Re: The Reasons for Japan's surrender

We have a tradition of not hitting a defeated foe when he is down, but we should resist that tradition when it comes to the Leftist. Leftists, born in the Communist Anti-Americanism of the 1930s & 1940s, and battle hardened during their anti-American Vietnam victory, continue on fighting against America long after the Soviet Union has disbanded. So someone should make note of it when they are ultimately proved to be wrong. For example, weren’t they all screaming that the U.S. was defeated in Iraq? Weren’t they urging the government to admit defeat and withdraw American troops? What are they saying now? In fact, where did they go?

They haven’t gone any place. Their hatred of America is just a virulent. The love to quibble; so I’ll add that by America, I mean traditional America. Many would be utterly happy if the U.S. could be turned into a European clone. Leftism in Europe was never opposed to the extent it was in America. It has transmuted itself into Welfare-Statism, and if we could do that here in the U.S., perhaps the Leftists would let up on us a bit – if we apologized for all our American sins, turned in our guns, submitted to Big Government, and embraced the ideals of Marx and Lenin.

Another example is the accusation that America bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima for petty reasons unrelated to military goals. “Everyone knows,” the leftists tell us, that the Japanese were ready to give up. Well, everyone doesn’t know that. The biography of Hirohito describes how lightly he was taking the bombings. There is some ambivalence about his public and private statements, but Herbert Bix believed Hirohito was more concerned about Russian occupation than about nuclear bombs.

And just yesterday an article was published by Mari Yamaguchi quoting some passages from Tojo’s diary, recently extracted from the Japanese National archives, showing that Tojo was in favor of continuing the war even after the nuclear bombs had been dropped. http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jg-g0TASLocXq4cMWCu_4tjjfSWAD92GT6N81 This is one more bit of evidence (if any more was needed) that Truman and his advisors were right in dropping the bombs – both of them – on Japan. The bombs didn’t influence the head of Japanese military forces, the architect of Japan’s war, Tojo, but they did influence Hirohito – along with his belief that Japan would eventually lose. The bombs gave Hirohito a convenient excuse. His biographer believes he was more worried about Russian occupation than the loss of Japanese lives in bombings. Tojo wrote in his diaries: “Now that the diplomatic steps have been taken after the emperor’s judgment, I have decided to refrain from making any comments about it, though I have a separate view.”

Will Leftists arise beating their breasts chanting mea culpa, mea maxima culpa? I don’t think so. They don’t even know they have been defeated on this issue. They are like Tojo sitting in his cell saying “I have a separate view.”

Lawrence Helm