*Previously Recorded by Phyllis Schlafly // August 2006
Today is the anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. For years, the leftwing has carried on a drumbeat campaign to convince people who don’t remember World War II that Americans have guilt on our hands for dropping the bomb. Leftwing historians argue that dropping the bomb was unnecessary to winning the war because Japan was ready to surrender anyway. These leftwing historians have worked hard and written extensively to undercut the U.S. moral position.
However, recent research into Japanese documents confirms that it was absolutely necessary to drop both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs because the Japanese military was determined to keep the war going even if it meant, as a navy official urged at one meeting, “sacrificing 20 million Japanese lives.” The Japanese military ferociously resisted surrender even after the two atomic bombings, even after Soviet entry into the war, even when it expected the U.S. to drop a third bomb on Tokyo.
Japanese historians at Doshisha University in Kyoto have now discovered the documents that prove the Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up. The atomic bombings broke this political stalemate. Japan’s chief cabinet secretary in 1975 said: “The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war.” Without the atomic bombings, Japan would have continued fighting, and that would have meant more firebombing of Japanese cities and a ground invasion by U.S. troops that would have cost millions of deaths.
Hiroshima was the chief argument in the hands of the Japanese peace faction to force the Japanese military to agree to surrender. One of Emperor Hirohito’s closest aides is quoted as saying, “We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war. “
Yes, Hiroshima and Nagasaki incinerated so many people, but the wartime alternatives were worse. Thank you, President Truman, for having the courage to make the wise decision.
