From my mother's sleep
I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly
till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed
from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak
and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out
of the turret with a hose.
--Randall Jarrell
"The Death of the
Ball Turret Gunner"
Those who still say World War II was the "last good war" might not remember a certain poem from 1945, "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner."
There are no good wars. The cause might be good, and let's hope the United States tends in that direction always, but those doing the dying have never died pretty. They didn't die as the actors in the black-and-white movies did, before directors were allowed to show blood.
The replica version of your statewide newspaper has its advantages, one of them being the ability to publish extra pages every day. This week, between the electronic A section and B section, the editors in the newsroom picked a feature to highlight among the bonus pages: A story about Hiroshima.
The name itself conjures awful images and even worse feelings.
It was 75 years ago today that the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on enemy territory. And for nearly three-quarters of a century, the debate has been: Did it have to happen?
We say nearly three-quarters of a century. For in the days and months immediately after the bombing--and following the second A-bomb a few days later at Nagasaki, Japan--there was no debate. At least not among Americans, or its allies in the West. It would take a few years before people felt safe enough from a defeated Imperial Japan to take up the debate about how the war in the Pacific ended.
But now, in this safe remove, a debate seethes when it doesn't boil. Just as unreconstructed Confederates in this country write books about how slavery didn't cause the American Civil War--and authors quote each other in a publishing echo chamber--so do certain authors skip details about Japan's intentions in the summer of 1945, all the better to make President Truman's decision to drop the bombs something along the lines of a war crime.
Theories abound: The bombs were dropped knowing that Japan was planning surrender, but dropped anyway to show the Soviets that we had the devices and would use them. Because American leaders were clairvoyant enough to see (1) the coming Cold War, and (2) the deceit of the USSR's promises to let Europe choose its own path.
And racism had everything to do with it because the Americans would never have dropped atomic bombs on white European enemies.
Thankfully, we still have good history. For now. And can read and understand the decisions made at the end of World War II, if we only will.
Planners of the invasion of Japan targeted the southern part of the country at Kyushu. The battle at Okinawa showed that the Japanese soldiery would fight to the death. And not only on land. The kamikaze attacks intensified.
There were at least 75,000 Allied casualties, and maybe 117,000 Japanese, in the battle of Okinawa. And perhaps as much as half the population of the island wiped out. Historians say that the Japanese strategy that summer was to cause more deaths than the Americans would countenance. Then sue for a favorable peace.
There were certain communiqués from certain Japanese diplomats who thought the end was nigh, and said so. But they didn't run things. The blind military in Tokyo did.
D-Day was in June of 1944, and the planners of the Japanese invasion selected a target date for X-Day in November of 1945. The Japanese weren't just prepping the landing fields for a long defensive struggle, but preparing civilians, too, by training them to attack invasion forces with whatever they had handy.
The American secretary of war, Henry Stimson, had visited Japan as a younger man, and remembered the terrain as he looked at the maps in Washington. He advised the American president: This isn't going to be as "easy" as Germany, for tanks weren't going to be able to run free once the lines broke. The Joint Chiefs advised President Truman to expect a million casualties--among American forces only. And the end of the war would probably come at the end of 1946.
When the president of the United States was presented the bomb that summer, his decision was an awful one. But the only one that he could make.
We suppose the president of the United States could have surrendered, or at least quit. But as sick as the American people were of war at the time, vessels still sat at the bottom of Pearl Harbor (as they do today). And it hadn't been four years since that surprise attack.
As ugly and uncomfortable and truthful as this is to point out, the Japanese people would have almost certainly had more casualties if Operation Olympic would have been unleashed in November.
It is easy to criticize the decision to end the war in August of 1945 now that we're in August of 2020--because few people remember the unrestrained joy that not only swept through this country, but most of the free world, a few days later when the Japanese emperor took to the airwaves to finally tell his people the course of the war wasn't necessarily moving in Japan's favor. (His words.)
The Allies wouldn't be taking the home islands inch by inch, flooded plain by flooded plain, city inferno by city inferno. Today, Americans--and not just Americans--can't experience the relief, release and gratitude now that Hiroshima has sunk in. And we have lived so much of our lives fearing for our own loved ones in a Cold War that went hot from time to time.
One last point: The Japanese didn't surrender after Hiroshima. The Imperial Army decided it could take it. Even after its own staff officers flew above the city, and radioed in what they'd saw, the Imperial Army didn't surrender. It would take another bomb over another city--and the threat by the president of the United States to keep them coming--before the forces of surrender won the debate.
Today marks an awful anniversary. It's one that our kids and grandkids will argue about years from now. But we hope the history books haven't been rewritten overmuch when that happens. And most of those who follow will realize the awfulness, and necessity, of the decisions in the summer of 1945.