CYPRESSWOOD CHURCH OF CHRIST
August 15, 2010
25424 Aldine-Westfield, Spring, TX. 77373
www.blakehart.com/cypresswoodbulletin.htm
PRAYERS AND PETITIONS:
God’s will for our congregation Various friends, relatives and co-workers
The spread of the good news Our nation, military, and leaders
CONFRONTING EVIL - 5
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:9-10).
The last “evil” that we will look at when people speak of the U.S. is that of the dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. This along with the fire bombings of Tokyo, Japan and Dresden, Germany are stated as evils that the U.S. has committed. Before we make that judgment however, the context must be looked at.
The Japanese were at war in China in the 1930s and it was an horrible affair. What we learned for the most part after the war was the war crimes committed by the Japanese Army, still not acknowledged by the decedents today. What happened was what is called the Rape of Naking, China where the Japanese raped and murdered thousands of civilians. Along with that was the enslavement of Korean women as prostitutes for the Japanese Army and the experiments on both civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) in northern China by Japanese doctors.
After the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7, 1941, the U.S. was at war with Japan, and a few days later with Germany and Italy. What was not known fully until 1945 was the abuses of POWs during the Bataan death march when U.S. forces surrendered in the Philippians and the treatment of them in the prison camps (1). During the Pacific campaign, U.S. forces faced a determined enemy whose philosophy was that surrender was dishonorable. Many Japanese fought to the death on various islands. It didn’t take long for U.S. Marines to learn this attitude when they saw how captured Marines were killed and abused by the Japanese. In 1942, an inexperienced military went up against combat veterans and fought their way across the Pacific, island hopping along the way (2).
After three years of fierce fighting, the home outer islands of Japan came into focus. The last two battles of the war were fought on these islands. The first began in February of 1945 on the five mile long island of Iwo Jima. It had two completed airfields and one under construction and the purpose would be to use those air fields for disabled planes returning from bombing runs on Japan. It took the Marines six weeks to secure the island at the cost of over six thousand dead and fifteen thousand wounded. Almost all of the twenty-two thousand Japanese defenders died.
The second battle was that of Okinawa beginning April 1, 1945. U.S. Army and Marine units landed and fought and when it was over, the Americans suffered fifty thousand causalities, with fifteen thousand dead. The Japanese suffered well over one hundred thousand dead including civilians. The Japanese Army told the civilians that the Americans would brutalize them (since that is what they did to their enemies), so mothers ended up throwing their children off of cliffs and then jumping to their deaths. Americans pleaded with and attempted to stop them from doing that. Added to this was the Divine Wind, the Kamikaze who would fly his plane into U.S. Naval ships attempting to sink them.
This brief background is what the Truman administration faced in their decision to drop the atomic bombs. There was debate however as to whether they should do this. The Japanese were not going to surrender after Okinawa so the military was planning on invading the Japanese home islands. One of the questions was, after over four hundred thousand American deaths in the War already, would the public put up with yet the possibility of that many in invading Japan, along with probably over a million causalities on top of that. That does include the Japanese deaths. After the War, it was found out that Japanese civilians were being trained to resist and fight the invaders. On top of that, the Japanese still had a million man army in China. Even if only a third of that army returned to Japan, it would add to the difficulty of defeating Japan.
The first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima yet there was no Japanese response. The second was dropped a few days later on Nagasaki and Japan requested surrender. The War ended officially on September 2, 1945. What was learned again after the War was that a number in the Japanese military still did not want to surrender after the second bomb. It was the Emperor who finally stepped in and ended it.
Since context is important, we must also see the after effects of the War. American forces occupied Japan and began doing something that few, if any, conquerors did; that is, rebuilding Japan and Germany. Some might see this as a form of atonement, but many that we would not let these people suffer any longer than they had already.
It is easy to be an arm chair quarterback some sixty years after the event. When one is sitting face to face with a determine enemy who had committed evils within war, tough decisions had to be made. We might disagree with the decision that President Truman made, but it was made. The complaint is made that the atomic bombs killed innocent civilians. There is no doubt about that, but again, after three and half years of bloody warfare, it is a difficult decision. Innocents die in all wars and saying that does not justify war or making excuses for what was done. Yet we must ask, since we know that the Japanese were not going to surrender, were more lives saved by dropping the bombs or not? Those who say no fail to take into account Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The bombs, whether we like it or not, brought a horrible war to an end.
You can decide whether that was evil or not on our part.
The U.S. learned from this event and others and over the next decades, attempted to limit civilian causalities, which we will look at next. Likewise, the threat of nuclear war cause the development of mutually assured destruction (MAD) that saved the world from another bomb. However that is changing and we will look at that next as well. Thanks for being patient with this long study which we should finish in a few weeks, Lord willing.
George B. Mearns
(1) Read the book Ghost Soldiers about the rescue of five hundred POWs by U.S. Army Rangers in the Philippians in early 1945 for more information.
(2) Read any book of any of the Pacific battles to see the fierce conflict that both sides faced. Victor Davis Hanson, an historian, as written on Okinawa in particular because his uncle died there. He is worth reading on this subject.