Japanese Researcher Wants America To “Apologize” For Bombing Them

[Professor Emeritus]

The real reason we dropped the bombs was because we wanted to end the war quickly before Russia invaded Japan. Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't chosen to kill civilians believe it or not, they were chosen because they were key military manufacturing and shipping points of the Japanese Army.

"Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. To quote a Japanese report, "Probably more than a thousand times since the beginning of the war did the Hiroshima citizens see off with cries of 'Banzai' the troops leaving from the harbor."

"The city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great war-time importance because of its many and varied industries, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The narrow long strip attacked was of particular importance because of its industries."

This is a lie. If we believed those cities were key to the military situation, then we wouldn't have purposely left them alone for months before the bombing. We literally chose the cities that had been most untouched by bombing to that point and then ordered that they not be bombed any further so we could fully test the effects.


Here's an actual quote about the target selection for the bombs:


"Dr. Stearns described the work he had done on target selection. He has surveyed possible targets possessing the following qualifications:

(1) they be important targets in a large urban area of more than three miles diameter,

(2) they be capable of being damaged effectively by a blast, and

(3) they are likely to be unattacked by next August. Dr. Stearns had a list of five targets which the Air Forces would be willing to reserve for our use unless unforeseen circumstances arise."



We literally chose the places least likely to be attacked by our military (in other words, of lowest strategic importance), ensured they were a large urban area with hundreds of thousands of civilians to be killed, and then had them specially "reserved for the use of the bombs".

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Coli is such a unserious site. Did not have “defend imperialist Japan” on my 2024 bingo card but here we are

Them dudes were doing resident evil fanfics IRL and were not going to stop, you had to get them out the paint.

Literally no one is defending imperialist Japan. If it was imperialist Japan we were so worried about, then maybe we should have dropped the bomb on them instead of dropping it on women and children who had zero say in any the imperialist decisions?

You keep trying to frame this as "these ignorant Coli posters" while ignoring that our own greatest military leaders said the same thing.







"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war....The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan."

- Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief U.S. Pacific Fleet




"The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [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."

- Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet




"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.

- Fleet Admiral William Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff




"The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air....it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse."

- General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, Commanding General of U.S. Army Air Forces




"Russia's entry into the Japanese war was the decisive factor in speeding its end and would have been so even if no atomic bombs had been dropped."

- General Claire Chennault, Army Air Forces Commander in China




"On the other hand if they knew or were told that no invasion would take place [and] that bombing would continue until the surrender, why I think the surrender would have taken place just about the same time."

General Carl Spaatz, Commander of U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific




"MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

- General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (Pacific)




"I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (Europe)

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Even more quotes cause I ran out of space:



"The diary of Walter Brown--an assistant to Secretary of State James F. Byrnes-- records that aboard ship returning from Potsdam on August 3, 1945 the President, Byrnes and Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to the President, "agreed Japas looking for peace. (Leahy had another report from Pacific) President afraid they will sue for peace through Russia instead of some country like Sweden."



"Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia....I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds."

Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Ellis Zacharias



"What prevented them from suing for peace or from bringing their plot into the open was their uncertainty on two scores. First, they wanted to know the meaning of unconditional surrender and the fate we planned for Japan after defeat. Second, they tried to obtain from us assurances that the Emperor could remain on the throne after surrender."

Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence Ellis Zacharias




"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- former President Dwight Eisenhower, reflecting after his presidency




"we brought them [the Japanese] down to an abject surrender through the accelerated sinking of their merchant marine and hunger alone, and when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

- Brigadier General Carter Clarke, officer who prepped intercepted Japanese cables for Truman




"...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

- William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.




"Obviously . . . the atomic bomb neither induced the Emperor's decision to surrender nor had any effect on the ultimate outcome of the war."

- Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, in charge of psychological warfare on MacArthur's staff




"The poor damn Japanese were putting feelers out by the ton so to speak, through Russia."

- Colonel Charles "Tick" Bonesteel, Chief of the War Department Operations Division Policy Section




"Obviously . . . the atomic bomb neither induced the Emperor's decision to surrender nor had any effect on the ultimate outcome of the war."

- Colonel Charles "Tick" Bonesteel, Chief of the War Department Operations Division Policy Section




"I think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that suggestion of [giving] a warning [of the atomic bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted...In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb."

- Under-Secretary of Navy Ralph Bard




"During recent weeks I have also had the feeling very definitely that the Japanese government may be searching for some opportunity which they could use as a medium of surrender. Following the three-power conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia's position and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for."

- Under-Secretary of Navy Ralph Bard




"...in the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the [retention of the] dynasty had been issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the [Japanese] Government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clearcut decision. If surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer."

Under-Secretary of State Joseph Grew




"I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs."

Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy




"Primarily it was because it was clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate...It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world...".

Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Receipts are so long, I ran out of space again:



""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. 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."

- Chairman of Chiefs of Staff William Leahy




"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

- Vice-chairman of U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey Paul Nitze (Nitze would later become Secretary of the Navy)




"As early as April 29, 1945 the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff that increasing 'numbers of informed Japanese, both military and civilian, already realize the inevitability of absolute defeat...The entry of the U.S.S.R. into the war would, together with the foregoing factors, convince most Japanese at once of the inevitability of complete defeat.'"

- Joint Intelligence Committee of the United Kingdom




“First, intelligence and other advice to President Truman, in significant part based on intercepted and secretly decoded Japanese cable traffic, indicated that from at least May 1945 on, Japan wished to end the war and seemed likely to do so if assurances were given that the emperor would not be eliminated. Second, similar advice to the president suggested that the shock of Soviet entry into the war (expected in early August) would likely tip the balance, almost certainly if combined with assurances concerning the emperor. Third, Truman was advised by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, Assistant Secretary of War John J. McCloy, Admiral Leahy, the acting Secretary of State Joseph E. Grew, and others to let Japan know that the emperor would not be eliminated; contrary to the claims of some historians, Truman made clear that he had no serious objection to offering such assurances.”

- historians Gar Alperovitz and Kai Bird, writing in the Christian Science Monitor




"Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it.... The hoary claim that the bomb prevented 500,000 American combat deaths is unsupportable."

- J. Samuel Walker, chief historian of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission

 

[Deafheaven]

Literally no one is defending imperialist Japan. If it was imperialist Japan we were so worried about, then maybe we should have dropped the bomb on them instead of dropping it on women and children who had zero say in any the imperialist decisions?

You keep trying to frame this as "these ignorant Coli posters" while ignoring that our own greatest military leaders said the same thing.







"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war....The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan."

- Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief U.S. Pacific Fleet




"The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment. . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it. . . . [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."

- Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., Commander U.S. Third Fleet




"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.

- Fleet Admiral William Leahy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff




"The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air....it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse."

- General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, Commanding General of U.S. Army Air Forces




"Russia's entry into the Japanese war was the decisive factor in speeding its end and would have been so even if no atomic bombs had been dropped."

- General Claire Chennault, Army Air Forces Commander in China




"On the other hand if they knew or were told that no invasion would take place [and] that bombing would continue until the surrender, why I think the surrender would have taken place just about the same time."

General Carl Spaatz, Commander of U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific




"MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

- General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (Pacific)




"I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (Europe)

 

[Insensitive]

Japan was on demon time back in the day clearly but that was the government/military not the civilians, dropping two atomic bombs on them was always overkill. The US also baited Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor by cutting off their trade


This country always goes too far and will not apologize just like they did in Vietnam and the use of Agent Orange which detrimentally affected those people and future generations all for a dumb ass war we had no business being involved in

Japan and the US both need to apologize for their pasts

That's too easy of an out for the Japanese Citizenry.
Many agreed with what was happening.

It's like how I feel about someone saying that the (WHITE) Silent Generation and (WHITE) Boomers shouldn't catch
smoke while being complicit the discrimination and terrorizing of AA's because "it was the government bro!".

Many, MANY of those people who are walking around TODAY who committed injustices against AA's
should be sleeping under dirt.



I'm just shocked @Professor Emeritus thought he had a point with "buu buuuu buuuu what about them Europeans ?".
They should get it too.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

First you said:

Coli is such a unserious site. Did not have “defend imperialist Japan” on my 2024 bingo card but here we are

But then you pivot to:

Which is why these arguments stay at the level of ignorance and stupidity. You just lied about our position and called us unserious, but when caught in the lie, you're going to roll with "haha didn't read".

 

[Sauce Dab]

It’s obvious some folks in here must’ve been sleep in history class when the teachers were talking about war. Japan was killing and raping all over Asia. Somebody had to put a stop to them

 

[Professor Emeritus]

It’s obvious some folks in here must’ve been sleep in history class when the teachers were talking about war. Japan was killing and raping all over Asia. Somebody had to put a stop to them

Who here has claimed that Japan didn't commit atrocities during World War II? But I somehow doubt the women and children killed by the bombs were the ones killing and raping.

Scroll up 3 comments and tell me if our American military leaders were "sleep in history class" too. At some point you realize that a lot of the history we were taught was intended to convince us of American righteousness and goodness and make us rubber-stamp a political agenda, not intended to actually educate us.

 

[5n0man]

This is a lie. If we believed those cities were key to the military situation, then we wouldn't have purposely left them alone for months before the bombing. We literally chose the cities that had been most untouched by bombing to that point and then ordered that they not be bombed any further so we could fully test the effects.


Here's an actual quote about the target selection for the bombs:


"Dr. Stearns described the work he had done on target selection. He has surveyed possible targets possessing the following qualifications:

(1) they be important targets in a large urban area of more than three miles diameter,

(2) they be capable of being damaged effectively by a blast, and

(3) they are likely to be unattacked by next August. Dr. Stearns had a list of five targets which the Air Forces would be willing to reserve for our use unless unforeseen circumstances arise."



We literally chose the places least likely to be attacked by our military (in other words, of lowest strategic importance), ensured they were a large urban area with hundreds of thousands of civilians to be killed, and then had them specially "reserved for the use of the bombs".

All this says to me is they were looking for targets that weren't already destroyed in one of the previous bombings.

Nagasaki was one of Japan's last operation ports, why would they bomb one that had already been destroyed?

 

[King Sun]

It’s obvious some folks in here must’ve been sleep in history class when the teachers were talking about war. Japan was killing and raping all over Asia. Somebody had to put a stop to them

The same could be said about the US, pre war II. American propaganda got yall in a chokehold

 

[Geode]

I appreciate a good WWII history thread.

@Toussaint and @Professor Emeritus , although you're on opposite sides, I appreciate the information. No one's hands are clean.

 

[Black Magisterialness]

They should apologize to China, The Phillipines, Korean, Indonesia and sit on they mama dikk

They better chill the fukk out before China come knocking for THEIR check from Japan. The shyt Japan did to China and Korea was on some horror anime Jigsaw shyt.

Just look up "Unit 731" where just ONE of the many torturous experiments they did was to rape a woman, forcibly getting her pregnant then purposefully infecting her with various diseases like Syphilis or Hepatitis to see if the baby would also be infected. After that then forcibly cutting the baby out of her womb, with no anesthesia and killing the baby afterwards as well. That's just ONE experiment.

Don't get me wrong, being the only people to be nuked fukked up their national psyche. But damn....they were NOT a just fighting force back then.

 

[tuckgod]

As the renowned American philosopher Pooh Shiesty said Japan want an apology come get it back in blood

Sounds cute until it’s your mama under rubble

 

[OperationNumbNutts]

Can’t apologize now with ww3 coming. How would it look if we apologize now and have to drop another one next year. Talk about awkward

I'm confused. Are you saying on Japan or in general?