By John McLean
The modern mind is very prone to emotionalism rather than facts, e.g. the emotive and non-scientific agenda of Greenpeace and even accepting the screaming slogans of an uneducated teenager with mental problems, Greta Thunberg, on “climate change”. In New Zealand one of the most simplistic pieces of emotionalism is a mindless howl against nuclear weapons and even nuclear power, which latter is a clean and safe source of energy that powers great nations such as France. And, of course, the anniversary of “Hiroshima Day” each year brings out all the pious pacifists, churchmen and other virtue signallers who chant how “wrong” it was to end the Second World War by dropping the two atomic bombs on Japan.
The phrase “a miracle of deliverance” is one that Churchill used to describe the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, thus ending the Second World War in which tens of millions of people had been killed and which had not been started by the Allies. A look at the situation in 1945 certainly justifies his remarks.
After the defeat of Germany in May, 1945, it was obvious that the Japanese could not last much longer. Most of their warships had been sunk, their force of over 90,000 men in Rabaul, New Guinea, were cut off from supplies and were reduced to eating plants and weeds while Burma had been all but recaptured by the British. Okinawa, an island just to the south of Japan, had been taken by the Allies and the 9th Australian Division was driving them out of Borneo.
To any rational enemy the game was up but the fanatics in Japan’s military dictatorship chose to fight on to the bitter end, risking the lives of not only Allied servicemen but their own soldiers and civilians as well. So hard did the Japanese fight on Okinawa that it took almost three months, hundreds of Allied ships and 450,000 Allied soldiers to capture it. If this was how the Japanese were prepared to fight for a mere offshore island, what on earth would be the Allied casualties when the time would come to invade the home islands of Japan?
The Americans had planned two invasions of mainland Japan – one scheduled for late 1945 against the small southern island of Kyushu (Operation Olympic) and the other in early 1946 against the main island of Honshu (Operation Coronet). They estimated that, in the event of such invasions, they would have more than a million American casualties – and this after a war that had already been going for six years and which had not been started by the peace loving people of Britain, France and the United States.
In addition, hundreds of thousands of Japanese would have died in defence of their homeland – as they had done on Okinawa where they fought for that offshore island with such fanaticism. To invade Japan proper would have involved the entire U.S. Marine Corps, the entire U.S. Navy, the 7th, 8th, 20th and Far Eastern Air Forces – more than 1,500,000 combat servicemen with another 4,500,000 in support.
In Japan were hidden airfields, underground hangars containing both planes and fuel, fortified caves and underground defences. Suicide units were dispersed throughout the land while 300 Kairyu suicide submarines were poised to sink Allied ships. These were two-man craft with 600 kg of explosives in the nose. They also had 40 conventional submarines and 115 Koryu five-man suicide subs with a further 496 Koryu and 207 Kairyu submarines under construction.
There were nearly 4,000 Shinyo motor-boats filled with high explosives for night attacks against Allied landing craft. On land were magnetic and other mines on the beaches plus electronically detonated mines in the shallow waters where our invading troops would come ashore.
Fourteen American divisions would be required (c. 550, 000 troops) to face 790,000 fanatical Japanese defending troops, thus making Okinawa seem like a picnic. In addition to the defending troops were 28 million frenzied Japanese civilians who were part of the National Volunteer Combat Force – a type of Home Guard but ready to lay down their lives for their wretched emperor.
So, already effectively beaten, wouldn’t it have been easier and more humane for Japan to surrender to the overwhelming force which, with the defeat of Germany, would now be set against them? Yes, but Japan’s military leaders were neither sensible nor humane. At the Allied leaders’ conference at Potsdam in July, 1945, the leaders of Britain, the United States, France and the Soviet Union issued an ultimatum to Japan calling for an immediate unconditional surrender – a way for Japan to extricate itself from its losing war. These terms were rejected by Japan and so the decision was made to bring this dreadful war to an end by dropping two atomic bombs.
For the benefit of civilians, leaflets were dropped on several cities warning them in Japanese that they would be subjected to intensive air bombardment. A million and a half of these leaflets were dropped on twenty-three Japanese cities (including Hiroshima and Nagasaki) – a warning but without disclosing which two cities would be the target.
On 6th August Hiroshima was bombed and then, three days later, Nagasaki. The next day the Japanese government agreed to accept the Potsdam ultimatum that they had so foolishly rejected a fortnight earlier. The Second World War was over. In Churchill’s words, “To avert a vast, indefinite butchery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils, a miracle of deliverance”.
These are the sentiments that should accompany any sympathy for the victims on “Hiroshima Day”. The real responsibility for the dropping of these two terrifying bombs lay with the Japanese government. If they had not so sneakily and unnecessarily bombed Pearl Harbour, they would not have suffered their Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is called “cause and effect” which trumps emotionalism at every turn.
John McLean is a naval historian and the author of “A Mission of Honour; the Royal Navy in the Pacific, 1769-1997”
