The end of the war in the Pacific Theatre has dominated civilisation’s thinking for four-score years. However, when moralising about the use of nuclear weapons, disarmers must understand the essential fact. The Government of Japan would not have surrendered without the detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Allies had already tried aerial bombing of Tokyo and other cities with little effect on the Japanese culture of no-surrender. Although General Eisenhower suggested that Japan was ready to capitulate, the response to the Potsdam Declaration and the hard intelligence about the defensive preparations against an Allied invasion contradicts this opinion from afar. Perhaps more importantly, the three month battle for Okinawa, a tiny speck of an island between Taiwan and Japan, which resulted in nearly 250,000 military and civilian killed on both sides, supports the argument that fewer deaths resulted from the flight of Enola Gay on 6 August 1945.
Another factor, which is rarely considered, is that by using nuclear weapons to end World War II, the USA prevented a far more catastrophic use of them during the Cold War.
Local VJ Day Commemoration
Rupert Wieloch 