siam railway, the wanton destruction of Manila… All of these and even uglier accounts of Japanese brutality were publicized in the last months and weeks of the war, just as the reality of German concentration and extermination camps emerged earlier in 1945. Knowledge of these horrors was why contemporary opinion approved with mild reservations the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even if many were startled by the suddenness of the events, baffled by the science, and apprehensive regarding the implications of atomic weapons.
A further element had to do with knowing how fanatical Japanese resistance had been in New Guinea, on Guadalcanal, on Tarawa, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. An invasion of the Japanese home islands could only be much, much worse. And yet, planning for such an invasion went forward. Part of that planning involved a massive order of 1.5 million Purple Heart medals, in expectation of a huge number of American casualties. That backlog of medals was not drawn down sufficiently for another order until 2008; this after the end of WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Grenada and two wars in Gulf and the many pinprick casualties from random terrorism over the following seven decades. Knowing that the cost in blood and human lives would be almost unbearably high for a ground invasion of Japan, among the invading troops, the defending Japanese and the hapless Japanese civilians, the choice for atomic bombing was a necessary albeit cruel calculation. Japanese cities were being pounded unmercifully by American bombing, with destruction and death by many conventional bombs equal to a single atomic bomb …
I’m on the side of those historians who believe that turning segments of Nagasaki and Hiroshima into radioactive glass saved lives. A cruel calculation, but one which saved the lives of Allied soldiers who would otherwise have died in an invasion, the lives of Japanese civilians who would have been thrown into the maelstrom and saved the lives of prisoners and internees all across the Japan-occupied territories who were about two weeks from being killed by starvation or hours and minutes of being murdered outright.
Imagine, if you will; how it would have gone if President Truman had let the invasion of Japan go ahead – with all the casualties; the massive deaths of soldiers, civilians, prisoners, and internees … and then finding out that all that torment could have been avoided by dropping two bombs on Japanese cities (cities already being systematically destroyed by conventional bombing).
No, the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was, as many of these historical choices come down to – the least worst choice of the lot. This is why practically everyone who would have had a real stake in this choice – their lives, the lives of those whom they loved and who would now survive because of it – heaved a sigh of relief at the outcome of a mushroom-shaped cloud over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A perilous choice and one with regrets attached. Because of that decision, they and the ones whom they loved – would live.
Related:
• Hiroshima 15: Examining the Issues Surrounding the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Japan (Erik Svane)
• Hiroshima 17: During WWII, Japan Killed 7 Times More People (Most of Them Civilians) than They Lost (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Hiroshima 18: The Imperial Japanese Army was every bit as evil as the Nazi SS, and more lethal (Trent Telenko)
• Hiroshima 14: "I regard Hiroshima revisionism as the greatest hoax in American history" (Robert Maddox)
• Hiroshima 13: Although It Is Not Said Openly, Hiroshima Also Played a Purifying Role, IE the Baptism of a New Japan, the Event that Put an End to 50 Years of Crimes (Le Monde)
• Hiroshima 12: Political Correctness in Japan: The comment "tramples on the feelings of victims", so… Shut the F**k Up and Lose Your Job! (re the forced resignation of Japan's defense (!) minister)
• Hiroshima 11: If Western elites cannot find perfection in history, they see no good at all; most never learned the narrative of WWII, only what was wrong about it (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Hiroshima 10: If Not for the Atom Bombs, Japan, as we know it today, would not exist (S L Sanger, author of “Working on the Bomb”)
• Hiroshima 9: Over
one million warning leaflets were dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and
33 other Japanese cities 5 days before the Hiroshima bombing (Bill Whittle)
• Hiroshima 8: Was It Wrong to Use the Atom Bomb on Japan? (Father Wilson Miscamble)
• Hiroshima 7: 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 (New York Times)
• Hiroshima 6: "Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing" (a Japanese American)
• Hiroshima 5: Japan's plans for defense involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the customary suicidal battle tactics (Thomas Sowell)
• Hiroshima 4: "Les 300 000 morts d'Hiroshima ont épargné bien davantage de Japonais, qui auraient été écrasés sous des bombes ordinaires" (Charles de Gaulle)
• Hiroshima 3: A mainland invasion could have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths—and that's not counting civilians (Wall Street Journal)
• Hiroshima 2: Hand-wringing over Hiroshima is just virtue-signaling by people who never said a bad word about Stalin or Mao’s mass murders (Glenn Reynolds)
• Hiroshima 1: Unlike the ends of the majority of conflicts, World War II in the Pacific grew increasingly bloody as U.S. forces approached the Japanese homeland (Erik Svane)
I met a Japanese/American Navy Master Chief who was in High School in Japan at the start of the war. According to him he, an American citizen. and his classmates were prepared to fight to the death.
ReplyDeleteThose Chinese who helped the Doolittle raiders were patriots, not "collaborators".
ReplyDeleteCollaborators were people like the Aquino family in the Philippines (yes, those Aquinos) who spent the war in safety and luxury as friends of the Nips while people like Ferdinand Marcos risked their lives as well as the lives of their families, friends, neighbors, and comrades in arms to fight the Japanese forces.
Thanks edutcher.
ReplyDeleteThe idea was to describe the Chinese "rebels" from the Japanese point of view.
The passage has now been rewritten to make that more clear.
This article is complete nonsense. Given the naval blockade of Japan at the time, the Japanese had no capacity to launch the biological weapons in question. We had antibiotics in a well-nourished population, so even if they HAD managed launching a few flea-infested "bombs", it would have had as much effect as the gophers in the Four Corners region of the Southwest, where bubonic plague is still endemic. That is to say, it would have had almost zero effect.
ReplyDeleteIt is certainly true that the Nazis and the Japanese waged absolutely ruthless, lawless warfare, but so did the Allies. The Nazis may have started terror bombing in Europe, but we perfected and extended it, deliberately targeting civilian populations in direct contravention to numerous treaties.
The U.K.’s 1941 Butt Report found that only five percent of British bombers were dropping their bombs within five miles of their targets, and that 49 percent of their bombs were falling in “open country.” US bombers had roughly the same "accuracy". Google "they myth of precision bombing in WW 2". That makes us war criminals, as our own Air Force generals knew and admitted at the time.
Our Navy was not above machine-gunning enemy survivors in the water. Our troops, on several occasions, murdered POWs in cold blood. Anyone who has studied the war knows this. We deliberately boiled Japanese civilians, children and old people, in the shallower canals of Tokyo during the fire-bombing raids. Those were worse than Hiroshima, and deliberately targeted a civilian population, just as in Europe.
As for the atomic bombs, nearly every Allied commander in the Pacific theater opposed the use of those weapons as unnecessary and horrific. This includes Dwight D. Eisenhower. Every Allied commander in theater agreed Japan was on the verge of surrender and ground invasion was completely unnecessary.
A Democrat president dropped those bombs for political reasons. Contemporaneous military commanders and Republicans united in being opposed to their use. However, a completely uninformed American public liked their use, so Republicans soon switched positions to endorse it. Today, we see the spectacle of conservatives and Republicans endorsing the war crimes committed by a Democrat president while in office. And 21st century "conservatives" continue to promote the Democrat myth that it was necessary
It's disgusting.
For more on the Australian experience as prisoners of was, go to abc.com.au and listen to the series “Australians under Nippon.” Interviews from 1984 with surviving POWs.
ReplyDeleteThere were no Japanese civilians. The Emperor tasked all of them to resist the invasion, making them all combatants. The Japanese were indeed on the verge of surrender but their strategy was to bleed the Allies for a negotiated peace that preserved the Emperor. Even with the atom bombs, we found it necessary to make a negotiated peace that preserved the Emperor.
ReplyDeleteDespite the naval blockade, the Japanese successfully sent subs carrying precious war materiel to Germany, some of which got through and found themselves on the open sea when Japan surrendered.
The atom bombs killed perhaps 300,000 Japanese. A conventional invasion of Japan would have cost a million Allied casualties, which infers Japanese casualties of ten to nineteen million. That makes opposition to the atom bombs immoral.
In response to Steve K.
ReplyDeleteI must disagree with most all of your points, save the last one. That of the dropping of the bomb. While the allies did many of the various things that the axis powers did, in regards to bombing of civilian targets and other issues, our ultimate goals were vastly different. While the goal of the Nazi bombing of say, London proper was the destruction of civilians and their homes, our bombing of the cities of Germany was not civilian homes but rather directed towards the factories and war production facilities that fueled the war effort of the axis powers. As you mentioned our bombing, especially during night time hours was far from accurate. And so from the altitudes that we attacked from, it would have been virtually impossible to not have huge collateral damage on any bombing raid.
Of course, during wartime, any civilian casualties are to be viewed as not just unpleasant parts of war, but as truly horrible tragedies that are to be avoided at nearly all costs. That of course is often impossible, especially when viewed in the mirror of total world war that was the early 1940's.
As to the rest of the ideas that Imperial Japan was on the brink of surrendering and we merely had to await their capitulation, the facts are, while this probably was the truth, we were still experiencing some fierce fighting in parts of the Pacific Islands. And Japan was still a very proud nation, whose people would be very hard to convince to just lay down arms and give up, unless they had a very strong message, from the emperor. And even when that message came, it still was difficult to convince some to surrender, and many chose instead ritual suicide.
As for the bombs, I read a couple of books written about this very subject, and I am convince that the actual dropping of the bombs was done not to convince the Japanese, but more as a warning to the Soviets. While Eisenhower did not want the bombs dropped, I don't think that Truman wanted to drop them either. Rather, he allowed his advisors to convince him that if he did not drop them, he was sending a message to the Soviets that America was afraid to use them, at a time when the Russians were actively working on their own nuclear bomb also. And the advisors felt it important to show that it was important that America not only had the bomb, but was willing to use it, in defense of our interests.
It has been quite awhile since I read the books about this subject, but the points they made was quite clear, that Truman did not want to drop the bomb, he felt it was not needed, his advisors convinced him that he had to do so, politically. And it was done not because of Japan, but because of the Soviets.
However, myself I believe that by dropping the bombs on Japan, we did reduce the number of casualties that would have been taken by an invasion of the mainland of Japan, by a huge number. The actual need for such an invasion is something that is in actual debate, and can never be decided, but I think that if it were in fact undertaken, the amount of dead, on both sides, is nearly unimaginable. And Japan as we know her today may indeed not be the same.
No matter the truth, this is indeed a fantastically thought provoking article, and I am glad to have run across it.
Re: Why invade?
ReplyDeleteIf the projected invasion was feared to be so bloody then why invade?
God bless
Richard W Comerford
Of course the Japanese had the capacity to launch their bio weapons. Read, "Japan's World War II Balloon Bomb Attacks on North America". The only deaths in the Continental U.S. caused by direct enemy action, occurred on May 5th 1945, near Bly, Oregon. Our government covered up the use of balloon bombs, because they didn't want to panic the public, but the Japanese sent over THOUSANDS of them. Right up to the end of the war.
ReplyDeleteApologists for the Japanese act like they were innocent of any wrongdoing and that Americans were brutal racists.
Try reading "War Without Mercy" by John Dower. Pretty much everyone in the world seemed to be racists back then. He delivers a well researched story of racism in the Pacific war, and why many of the war decisions were made.
It can be argued that we didn't need to invade the home islands, and maybe that's true, but I doubt it. How well did our 'blockade' of Iraq do? We lost interest after a few months and Sadaam went back to his old ways. Japan, in the same position, would have been exponentially more dangerous.