The Legacy of Hiroshima

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Check with Chip. Broughtto you by retire Smart. I'm Chip
Maxwell. The forty ninth annual Gseven Summit is wrapping up G seven Group
of seven basically the leading democratic capitalistnations of the post World War two era,
the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy,

(00:21):
the European Union, Canada, andthis year's host nation, Japan. The
conference is being held in Hiroshima.There have been remembrances of the atomic bombing
of Hiroshima by the United States inAugust of nineteen forty five. That's fine
as long as it does not turninto another edition of the Barack Obama American

(00:43):
Apology Tour. You remember, Obamawent around the world bowing and apologizing for
America. America has not been perfect, but it was America that saved the
world from becoming the slave planet ofthe brutal totalitarians in Nazi Germany and imperial
Japan. Has Japan ever said thankyou to America for using two nuclear bombs

(01:07):
instead of engaging in a conventional invasionof Japan. Now you might be thinking,
thank you for nuking us? Whatare you smoking? Here's what I
mean. The battles leading up tothe invasion of Japan were increasingly desperate and
ferocious. Japanese soldiers used civilians ashuman shields. Some civilians engaged in suicide

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attacks on American forces, or theycommitted suicide to avoid capture by the Americans.
You can see video online of adultsthrowing children off cliffs and then jumping
themselves in Japan, as America closedin on the whole islands, leaders began
to speak openly of the suicide ofthe one hundred million. Type it into

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your search engine Japan and Suicide ofthe one hundred million. The population of
Japan was roughly one hundred million,and the idea began to spread that no
one should be taken alive by theAmericans. Japanese civilians were being told that
Americans were monsters who would kill themen, rape the women, and eat

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the children. Fight them to thedeath with whatever you have, or kill
yourself and your children. Don't letthe Americans get you. And the word
glorious sometimes was used in connection withthis idea of a mass total sacrifice of
the entire nation. No one knowsfor sure. The death toll from the

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bombing of Hiroshima and Nakasaki a fewdays later. Estimates are one hundred thousand
to one hundred and fifty thousand ineach city from the bomb blast, and
perhaps an equal number in the aftermathdue to radiation damage. Let's round it
up to five hundred thousand a halfmillion. I don't mean to sound flippant

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or cavalier. It's a stunning,tragic amount of death, but it must
be measured against the massive death tollthat would have been produced by a conventional
invasion. Again, it's speculative,but estimates are that American dead would have
been a half million to a million. The United States had about four hundred

(03:19):
thousand dead for the entire war.We were going to match that and maybe
double it in an invasion of Japan. So certainly, from the American side,
the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki werejustified. Now look at it from
the Japanese side. Perhaps not allof Japanese society would have adopted the fight

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to the death or suicide approach,but it's reasonable to think that a quarter
or a half might have bought intoit. That's tens of millions of people.
Presumably an entire generation of males wouldhave been wiped out. What would
this have done to Japanese society.Perhaps that's what went through the mind of

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the Emperor when he told the militaryleadership to surrender, end the appalling suffering,
and preserve the Japanese nation. Andthen, of course, America,
unlike conquerors of previous generations, helpedJapan rebuild itself and become a successful and
prosperous nation and a peer member ofthe G seven. So say a prayer

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for the victims of Hiroshima and Nakasaki, but also say a prayer of thanksgiving
that, thanks to bold American actionin the final phase of the war against
Japan, hundreds of thousands died insteadof tens of millions. That's check with
Chip. I'm Chip Maxwell. Thankyou for listening.