My last column concerned the legacy of the Yalta and Potsdam conferences that were the final summits at the end of the Second World War. The atomic bomb was integral to the outcome of those summits and completely altered both American foreign policy and American national security to this day.
It has and is fashionable to decry President Harry Truman and his decision to use the atomic bomb against the Japanese empire during the Second World War.
The decision has been mutated by the educational and media establishment, which seeks to cast the judgment as incompetence, but more likely, decries it as evil.
Like so much lost in America today, there is no appreciation for the history of this period, and more importantly, the existential struggle the United States faced against the Axis powers, and then immediately with the Soviet Union. In case some readers are unaware, the term "existential," when applied to foreign affairs literally, means that the civilization involved will cease to exist if the decisions are wrong.
It's probably difficult for those who possess little education, however much they might have on paper, to fully grasp the horrendous struggle America engaged in from 1941 to 1945.
They are less likely to understand how close to defeat we came on several occasions.
It's lost on many that had the United States lost a few pivotal battles like Normandy, and Midway, the entire outcome of the war would have changed.
It's also beyond the scope of many to fully grasp the casualty rates that America suffered.
Contemporary Americans may be shocked to know that America suffered 6,000 casualties on the first day of Normandy, and 49,000 during the battle of Okinawa.
One should pause here because part of Truman’s decision was because of the casualty rates that came in from Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Truman’s decision followed the absurd fighting in places like Iwo Jima and Okinawa and, more importantly, the projected casualties (as reported to Secretary of War Stimson) of Operations Olympic and Coronet (the projected conventional invasion of Japan) to be over 1 million Americans and 5 to 10 million Japanese.
Other myths and fairytales have grown up surrounding the decision to drop the bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9.
We must keep in mind that the United States had three total bombs, one of which had already been used during the New Mexico test.
The most common myths associated with Truman and this period need a quick dispelling:
Truman had a committee considering alternatives, including using the bomb as a demonstration or continuing the much more horrific option of enforced starvation through a blockade. He also wanted to ensure that the targets made political and cultural sense, and therefore Tokyo and Kyoto were not ultimately targeted.
Truman’s decision was also affected by the growing kamikaze casualties and the militarists of Japan, who clearly stated that it would be better for Japan to be destroyed than surrender. Finally, it must be remembered the Soviets invaded Japan in between the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The question of whether Japan today would have been better off being divided like Korea is one that is easy to answer with an emphatic no.
Can the Japanese people or we even conceive of what the horrors and genocide inside a Peoples Republic (North Japan) of Japan would have looked like?
Finally, an item rarely discussed is that both the Germans and the Japanese were working on their own atomic bomb projects. We know the Soviets were stealing ours during our creation of it.
It's worth reflecting on what kind of world would have existed if any of those powers would have had a first nuclear weapon, and worse, an atomic monopoly.
The decision to drop the atomic bombs was the hardest any president faced. Truman exhibited the first taste of his national security doctrine with this decision, and it was one that he neither relished nor regretted.
The dropping of the bombs ended the war in the Pacific and saved millions of allied soldiers and Japanese civilian lives. It blunted the immediate Soviet threat and gave the West breathing room to deal with the looming Communist threat that sought world domination through the spread of evil, misery, and terror.
Dr. Lamont Colucci has experience as a diplomat with the U.S. Dept. of State and is today a Full Professor of Politics and Government at Ripon College. He has published two books as the sole author entitled "Crusading Realism: The Bush Doctrine and American Core Values After 9/11," and a two-volume series entitled "The National Security Doctrines of the American Presidency: How they Shape our Present and Future." He was contributing author of two books entitled "The Day That Changed Everything: Looking at the Impact of 9/11 at the End of the Decade" and "Homeland Security and Intelligence." He is also Senior Fellow in National Security Affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, Senior Advisor in National Security for Contingent Security, Advisor on National Security and Foreign Affairs, to the Conference of Defence Associations Institute and member of the National Task Force on National and Homeland Security. Find out more at lamontcolucci.org. Read Dr. Lamont Colucci's Reports — More Here.
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