August 6, 1945. A day that, for the Left, will live in infamy. Happy Hiroshima Day! Today the World will mourn, the Left will castigate America for her sins, and Obama will no doubt make an act of contrition, but what is the truth about the bombing of Hiroshima? Was it a tragedy? For the Imperial Japanese, no doubt, and for the thousands who died as a result, but such are the fortunes of war. Was it a war crime? Hardly. Imperial Japan should know. They were, after all, masters of war crimes. As Americans, most of us are familiar with the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor that brought America into the war with Imperial Japan on December 7 1941, but the War in Asia had been raging for years when that happened. And that war saw true atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese. If today we are going to condemn America for the crime of using nuclear weapons on Imperial Japan, we should be very clear about what kind of nation Imperial Japan was.
Imperial Japan was a worthy ally for Nazi Germany. Like Nazi Germany, the Imperial Japanese believed in their own racial superiority. Living in a nation where there were no significant minorities to oppress and exterminate, Imperial Japan sought for such outside of her borders. Before Imperial Japan turned her guns on America, she had China in her sights. Japan’s invasion of China was brutal. Though China’s army was primitive, and poorly equipped, Japan’s victory was neither quick nor easy. The Chinese bravely resisted, but were defeated.
The Japanese were cruel victors. The set an example for China in their pacification and occupation of the capital of the Republic of China, Nanking (Nanjing). Historically, this operation is often called the Rape of Nanking, and rape it was. The Japanese Army systematically raped the women of the city. The actual count of women raped by the Japanese army is unknown, but estimates range from twenty to eighty thousand women. This was rape as a tool of intimidation. Rape as an instrument of control (as it often is) writ large as a policy of the Japanese army.
Such brutality was unfortunately merely part of the pacification effort. Slaughter was another tool applied with vigor and zest. Again, the exact toll will never be known. Unlike the Germans in their death camps, the Imperial Japanese did not keep meticulous records of the lives they snuffed out. Accounts vary from as low as “merely” 100,000 murdered (those would be Japanese estimates, who would have an interest in minimizing the atrocity) to estimates as high as three times that number.
The International Military Tribunal of the Far East estimates 260,000 casualties; China’s official estimate is 300,000 casualties, based on the evaluation of the Nanjing War Crimes Tribunal. Japanese historians estimate a lower death toll, in the vicinity of 100,000–200,000.
Source. It should be noted that the low estimate would put the death toll in line with that of the Hiroshima bombing, while the higher estimates would be greater than the combined death toll of both atomic bombings. Men, women, and children butchered individually or in small groups as part of an overall policy of extreme brutality designed to brutalize and intimidate a defeated foe.
So by all means, remember Hiroshima today, but understand it in its context. Are we not always told by the Left that we have to understand an events context to truly understand the event? The context of Hiroshima is not that of Pearl Harbor, an attack that while perhaps dishonorable in its implementation at least attacked military installations, facilities, and personnel. The context of Hiroshima is the Rape of Nanking, and measured against that great atrocity the bombing takes a more rational shape, as opposed to the hyperventilation’s about the bombing being done with an atomic weapon. It was, in the end, a necessary act of war, a feat of science and engineering, and a triumph of American arms. Celebrate Hiroshima Day, and Nagasaki Day to come, and remember the atrocities of the Japanese Empire that are so often glossed over in the rush to condemn “evil” America again and again.
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Tags: World War II
