Keeping Historical Blinders On: Containing the Debate on Nuking the Japs

Twitter Conservatives Miss the Mark on Tucker Carlson's Atom Bomb Revisionism

Tucker Carlson started a little kerfluffle on the political right by questioning the morality of the dual atomic bombings of Japan in August 1945.

Hiroshima was bombed by the Enola Gay carrying the “Little Boy” bomb on August 6, 1945. Nagasaki was bombed by the Bockscar carrying the “Fat Man” bomb on August 9, 1945. Japan surrendered on August 14, 1945 and formalized that with signatures aboard the U.S.S. Missouri on September 2, 1945. Somewhere between 130,000-225,000 people were killed by these two bombs.

You can hear Carlson’s comments on the Joe Rogan podcast, here:

I have a certain amount of sympathy for the underlying philosophical questions involved: is it moral to instantly extinguish two largely-civilian cities near the end of a war? Then again, is it moral to have such a weapon and not use it, condemning hundreds of thousands of invading soldiers to their likely death?

The invasion of mainland Japan was internally called “Operation Downfall”

That’s the basic moral debate as presented by the mainstream sources. The left is allowed to have the moral high ground, the right is forced into the weird position of arguing as though they’re Harry Truman in August 1945. Nobody is allowed to introduce new relevant facts.

The left throws out some ahistorical conspiracy theories about the topic, such as that the bombings had everything to do with ‘intimidating’ the Soviets, for example. Or that Japan would have surrendered without the bombs. Or that it was a decision really pushed by the militarists like General LeMay and not Truman’s. Or retconning Truman into being a right-wing crypto conservative put into place to deny the Presidency to Soviet-death-camp-tourist Henry Wallace.

Vice President, Communist, Henry Wallace

The left prefers to ignore Presidents they can’t spin well, like LBJ, but with Truman they don’t mind these days just hating him outright.

Here’s how a few voices in the conservative sphere take a stand on the question of whether the atomic bombings were justified:

• Matt Walsh: It was necessary, but I don’t like it.

• Jeremy Boreing: Arguing against the bombings is evil and repugnant.

• Ron Nehring: They weren’t good, but they were necessary.

• Ben Domenech: Questioning dropping the bombs make you an immoral hippie.

Ben Domenech, publisher of the Federalist online magazine.

The entire historical debate is well-constructed by the left to be lose-lose for the right. It’s a shame that instead of this opening a larger conversation about actual issues of consequence, we’re stuck parrying this philosophical tar baby back and forth.

I guess I don’t need to state the obvious as well: shit like this reminds me how uncomfortable I often find myself on the political right, which is constantly just arguing and bitching… merely employing sophistry while essentially arguing left-wing assumptions, facts, and philosophical foundations.

What are the missing facts relevant to this debate that never get brought up? Well, I’m glad you asked!

1. Japan started offering terms for surrender in January 1945, that were substantially the same as those given again in August 1945.

2. FDR and his team provoked the Pearl Harbor attack, knew it was coming, and even knew where they were going to strike. They maximized the U.S. casualties in order to reap the maximum political effect. The Pacific fleet was pulled into harbor and preparing for an inspection. The radar at Opana Point was turned off.

3. Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor was never meant to start a death struggle between two countries. Japan intended to have a 6-9 month war that would allow them to sue for better peace terms. Japan simply didn’t have the oil for a multi-year war.

4. The basic terms, in both theaters, of “unconditional surrender” was entirely unjustified and irrational. It prolonged the war and massively inflated suffering on both sides. You can displace a regime without demanding they surrender with no terms. The Germans in May were willing to surrender several days to a week earlier, if they could be permitted to let civilians keep fleeing west to avoid the Soviet hordes. They were refused. The policy of unconditional surrender should be considered a war crime.

5. The war atrocity stories were probably overblown. These atrocities were used to justify the bombing. The classic example is the Bataan Death March, which as I discussed previously, is problematic on many levels. Most certainly, the original death toll of 10,000 is now probably, at most, 500-650 Americans. Most of those who died were probably starved and weak from the two-month decision by Washington not to resupply the troops.

6. There was an irrational desire among the senior U.S. policymakers to help end monarchies and imperial systems globally. The U.S. ensured that the war would finish off the British Empire, and ensured the end of most European colonies after the war. The U.S. was funding Communist rebels to oppose the return of colonial administration. This may have been Soviet policy influence, it may have been misguided neoliberalism, maybe there’s no difference between those two things. But it’s hard not to notice the patterns in American policymaking. The U.S. wanted a world that was not white-run, and not European-centric, in the post-war world and took many deliberate steps to accomplish that purpose.

7. Instead of dropping the bombs to ‘intimidate’ the Soviets, I suspect that the bombings were to enable Soviet domination of China, Korea, and Japan. The Soviet troops were tied up in Europe until May. They needed time to move them East. The Soviets were never at war with Japan until the very end. This is why the peace terms couldn’t be accepted in January 1945.

The Japanese surrender on September 2, 1945 aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

So, for what it’s worth, my position is that the bombings were probably necessary in August, 1945 only if you were irrationally dead-set on unconditional surrender— but it would have been better to not start the war in the first place. It would have also been much better to accept the conditional peace terms in January.

Accepting the peace terms in January would have avoided these major battles:

• Battle of Manila - February 1945: 1,010 Americans KIA, 16,665 Japanese KIA, 100,000+ civilian KIA

• Battle of Iwo Jima - March-April 1945: 5,931 Americans KIA, ~18,000 Japanese KIA

• Battle of Okinawa - April-June 1945: 14,010 Americans KIA, ~77,000 Japanese KIA, ~150,000 civilian KIA

Raising the American flag during the Battle of Okinawa

Reading Truman’s later justifications for the war, creates an interesting perspective that I believe validates my position.

President Harry S Truman (1884-1972)

Here’s a letter from August 11, 1945 that captures Truman’s best present-sense-impression. This is two days after the second bomb was dropped, and three days before the Japanese signal their willingness to surrender.

The attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.

In it, Truman points to two things as justifying the atomic bombings: 1) the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, and 2) the mistreatment of American POW’s.

Here’s a 1961 letter between Truman and the UPI Bureau Chief, where he defended the atomic bombings by pointing out the 2,000 deaths at Pearl Harbor. The real number is 2,403.

Two years later, Truman writes another letter where he references the atomic bombs and his rationale. He notes that he would do it all over again. Oddly, he wildly misstates the numbers killed at Pearl Harbor.

Two things that stand out here, is:

1. The bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan was provoked by the United States, and the United States was hardly ‘trying our best to negotiate a treaty with them.’

2. The currently-accepted number of deaths at Pearl Harbor is 2,403. So when Truman references 3,000 under the water and another 3,000 killed elsewhere, what exactly is he talking about? He’s wildly off on the actual casualty numbers.

If you’re going to engage in alternative history to say ‘what if’ why do we accept the premises as determined by left-wing academics? The real what-if would be whether the policymakers deciding on whether or not to nuke Japan could realize that there were other critical decisions that led to that moment.

Revising and changing those important policy decisions would have possibly not only avoided the war altogether, but would also have resolved the war with a lot less bloodshed.