Idiot Savant has cracked open the bottle of anti-Americanism again with his dismissal of the Hiroshima nuclear attack as an act of murder:
“the United States murdered between 90,000 and 140,000 Japanese civilians when they destroyed the city of Hirsohima with a primitive atomic weapon. It was a war crime of the first magnitude, but no-one has ever been punished for it. Instead, those responsible were decorated and hailed as heroes.” (sic)
Of course, this was an unprovoked attack. The Empire of Japan had long been a peace loving nation, which respect the territorial integrity, human rights and the peaceful right of its neighbours to co-exist. Its government was recognised as such.
The Empire of Japan behaved impeccably, so there is no reason for Idiot Savant to mention the 200,000 massacred by Japan in Nanking, and a minimum of 3 million Chinese, Koreans, Indonesians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians during its imperial period through the 1930s to 1945.
After all, no reason for him to commemorate those murders is there? No post on 13 December to commemorate the fall of Nanking. No, he couldn’t be anti-American now could he?
He wouldn’t mention the over 3,000 killed by medical experiments and biological warfare experiments now. No. He wouldn’t mention that as recent as May 1945 Japan was still taking US POWs to be used in vivisection experiments. No. Japan was simply a victim.
Japan used chemical and biological weapons against Chinese forces and civilians, but no Idiot Savant wont commemorate that and condemn Japan’s murders annually. Japan was simply a victim.
Japan killed 100,000 civil and military POWs building the Burma railway, with up to 10 million Chinese civilians engaged in slave labour, and at least 4 million in Java in what is now Indonesia. No, Japan was simply a victim.
At least 50,000 women primarily from Korea and China, but also women from all of the Japanese imperial conquests were raped as “comfort women” for Japanese soldier. No, don’t see Idiot Savant talking about Japan's state policy of raping and enslaving women, Japan was simply a victim.
So. The United States entered the war against a racist, militarist murdering state, which engaged on a blood thirsty and sadistic rampage through Asia. Japan’s government encouraged and almost compelled young men to sacrifice their lives for the Empire, and when it conquered it treated the civilians and prisoners of war as less than animals. The USA sacrificed over 400,000 of its young men and women to defeat this barbaric regime as well as the despicably evil Nazi Germany.
So was Hiroshima a war crime? No.
Responsibility for the civilian deaths in Japan lies clearly and unequivocably with the Japanese government. The Japanese government waged war against the United States and the whole of Asia. It could, at any point, have surrendered unconditionally, and spared its people – civilian and military - the ongoing death and destruction that war brought upon them. War started by the Japanese government.
The Cairo Declaration in 1943, made by Churchill, Roosevelt and Chiang Kai Shek called for Japan’s unconditional surrender, the return of all of China back to Chinese control and free and independent Korea. It called on Japan to surrender or face “unrelenting military pressure”.
On 26 July 1945 it was made perfectly clear to the Japanese government in the Potsdam Declaration, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, that it should surrender or face “the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland”. On 31 July Emperor Hirohito affirmed that Japan was to be defended at “all costs”.
The United States had a choice. Undertake a land invasion at considerable cost to itself, and lengthening the war, or release the greatest weapon available at the time. It chose to end the war, quickly, at the cost of two cities.
It was a decision not taken lightly, and one that saw Truman refuse subsequently to use nuclear weapons in Korea (when that may have made a considerable difference). Yes, it was indiscriminate, yes the results were horrendous and horrible – indeed perhaps sufficient to contribute towards the fact nuclear weapons have not been used since, but to consider the bombing in isolation of context is disgraceful, despicable and betrays the ultimate responsibility. It also betrays that, by and large, Japanese civilians happily went along with the war effort, offered no resistance and little interest in overthrowing its government, which was spilling rivers of blood across Asia.
The bombs would not have been dropped had Japan surrendered or not even engaged in its imperialist war of genocide and slavery.
Idiot Savant is right to note the sheer awfulness of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. However his refusal to consider the context, to acknowledge Japan was to blame for the continuation of the war, for the murder of many millions of others, and in SPITE of that, the Allies rebuilt, rehabilitated and changed Japan into a modern liberal democratic state, is just pure narrow minded bigotry against the United States.
He doesn’t commemorate those who died under the atrocities committed by Japan’s sadistic regime – only those who died who at best were exposed to risk by Japan’s vile imperialist government, and at worst who happily obeyed their brutal, racist government as it spilt blood across Asia.
It is tired old Marxist anti-Americanism, in which even the deeds and victims of the most vile and blood thirsty regimes can be ignored. What is the psychological process of denial one must go through to treat US military action after many efforts to end a war peacefully, as murderous and unjustified, whereas the most heinous sadistic actions of its enemies are not really worth giving much attention to? Let alone the victims.
