Friday, March 29, AD 2024 6:30am

The Asian Holocaust

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”I want to make sure with my own eyes about this cruelty, so I can someday tell others about it as a witness.”

John Rabe, German Nazi businessman credited with organizing the efforts to save the lives of some 200,000 Chinese during the rape of Nanking that saw the murder of 300,000 Chinese civilians by the Imperial Japanese Army.

 

One of the problems of the analysis of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that the events are often treated as if they occurred in a moral vacuum.  They did not.  Here are a few of the crimes of the Empire of Japan:

 

1. Launching a sneak attack against a country you are not at war with.

2. Murdering approximately 20 million civilians in a war of aggression.

3. Using live enemy POWs and civilians for bayonet practice.

4. Forcing enemy civilian women to serve as “comfort women” for your troops.

5. Starving POWs and interned enemy civilians.

6. Beheading enemy POWs and civilians for such serious crimes as stealing a bowl of rice or failing to bow low enough to a camp guard.

7. Using entire enemy civilian populations as slave labor.

8. Confiscating red cross packages intended for starving POWs and interned civilian populations.

9. Dissecting live POWs in “scientific” experiments, and infecting others with plague viruses and poisons.

10. Using enemy civilians to clear out suspected mine fields, by herding them into the mine fields.

I could come up with a few dozen other examples with no strain at all.  The evil of the Third Reich is generally accepted.  Outside Asia, the crimes of the Empire of Japan are largely ignored or forgotten.  That was not the case in August of 1945.  There was a moral urgency to defeat Japan as swiftly as possible and to end the holocaust in east Asia they had unleashed.  Something to recall the next time you read a piece decrying the “immorality” of the atomic bombings.

 

 

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Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Saturday, August 8, AD 2015 5:53am

The critics and haters of the USA, from the National Schismatic Reporter to the Remnant, focus upon the evil and cruelty of the USA, its Masonic founders, its Mason President Truman who wanted the bomb dropped on a Catholic Church, etc.

Critics of the Bomb weren’t alive in 1945. Obviously they weren’t in the Army, Navy or Marines faced with death fighting a fanatical enemy. Nor were they prisoners of Japan.

Crickets.

Don L
Don L
Saturday, August 8, AD 2015 6:42am

I suspect many (but certainly not all) critics of America’s using the bomb are kissen-cousins to those who spend their lives taking down America by preaching lies about our deliberately killing the “Indians” with diseases we brought here as weapons.(failing to mention the lasting destruction of live “tobacco.”)

Paul W Primavera
Saturday, August 8, AD 2015 11:23am

Japan sowed the whirl wind. Guess what it reaped!
.
Be not deceived. God is not mocked. Whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap.
.
The Prophet Hosea and St Paul continue to speak on deaf ears.
.
🙁

Tom
Tom
Saturday, August 8, AD 2015 1:16pm

With all due respect, it’s a totally asinine and illogical argument that “party x” did “wrong thing y” in war and that therefore “party a” became justified doing “wrong thing z”

Seriously, are we suggesting on a site with “Catholic” in the title that two wrongs make a right?

No one doubts that the Japanese *military* and by extension her government committed war crimes. How in the world would that justify the US committing a war crime itself?

No, Axis atrocities don’t absolve the Allied powers, who should have known better, from their own war crimes, such as the fire-bombing of Dresden and other militarily useless cities in Europe, and the indiscriminate destruction of absolutely innocent civilian lives at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Don L
Don L
Saturday, August 8, AD 2015 1:49pm

Tom, your thinking is correct if that is what the issue was, but I’m afraid the issue was more complex. You might consider one more appropriate moral criterion to be “the lesser of two evils, and toss in the idea that the civilian population was effectively conscripted as part of the military–by its construct-to fight to the death (think radical Islam)
There was reasonable hope that millions of Japanese lives could be saved.
Having been there during the “occupation” I can assure you they were more than thankful to be offered the opportunity to become westernized, putting a permanent end to the evils of their bushido warrior mentality–thus saving unknown lives even to this day..

Tom
Tom
Saturday, August 8, AD 2015 2:40pm

There is no evidence that the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were “militarized.” I would challenge anyone to produce contemporary, reliable evidence that the people of those cities were armed combatants.

This claim, like the “1 million American dead” upon invasion claim, is an attempt to get around what we know happened: thousands of civilians directly and indiscriminately killed in order to compel a Japanese surrender. The towns were not bombed to destroy combatants, but to terrorize the Japanese government into surrendering. That such an act would save 50k or 500k soldiers’ lives is not a sufficient moral justification under Christian moral teaching.

Here’s what Ike said about the bombings: “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.”

Tom
Tom
Saturday, August 8, AD 2015 3:00pm

Admiral Leahy, Chief of Staff to FDR and Truman:
“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.

“The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. 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.”

Norman Cousins, relating a conversation with MacArthur:
“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.”
Assistant Secy of War, John McCloy:
“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.”

Tom
Tom
Saturday, August 8, AD 2015 3:08pm

Again, thick with ad hominems and name calling, thin on any Catholic rationale justifying the bombings.

I’m surprised, but shouldn’t be, that when shibboleths like the morally mandatory nature of the bombings is questioned, the long knives come out.

I expect that kind of argumentation from people like Shea, not from folks who say they’re committed Catholics.

Tom D
Tom D
Saturday, August 8, AD 2015 9:59pm

Tom, it’s not an ad hominem attack to state that you either don’t know history or that you tailor and cherry pick the facts that you want. Your opponents in this debate are not doing that. Don McC says you are lying. I think you are deluded. But it really doesn’t matter. You are wrong on your facts. period.

The only point I can grant you is that, yes, the nuclear attacks were a direct evil. The problem is that you effectively deny the truth about the alternatives, almost all of which are also direct evils. The invasion intends the deaths of those who oppose it, regardless of age or gender, and yes even some just in close proximity. The blockade intends the suffering and death by starvation of millions. Every time I or others point this out you are mum. Sorry, you cannot have only one direct evil in this debate. Facts are facts.

Foxfier
Admin
Saturday, August 8, AD 2015 10:13pm

Going to be less polite than others, in a vague hope it MIGHT penetrate.
Again, thick with ad hominems and name calling, thin on any Catholic rationale justifying the bombings.
Due to your own contributions, I must admit this is true for the combined total of the Bombing posts on this site in the last month.

Ernst Schreiber
Ernst Schreiber
Monday, August 10, AD 2015 10:30am

Re: Eisenhower, Leahy, MacArthur (according to Cousins), and McCloy:
.
J. Glenn Gray’s all.

Barbara Gordon
Barbara Gordon
Tuesday, August 11, AD 2015 1:45am

“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.”

This is pure bovine feces. McAthur & his staff provided Truman with the 50,000 number you keep mentioning re: the US deaths–except onstead of 50,000 total deaths–it eas 50,000 US dead from the first 30 days of the first phase of what was to be a 2 phase planned invasion of just part of the Japanese homeland. I have already cited an exact source of that info for you an an earlier post. MacArthur did indeed want to invade Japan–he was not content with Truman’s decision to bomb. The individual claiming that MacArthur saying he was never consulted either 1.is greatly exaggerating, 2. Is lying or 3. Simply misunderstood what he was told.

Nothing in Truman’s nature or pattern of political functioning would suggest that Truman would leave even the smallest stone unturned in gleaning any and all info available to him for decision making.

Re: your repeated claims that there is no Catholic belief that allows for the dropping of those two bombs on the Japanese under the situation that Truman found himself as the commander-in-chief of the US forces & also bearing great responsibility for the lives of all Allied forces. Again, I will point out that Truman had led men in battle during WW 1 & knew first hand what it was to face the death, hell, & suffering of war. I’m sure those first hand experiences greatly impacted his feelings of responsibility re: the savings of lives under his WW 2 leadership. Truman headed up a committee in the US Senate before becoming VP in which he worked tirelessly to make sure that our soldiers were provided with the most effective & best quality materials with which to fight these battles–in order to save US lives.

What does Catholic teaching have to say about the saving of lives and governmental responsibility to protect the lives, property, souls, and freedom of those under your governmental authority? What does Catholic teaching say about dragging wars on longer than necessary when you have in your hands the ability to bring one to a quick close? Before God, Truman’s first responsibility was to the men & women of our armed forces–and to the families who loaned them to the US govt for the fighting of this war. What in Catholic teaching would have vacated Truman’s responsibility to those US citizens?

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