This week marks the 70th anniversary of a very dark chapter of human history, the U.S. incineration of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a war crime that has been rationalized in popular U.S. history, writes Gary G. Kohls.
By Gary G. Kohls
August 6, 2015, is the 70th anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a civilian city that had minimal military value despite the claims of President Harry Truman when he announced the event to the American people.
An estimated 80,000 innocent civilians plus 20,000 weaponless young Japanese conscripts died instantly in the Hiroshima bombing raid. Hundreds of thousands more suffered slow deaths and disabilities from agonizing burns, radiation sickness, leukemia, anemia, thrombocytopenia and untreatable infections. Another shameful reality was the fact that 12 American Navy pilot POWs, their existence well known to the U.S. command prior to the bombing, were instantly incinerated in the Hiroshima jail on that fateful day.
The mushroom cloud from the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6, 1945.
The Japanese survivors and their progeny suffered a fate similar to the survivors and progeny of America’s “Atomic Soldiers,” who were exposed in the line of duty to the hundreds of nuclear tests in the 1950s and 1960s or to the depleted uranium that the U.S. military has used in the two Gulf Wars. These groups were afflicted with horrible radiation-induced illnesses, congenital anomalies, genetic mutations, immune deficiencies, cancers and premature deaths.
The whole truth about the Hiroshima slaughter the first of only two cases of nuclear bombs being dropped in wartime, with the second coming only three days later at Nagasaki has been heavily censored and mythologized ever since. In 1945, war-weary Americans accepted the propaganda that the bombings were necessary to shorten the war and prevent what U.S. officials claimed could be the loss of a million U.S. soldiers during a November 1945 invasion of Japan.
On Aug. 9, 1945, the U.S. military dropped the second atomic bomb on the equally defenseless city of Nagasaki, which no longer had any military value to Japan. “Fat Man,” the plutonium bomb named after British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, was detonated before the Japanese leadership fully understood what had happened at Hiroshima.
The premeditated killing of so many civilians would be defined by the Nuremburg tribunal in the context of Germany’s actions as an international war crime and a crime against humanity. Of course, the reason that the United States wasn’t sanctioned for Hiroshima and Nagasaki as Germany was for the Jewish Holocaust and other atrocities was that America was the victor and the occupier and thus was in charge of making and enforcing the rules in the post-World War II international order.
So, the official War Department-approved, highly censored version of the end of the war in the Pacific was added to an ever-lengthening list of myths that we Americans have been continuously fed by our corporate-controlled military, political and media opinion leaders. In the process, the gruesomeness and cruelty of war has been cunningly propagandized so that we consumers of information see only the glorification of American militarism.
My high school history teachers all seemed to be ex-jocks who weren’t athletically talented enough to make it into the professional ranks. The main chance for them to play games for pay was to join the teaching profession and thus be available to coach high school athletics. American history was of secondary importance in many small town high schools. Thus, my classmates and I “learned” our lessons from some very uninspired, very bored and/or very uninformed teachers who would rather have been on the playing field.
In my coach’s defense, the history books that they had to teach from had been highly censored in order to promote patriotism; and so we “learned” that most everything that the “noble” British colonizers and “honorable” U.S. empire-builders ever did in the history of warfare was self-sacrificing, democracy-promoting and Christianizing – and that everything their revolutionary colonial victims did was barbaric, atheistic and evil. Anybody who resisted colonial oppressors was treated as a terrorist.
It was from these history books that we learned about the “glorious” end of the war against Japan via nuclear incineration. Probably everybody in my high school, including myself, swallowed the post-war propaganda hook, line and sinker.
Of course, I now realize that my classmates and I, just like most other Americans (including the volunteer or conscripted members of the military), have been naive victims of “lies our history teachers taught us.” In their defense, those teachers had been misled in their own schooling by equally mis-informed teachers who got their information from a variety of dis-informers who wrote the books: and those authors were the war- and empire-justifying militarists and assorted uber-patriotic pseudo-historians who had been duped into believing the myth of American exceptionalism.
Not included in that group of true believers were the 50,000 WWII American soldiers, members of the “Greatest Generation,” who in many cases logically and understandably deserted or went AWOL during their war service, a reality that also has been conveniently censored out of our consciousness.
Post-War Japan
One of General Douglas MacArthur’s first acts after taking over as Viceroy of Japan was to confiscate or otherwise destroy all the photographic evidence documenting the horrors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He imposed total censorship over journalists who wanted to report to the world about what had really happened at Ground Zero, again proving the old adage that “the first casualty of war is truth.”
Embedding journalists in the U.S. military so that only America-friendly reportage happened wasn’t the original idea of General Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf in Gulf War I.
In 1995, the Smithsonian Institution was preparing to correct some of the 50-year-old pseudo-patriotic myths about the Pacific War by staging an honest, historically-accurate display dealing with the atomic bombings from the Japanese civilian perspective.
Swift, vehement and well-orchestrated condemnations directed at the Smithsonian historians’ plans to tell unwelcome truths about war came from right-wing pro-war veterans organizations, the GOP-dominated Congress at the time, and other militarist groups (such as House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s paymaster Lockheed Martin, one of many war-profiteering merchants-of-death multinationals whose profits and products depend on Congressional and Pentagon largesse).
Gingrich threatened to stop federal funding of the Smithsonian, thus forcing it to censor-out all of the contextually important parts of the real story. And so the pseudo-patriotic myths about Hiroshima and Nagasaki continue to be preserved to this very day.
So, we historically illiterate Americans are blocked, again and again, from learning historical truths about the American Empire – and the control that the military and multinational corporations have over it. Anything that might shake voter confidence in or incite grassroots revolution against – the unelected ruling elites, the Pentagon or the conscienceless transnational corporations (that control our two major party politicians, the mainstream media and the “invisible hand of the market”) is verboten.
The Smithsonian historians did have a gun to their heads, but in the melee, we voters failed to learn an important historical point, and that is this: the war in the Pacific could have ended in spring 1945 without the need for the August atomic bombings, and therefore there might have been no Okinawa bloodbath that senselessly doomed thousands of American Marines and Japanese soldiers.
And there would have been no need for an American land invasion of Japan in November. Indeed, in the 1980s, top secret records were revealed that the contingency plans for a large-scale U.S. invasion (planned for no sooner than Nov. 1, 1945) would have been unnecessary. However, to the victors go the spoils, and the American victors were the ones running the war crimes tribunals and determining the content of my history text books.
Japan Seeking Surrender
American intelligence agencies, with the full knowledge of President Franklin Roosevelt’s and President Harry Truman’s administrations, were fully aware of Japan’s search for ways to honorably surrender months before Truman gave the fateful order to incinerate Hiroshima.
Japan was working on peace negotiations through its ambassador in Moscow as early as April of 1945, with surrender feelers from Japan occurring as far back as 1944. Truman knew of these developments because the U.S. had broken the Japanese code even before Pearl Harbor, and all of Japan’s military and diplomatic messages were being intercepted. On July 13, 1945, Foreign Minister Togo wrote: “Unconditional surrender (giving up all sovereignty, including the deposing of Emperor Hirohito) is the only obstacle to peace.”
Truman’s advisers knew about these efforts and that the war could have ended through diplomacy by simply conceding a post-war figurehead position for the emperor (who was regarded as a deity in Japan). That reasonable concession was refused by the U.S. in its demand for unconditional surrender, which announced at the 1943 Casablanca Conference between Roosevelt and Churchill and then reiterated at the Potsdam Conference by Truman, Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Still, the Japanese continued searching for an honorable peace through negotiations.
Even Secretary of War Henry Stimson said: “the true question was not whether surrender could have been achieved without the use of the bomb but whether a different diplomatic and military course would have led to an earlier surrender. A large segment of the Japanese cabinet was ready in the spring of 1945 to accept substantially the same terms as those finally agreed on.” In other words, Stimson knew that the U.S. could have ended the war before Hiroshima.
After Japan officially surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945 six days after the Nagasaki bomb General MacArthur allowed the emperor to remain in place as spiritual head of Japan, the very condition that forced the Japanese leadership to refuse to accept the earlier, humiliating, “unconditional surrender” terms.
So the two essential questions that need answering in order to comprehend what was going on behind the scenes are these: 1) Why did the U.S. refuse to accept Japan’s only demand concerning its surrender (the retention of the emperor) and 2) why were the atomic bombs used when victory in the Pacific was assured?
There are a number of factors that contributed to the Truman administration’s fateful decision to use the atomic bombs, including:
1) Investment. The U.S. had made a huge investment in time, mind and money (a massive $2 billion in 1940 dollars) to produce three bombs, and there was no inclination – and no guts – to stop the momentum.
2) Revenge. Like many Americans, the U.S. military and political leadership had a tremendous appetite for revenge because of the Pearl Harbor “surprise” attack. Mercy wasn’t in the mindset of the U.S. military or the average American Christians and their churches. The missions against Hiroshima and Nagasaki were accepted as necessary, with no questions asked, by most of those folks who only knew the sanitized, national security state version of events. Most Americans wanted to believe the cunningly-orchestrated propaganda.
3) A “use it or lose it” mentality and scientific curiosity. The fissionable material in Hiroshima’s bomb was uranium. The Trinity test bomb (exploded on July 16, 1945) and the Nagasaki bomb were plutonium bombs. Scientific curiosity was a significant factor that pushed the project to its deadly completion. The Manhattan Project leaders were curious. “What would happen if a city was leveled by a single uranium bomb?” “What would happen if plutonium was used?” With the war against Nazi Germany (the original intended target) over, the most conscientious scientists felt that the bombs should not be used against civilian targets but they lost out in the internal debate.
4) “Orders are orders.” Actually, the military decision to drop both bombs had been made well in advance of August 1945. Accepting the surrender of Japan prior to their use was not an option if the experiment was to go ahead. It should be obvious to anybody that the three-day interval between the two bombs was unconscionably short if the purpose of the first bomb was to force immediate surrender. Japan’s communications and transportation capabilities were in shambles, and no one, not the Japanese high command, not even the U.S. military, fully understood what had happened at Hiroshima. (It is a fascinating fact that the Manhattan Project had been so top secret that even MacArthur, commanding general of the entire Pacific theatre, was kept out of the loop – until July 1.)
5) The Russians. Stalin had proclaimed his intent to enter the war with Japan 90 days after V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day, May 8, 1945), which would have been two days after Hiroshima was bombed. Indeed, Russia did declare war on Japan on Aug. 8 and was advancing eastward across Manchuria when Nagasaki, ironically the center of Japanese Christianity, was incinerated.
Certainly Russia still felt the sting of the humiliating defeat and the loss of territory from the disastrous Russo-Japanese War of 1905 when the Russians were beaten by upstart Japan. Ego-bloated nation-states have long memories, especially when they lose an argument, lose a fight or are embarrassed in public. Witness the 150-year-old enduring devotion of white segregationists to the Confederate flag or consider the rabid right-wing, sociopathic neo-Nazis all around the world in their devotion to Adolf Hitler and the symbol of fascism, the Swastika.
Spoils of War
The U.S. didn’t want Japan surrendering to the Soviet Union with the Soviets getting a share of the spoils of war. The Soviet Union was soon to be one of only two world superpowers – and therefore a future enemy of the United States. So the first “messages” of the Cold War were sent by the U.S. to the USSR on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945.
The Soviets didn’t receive the spoils of the Pacific War that they had anticipated, and the two superpowers were instantly mired in the multi-trillion-dollar stalemated nuclear arms race and the multitude of proxy wars that regularly risked the total extinction of humanity.
But somehow most of us still hang on to our shaky “my country right or wrong” patriotism, desperately wanting to believe the myths that say that the war-profiteering corporate elite (and the politicians, military leaders and media talking-heads who are in their employ) only work for peace, justice, equality and liberty, supposedly “making the world safe for democracy,” but really for predatory capitalism.
Our understanding of Aug. 6 and 9, 1945, is just another example of the brain-washing that goes on in all “total war” political agendas, which are accompanied by the inevitable human death and destruction that is euphemistically labeled “splendid slaughter,” “collateral damage” or “friendly fire.”
Among the other censored out realities of American wars include what really happened in the U.S. military’s participation in the destabilize-and-conquer campaigns and coups d’etat in Ukraine, Honduras, Venezuela, Libya, and bloody invasions and/or occupations of Korea, Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Granada, Panama, the Philippines, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Haiti, Colombia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc.
This list doesn’t necessarily cover the uncountable secret Pentagon/CIA covert operations and assassination plots in the rest of the world, where scores of “sovereign” nations have been coerced into allowing the building of American military bases (permission lavishly paid for by bribes or threats of economic or military sanctions).
It might already be too late to effectively confront the corporate hijacking of liberal democracy in America. It might be too late to successfully bring down the arrogant and greedy ruling elites who are selfishly dragging our planet down the road to destruction. The rolling coups d’etat orchestrated by the profiteers of what I call Friendly American Fascism may have already accomplished their goals.
But I suppose there is always hope. Rather than being silent about the destabilizing conflicts that the warmongers are provoking all over the planet (with the very willing assistance of Wall Street, the Pentagon, the weapons industries and their lapdogs in Congress), people of conscience need to start learning the whole truth of history, despite the psychological discomfort that they may feel (cognitive dissonance) when the lies that they had been led to believe can’t be believed any more. We need to start owning up to America’s uncountable war crimes that have been orchestrated in our names.
And so the whistle-blowers among us need to rise up in dissent, go to the streets in protest and courageously refuse to cooperate with those sociopathic personalities that have gradually transformed America into a criminal rogue state.
Like Nazi Germany or Fascist Japan, rogue nations throughout history have been eventually targeted for downfall by the billions of angry, fed-up, suffering victims who live both inside and outside its borders. That fate awaits America unless its leaders confess their sins and promise to join the peace-loving human race.
Doing what is right for the whole of humanity for a change, rather than just doing what is profitable or advantageous for our over-privileged, over-consumptive, toxic and unsustainable American way of life, would be real honor, real patriotism and an essential start toward real peace.
Dr. Kohls writes a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, an alternative newsweekly magazine that is published in Duluth, Minnesota. Many of his columns are archived at http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn.
For a carefully researched 1995 documentary report by Peter Jennings, titled “Hiroshima: Why the Bomb Was Dropped” that is consistent with Gary Kohls’ fine article, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-WnLNLe3sk#t=1437
Everyone that examines know facts understands that Zionists control the US government by threatening to fund the opposition of any US politician who refuses to do Israel’s bidding.
Are you going to tell us it’s the Tories or Patriots who put Zionists up to this?
https://www.google.com/search?q=Israel+controls+US+government&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari
Yes. Zionism was hatched by the British Empire in the 19th century, as one possible scenario for advancing The Imperial Agenda. WWII presented the perfect opportunity to secure a “Beach Head” for the Western Empire (successor to the Brit Empire, successor to the Anglo-Dutch business Empires of royally-chartered Trading/colonizing Companies, successor to the Venetian Imperial activities, successor to Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire, successor to the old Roman Empire itself) to “reclaim” its’ Eastern Provinces. They’ve worked long & hard to steer their chosen “Fall Guy” into place. You’re doing the work of covering the tracks of The Western Empire by believing the Zionist tail is wagging this ANCIENT Imperial Dog. The Old Whore is alive & well, and using whatever tools come-to-hand to advance the Imperial Agenda. The Royalist/Parliamentarian bit is just The Empire-Republic Civil War in the English-speaking Provinces. 35 Nations and a dozen Empires were birthed by The Old Whore (the Roman Empire). Yeah, right, a few Meglomaniac Jews from one of The Roman Empire’s Provinces, run the World. I don’t buy into that scenario, even though I know this is bucking the trend; that an entire industry has been built up to “prove” that Jewish people are at the bottom (or Top perhaps?) of all these nefarious activities. They have some accomplices, for sure, who loyal servants to The Old Whore. She might even put one of them on “The Throne” just to continue Its’ task of deflecting attention from those who actually Reign over this global Empire.
Ira Michael Heyman was the then-new Secretary of the Smithsonian who was caught in the controversy over the attempted even-handed exhibition of the Enola Gay and was forced to pull it for fear of damaging the institution if he did not. That is ironic because, as Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley and a leading candidate for President of the institution, Heyman advocated divestiture of the UC from its nuclear weapons labs at Livermore and Los Alamos — its twin shadow campuses in California and New Mexico. Since the university has been thoroughly integrated into the military-industrial complex since at least the Manhattan Project and since many of the wealthy Regents have financial interests in the nuclear support industries, Heyman’s candidacy didn’t stand a chance and he moved on to the Smithsonian after a brief stint teaching law at Berkeley.
A small search committee recently appointed Janet Napolitano, the exiting head of the Department of Homeland Security. as president of an institution that still bills itself as “the world’s greatest public university” even though it is no longer public. The faculty and student body remained largely silent at what in many other countries would have provoked university riots.
If the US had not used the A-bombs in Japan, would we now be the arrogant threat to the world we are today? And has anyone considered the A-bombs use then were advocated by those with the same American exceptionalist philosophy for spreading “democracy and freedom†that has been carried forward to this day — while making the US directly and indirectly responsible for somewhere upwards of thirty million human lives to date since WWII?
If we didn’t use the bombs on Japan in 1945 we might not be responsible for those 30,000,000 deaths and might not be the arrogant and self-serving threat to all life on this planet that we currently are.
IMO, whether we became the arrogant, self-serving threat to the World—or not—didn’t depend on the use or non-use of the Bomb. It depended on which Faction gained control over our Government: Tories, or Patriots; Royalists, or Parliamentarians; agents of The Empire, or agents for The Republic. This always was, and still is, “The Duet” always at play throughout our 400-year history. FDR stood with The Parliamentarians, and even called out the Wall Streeters as “Economic Royalists”, which was no mere figure-of-speech; it was simply the plain Truth. Anyway, he died, the Tory/Royalist/Empire-worshipers IMMEDIATELY started gaining the upper hand, and WWII ended the way it did; The Western Empire was crowned by the keepers of the old British Empire, and nothing but wars-for-The-Empire have we fought ever since.
Prior to the outbreak of WW I I, the Japanese had a historical reputation as fierce warriors and conquistadors. In my opinion, more ferocious than any other Axis power. During that same war, Berliners, two hundred fifty thousand, mostly civilians, perished taking up arms against the Russian onslaught. It ended in a bloody street by street and door by door confrontation and Soviet victory. In light of this fact and other similar examples, (Stalingrad) , our allied forces had one of two choices; slow, street by street, town by town slaughter, or the instantaneous horrors of the A-Bomb. I dismiss any value associated with a signed surrender; towards the end, small arms were being rapidly distributed into urban areas. Surrender didn’t work in Berlin and it wouldn’t have worked in Tokyo or anywhere else in Japan. Only the absolute shock of the Bomb was sufficiently demoralizing to prevent another D-day.
I’m still catching up on my internet reading, so here is a late entry on the thread topic which many here might appreciate.
Were there alternatives to the atomic bombings?
Obviously the author and I disagree about some of the issues, but he does provide some really good background material.
One point I learned from the piece was that Truman wasn’t really yet in charge. The US military had been pretty well controlled by Roosevelt until he began his rapid decline into death. Whether a healthy Roosevelt would have permitted the firebombings in Europe and Japan is something I’m not likely to ever know.
And Roosevelt left Truman in a very bad way. By his very nature FDR played things close to the vest, and Truman was thrown into an ugly situation where he spent a long time playing ‘catch-up’.
By playing on Truman’s ignorance and inexperience, the military was essentially running the war at the end. And not very well, in my personal opinion.
By the way, the linked blog is darned interesting reading. By scrolling down you’ll find the title of his previous post about the A-bomb:
Trinity at 70: “Now we are all sons of bitches.â€
Many researchers (who are not on the nuclear payroll) believe that the release of radiation from atomic bomb tests, nuclear energy and nuclear meltdowns are responsible for the cancer epidemic in the U.S.
Do you know that 500,000 people die of cancer a year in the U.S. ?!
Enenews dot com is a great resource for more information on this.
What you left out is that “many researchers” believe that radiation from careless and needless X-rays (doctor and dentist) as well as exposure to airline passengers at airports and at high altitudes also contribute to the “cancer epidemic”.
Not to mention the high rate of irradiation of human lungs by the polonium within tobacco. And speaking of tobacco, even forgetting that, the chemicals from the growing and treatment and burning/inhaling the crap are major issues.
And then there are is the witches brew of unresearched chemicals in food.
What nation- group of People embarked on the search for NUCLEAR Weapons? — vis-a-vis the nuclear arms race…?
What insane mathematician’s equations led US to accept the concept of
Mutually Assured Destruction? A Thing that morphed into a Game Theory
of Gaining the Advantage over opposing strategies/forces as in Who’ll Blink First
and, how will we compel The Other to retreat before both sides launch missiles?
These are the Tactical/talking points framework that propels US/ European “Negotiators,” that are “protecting”/favoring Israel from the trumped-up charge of a Theoretical Persian Bomb.
( Stop!- Google search Mordicai Venunu — right now! )
What group-of-nations maintain multiple Armed-and-Ready to fire Atomic and Hydrogen BOMBS from multiple platforms as you read this??? ! —
Is sanctioned Iran in that picture !!! ? NO ! and WTF gives US the Right-of-Authority over all the f’n people of the WORLD !!! ? — Only our Super Unnatural Supply of Destructive WEAPONs with a Unique Willingness to deploy said weapons upon weaker opponents and their civilians.
Martian Law on Planet Earth.
You’ve just described the neocon/Zionist war that’s been ongoing across the globe for decades.
It makes no difference at all that they haven’t declared war, or that our “news media” has not called it what it is.
We wouldn’t want to upset those neocons and Zionists by telling the truth now would we? Of course not, especially since mainstream network mews media is the “stealth” propaganda arm of the neocon/Zionist war machine…
The modernization of U.S. nuclear weapons deployed in Europe is part of the growing nuclear arms race. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the U.S. maintains 1,920 strategic nuclear warheads ready to launch (out of a total of 7,300), compared to 1,600 Russian ready to launch (out of 8,000). Including French and British weapons, NATO nuclear forces have some 8,000 nuclear warheads, of which 2,370 are ready to launch. Adding those of the Chinese, Pakistani, Indian, Israeli and North Korean weapons, the total number of nuclear warheads is estimated at 16,300, of which 4,350 are ready to launch. And the nuclear arms race continues the ongoing modernization of arsenals.
For this reason the big hand of “Apocalypse Watch,†the symbolic timepiece that the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists†uses to tell us how many minutes until the midnight of nuclear war, has been moved from five to midnight in 2012 to three to midnight in 2015, the same level as in 1984 in the midst of the Cold War.
The risk is particularly high that one day nuclear weapons will be used in the Middle East, where the only country to possess them is Israel, which unlike Iran has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty. According to estimates, the Israeli armed forces have 100-400 nuclear warheads, including H-bombs, with a power equivalent to almost 4,000 Hiroshima bombs. Israeli delivery systems include over 300 U.S. F-16 and F-15 fighter-bombers, also armed with U.S.-Israeli Popeye missiles with nuclear warheads, and approximately 50 Jericho II ballistic missiles on mobile launching ramps. Israel also has four Dolphin submarines, modified for nuclear attack, provided by Germany, which last September delivered the fourth of the six planned.
In addition, the United States has signed agreements to supply, to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, nuclear technology and fissile material with which they can acquire nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia has officially declared that does not prevent them from building or acquiring nuclear weapons with the help of Pakistan, whose nuclear weapons program they fund to the tune of 60 percent.
On this background the Vienna negotiation appears as a tragic melodrama. It put the spotlight on Iran, which does not possess nuclear weapons and whose civilian nuclear program is verifiable, but it leaves aside the dramatic reality of the nuclear arms race. This was done to convince the public that, with the Iranian nuclear agreement, “Our world is safer.”
Iran nuclear-free, Italy nuclearized
By Manlio Dinucci
http://www.voltairenet.org/article188215.html
Some of us have read extensively on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the firebombing of 60 cities in Japan, and have known the truth about America’s barbaric acts of cruelty for some time. But truth will always be a private affair – for wisdom seekers only – in idiot Amerika.
in idiot America
http://atimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Hiroshima-A-Bomb-victim.jpg
Somebody mentioned 1963 among the things that American public prefers not to notice. I would go further – 1865. This where the path was chosen firmly. How many Americans know that USA and Russian Empire were allies. Unfortunately assassination of Lincoln (practically simultaneous first assassination attempt on Russian Emperor doesn’t leave doubt on who is behind both assassination attempts) prevented plans to blockade Britain and slay the monster at its roots.
Well Done!! Good to know I’m not the only one listening to Tarpley. 1776 was only the START of a war to be free of EMPIRE. We’re still fighting it…and have LOST more battles than won…but “we’re still here, you bastards” to quote Steve McQ in Papillon.
I’ve often thought Harry Turtledove should have written one of his “What if…” books on the consequences of Lincoln surviving the assassination attempt. I’ve read speculation that Lincoln would regroup, build a fleet of ocean-going monitors and troop ships, liberate Ireland, recruit them and use Ireland as a staging ground for the invasion of Britain. France would come to their aid (with much republican resistance in their rear), Russia would come to our aid, to slay the beast for the Crimean War. Many German Principalities would join in. Many influences came out of the Civil War. Bismark was influenced by “Lincoln’s economists” Henry Carey and Friedrich List, which is WHY Germany has been the economic powerhouse of Europe (Hitler was influenced by the CSA for its’ “scientific” management of a slave population). Egypt was influenced by “Lincoln’s Officers” who indirectly gave the Brits a black eye, with their victory. Some of them went to Egypt to train them and pass on a certain kind of civic “esprit de corps”. Of course, the Russian Emperor freed the serfs in 1861, I think it was. Had the Brits been crushed and changed into a Republic, de-throning Vicky, then her son Eddy #7 wouldn’t have been in a position to sew the seeds of WWI, and WWII-as-a-consequence of WWI, so also no Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The U.N might have then been born in the 1870’s, and we would probably be living in an advanced “Star Trek”-type of society by now. But as there has always been “Tories” in our ranks, they would’ve found any number of ways to derail this train-of-events.
History books are for a reason dominated by British Authors. Apart from slander and misrepresentation they like to employ omission were possible. It baffles me how most of Americans don’t know the original Cassius Clay in who’s honour Muhammad Ali was named at birth. American embassador in Sankt-Petersburg that brought Russian emancipation manifesto (1861) to Linkoln in 1863 and convinced later to change the goal of civil war into emancipation. Clay ensured that when British and French were ready to recognise Confederates as political entity and provide direct military assistance, Russia responded that in that case it will declare war on them on the side of Lincoln. Letters between Lincoln and Russian Emperor are a good place to start rediscovering that topic. Clay was the negotiator for Alaska purchase from American side, not Seward. And it was confirmed years later but the propaganda already placed Seward into history books. Clay (and Russia) was well aware of gold deposites in Alaska. He was supervising The project that gave power of money to Western Union company that was paid to build telegraph line to Russia through Alaska. And their reports were already saying about discovery of gold. Unfortunately, Russians falsely assumed that Seward is on their team, thanks to corrupt Russian embassador in USA. Bottom line is that history is given to very wrong hands to guard. And there is no way out. The mount of garbage is too high to clean
Always read/research about the historian. That will help to form your own opinion about the history and save you from being led to darkness
Yes. Tzar Alexander II’s bold move to free the serfs was probably just the shove needed to “give life” to an idea whose time had finally come, after 80 years of debate and delay, fearing it would lead exactly to where Lincoln and Davis found themselves; in extremely bloody Civil War. My understanding on Alaska is that, since the British Empire (the singular “Superpower” of that era, complete with bad reputation-and-all) was also Russia’s main enemy, they felt USA was in a better position to defend Alaska, given that the Union had 1.5 to 2 million seasoned veteran troops on hand, and at least another 750,000 seasoned, veteran, former Confederate soldiers, many of whom might be persuaded-to-service. There was also, just before the Civil War, the “54 40 or fight” issue, seeking to forcibly take west-coast Canada from the British Empire, all the way to “Russian America” (Alaska). But those Factions lost out to the slave states who wanted to fight the Mexican War (against a sister Republic, the idea of which offended the Northern states) in order to expand the southern “slave territory”. It could be fairly-guessed that any virgin territory would be rich in resources, and only a matter of time before gold, oil, etc…would be found. Anyway, it is a fitting honor that both Russia and USA will sponsor the joint project of building the World LandBridge, spanning the narrow channel between Alaska and Siberia, linking 4 Continents; The Americas, Eurasia, and Africa, with Maglev-, rail-, pipe-, communication-, and powerlines, rendering sea and air travel almost obsolete. This will happen with our Russian allies, if we can ever get our treasonous Tories under control (Loyalists to the oligarchical descendant of the British Empire). They’ve retarded our progress from-the-start, and made a laughing-stock out of us.
This weekend I visited a fundamentalist relative who said he has been giving donations to John Hagee. This man is a mega-church Christian Zionist who provides a ‘christian’ religious justification for everything Israel has done, is doing, and plans to do.
The relative explained to me that Israel is comprised of God’s Chosen People, and is by that entitled to do anything it damned well pleases, and if its continued prosperity involves murdering all the Palestinians trespassing on the Holy Land, then so be it. God’s will is not to be thwarted.
I quickly came to realize that this is a DEFINITION, and thus is immune from logic and reason and facts.
Japan Seeking Surrender
The equally determined belief that poor Japan was desperately seeking to surrender, but was refused by the Evil Americans so they could use their Atom Bombs is another of those DEFINITIONS which defies any evidence to the contrary.
No amount of evidence will shake either my fundie relative or Mr. Kohls, so I did not and will not waste any of my time on the issue.
John Hagee calls for preemptive “nooklar†strike on Iran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDh1Vr7qajA
You might want to try and help your relative understand he’s been a victim of an elaborate scheme to fool Christians as mass murder and theft does not subscribe to Christ’s teachings.
The Scofield Bible, promoting Zionism was actually written and published by Zionists while they promoted it as the work of Scofield who was actually a drunkard that deserted his wife and children.
Not really.
Had the Japanese voted to surrender, under any terms, it would have had to been agreed upon by unanimous vote by the entire cabinet. While some of the cabinet was open to a negotiated peace under harsh terms (not the Potsdam terms, but close) the holdouts, Hirohito, Kido, Anami, Umezu, Toyoda, Suzuki, Yonai, were willing to wait and see how much the allied resolve would weaken after the Battle of Kyushu. Even had there been a serious negotiation Mr Kohls is wrong to say retention of the Emperor would have been the only sticking point. The entire cabinet was firm on five provisions to end the war diplomatically before the bombings: retention of the editor, no occupation, no war crime trials, no disarmament, and no change in government.
None of these points are really contestable by the way.
Even after the first bombing the hardcore in the cabinet thought it was one time event, and would not vote to surrender. Even after Nagasaki, the hardest of the hardcore attempted a coup to stop the surrender.
So yes, the atomic bombings were absolutely necessary to end the war without several hundred thousand dead (not to mention the Japanese ordered all 250,000 POW’s executed if Japan was invaded) on terms that wouldn’t leave the fascist Imperial government in power.
Until we Americans come to accept that on November 22, 1963 that we encountered an American Coup D’état, there is no hope for change. Until we all understand what Smedley Butler was trying to warn us Americans about, there is no hope for change. What Colonel Butler had experienced with his generation, JFK and the nation suffered with that generation’s children in command. The JFK generation of this corporate class of children raised the current generation of elite children who we are now so desperately struggling to deal with. Lying about the terrible effects of those first Atom Bombs was only a beginning for this corrupt bunch, and their takeover. John F. Kennedy while attempting to make peace with third world nations, and along with back channeling a nuclear test ban treaty with Nikita Khrushchev paid the ultimate price for his attempt. Since that fateful Coup d’état back in November 22, 1963 nothing has seemed to be effective towards stopping this selfish bunch of corporatist and military war mongers. As if this has not been enough to satisfy their greed, now via bank bailouts and war spending up the kazoo this elite regime of bandits has come home to roast. Is it not a curious thing that now these crooks call Social Security an entitlement? Here you thought that was being taken out of your paycheck on payday…well think again. It’s all theirs, I tell you, it’s all theirs!
Yes, Joe Tedesky, – Smedley Butler was a shining light in 1934 as he exposed a right-wing conspiracy led by corporatists to overthrow our elected President.
After 9/11 Lt. Col. Richard Butler was a bright reflection of his predecessor.
http://www.visibility911.org/who-is-lt-colonel-steve-butler/
Mortimer, that link you provided only makes me want to reopen the 9/11 Truth Commission…oh, wait that was already done, my bad! Maybe we could name it ‘the Real Truth about 9/11 Commission’ ….thanks for the link. Never Forget!
I think #5 “the Russians” is the most likely reason for why the bombings were carried out. Very well written synopsis and analysis of the REAL history behind the end of WW2.
I agree that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan was without purpose … a case of let’s see what it can do, so long as the dead are not us.
But, I will argue that American History is nothing but a myth. The whole thing is a nationalistic smorgasbord of ‘making white right’ and ‘the other’ evil. It is also little more than a rationalization for retaining power in the hands of the elites and oligarchs. Coupled with the capitalist crusade to make everyone a consumer, the majority of Americans just assume that if we did it, or if we are doing it, it is for the good. And, anyone who suggests that what America (or Americans) does is suspect is by definition evil. In other words, we are a psychotic bunch of sociopaths.
Having said that, do have a nice (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nice) day.
Talk about hitting the nail on the head; that is the proverbial big picture and a testament that truth still lives.
Dr. Kohls if the truth would register with the American public your fact based analysis should have half of America out in the streets tomorrow — that’s how dire the situation will be if we don’t wake up soon from being kept in the dark.
I’ve alienated friends and family trying to get them to see reality and what our basking in the illusion of our own goodness is costing us and the world. When I send them all this article, I’ll send it anonymously and maybe they’ll read it thinking it’s comming from some well wisher other than myself.