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Posts Tagged ‘Nagasaki’

An Economic Case against the Atomic Bombing of Japan

Posted by M. C. on August 8, 2023

Japan could never have won the war against the U.S. It could not produce enough war goods to defeat the U.S., let alone the combined economic strength of the Allied powers (Hanson 2017, 303). Wartime production statistics strongly suggest U.S. war planners understood victory was inevitable long before the atomic bombing.

But Halsey maintained, “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment…. It was a mistake to ever drop it. Why reveal a weapon like that to the world when it wasn’t necessary? … [The scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it…. It killed a lot of Japs, but the Japs had put out a lot of peace feelers through Russia long before” (qtd. in Alperovitz 1995, 331).

https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=1850

By Edward W. Fuller

This article appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of The Independent Review.

There were many great battles during the Second World War, however, the production battle was far and away the most important. A close examination of wartime production statistics strongly suggest that U.S. war planners understood victory over Japan was inevitable. Was the atomic bombing of Japan even necessary to win the war?

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On August 6, 1945, the government of the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. The bomb killed sixty-five thousand Japanese instantly. Another sixty-five thousand inhabitants of Hiroshima perished in the following months. On August 9, the U.S. government dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing thirty-five thousand instantly and another thirty-five thousand before the end of the year. Over the following decades, thousands more died from medical complications caused by the atomic bombing. In short, the U.S. government killed over two hundred thousand Japanese with atomic weapons. Fully 96.5 percent were civilians (Dower 2010, 199; Overy 2022, 790).

The atomic bombing was a watershed in history. Since the bombing, the specter of nuclear war has haunted humanity. For this reason, a survey of prominent journalists ranked the bombing as the most important event of the twentieth century (Walker 2005, 311). The controversy over the event is commensurate with its significance. Debates over the atomic bombing are waged with more ferocity and contempt than debates over almost any other historical topic.[1] Although many questions are involved, the debate almost inevitably comes down to this question: was it necessary?

Arguments over the bombing often appeal to statements from U.S. government officials. For example, President Harry S. Truman claimed the atomic bombing was “the greatest thing in history” and “saved millions of lives” (qtd. in Alperovitz 1995, 513, 517). By contrast, Admiral William D. Leahy—the highest-ranking U.S. military officer throughout the Second World War—thought the atomic bombing was unnecessary:

It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons…. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. (1950, 513–14)[2]

Statements from government officials cannot establish whether the atomic bombing was unnecessary. Any argument that the bombing was unnecessary must be based on the facts of the war. To be sure, statements from government officials can be crucial in the search for essential facts. Still, the facts must be independently verified and interpreted.

Unfortunately, the vast literature on the atomic bombing overlooks the most important facts of the war—namely, the economic facts. At its core, the Second World War was an economic war. Economic conflict caused the war, and the economic battle was by far the most important battle.[3] It is impossible to fully understand the war in general and the atomic bombing in particular without understanding the economics of the war. This paper introduces vital economic facts about the Second World War into the literature on the atomic bombing.

The central thesis of this paper is that the atomic bombing of Japan was unnecessary. Basic wartime economic statistics show that the United States had an overwhelming economic advantage over Japan during the Second World War. The U.S. used its commanding economic position to wage a debilitating economic war against Japan. Production statistics show the U.S. economic war caused the Japanese economy to collapse. Additionally, production statistics strongly suggest that U.S. political and military leadership did not view Japan as an existential threat after 1943. Invading Japan was unnecessary for the same economic reasons that the atomic bombing was unnecessary.

The Big Economic Picture

An economic analysis of the Second World War must begin by comparing the sizes of the combatants’ territories, populations, and armed forces. All else equal, a combatant with more territory has an advantage over a combatant with less territory. A larger territory is more difficult to conquer and occupy, and it has more natural resources needed for war. As table 1 shows, the Allied powers’ home territory was 23.9 times larger than the Axis powers’ home territory. The U.S. alone was 6.3 times larger than the combined home territories of the Axis powers. The Japanese homeland was only 4.9 percent of the size of the continental United States. Even when Japanese colonial territory is considered, U.S. home territory was 4 times larger than total Japanese territory. Clearly, the U.S. had a massive territorial advantage over Japan.

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The relative size of the combatants’ populations is another relevant factor in any war. All else equal, the combatant with the larger population can devote more manpower to the war effort. The total population of the major Allied powers (412.6 million) far exceeded the total population of the Axis powers (194 million). Moreover, China’s and India’s populations were 450 million and 360 million, respectively (Ellis 1993, 253). Hence, total population of all the Allies was approximately six times larger than the Axis population. As for the Pacific war in particular, the population of the U.S. (129 million) was almost twice the population of Japan (72.2 million).

As table 2 shows, nearly 56.9 million served in the Allied armed forces, while 30.4 million served for the Axis powers. And 16.4 million Americans served in the armed forces, compared to 9.1 million Japanese. As table 3 indicates, 13.8 Japanese servicemen died for every 1 American in the US-Japanese Theater. It is true that two-thirds of Japanese military deaths were due to starvation or illness (Dower 1986, 298). Still, the American kill ratio averaged five to one for the war. And it skyrocketed to twenty-two to one between March 1944 and May 1945 (Miles 1985, 134). In short, the American armed forces were much larger than their Japanese counterparts, and the Americans were far more deadly.

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The U.S. thus had a significant advantage over Japan in terms of territory, population size, and servicemen. However, greater numbers do not guarantee victory. History is full of examples in which a smaller force was able to easily defeat a much larger force. Two obvious examples are the Spanish conquest of the New World and the Opium Wars. How can a smaller force prevail? The answer is superiority in war goods.

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War goods are required to fight and win wars. All else equal, a force better equipped with war goods has an advantage over a force poorly equipped. To take an extreme example, a force with machine guns has an advantage over a force with wooden spears. But war goods do not fall from the sky; they must be produced. The combatant with the superior economic ability to produce war goods has an important advantage in war. Indeed, the production advantage is the decisive advantage in modern war.

Gross domestic product (GDP) is the most common measure of a country’s capacity to produce. In 1945 total Allied GDP was 5.1 times greater than total Axis GDP. U.S. GDP alone was 3.2 times greater than total Axis GDP. The combined GDP of all the other major powers—the UK, the USSR, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan—was only 94 percent of U.S. GDP. Amazingly, U.S. GDP was 10.2 times greater than Japanese GDP in 1945. Put differently, Japanese GDP was only 9.8 percent of U.S. GDP when the atomic bombs were dropped.

Military spending is a good indicator of a combatant’s economic capacity to wage war. Table 5 shows the military spending of each major power during the war. By 1945 Allied military spending was 3 times greater than total Axis military spending. U.S. military spending alone was 1.3 times greater than total Axis GDP in 1945 and 5.7 times greater than Japan’s military spending. Shockingly, Japanese GDP was only 23.3 percent of U.S. military spending in 1945. Military-spending statistics show that the U.S. had an enormous economic advantage over Japan and all the other major powers.

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The U.S. Economic War against Japan

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The Abominable August 9th

Posted by M. C. on August 8, 2023

Finally, in almost comic relief compared to recent official crimes, on August 9th in 1974 Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States due to the coverup of the Watergate affair.

The Abominable August 9th

By Ira Katz

I assume that for any date on the calendar we might find a number of important historical events. For example, December 7th has been tagged as “a date that will live in infamy” by FDR, the person who instigated the Pearl Harbor disaster.

Here I make the case that August 9th can be called The Abominable. Wikipedia lists historical events for August 9th. The event that stands out as abominable is the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945. On that morning, the B-29 Bockscar, lifted off from Tinian island (where my father was that very day serving as a Marine radar operator) with the bomb called Fat Man. Nagasaki was the secondary target that day,

There has been much debate about why it was necessary for this horrible bombing of a city, as opposed to a more pure military target, or even a demonstration on an uninhabited area, in my mind even more questionable than the first one of Hiroshima.

But there is more to the story. Nagasaki was the center of the remnant Catholic population of Japan founded by Spanish Jesuit missionaries in the 16th century. Nearly two-thirds of Japan’s Catholics lived there. While Nagasaki was devastated, the Franciscan Convent built by St. Maximilian Kolbe remained standing.

Another story of survival is Takashi Nagai. “Nagai, a medical doctor who had converted from atheism to Catholicism, lost his wife Midori in the atomic blast from the Americans’ Aug. 9, 1945 attack on Nagasaki. The bomb fell on the heavily Catholic Urakami area, killing thousands of the city’s Catholics and tens of thousands of other Japanese civilians.” While suffering injuries from the blast and from advancing leukemia, initiated due to his work as a radiologist and enhanced by the bomb’s radiation, he treated survivors both in bodily and spiritual health. He spent his last years bedridden until his death in 1951, but “he continued to live a life of joy, humility, and faith.” During these days he wrote extensively, including his widely read book The Bells of Nagasaki. “As soon as I wake up, the first thought that occurs to me every morning is that I’m happy,” he said in his writings. “Beating within my chest is a child’s heart. The life of a new day awaits me.” Nagai has been named a Servant of God by the Catholic Church. “Servant of God” is an expression used for a member of the Catholic Church whose life and works are being investigated in consideration for official recognition as a saint. The film All That Remains depicts the story of Nagai’s life.

There are two events that are not on the Wikipedia list.

On August 9th in 1942 Edith Stein was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. She was born in 1891 into a Jewish family in Breslau, a part of the German Empire that is now Poland (Ludwig von Mises was born into a Jewish family in Lemberg, part of the Austrian Empire that is now Ukraine). She was a brilliant philosopher who studied phenomenology under Edmund Husserl at the University of Göttingen, and later at the University of Freiburg, where she had followed him. Her searches for truth eventually lead her to the Catholic Church. In 1934 she entered the Discalced Carmelite convent at Cologne and took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. But even there she was not safe in Hitler’s Germany so her order transferred her to Echt in the Netherlands in 1938. By July, 1942 the Germans were in control of that country. A public statement was read in all the Catholic (and some other denominations) churches of the country on July 20th, condemning Nazi anti-Semitic policies. In a retaliatory response on July 26th all Jewish converts, who had previously been spared, were ordered to be arrested. Stein and her sister Rosa, also a convert, were taken from the sanctuary of the convent and shipped to Auschwitz. She is now a Doctor of the Church, beatified, and canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross by Pope John Paul II in 1998.

On August 9th in 1943 Franz Jägerstätter was

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The Collapse of the US Military Continues – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on September 3, 2021

The letter of resignation below represents today the feelings of about just the entire US military according to our sources.  Our heroic soldiers have had just about as much as they can take from our woke government and their imposition of woke perversions on the military as sodomy, abortion, critical race theory and transgenderism. 

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/09/no_author/the-collapse-of-the-us-military-continues/

By David Lifschultz
The Lifschultz Organization

The letter of resignation below represents today the feelings of about just the entire US military according to our sources.  Our heroic soldiers have had just about as much as they can take from our woke government and their imposition of woke perversions on the military as sodomy, abortion, critical race theory and transgenderism. We saw the likes of this in the similarly rotten and corrupt Weimar Republic though the German military was largely unaffected where Prussianism prevailed. I always thought that 1933 Germany required the Versailles Treaty, the hyperinflation of 1920-1923, and a 1929-1933 depression culminating in 50% German unemployment to create the National Socialist Revolution but this may not be the case as we watch the US morally implode into an Aldous Huxley medical dictatorship under an Orwellian Animal Farm under the most degraded values in history. Here mass abortion has killed in the US alone 60 million souls not to speak of our US influence on the 1.5 billion abortion murders worldwide not including the after morning pill.

katisthesea3 Anonup Update: U.S. Marine Corps Resignation Letter, Higher Alert Status | Operation Disclosure Official

90 RETIRED OFFICERS DEMAND THAT THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE AND THE CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS RESIGN.

‘Negligence in Performing Their Duties,’ Almost 90 Retired Generals and Admirals Demand Resignations from Gen. Mark Milley, Lloyd Austin

We have written up the history of Afghanistan in two parts below.

Operation Disclosure | So Ends the Afghanistan Heroin War

So Ends the Afghanistan Heroin War: Part 2

The following quote was taken from an RT article by Chris Hedges that appeared today that complements my points. As my above articles just above points out that Brzezinski lured the Russians into Afghanistan and here was the cost:

One million Afghan civilians were killed in the nine-year conflict with the Soviets, along with 90,000 mujahideen fighters, 18,000 Afghan troops, and 14,500 Soviet soldiers. But these deaths, along with the destruction of Afghanistan, were “worth it” to cripple the Soviets.

Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, along with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, oversaw the arming of the most radical Islamic mujahideen groups fighting the Soviet occupation forces, leading to the extinguishing of the secular, democratic Afghan opposition. Brzezinski detailed the strategy – designed, he said, to give the Soviet Union its Vietnam – taken by the Carter administration following the 1979 Soviet invasion to prop up the Marxist regime of Hafizullah Amin in Kabul:

We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Agency prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again — for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujahideen from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.

Next Hedges writes about the Afghanistan heroin war that was justified by 9-11 that no one in Afghanistan was involved in. The CIA brought us in there for only one purpose which was to restart the heroin.  As my heroin war pieces point out, no member of Islam was involved in 9-11 but we invaded Afghanistan for the only purpose which was to restart the heroin production shut down by Mullah Omar which was a righteous act. Here is the cost of the Afghanistan War Two.

Here Chris Hedges:

Things are already dire. There are some 14 million Afghans – one in three – who lack sufficient food. There are two million Afghan children who are malnourished. There are 3.5 million people in Afghanistan who have been displaced from their homes. The war has wrecked infrastructure. A drought destroyed 40 percent of the nation’s crops last year. The assault on the Afghan economy is already seeing food prices skyrocket. The sanctions and severance of aid will force civil servants to go without salaries, and the health service, already chronically short of medicine and equipment, will collapse. The suffering orchestrated by the empire will be of biblical proportions. And this is what the empire wants.

UNICEF estimates that 500,000 children were killed as a direct result of sanctions on Iraq. Expect child deaths in Afghanistan to soar above that horrifying figure. And expect the same imperial heartlessness Madeleine Albright, then the US ambassador to the United Nations, exhibited when she told ‘60 Minutes’ correspondent Lesley Stahl that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children because of the sanctions were “worth it.” Or the heartlessness of Hillary Clinton, who joked, “We came, we saw, he died” when informed of Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi’s brutal death. Or the demand by Democratic Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who after the attacks of 9/11 declared: “I say, bomb the hell out of them. If there’s collateral damage, so be it.” No matter that the empire has since turned Libya, along with Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, into cauldrons of violence, chaos, and misery. The power to destroy is an intoxicating drug that is its own justification.

Death of 500,000 Innocent Children is Worth It – We Want Oil – Madeline Albright

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FbCAOdNRp_4%3Fab_channel%3DTrustNoMan

Murdering innocent civilians in war did not start in Afghanistan or Vietnam, or Korea but in World War Two.  It was not US policy in World War One for its soldiers to kill women and children as we did at Hiroshima and Nagasaki which were not military targets. Secretary of State James Byrnes persuaded Truman to nuclear bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki to deter Stalin from overrunning Europe as our forces could not hold back the Russian Army which had faced 80% of the German Army finest divisions whereas the US faced at Normandy and in Europe largely the rump of the German Army except at the Battle of the Bulge where we suffered an attack by crack German Panzer divisions brought from the Eastern Front.  Hitler rolled the dice in an attempt to cut off the bulk of the Anglo-Saxon Army that required capturing allied fuel depots. Germany largely lost the war based on lack of oil.  It was a close call anyway as they came near to some major oil depots. Allied forces suffered over 75,000 casualties.

“The Cherwell memo described in quantitative terms the effect on Germany of the British bombing offensive on Germany between March, 1942-September, 1943.  This paper laid down the strategic policy.  The bombing must be directed essentially against German working class houses. Middle-class houses have too much space around them, and so are bound to waste bombs; factories and “military objectives” had long since been forgotten, except in official bulletins, since they were much too difficult to hit. (The meaning here is that more women and children could be murdered per bomb for lower classes as their homes were closer together.) The paper claimed that–given a total concentration of effort on the production and use of bombing aircraft–it would be possible, in all German towns (that is, those with more than 50,000 inhabitants), to destroy 50% of the houses.”

The US Air Force General Jimmy Doolittle vehemently opposed bombing women and children unlike General Curtis Lemay who supervised the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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Truman’s War Crimes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki – The Future of Freedom Foundation

Posted by M. C. on August 8, 2020

Keep in mind that there is nothing in the principles of warfare that required Truman and Roosevelt to demand the unconditional surrender of Japan (or Germany). Wars can be — and often are — ended with terms of surrender. Both presidents were willing to sacrifice countless people on both sides of the conflict to attain their demand for unconditional surrender.

https://www.fff.org/2020/08/05/trumans-war-crimes-at-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/

by

This month marks the 75h anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While proponents of the bombings have long justified them on the basis that they shortened World War II, the fact is that they were war crimes. The only reason why President Truman and the pilots who dropped the bombs were not prosecuted as war criminals is because the United States ended up winning the war.

It has long been pointed out that Japan had expressed a willingness to surrender. The only condition was that the Japanese emperor not be abused or executed.

President Truman refused to agree to that condition. Like his predecessor Franklin Roosevelt, Truman demanded “unconditional surrender.”

That was why Japan continued fighting. Japanese officials naturally assumed that U.S. officials were going to do some very bad things to their emperor, including torture and execution. In the minds of Japanese officials, why else would the United States not be willing to agree to that one condition, especially given that it would have meant the end of the war?

The dark irony is that Truman ended up accepting the condition anyway, only after he pulverized the people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear bombs.

In an excellent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times today entitled “U.S. Leaders Knew We Didn’t Have to Drop Atomic Bombs on Japan to Win the War. We Did It Anyway” the authors point out:

Seven of the United States’ eight five-star Army and Navy officers in 1945 agreed with the Navy’s vitriolic assessment. Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, and William Halsey are on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both.

Keep in mind that there is nothing in the principles of warfare that required Truman and Roosevelt to demand the unconditional surrender of Japan (or Germany). Wars can be — and often are — ended with terms of surrender. Both presidents were willing to sacrifice countless people on both sides of the conflict to attain their demand for unconditional surrender.

But Truman’s unconditional surrender demand is not why his action constituted a war crime. This bombings constituted war crimes because they targeted non-combatants, including children, women, and seniors with death as a way to bring about an unconditional surrender of the Japanese government.

It has long been considered a rule of warfare that armies fight armies in war. They don’t target non-combatants. The intentional killing of non-combatants is considered a war crime.

A good example of this principle involved the case of Lt. William Calley in the Vietnam War. Calley and his men shot and killed numerous non-combatants in a South Vietnamese village. The victims included women and children.

The U.S military prosecuted Calley as a war criminal — and rightly so. While the deaths of non-combatants oftentimes occurs incidentally to wartime operations, it is a war crime to specifically target them for death.

Truman justified his action by arguing that the bombings shortened the war and, therefore, saved the lives of thousands of American soldiers and Japanese people if an invasion had become necessary. It is a justification that has been repeated ever since by proponents of the bombings.

There are two big problems with that justification, however.

First, an invasion would not have been necessary. All that Truman had to do was to accept Japan’s only condition for surrender, and that would have meant the end of the war, without the deaths that would have come with an invasion and that did come with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

More important, the fact that lives of American soldiers would have been saved is not a moral or legal justification for targeting non-combatants. If Calley had maintained at his trial that his actions were intended to shorten the Vietnam War, his defense would have been rejected. He would have still be convicted for war crimes.

Soldiers die in war. That is the nature of war. To kill women, children, and seniors in the hopes of saving the lives of soldiers by shortening the war is not only a war crime, it is also an act of extreme cowardice. If an invasion of Japan would have become necessary to win the war, thereby resulting in the deaths of thousands of U.S. soldiers, then that’s just the way that war works.

It’s also worth pointing out that Japan never had any intention of invading and conquering the United States. The only reason that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor was in the hope of knocking out the U.S. Pacific fleet, not as a prelude to invading Hawaii or the continental United States but simply to prevent the U.S. from interfering with Japan’s efforts to secure oil in the Dutch East Indies.

And why was Japan so desperate for oil as to initiate war against the United States? Because President Franklin Roosevelt had imposed a highly effective oil embargo on Japan as a way to maneuver the Japanese into attacking the United States.

FDR’s plan, of course, succeeded, which ended up costing the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and millions of Japanese citizens, including those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This post was written by:

 

Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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Fr. George Zabelka – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 8, 2020

If Zabelka eventually came around to the “right side” of history and Church teaching, then why is he not considered some kind of hero? Why do hardly any Catholics know about him? Why I am, literally, the only Christian in the world using the hashtag “#GeorgeZabelka” on Twitter on the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs?

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/ellen-finnigan/george-zabelka/

By

Why have I, a cradle Catholic, learned more about the Prince of Peace, the evils of war, and the lies of the government from your website than from my own Church?

In 2007, you published “A Military Chaplain Repents,” an interview that Fr. Emmanuel McCarthy did with Fr. George Zabelka in the late 1970s. Fr. Zabelka served as the Catholic chaplain for the group that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. No Catholic magazine or newspaper was interested in publishing this interview at the time. It wouldn’t have seen the light of day if Sojourners, a Protestant publication, had not published it in 1980.

In 2005, you published “Blessing the Bombs,” a speech Fr. Zabelka gave at a Pax Christi conference in August 1985. By this point, George’s story had become internationally known, but even after a Hollywood-quality documentary was made about him in 1988 (“The Reluctant Prophet”), no American t.v. station, either Catholic or secular, was interested in televising it.

Whereas Maj. Gen. Charles W. Sweeney, a Catholic who flew the B-29 that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, never doubted that he did the right thing (it should be noted: as a 25-year-old), Fr. Zabelka did a complete “about-face” as he called it. He said: “I was there, and I was wrong.” Which one of these men do you think was the subject of many interviews and feature articles that would appear in national publications on various anniversaries of the bombing?

This week I had the honor of interviewing Fr. McCarthy on my podcast about his good friend, George Zabelka. Your readers might be interested in hearing the “inside story” of Fr. Zabelka’s conversion, and how Fr. McCarthy ended up meeting him, about the rocky start to their relationship, and some of the fruits that came from Fr. Zabelka’s work for peace toward the end of his life.

I see many Catholics this week reassuring themselves and others on Twitter that “the Church has always condemned the indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians,” as if to say: “It’s all good. We have nothing to repent for. We were in the right.”

A more honest look at history might lead one to wonder, if this is true, why so many Christians participated in the indiscriminate slaughtering of civilians — and without a second thought. One cannot overestimate the importance of George Zabelka’s testimony;  but equally important I think is the story of how his testimony was, one can only conclude after listening to the podcast, deliberately suppressed, minimized, and ignored by not only the mainstream media but the mainstream Catholic Church.

If Zabelka eventually came around to the “right side” of history and Church teaching, then why is he not considered some kind of hero? Why do hardly any Catholics know about him? Why I am, literally, the only Christian in the world using the hashtag “#GeorgeZabelka” on Twitter on the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs?

Fr. McCarthy always says that Jesus uses the verb “do” more than any other verb in the New Testament. Thank you for all you’ve done to spread the word of Fr. George Zabelka’s witness, for not letting his story be memory-holed. If I could, I’d give you one of the buttons that Fr. Zabelka use to pass out to people by the thousands before he died.

The Best of Ellen Finnigan

 

Ellen Finnigan [send her mail] teaches writing and literature at an online, Catholic school for homeschoolers. She runs a website and a podcast called Catholics Against Militarism. You can find her on Twitter @EllenFinnigan and read more of her writing here.

 

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The US bombed Japan in 1945 to demonstrate its power to the USSR. Intimidation, NOT deterrence was, is and always will be the goal — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on August 7, 2020

The fact of the matter is Truman’s inner circle, including Secretary of State James Byrnes and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, were in favor of dropping the atomic bomb on Japanese cities not so much because it would shorten the current war with Japan, but primarily because it would help deter a future war with the Soviet Union. 

Byrnes believed that “Russia might be more manageable” in a post-war reality shaped not by the theoretical possibility of an atomic bomb, but the demonstrated destructive capacity of the new weapon. As General Leslie Groves, the military director of the Manhattan Project that produced the two American bombs, relayed to the scientists involved, “the whole purpose of this project was to subdue the Russians.”

The fact that the US continues to design and deploy nuclear weapons based on their ‘usability’ should send a chill down the neck of every American citizen, and indeed of the neck of every citizen of the world.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/497209-intimidation-deterrence-nuclear-bombing-japan/

Scott Ritter
Scott Ritter

is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

 

As the world reflects on the decision by the US to drop two atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II, the reality is that the US nuclear enterprise remains the greatest threat to world peace.

Seventy-five years ago this week, two American B-29 ‘Superfortress’ bombers departed Tinian Island, in the northernmost part of the Mariana Islands, some 1,500 miles south of Tokyo, armed with the world’s newest and most horrific weapon: the atomic bomb. On August 6, a B-29 nicknamed the ‘Enola Gay’ dropped a single bomb containing 64 kilograms of highly enriched uranium over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb, nicknamed ‘Little Boy,’ detonated with the force of 15 kilotons of TNT. At least 66,000 people were killed outright, with another 69,000 wounded, many of whom subsequently died of their injuries.

Two days later a second B-29, nicknamed the ‘Bockscar,’ dropped a bomb containing 6.4 kilograms of plutonium over the city of Nagasaki. This weapon, nicknamed ‘Fat Man,’ detonated with a force of 21 kilotons, killing some 39,000 Japanese outright and wounding another 25,000, most of whom, like those injured in Hiroshima, later died from their wounds.

Also on rt.com John Pilger: Another Hiroshima is coming – unless we stop it now American historians have struggled with the morality of dropping weapons that could destroy a city and its population in one mighty blast. Over the years, a consensus has been reached that justifies the horror of using the atomic bomb on the grounds that it helped shorten the war with Japan and, in doing so, saved hundreds of thousands of American lives that would have been lost in any invasion of the main Japanese islands, along with the lives of millions of Japanese, who would have died defending their homeland.

The problem with this narrative is that it provides an inaccurate picture of what really transpired. Certainly, the math regarding expected casualties in the case of an invasion of Japan is factually accurate, as far as estimates go. However, the reality was that Japan was on the cusp of surrendering and, had the US offered conditional terms replicating the post-war arrangement eventually reached by General MacArthur (the retention of the Imperial family, and a modicum of Japanese self-governance), there is every reason to believe that the Japanese would have surrendered without the US resorting to a costly campaign of conquest.

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Aerial view from B-29 Superfortress, of the mushroom cloud from the atomic detonation in Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945. © Getty Images / PhotoQuest

The fact of the matter is Truman’s inner circle, including Secretary of State James Byrnes and Secretary of War Henry Stimson, were in favor of dropping the atomic bomb on Japanese cities not so much because it would shorten the current war with Japan, but primarily because it would help deter a future war with the Soviet Union.

Byrnes believed that “Russia might be more manageable” in a post-war reality shaped not by the theoretical possibility of an atomic bomb, but the demonstrated destructive capacity of the new weapon. As General Leslie Groves, the military director of the Manhattan Project that produced the two American bombs, relayed to the scientists involved, “the whole purpose of this project was to subdue the Russians.”

Also on rt.com US is stuck in Cold War thinking; Plan to spend Russia & China ‘into oblivion’ in arms race will bankrupt only America This distinction is critical to understanding the role played by nuclear weapons in American nuclear posture and policy today. Doctrine, like organizations and people, are heavily influenced by the circumstances of their birth. There is a huge distinction between the calculation required to justify using a weapon for the purpose of shortening a war and saving lives, and that used to seek to intimidate a potential future opponent by demonstrating the destructive capability of a weapon through the annihilation of two cities, and their respective populations, that otherwise need not have been targeted for destruction.

Americans like to embrace the narrative of the use of the two atomic bombs that targeted Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a perverse act of humanitarianism – we had to kill hundreds of thousands in order to save millions. Seen in this light, the continued possession of nuclear weapons by the United States is a necessary evil, as their existence helps prevent, through deterrence, the future employment of these terrible weapons of mass destruction.

But when viewed through a lens that reflects the reality of the genesis of the atomic bomb – that it was a force of intimidation the power of which had to be demonstrated through the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom were civilians who otherwise would have survived – the atomic bomb and its progeny were no longer a necessary evil, but rather pure evil personified.

The United States has long struggled with the need to balance the notion of ‘war made easy’ through the existence of nuclear weapons and the temptation to use them that such a philosophy promotes, and the harsh reality of retaliation at the hands of other nuclear powers should it be inclined to use them. The fact that, over the years, the US has been tempted to use nuclear weapons to resolve difficult non-nuclear conflicts (Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq come to mind) only underscores the reality that intimidation, and not deterrence, is their principal value.

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US nukes in Poland would not be a deterrent, but a MASSIVE provocation for Russia US nukes in Poland would not be a deterrent, but a MASSIVE provocation for Russia

The fact that the US continues to design and deploy nuclear weapons based on their ‘usability’ should send a chill down the neck of every American citizen, and indeed of the neck of every citizen of the world. This is especially so now, given the current ambivalence of the US to the kind of arms control that previously helped reduce the risk of inadvertent nuclear conflict. In the past 20 years, the US has withdrawn from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force Treaty, and is on the cusp of allowing the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to expire without a replacement.

Instead of doubling down on trying to revive arms control, the US seems focused on flexing its muscle through the deployment of new ‘small yield’ warheads on submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). It’s also ‘up-warheading’ and flight-testing Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with three multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles – despite the fact the operational Minuteman III force is deployed with only a single warhead.

American politicians and military planners may seek to mollify a worried world by insisting that these actions, and others like it, are meant only to bolster the deterrent capability of the US nuclear enterprise. But the world should not be fooled. Seventy-five years ago, the United States murdered hundreds of thousands of Japanese for the sole purpose of seeking to intimidate Russia. A recent exercise involving the newly deployed ‘low-yield’ SLBM, in which the Secretary of Defense practiced the weapons-release procedures in a scenario involving the targeting of Russian forces in Europe, must be viewed in the shadow of this history. Intimidation, not deterrence, was, is and always will be the driving force behind America’s nuclear arsenal. Like any schoolyard bully, the concern isn’t if the US will use these weapons, but when.

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Evil Killing by the US Relies on Willful Indifference – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on August 7, 2019

Truman and his advisors lied to the American public, and withheld the information that Japan offered to surrender much in advance of the bombings.

How can a more informed citizenry continue to hide their heads in the sand, and worship the nation state apparatus and its agents of force in the military? This is a travesty, and exposes the success achieved by the elites to brainwash the public into supporting any kind of butchery and mass murder under the guise that they are protecting the nation from non-existent monsters from afar.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/gary-d-barnett/evil-killing-by-the-u-s-relies-on-willful-indifference/

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This week marks another horrible anniversary of the two single largest terrorist acts ever perpetrated by any nation against mankind. That nation was the United States, and its victims were Japanese civilians. Hiroshima was bombed on August 6th, and Nagasaki was bombed on August 9th, 1945. Over 200,000 innocent people, mostly women and children, were immediately obliterated from the face of the earth for a lie. Many tens of thousands more have died since that time due to that murderous event.

How was it possible that hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were burned alive by U.S. atomic bombs, and their cities destroyed, while the U.S. masses remained apathetic to their plight? That apathy remains in place even today.

There is no less guilt for those who do nothing to stop evil acts than there is for those who commit them. Indifference is a most vile trait of human existence, but indifference toward the mass starvation, torture, and murder of innocents for political purposes may be the worst of all.

Indifference is the opposite of love, it is the opposite of good, and it is the opposite of anything of value. It is worse than hate. Apathy in the face of depravity has become common among many around the world, but especially so in this make-believe land of the free called America. This attitude of emptiness breeds despair, but it is important to remember that the evildoers among us can only succeed in their efforts of madness so long as those watching remain silent and do nothing.

Those heinous acts of extreme violence and death like the bombing of innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be remembered so that it never happens again. But it does happen over and over, as this country’s ruling class and its military industrial complex continue to murder innocents every day. Truman and his advisors lied to the American public, and withheld the information that Japan offered to surrender much in advance of the bombings. In other words, the bombings were the premeditated murder of innocent women and children just to advance a political agenda.

I have been to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and studied what happened there. My wife was raised in Kokura, Japan and her family still resides there. Kokura was the second target for the atomic bomb, but was passed over after multiple attempts, which failed due to adverse weather conditions. Nagasaki was the alternate bombsite on the 9th, and was mercilessly destroyed.

Those responsible for that carnage were evil monsters, and the stated plan was to only bomb civilian cities and targets, cities that were unscathed by previous bombings, so that the massive destruction could be calculated and measured. This was purposeful wickedness beyond the imagination of any decent and moral human being. The elected rulers of America were allowed to do the things they did with total immunity, and with the blessing of the public at large.

Today, much more is known about the intent of the political class and its elitist controllers, but it seems as if there is much more apathy today than at anytime in the past. How can this be? How can a more informed citizenry continue to hide their heads in the sand, and worship the nation state apparatus and its agents of force in the military? This is a travesty, and exposes the success achieved by the elites to brainwash the public into supporting any kind of butchery and mass murder under the guise that they are protecting the nation from non-existent monsters from afar. Societal weakness at this level deserves no respect or admiration whatsoever. It deserves only contempt. There is no excuse for such complicity in acts of war. The truth that must be accepted is that it is not just the government that should be blamed for all its heinous acts, but that each and every citizen who stands silent in the face of that evil committed in their name is fully responsible as well.

The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were but two unconscionable acts of carnage in a horrible war that saw tens of millions die for the benefit of the powerbrokers that rule the world. But those events solidified in the minds of the weak masses a tolerance for the unspeakable, and a total disregard for humanity. The acceptance of such brazen acts as these set in motion a collective coldness that has allowed for a future of unlimited brutality.

The people of this country who value peace must rise up and fight against the continued slaughter of innocents in order to regain any sanity. Those who do not speak out to force a stop to these aggressive wars and killing, those who continue to blindly support the status quo, will be as guilty as those who prosecute war. They should be left with only shame and humiliation.

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Survey: Americans Have Remarkably Ignorant Attitude Toward Nukes And North Korea – Caitlin Johnstone

Posted by M. C. on June 28, 2019

“Most Americans have been taught that using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was justified because the bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby averting a costly U.S. invasion of Japan,” reads an excellent 2016 LA Times article on this subject by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznik. “This erroneous contention finds its way into high school history texts still today.”

In reality, the sole purpose of dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was not to end the war, but to show the rest of the world in general and the Soviets in particular that the United States had both the capability and the savagery to wipe out any city in the world with a single bomb. The war, in fact, had already been won, and the Japanese were already on the brink of surrender as the fearsome Soviet forces entered into the war in the Pacific

https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/06/26/survey-americans-have-remarkably-ignorant-attitude-toward-nukes-and-north-korea/

author: Caitlin Johnstone

Half of the responders to an innovative new survey of 3,000 Americans conducted by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the British research firm YouGov reported that they would support a nuclear strike against North Korea if it tested a long-range missile capable of reaching the continental United States. A third said they’d actually prefer such a strike over other hypothetical responses.

“For example, while ‘only’ 33 percent of the US public prefer a US preventive nuclear strike that would kill 15,000 North Koreans, 50 percent approve,” the report reads.

The study found little change in preference for a preemptive nuclear strike whether the hypothetical scenario offered to respondents entailed the death of 15,000 North Korean civilians or one million. Preferences for a preemptive strike only dropped when the hypothetical scenario reduced the probability of success (meaning elimination of North Korea’s nuclear retaliatory capabilities) was reduced from ninety to fifty percent.

The survey found a large knowledge deficit in responders regarding nuclear weapons, with a majority reporting an unrealistic amount of confidence in both the US military’s ability to eliminate all of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal in a preemptive strike and in its ability to shoot down North Korean missiles using current missile defense systems. This inaccurate perspective was significantly higher among Trump supporters.

While the study found that a majority of Americans would prefer to de-escalate against North Korea if given the choice, a jarring number of them would be willing to use nuclear weapons at the drop of a hat, and believe it’s possible to do so at relatively little risk to Americans.

“As we have previously found, the US public exhibits only limited aversion to nuclear weapons use and a shocking willingness to support the killing of enemy civilians,” write the report’s authors.

And really, why would we expect anything else? After all, Americans are taught the lie since they are children that their nation, the only nation ever to use nuclear weapons, did so with the goal of bringing a quick and painless end to a horrible world war. Like so much else, this ultimately boils down to the effects of propaganda.

“Most Americans have been taught that using atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was justified because the bombings ended the war in the Pacific, thereby averting a costly U.S. invasion of Japan,” reads an excellent 2016 LA Times article on this subject by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznik. “This erroneous contention finds its way into high school history texts still today.”

In reality, the sole purpose of dropping nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was not to end the war, but to show the rest of the world in general and the Soviets in particular that the United States had both the capability and the savagery to wipe out any city in the world with a single bomb. The war, in fact, had already been won, and the Japanese were already on the brink of surrender as the fearsome Soviet forces entered into the war in the Pacific. The narrative that the use of nuclear bombs was a tragic but necessary means to end World War II is a lie that the US has used its cultural hegemony to circulate around the world, much like the lie that America was mostly responsible for Germany’s defeat and not the USSR.

I always get a lot of pushback from Americans when I point to this, not because I don’t have facts on my side but because it’s so glaringly different from the dominant narratives that Americans are spoon fed in school. If you don’t believe me, read the aforementioned LA Times article titled “Bombing Hiroshima changed the world, but it didn’t end WWII“, or this article from The Nation, or this one from Mises Institute.

Seriously, read the articles if this is upsetting you. This is an established fact to which contemporary generals at the time have attested. The uncomfortable feeling you’re experiencing upon reading this is called cognitive dissonance. It’s what learning you’ve been lied to your whole life feels like.

This report on the American public’s widespread ignorance of and indifference to the consequences of nuclear weapons use comes shortly after the US Joint Chiefs of Staff briefly published and then removed from public access an update on their position on the use of nukes which contains the alarming line, “Using nuclear weapons could create conditions for decisive results and the restoration of strategic stability. Specifically, the use of a nuclear weapon will fundamentally change the scope of a battle and create conditions that affect how commanders will prevail in conflict.”

So the people responsible for forming America’s nuclear strategies believe using nuclear weapons is not just acceptable, but potentially beneficial. The mass media have been completely ignoring this horrifying revelation, and the public are too awash in disinformation to do anything about it themselves.

Anyone who believes it’s acceptable to use nuclear weapons for any other reason than retaliation against another nuclear attack shouldn’t be allowed to operate heavy machinery, much less participate in the formation of nuclear strategy for the most powerful military force in the history of civilization. The correct response to North Korea having nuclear retaliatory capabilities is the same as the response to any other nuclear power: leave them alone. The narrative that North Korea’s leadership is likely to launch an unprovoked attack is exactly as baseless and moronic as the narratives about Iraq or Iran launching an unprovoked attack. It’s not a thing.

As tensions continue to escalate between nuclear powers around the world while the faltering US empire becomes increasingly desperate to maintain its global hegemony, human extinction via nuclear annihilation is just as real a possibility as it was at the height of the last Cold War.

But it isn’t just the use of nuclear weapons which threatens us. Their very existence warps us as a species. Arundhati Roy writes the following in her book The Algebra of Infinite Justice:

“It is such supreme folly to believe that nuclear weapons are deadly only if they are used. The fact that they exist at all, their very presence in our lives, will wreak more havoc than we can begin to fathom. Nuclear weapons pervade our thinking. Control our behaviour. Administer our societies. Inform our dreams. They bury themselves like meathooks deep in the base of our brains… The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made. Through it, man now has the power to destroy God’s creation.”

This needs to change. And it won’t be changed by those in power who benefit from the status quo. Humanity itself must awaken from the propaganda cages which have been built around our minds so that the people can use the power of their numbers to force a change. The time to wake up is now.

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Harry Truman and the Atomic Bomb | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on August 12, 2017

https://mises.org/blog/harry-truman-and-atomic-bomb

More that you didn’t learn in government school. Frank Capra’s fake news.

This, however, is absurd. Pearl Harbor was a military base. Hiroshima was a city, inhabited by some three hundred thousand people, which contained military elements. In any case, since the harbor was mined and the US Navy and Air Force were in control of the waters around Japan, whatever troops were stationed in Hiroshima had been effectively neutralized.

On other occasions, Truman claimed that Hiroshima was bombed because it was an industrial center. But, as noted in the US Strategic Bombing Survey, “all major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the city — and escaped serious damage.”4 The target was the center of the city. That Truman realized the kind of victims the bombs consumed is evident from his comment to his cabinet on August 10, explaining his reluctance to drop a third bomb: “The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible,” he said; he didn’t like the idea of killing “all those kids.”5 Wiping out another one hundred thousand people … all those kids. Read the rest of this entry »

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