Top 25 Quotes of Harry Truman

1. Adam - December 19th, 2007 at 10:26 am

wow cool list, I had no Idea that He was the one that first said #2 and 3

2. SubliminalDeath666 - December 19th, 2007 at 10:26 am

I don’t get number 2, but number 3 is awesome!!

3. Cat Skyfire - December 19th, 2007 at 10:34 am

SubliminalDeath666:
#2, the Buck Stops Here, was one of his big phrases. You’ve heard the phrase ‘passing the buck’, or giving the problem to someone else rather than dealing with it. His ‘the buck stops here’ was the idea that he wouldn’t pass it further. He would take care of the problem.

4. JT - December 19th, 2007 at 10:37 am

“Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Republican. But I repeat myself.”

This made me spill apple juice all over my keyboard.

5. dangorironhide - December 19th, 2007 at 10:42 am

I didn’t realise 3 was Truman’s.

I guess he was a Democrat then

6. Ravyn - December 19th, 2007 at 10:51 am

He was such a brillient man.

7. Cnorman - December 19th, 2007 at 10:59 am

didn’t realise he said number 3, it’s such an everdyay quote nowadays

8. Juggz - December 19th, 2007 at 11:05 am

I take it Truman didnt like Nixon?

9. Miss Destiny - December 19th, 2007 at 11:11 am

These are great quotes! I hadn’t heard most of them, and the ones I had heard I didn’t know were attributed to him. Very nice, thanks for sharing.

10. Blogball - December 19th, 2007 at 11:21 am

These are some great quotes.
This is when Democrats were Democrats.
Many people in the last 25 years did not leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left them.

11. kiwiboi - December 19th, 2007 at 11:47 am

Of course Truman also said : “If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible…”.

And he is the only world leader to have sanctioned an actual nuclear strike.

I guess I am not his biggest fan.

12. kiwiboi - December 19th, 2007 at 11:51 am

Oh, and quote #18 is a bastardisation of a Samuel Clemens witticism.

13. hg8057 - December 19th, 2007 at 11:53 am

Isn’t the picture of the man with the John Deere hat holding a glass the Harry Truman that died in the Mt St Helens eruption in 1980?

14. emily - December 19th, 2007 at 11:55 am

hg8057: I didn’t remember that a Harry Truman died in that eruption, but I was thinking that that picture wasn’t the same person as the other photos.

15. Cyn - December 19th, 2007 at 11:57 am

there is a problem w/ the photo and i’ve notified J. just be patient and it’ll get fixed.

thanks!

16. Libertine - December 19th, 2007 at 11:59 am

Hindsight is always 20/20. You must take into account that Truman didn’t have the 60+ years of additional history to work with as you do.

As far as the nuclear strike goes, this decision was made after much careful consideration. Unlike the Germans, the Japanese did not surrender once it was clear that a battle was lost — they fought to the last man. Thus casualty levels were typically much higher than in the European theater. Military experts estimated the expected level of casualties if the taking of the main islands of Japan was conducted using conventional warfare and it was much, much greater, combining American and Japanese losses, than the totals of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It also would have likely extended World War II until at least 1947.

Perhaps Truman would not have made this decision if he had sixty more years of history to work with, but who knows? He did what he thought was best with the information he had to work with at the time.

17. Blogball - December 19th, 2007 at 12:03 pm

Good call hg8057. You can read about the other Harry Truman HERE

18. Blogball - December 19th, 2007 at 12:06 pm

Sorry try this

http://images.google.com/imgre.....n%26sa%3DX

19. jfrater - December 19th, 2007 at 12:09 pm

my apologies for the photo error - I will fix it when I land somewhere nearly time to board the plane.

20. Hobolad - December 19th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

I know next to nothing about American history, but this guy seems well cool (I say that tentatively, not knowing anything about the chap)

Good list!

21. SubliminalDeath666 - December 19th, 2007 at 12:27 pm

Hey Jamie, I got a good list idea for christmas: Top 10 or 20 (if you can) Gifts for 2007 for Men then another one for Women, children, etc. Does that sound good? I know it does…. Lol!

22. emily - December 19th, 2007 at 12:42 pm

Safe flight, Jamie!

23. kiwiboi - December 19th, 2007 at 1:18 pm

Libertine, I’m not sure that hindsight provides a famework that justifies Truman’s decision to drop the nukes on non-military targets ?

Your comment that the decision was made “after much careful consideration” is deserving of scrutiny. Truman is on the record as having said moral considerations never entered his thinking process and that he made the decision “just like that” (snapping his fingers).

24. KKing - December 19th, 2007 at 1:27 pm

In another list, you said #3 was wrongly attributed to him; rather, Harry Vaughn. You may want to clarify that he was quoting someone. But otherwise, it’s good to have a good sense of humour in politics. These days no one takes risks (at least not on purpose).

25. Kelsi - December 19th, 2007 at 1:34 pm

Based solely on these quotes, I really don’t like him, at all. But then again, he was a politician, and they’re rather difficult to be fond of. However, after reading this quote, only one thing sprang to mind:

“When even one American-who has done nothing wrong-is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth-then all Americans are in peril.”

Legalize it. xD (Couldn’t resist, I’m not even a pothead. It just seemed perfect.)

26. dan231 - December 19th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

This is an interesting skim: http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/bennettf.htm

It states that in 1931 a judge, Buck Purcell said this first and then in 1934 Truman heard this from a friends mother after Truman commented on how hot it was in the kitchen.

Not sure what is correct, but many quotes are often credited to the wrong person or misquoted.

27. PeteFloyd - December 19th, 2007 at 2:50 pm

Many lives would have been lost in a full scale invasion of Japan. But they would have been, for the most part, soldiers who were choosing to die for their countries. Not women and children cooking breakfast and going about their daily lives. The bombs on Japan were cowardly.

28. QDV - December 19th, 2007 at 2:53 pm

Jamie…thanks for the quotes. I’m rather fond of Truman for reasons very similar to yours. Think any leaders of the last few years would have the cojones to stand up to Macarthur, right or wrong, to remind him that the buck DOES stop with the President? Truman may have fired Macarthur, but we don’t seem to learn in schools that he HIRED George Marshall.

kiwiboi…if you don’t like Truman, you don’t like Truman, but HST’s feelings and decision-making regarding Hiroshima/Nagasaki are covered pretty well in David McCullough’s “Truman”, which I think is THE quintessential HST book (I also recommend Ralph Keyes’s “The Wit and Wisdom of Harry S. Truman.”). Great biography, and you’ll find that Truman was just an average, ordinary guy who found himself doing the best he could in an extraordinary position. He also got the ball rolling on civil rights, something that isn’t mentioned about him very often.

Incidentally, speaking of Harry Truman the President and Harry Truman the Volcano Victim, I once encountered a guy named Laurie Appleton who claimed to have walked around St. Helen’s with “past president Harry Truman,” years after the President had died. Mr. Appleton, from the Land Down Under, didn’t seem to realize that they were two different people.

29. Libertine - December 19th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

QDV — I wrote this list….those reasons for liking Truman were mine.

30. Blogball - December 19th, 2007 at 3:49 pm

Just wondering how we are supposed to know who is writing the lists we read?

31. Blogball - December 19th, 2007 at 3:50 pm

Never mind I see it at the end

32. Yarr - December 19th, 2007 at 3:54 pm

To those of you who don’t like him because he sanctioned nukes:
1. Civilians were already being slaughtered, by both sides, in both theatres. (Dresden, Tokyo, Nanking, etc.) Many more so with conventional weapons than with nukes.
2. Scientists were unaware of the true dangers of radiation, fallout, etc.
3. Truman was unaware that the bomb existed until months after he was elected. When given the option, he used it. (again, unaware of collateral damage.)
4. It took 2 atomic bombs to force the Japanese to concede. Leaflets were dropped warning civilians to evacuate. The Japanese government was warned that we had a weapon that could destroy an entire city. These warnings were ignored.
5. There are no ‘civilians’ when your entire culture is taught that death is preferable to surrender. An invasion of Japan would have been a bloodbath, with millions of casualties on both sides. Women and children included.

33. Cyn - December 19th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

Contributor: Libertine
is directly beneath the final # of the list.

if a contributor IS NOT noted you can assume one of two things:

J (jfrater site owner) wrote it.

or the person who did either chose not to have their name listed or stated no preference that their name be listed.

btw…you can always ask in comments if its not clear to you.

34. PeteFloyd - December 19th, 2007 at 4:12 pm

Yar:
1. Slaughtering civilians with conventional weapons justifies slaughtering them with nukes??!?!?
2. Regardless of radiation, they knew it would turn a city full of civilians into a fireball.
3. Potsdam Declaration: “Prompt & Utter Destruction” = Truman knew damn well he wasn’t just lighting a firecracker.
4. Does warning someone that you are going to punch them in the face justify you punching them in the face??? What kind of logic is that?
5. If the entire Japanese culture was prepared to fight to the death, why did they surrender? If they really believed what you are saying, they would have let their entire country be razed to the ground.

35. PeteFloyd - December 19th, 2007 at 4:13 pm

p.s. Harry Potter Rules

36. Gravy - December 19th, 2007 at 4:18 pm

He was the man

37. XayXay - December 19th, 2007 at 5:23 pm

I’m so happy he said that stuff…i mean really…fuck Richard Nixon..he was a shitty human being…and a shitty president.

38. Dave666 - December 19th, 2007 at 5:40 pm

I work in the city that Richard Nixon was born and buried in; Yorba Linda, California. I get the heeby jeebies every time I drive to work.

39. Kelsi - December 19th, 2007 at 6:57 pm

“4. Does warning someone that you are going to punch them in the face justify you punching them in the face??? What kind of logic is that?”

In war…yeah, it kind of does.

40. Yarr - December 19th, 2007 at 7:09 pm

Hey Floyd: That’s why the first nuke didn’t go to Tokyo- If the Emperor and the government had been killed, they would never have surrendered and would have had to be killed to the man. The Japanese government didn’t want to surrender. It was the Emperor who finally made that happen.

Yeah, if you’re holding a knife and I’m holding a gun, and I tell you to put it down or I’ll shoot, that knife better be falling with the quickness. I will follow through. It’s that kind of logic.

41. Yarr - December 19th, 2007 at 7:10 pm

And yes, Harry Potter does rule.

42. Yarr - December 19th, 2007 at 7:14 pm

Oh yeah, and though it is a matter or moral relativity, killing thousands in one stroke is, in my mind, better than causing the injury and death of millions more.
Would you rather lose $5 or $50,000?

43. sdggrant - December 19th, 2007 at 8:15 pm

While I agree that dropping a nuclear bomb is a horrible thing to do, the other option, was even more horrid. It was estimated that over a million american soldiers would of died in an invasion of the Japanese homeland, and something like 9 millions japanese civilians would of been killed. It was a horrible decision that had to be made and I think it was made correctly.

And yes, the Japanese were determined to fight to the very last man, woman and child…That was until they realised that they could be destroyed without ever even being able to fight back.

44. sdggrant - December 19th, 2007 at 8:17 pm

Pretty good list, Libertine. While I think that Truman was a good president, and a smart man, he loses points in my book for the blatant ani-republican attitude. I feel the same way about republicans who bad mouth democrats. For the record, I am a republican, and I try to ever aviod voting/supporting other republicans who result to degrading members of the opposite party.

45. el duderino - December 19th, 2007 at 9:09 pm

If Truman were in politics today he would be a republican, probably much to his dismay.

46. Allis - December 19th, 2007 at 9:35 pm

I love Harry Truman. My father, stepfather and father-in-law were all slated to go with the initial invasion of Japan. Truman more than likely saved my life and my son’s.

47. Veranunca - December 19th, 2007 at 9:41 pm

Japan’s average citizen most certainly would not have fought to the death, and an invasion would not have been necessary. A strict naval blockade and constant conventional bombing runs would have left them begging for surrender {hunger always outweighs honor} Russia was preparing to enter that theater, so I’m confident in saying that a full surrender would have been very likely after a year or two. The bomb was just us pissing in the sand, telling Stalin not to mess with us in Europe.

48. PeteFloyd - December 20th, 2007 at 1:35 am

Well said Veranunca. Yarr could learn a thing or two from you.

49. sdggrant - December 20th, 2007 at 1:52 am

I don’t doubt, Veranunca, that it was also a way for us to flex our muscles at Russia, but it was the quickest solution to end the bloodiest war in history.
Also, if we would of allowed Russia to enter the theater the death toll would of been even greater. Look at the millions of german citiens they killed marching to Berlin. Plus Russia already had a bone to pick with Japan after the Japanese kicked them out of China in the early 1900s.

It is easy to nit-pick at decisions that were made 60 years ago, when emotions have died down and nerves arent strained. I do think there is oen good thing to come out of dropping the atom bomb though. Seeing what it was capable of has prevented it from ever being used offensively again. And as stated before, Japan was warned what would happen if they did not surrender, hell, they wouldn’teven surrender after the first one was dropped, THAT is the kind of attitude they had. When it becomes a number game between the death toll of the enemy, and the death toll of our own countrymen and allies, guess who wins?

50. dangorironhide - December 20th, 2007 at 3:25 am

PeteFloyd (#34): “4. Does warning someone that you are going to punch them in the face justify you punching them in the face??? What kind of logic is that?”

Thats wrong. To use that analogy, they were saying ‘our fist is going in this direction, if you dont move, you will get hit, but you can if move if you want to’

51. Drogo - December 20th, 2007 at 3:30 am

I certainly hate atomic weapons, however;

Nuclear bombs were invented. Eventually they would have been used. When they were dropped on Japan, everyone learned how much damage they could do, and became afraid. If not Japan in 1945 the first time might have been in Korea in ‘52, or Vietnam, or the Soviet Union might have decided to have more than just a “cold war” with the U.S. in the 1960’s by being the first to use one. Also Germany was developing the bomb. They might have been the first to use one by dropping it on the U.S. if they weren’t deterred by seeing the U.S. use it first.

52. Yarr - December 20th, 2007 at 7:17 am

Floyd and Veranunca:
Stalin knew about the bomb. In fact, he probably knew about it before Truman did.

Japan’s average citizen would have very well gouged out their own eyes with a spoon if that’s what their Emperor told them to do.

And, Japan had been bombed pretty regularly since the beginning of the war. They were nowhere near surrender, truce, or anything like it. Russia wasn’t about to help with an invasion. They were there to help China get rid of the Japanese. In China. And they were doing just that when Little Boy was dropped.

What is it I could learn from Veranunca?
That if we just kept doing what we had been doing for 4 years with little or no effect would have just ‘worked’ one day? Ok, sure.

53. puddingpuppet - December 20th, 2007 at 3:30 pm

It would have been only a matter of time before someone used a nuclear weapon. Better to use one to end a war than to begin one.

54. Mikerodz - December 20th, 2007 at 5:27 pm

If we are cleaning the grains, we also lost some of the good ones.

55. Canuck - December 20th, 2007 at 9:02 pm

One thing to remember is that Japan surrendered after the bomb because their Emperor decided that he didn’t want any more lives lost. And even then, after he had made his decision there was an attempted coup that almost succeded by officers who wanted to continue the war. It was that close to being prolonged. And to the guys that said that merely a naval blockade and conventional bombing would have worked, you’re forgetting that they did that. Far more people were killed in conventional bombing in Japan then by the nukes. And the average Joe would have fought to the death were he told to, in general their armed forces were just average people with little to no training by this point in the war and look at what they did at Iwo Jima, Saipan, Tarawa, and countless other islands. They would have fought to the death, except that they saw this new, powerful, and frighteningly unknown weapon being used against them and one of them decided that enough was enough.

56. jardojo - December 20th, 2007 at 9:28 pm

That was horrible when Mt. St. Helens killed him.

57. jfrater - December 21st, 2007 at 1:51 pm

okay - FINALLY I have fixed the image of Harry Truman - sorry about that guys - though at least you all got to talking about the other Harry Truman

58. el duderino - December 22nd, 2007 at 1:21 am

Veranunca,
Hiroshima was absolutely a warning to the Soviet Union. It was chosen, among other reasons, because its design and construction most closely resembled a European or Russian city. Causing a normal Japanese city to burn had proved to be rather easy so the American military felt it was necessary to provide a more Western example.
While the nuking of an inhabited city seems excessive, is it any worse than the fire bombing of Tokyo, Coventry or Dresden? The bottom line is that it’s very easy in 2007 with our chances of getting killed in an invasion somewhat less than zero to second guess Truman’s decision to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If Japan or Germany had been a little quicker with their atomic projects, things may have turned out very differently. I’d like to hear from the people who lived in Nan King, Warsaw, Vilnius, Coventry or Paris at the time if things didn’t work out just fine they way they did.

59. Ginger Lee - December 23rd, 2007 at 5:17 am

Attacking Japan with the arms developed in the Manhattan Project was so the Soviet Union wouldn’t be the ones capturing and occupying Japan. It wasn’t really a warning as it was Truman wasn’t as “friendly” with Stalin as Roosevelt was. Roosevelt knew that Stalin had a full house but couldn’t put all his chips in because he was losing heavily already.

Remember before George HW Bush, Al Gore and Dick Cheney the Vice President was there as a fail safe, he wasn’t as heavily involved in executive affairs like the last couple of VP’s we’ve had. Hell, Kissinger knew more than Ford did in the last bit of Nixon’s reign. Truman was in the blind, hadn’t been working with FDR for the last 12 years, he did what he was dealt with and he chose the quickest way to end it.

I’m not saying Truman’s the greatest, but he held his own (then and in retrospect) after entering office behind a great, possibly the greatest, US president. I put more emphasis on what he started that eventually blew up in Vietnam with his “Truman Doctrine” and the “Marshall Plans”.

Truman then would be like having George Carlin in the presidency now, he was a different politician. And saying Truman would be a Republican today is like saying Kucinich or Pelosi would have been Republicans in Lincoln’s time. Every forty years or so either a new political party becomes one of the big two or they seem to switch on several ideals.

60. travis reece - December 28th, 2007 at 12:00 am

i love quote number 1. as a history major, i know that this is so true. You could spend your entire life devoted to even just a decade of some point in history. I’ve given up my aspirations of knowing everything in history long ago.

61. Steve - May 20th, 2008 at 9:04 am

I WILL NEVER FORGIVE TRUMAN FOR THE BOMBINGS. 220,000 KILLED INCLUDING NON-COMBATANTS: MOTHERS, CHILDREN, GRANDPARENTS, BABIES. IF THERE IS A HELL TRUMAN SURELY RESIDES IN IT.

HIS PITHY QUOTES CANNOT SHIELD HIM FROM HIS EVIL ACTS.

62. Randall - May 20th, 2008 at 9:17 am

Steve:

And your sophomoric moralizing doesn’t buy your way to correctness, Steve.

Go and learn some history, kid. Learn what war is about, and why it’s so utterly horrible. Learn the meaning of TRAGEDY instead of passing judgements freely and oh-so-easily regarding matters about which you know NOTHING.

NO ONE says what happened back then was right or good. It WAS evil. But the evil wasn’t Truman’s, you soft-headed fool. The evil was perpetrated by humanity. We start and fight wars. And anything that brings them to an end–especially a speedy and abrupt end–is better than letting them rage on. It forces us to realize that when we allow war to happen, we’re going to have to make terrible decisions based on numbers of people killed. Do we kill millions, or only thousands? That’s what war is. That’s why it should be avoided.

I take it you would rather have seen a slaughter on the beaches of Japan, in an invasion, that that two cities were obliterated. A couple hundred thousand dead instead of perhaps a million. Or that you’d rather have seen more American soldiers and seamen die, rather than those “innocent” Japanese civilians.

You are ignorant. Woefully, sadly, and tragically ignorant. Clearly you don’t even know that Japanese cities were being fire-bombed and razed to the ground nearly every day near the end of the war, and that this tactic would have continued ANYWAY even if the atomic bombs had not been used–and thus at least as many–if not more–Japanese would have been killed. And if your answer would be that this tactic too was “wrong,” then you would only further display your ignorance.

STOP judging until you know the FACTS. ALL the facts, not just the ones cherry-picked for you.

And until then, shut up.

63. Steve - May 20th, 2008 at 10:04 am

Randall,
You presume to know much –are you being funny? History is written by the winners and I ask to take a deeper look. 220 deaths IS NOT CHERRY PICKING and that doesn’t mention the post bomb effects. There was no need to drop the A-bombs. Admiral Leahy (perhaps you know more than he does too) knew we could secure victory through traditional approaches and I’ll take his opinion over yours NO OFFENSE. And, yes, I prefer military combat among the uniformed and I stand by the Fourth Geneva Convention adopted a few years later to dropping bombs blindly on women and children. If you can make the case that Truman was ignorant to the true power of the bomb I’d be willing to hear it. However we all know where the buck stops.

64. WarningDontReadThis - May 20th, 2008 at 11:12 am

I’m born on the same day as Harry. yay!

65. Randall - May 20th, 2008 at 11:28 am

Steve:

“History is written by the winners” is one of those empty-headed, deceptive old saws with barely even a half-truth in it, that adolescent-level thinkers like to toss around so they can pretend to be clever and pithy.

YES. I *do* know so much. A) I guarantee you I know a GREAT deal more history related to this subject than YOU do, else you wouldn’t be making these ludicrous statements. I was SCHOOLED in this and have STUDIED it *all my life.* AND I had family in combat in WWII. Can you say the same? I doubt it. Again, if you had, you wouldn’t be spouting this nonsense.

ADMIRAL LEAHY was NOT the only voice passing judgements on what could have been done and not done, “Steve.” There were MANY more military minds—PARTICULARLY those who were used to direct fighting with the Japanese–who openly contradicted what Leahy said. And yes, I’ll take THEIR opinions over Leahy’s, and I DO mean offense, particularly to YOU.

Nobody’s questioning that we could have achieved victory *without* the A-bombs. But the COST was the question, you moron. YOU claim you want combat among the uniformed only. You’re NAIVE. War has NEVER resided solely among the uniformed–but certainly MODERN warfare cannot. WWII was TOTAL war, and that you can toss out these cant-ridden, sophomoric moralizing statements about it shows you know NOTHING of the true scale, costs, and history of that war. *I* do. My father and my uncles were THERE–and not behind desks or at the rear–but at the FRONTS, in *combat.* It was THEIR lives that were saved by those bombs, as well as the lives of countless other soldiers, sailors, and marines—on BOTH sides. But you, it seems, would rather have had an “honest slaughter” of soldiers (AND civilians–the entire civilian population of Japan was arming to defend the shores, in case you didn’t know) than the destruction of Japanese cities. Yes, sure. ALWAYS people like you make this kind of talk. Privileged, probably white, at least middle class–sitting on your fat happy ass in the early 21st century, passing judgement on people you didn’t even know and likely wouldn’t have known had you been alive then–the underclass and working class of our societies–American as WELL as Japanese–who would have done the REAL fighting and dying while self-important, moralizing brats like yourself would have sat back and told the rest of us what “decent” fighting is.

You ass. THERE IS NO SUCH THING as “decent” fighting and there are few “rules” to war that stay sticking as war grinds on. People like you have a fairy-tale view of reality, though, thinking you can have your neat and tidy black and whites about it. I find your view repugnant and disgusting–and you don’t even know why. You have no idea why you’re wrong or how utterly wrong you are.

I could instruct you AT LENGTH about the realities of WWII, how THE JAPANESE themselves accepted AND ENSURED that everyone in Japan and every THING in Japan was a military target–it was in the very essence of their philosophy and way of life–as I said, I was educated in ALL of this, it was one of my specialties… but clearly you aren’t the type to listen or really learn… you’re happier and SMUG in your ignorant assertions of self-righteousness. AND YES—I COULD make the case that Truman WAS ignorant of the true power of those bombs–almost EVERYONE was at the time. Again, you like all of your ilk, look back on those times with glasses tinged with moral superiority and superior knowledge, and smugly assume you have the right to pronounce judgement on all that you see fit.

You have a LOT to learn.

66. Steve - May 20th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

Randall,
It’s clear to me now reading your last post your knowledge of WWII doesn’t exceed a History 101 class. I have no need to boast about my family for I have the courage to stand on my own. My interest in WWII, particularly D-Day, has taken me to Normandy among other places throughout the world. I suggest you go to a few.
Your basic garbled argument is that an innocent foreign child’s life is worth less than an Americans’. If you could even wrap your pea shaped mind around the after effects of atomic warefare perhaps you’d begin to understand. It wasn’t a grotesque act committed in a vacuum –the tragedy continues to this day! Should I send you photos?
I know Oppenheimer briefed Truman and Truman alone made the choice. Rather than drifting in Roosevelt’s wake he had to make his mark, he knew the destructive powers and HE CHOSE TO DROP A SECOND ONE. The buck stops at Truman’s desk.

Like the eternal peace flame at Hiroshima I’ll be there to counter Truman apologists where ever they go with their bullying posts. No, I cannot be bullied by cowards. My personal comments obviously struck a chord in you and I am glad for it, I’ll be banging that chord ’till the end of my days. I could assume you are a Godless Liberal, a terrorist and a coward wraped up in bloviating package we simply know as RANDALL, endorser of the atomic bomb. Congratulations that’s a fine title you’ve nurtured. The apologists and I have an appointment. Only death can cancel it.

67. YogiBarrister - May 20th, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Steve, you have a better case regarding the second bomb. As Randall has pointed out, the first bomb probably killed fewer people than an invasion of Japan would have.
I once made the very same compelling arguments you have presented here to my father-in-law and his friend. The thing is, they were both WWII vets, and there was simply no way to counter the fact that it ended the war and allowed them to come home and live their lives. My father was a navigator in one of the bombers that would have been involved in an invasion of Japan. Who’s to say I would have even been born, if not for that decision by Truman.

68. Randall - May 20th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

Steve:

“The apologists and I have an appointment. Only death can cancel it.”

This is a debate, Steve, not your freshman creative writing class.

As for my credentials, and your reckless-but-cutesy insult about them, (History 101 class) I can assure you it is QUITE the opposite. Would you like a list of some sort? And of material I’ve published on the subject?

You have raised ONE authority (Leahy) as a support for your statements (they don’t even amount to an argument–you HAVE no argument) I could easily raise at least TWENTY who took an opposite view. Which is right? But you have failed to answer this fact, anyway—as I predicted you would. Your mind is made up, and you’re stuck with your moralizing cant as they only tool you have. And your only other answer to me is that you’ve been traveling around to Normandy. And perhaps elsewhere. I take it I am meant to be impressed. But I’m impressed by the idiotic self-righteousness you’ve evinced instead, Steve, in suggesting I go to such places. Unfortunately for you, I’ve been to Normandy. But even more to the point–my uncle Merle was THERE. At Utah Beach, on D-Day.

But again, see, your blindness made it impossible for you to realize that I was not BOASTING in mentioning my family, but simply making a point (which of course you failed to comprehend) which was, namely, that A) the war was fought by real people–not armchair quarterbacks such as yourself–who had HORRIBLE decisions to make and HORRIBLE things to do. You choose to moralize about them. I choose to see them as tragedy. I would assert that my view is the grown-up and more honest one. B) I was also attempting to indicate to you that you have no first-hand knowledge of that war, or even second or third hand knowledge. If you had, you wouldn’t be making the statements you made. You clearly do not know what the fighting in the Pacific was like, or you have proved incapable of grasping it. You have no answer for the questions: 1. if the war could have been won without the A-bombs, then why did it require TWO of them to force the Japanese to finally consider surrender? 2. Why, even then, did a vast majority of the Japanese military wish to fight on? 3. Why is it better for perhaps a million or more Americans and Japanese–soldiers and civilians to die in an invasion, rather than the 200,000 of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? 4. Where is the proof that the war would have ended any earlier without the bombs? Leahy is ONE voice, with a few others added in. There were MORE on the opposite side, at the time, who believed exactly otherwise. Would you like all their names so you can go look them up? 5. What about the other cities bombed conventionally in Japan? This would have continued, without the A-bombs. Or do you assert that that was “wrong” as well? How would you, then, have won that war? Would you say that the only legitimate means for waging war is soldier-to-soldier? Even if it costs MORE lives? Even if it takes MUCH longer? Which it would have. 6. What about those Americans who continued to DIE in between the two atomic bombings? The fighting continued, you know. You feel you’ve found some great epiphany in visiting sites like Normandy. I say you’ve only had the epiphany of the 12 year old who thinks he knows it all because he’s read a single book or encountered a single passed-down bit of experience. But in any case, what ABOUT the soldiers in question? The American (as well as British, Dutch, Australian, Chinese AND Japanese) soldiers who CONTINUED to die in the fighting that went on–the horrific fighting–in the Pacific, in between Hiroshima and Nagasaki? What would you say to them? That they should die, to serve a greater morality which YOU have decided?

You have the gall to call me a coward… (with no evidence to support it) and why? Because I don’t subscribe to your adolescent view of reality. You’re an unbelievably sanctimonious idiot, Steve. And you have a lot of growing up to do.

I suggest you read THIS: http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~cfib/courses/Fussell.pdf

You desperately need the wisdom.

69. Steve - May 20th, 2008 at 4:23 pm

Randall,
Oh, that was an Orson Welles reference but…forget it.
If history is your specialty then I can see why you post so much. Underemployment tends to free up your days. That’s a joke. I suppose you think Admiral Leahy is an adolescent too? Or any Vet that takes my side. I call you a coward; you call me ignorant. Of course you’re a coward, you sit behind a screen sending insults as if you were the lone arbiter what what truth is. I’d be the first to admit I’m ignorant about many things. I can say “I don’t know”. Those are the most important three words to any thinker. Being flexible is key here. Suck it up.
BUT SERIOUSLY….

This will be my last note you.

There are two things about your statements that are truly disconcerting. I hope, in your quiet time, you think well on these:

1. You called my statement that history is written by the winners “empty-headed”. This is sad because instead of thinking you reverted to name calling. History IS written by the winners and that is why we have healthy skepticism. I would suggest, for one day, approaching everything with the healthy skepticism of a scientist. Your original views may or may not past this test. Truman also didn’t think problems through. Instead of thinking through on ways to send a message to Stalin while defeating Japan he defaulted to the bomb. I say to all defending the first bomb, mankind never needed to drop an A bomb in all of history before or since because there is no such need. And yes we defeated the Germans without using it. Despite the Emperor many in Japan wanted to negotiate, peace feelers were sent abroad, there were other options. The “it works” mentality that you love is distasteful. Sure torture “it works” –well the bomb meets your “it works” theory as well, I believe America should be better than that despite our past.

2. You act as if you’re the only one with skin in the game. As if only your Uncle fought in WWII. TREAD LIGHTLY HERE. Need I remind you that it was a WORLD WAR. There are Vets with differing opinions and you JUST HAVE AN OPINION. This kind of self-involvement and egocentric behavior has lead our country to be hated in many places in the world. We’re still the only country to ever drop the bomb and you act as if it were our exclusive right. Plus that kind of chest beating will get you punched out in a bar someday. Tread Lightly.

Looking over your posts I feel you’re fighting and array of phantoms that only you see and projecting pent-up anger towards me. I say, bring it on.

I recommend to you THE BLACK SWAN. It precisely explains a concept called “Narrative Fallacy”. Which you have bought lock, stock and barrel.

I sincerely hope that the collective countries of the Shanghai Commission never turn their atomic weaponry on you or your family. I wouldn’t want your children’s children to suffer the same birth defects as has happened in Japan over the decades. Your “It works” theory simply doesn’t work for me. May the eternal flame of peace in Hiroshima never be put out; may we never forget the unforgivable acts of Truman.
Good luck to you.

70. Steve - May 20th, 2008 at 5:04 pm

1. if the war could have been won without the A-bombs, then why did it require TWO of them to force the Japanese to finally consider surrender?

Because Truman didn’t understand Japanese culture. Japan has no place for cowards. They would NEVER surrender but they would negotiate if they could maintain their dignity. Peace feelers were put out abroad. You should know that.

2. Why, even then, did a vast majority of the Japanese military wish to fight on?
See question one. Do you know anything about Japanese culture? Americans have a hard time understanding other cultures. We find that with the countries around the Caspian now.

3. Why is it better for perhaps a million or more Americans and Japanese–soldiers and civilians to die in an invasion, rather than the 200,000 of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Your numbers are pure conjecture why not say 3 million? Killing women and children is why. How many American women and children were slaughtered in their very own streets? This was an evil aspect which you refuse to address. You’re going to kill Women and children in mass? That’s an American code of war you endorse? I don’t believe in neutrals on this position.

4. Where is the proof that the war would have ended any earlier without the bombs? Leahy is ONE voice, with a few others added in. There were MORE on the opposite side, at the time, who believed exactly otherwise. Would you like all their names so you can go look them up?

Save your obvious list. More doesn’t alway equal correct –see stock market. I never said it would end earlier. I said using A bombs on non-combatants is unforgivable and unnecessary. We beat the Germans without the bomb. Atrocities are a given in war but keep the fighting among men. Thank-you.

5. What about the other cities bombed conventionally in Japan? This would have continued, without the A-bombs. Or do you assert that that was “wrong” as well? How would you, then, have won that war? Would you say that the only legitimate means for waging war is soldier-to-soldier? Even if it costs MORE lives? Even if it takes MUCH longer? Which it would have.

You said you went to Normandy? Then you felt bravery first-hand. Yes, a country should do battle without Atomic weapons. The half life of some of these materials is 500 million years. The damage continues on many levels.

6. What about those Americans who continued to DIE in between the two atomic bombings?
That would be like me asking: What about the babies that were born deformed in the decades afterwards?

71. Steve - May 21st, 2008 at 5:46 am

~~~ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

“The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

72. Steve - May 21st, 2008 at 5:52 am

HOOVER AND GENERAL DOUGLAS MacArthur

On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: “I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you’ll get a peace in Japan - you’ll have both wars over.”

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O’Laughlin, “The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.”

quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

“…the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945…up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; …if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs.”

- quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

Hoover biographer Richard Norton Smith has written: “Use of the bomb had besmirched America’s reputation, he [Hoover] told friends. It ought to have been described in graphic terms before being flung out into the sky over Japan.”

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 349-350.

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, “I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria.”

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351.

73. Steve - May 21st, 2008 at 5:54 am

MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur’s reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: “…the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face ‘prompt and utter destruction.’ MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General’s advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary.”

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, “MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed.” He continues, “When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.”

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

74. Randall - May 21st, 2008 at 11:33 am

Steve:

I am heavily pressed for time and so can only address a couple points very quickly.

I see you have a hard time shutting up. This is also typical of people of your bent—self-righteous, intractable, unwilling to listen. Yet you expect others to sit still and swallow your instruction whole cloth.

First of all, I’d demand that you explain just how it is that I am a “coward.” By what you say, it seems the label fits me because I post my opinions on the internet. By that definition you’re a “coward” as well.

But you’re showing your true colors, Steve, by referring to someone thusly WHOM YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW. You have no idea what I have done in my life, what I have seen, what I have accomplished—yet you persist in characterizing me in very specific terms for which you have not a shred of support. Perhaps you would like to rephrase what you have called me to say that you feel I am an “intellectual coward.” I would no more agree with this than being called simply a “coward,” but I would find the distinction at least more reasonable and rational.

No, I do not feel Admiral Leahy was an “adolescent.” I feel he was wrong. This is possible you know. But you, you see, only appeal to authorities that you like, and whom you feel agreement with. Regardless of their competency on the issue at hand. Leahy was also the one who said, (before the Trinity bomb was tested) “This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives.”

I would also hasten to point out that during the war, Leahy was not a combat officer; in fact, throughout his career Leahy saw very little combat. He was primarily an administrative officer, and as such hadn’t the slightest clue as to what the men in the Pacific were going through in their war against the Japanese. Rank doesn’t automatically bestow wisdom, Steve. Neither is wisdom, sadly, always a necessary prerequisite for attaining high rank.

Your arguments are fraught with appeals to emotion and appeals to authority. You present NO evidence that the war would have ended early without the use of the atomic bombs (but I don’t think that matters to you, as it seems you’d have preferred soldiers to simply fight it out to bloody death, even if it took years, rather than bomb civilians. Your naive and juvenile “nobility” is both sickening and disgustingly wrong). Moreover, I would submit that you can’t find ANY veterans of WWII –who served in COMBAT–that would agree with your stance. I have known MANY such veterans–including the ones in my own family–and NONE of them would have agreed with you, and none of the ones still living do.

You miss a simple fact, Steve… I DO KNOW what I am talking about. YOU don’t. All you know is the naive and simplistic moralizing that you keep spouting, and a lot of slanted material you’ve sucked out of a few books, while ignoring (because it is inconvenient for you to accept the opinions of those who disagree with you) material that doesn’t support what you say.

Another quick point–there was NEVER an implied threat to the Emperor in any of the demands for surrender made to the Japanese; moreover, while you seem to want to focus on how promises for the emperor’s safety would have made a difference, it’s also a *fact* that many high-ranking officers in the Japanese military and government opposed surrender because A) they feared war crimes trials and B) their Bushido code would not allow them to accept the idea of surrender in ANY CASE. You have conveniently ignored the fact that it WAS the emperor who made the final decision, in the end, to surrender. Until he spoke up, surrender–even after Nagasaki–even after the Russians had entered the war–was still unthinkable to a great many high-ranking officers and members of the cabinet. This was NOT because there had been no dispensation of threat to the emperor by the allies, but because the Japanese were culturally hostile to the very idea of surrender and considered it anathema to what they were.

75. adam - May 27th, 2008 at 8:01 am

Hey Randall- is there something wrong with your key board? Because you seem to have the caps lock button stuck sometimes. Do you realize that when you type like that it makes you look like an idiot?

I’ve read over the argument between you two and and Randall appears to be a racist red neck bastard. It’s obvious that your position on the topic is swayed by the fact that your daddy served in WW2.

Also you claim to be an educated person. Why then would you react so angrily to a comment made on some random web site? If you were truly an educated person, your responses wouldn’t be so full of hatred.

I completely agree with Steve. Truman and everyone else involved in the decision to drop both A-bombs are probably burning in hell right now. And rightly so. War is abhorrent is all its forms and the next major conflict will spell the end of us all.
One other thing. In today’s world, what could you possibly have against the Japanese? WW2 was basically the final throes of an imperial world. Since then America is the only nation that still insists on embarking on imperial adventures. America is responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent civilians around the world as a result of their efforts to achieve and maintain global dominance.

76. souio - May 27th, 2008 at 8:13 am

–adam–

You haven’t been to this site for long, have you?

It is not wise to insult Randall and his arguments between people. Banter between Randall and co. is one of the main reasons (besides the excellent lists, of course) that this site is so interesting.

You’re in a deep ditch of doodoo now once Randall reads that..

77. Randall - May 27th, 2008 at 8:24 am

souio:

Thank you so much. Your check is in the mail. Remember, if anyone from the government (or anyone “official looking”) approaches you and asks what the renumeration was for, you just tell ‘em it was for “landscaping work.”

78. Randall - May 27th, 2008 at 8:54 am

adam:

You’re a putz, and a disrespectful, ill-informed and generally ill-mannered one to boot. Also wildly and impetuously dim-witted, as you made the poor decision to attempt to pigeonhole me without knowing a single fact about my life.

“Do you realize that when you type like that it makes you look like an idiot?”

Do *you* realize that when you make unsupportable, smart-mouthed comments and offer your little piss-ant characterizations of a total stranger that it makes you look like the unimaginative little asshole that you clearly are?

I agree that people who write in all-caps need their head examined. But a few caps here and there, used sparingly, is simply a quick and easy way to add emphasis to a thought without resorting to little stars (*) at the start and end of a word, or without resorting to html tags, which are time-consuming. I am often writing on the fly between meetings, sit-downs with students, performing some other demanding, official task, and/or fixing myself another drink. You, on the other hand, apparently had some six days to formulate the comment you etched here, and I can tell you, the extra time doesn’t show in your level of coherence, logic, or demonstrated critical thinking skills… in short, you appear to have none of these. Nice. If I were you, I’d sue your high school and/or community college. You probably have a decent case. They obviously failed you.

a “racist, red neck bastard,” huh? And just how, pray tell, did you come to this offensive conclusion? Just what, precisely, did I say that was “racist?” And do please tell me how someone who grew up in NEW YORK, who possesses *multiple degrees,* who speaks THREE languages and can get by in two others, whose parents were well-educated, and who is himself a graduate of a *prestigious* institution of higher-learning in New York— is a “red neck.” Do tell, adam. Because the definition of “red neck” must be stretched way past the breaking point, if so.

I am deeply angered by this particular topic (the atom bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) because it so often culls out of the woodwork every two-bit little moron with a badly-informed (if informed at all) opinion and about ZERO sense of reality and/or history. I in fact dislike it when people shoot off their mouths about ANY topic which they clearly know nothing about, but think they do. Oftentimes this is harmless. This particular topic, however, I think is one that requires honesty and clear-headedness more than most others. Unfortunately people such as yourself refuse to BE honest and clear-headed about it–you’d rather fall back on cant and ridiculously adolescent moralizing (”America is responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent civilians around the world…” —just where is your support for this outrageous figure? Show me the evidence. Show me how it is that the US is responsible for “millions” of deaths. And before you go off on my politics, I’ll state for the record that I am left of center and am no admirer of much of American foreign policy over the last fifty years. But neither do I childishly rant about it, as you do, making wild accusations for which there is no support).

If you want more arguments from me as to why the dropping of the atomic bombs was a tragic, but necessary action, then I’d be glad to give them to you. But a couple points first:

A) you say “war is abhorrent in all its forms…” to which my answer is, no shit, adam. Again, you’re moralizing, you’re making speeches. Do you know ANYONE, besides out and out militarist nuts, who think war ISN’T abhorrent in all its forms? Naturally I agree with you… yup, war sure is abhorrent in all its forms. But what’s your freakin’ POINT? What happens when a war is presented at a nation’s doorstep? Are you laying sole blame for WWII on Truman? Why is you single out only Truman (and anyone else involved in dropping the bombs) for burning in hell? Why not the Japanese generals, admirals and statesmen who PLANNED and executed that war?

B) who the hell said I had *anything* against the Japanese in TODAY’S world? Where and when did I say this? The discussion was about Japan *before* and *during* WWII. Not after. Do you dispute something I said about Japan in this context?

Another thing: You said, “It’s obvious that your position on the topic is swayed by the fact that your daddy served in WW2.”

To which I say, sighing, Yes, adam, you little dolt. My position IS informed by the fact that my father (AND five of my uncles) all fought *in combat* in WWII. What of it? Clearly YOUR position is NOT informed by any such personal experience of your own or any of your relatives or people you know. Does that make you more “right?” I hardly think so. Rather, it makes you, as I said, ill-informed and, in fact, quite probably ignorant of the facts.

79. Steve - May 27th, 2008 at 9:32 am

That’s good advice Randall. *Randall, Bloviating Idiot* or RANDALL, ENDORSER OF THE ATOM BOMB –I’d go with all caps if I had to choose.

Adam, don’t sweat this thug. I addressed all of his questions by number and he would never address my one question to him. That is because he can’t. He’s clearly a “Ken Burns/PBS Historian”. His conclusions were packaged for him on TV.
Give him quotes by life-long military men, trained at elite military academies who worked with Truman and he throws back insults. He has NO KNOWLEDGE of the short term and long term effects of radiation. Rather than thinking he edorses frying 220,000 people including Women, Grand Parents, Children and Babies with 9,000 degree wave of destruction.

He hangs his argument on his wayward Uncle Mel. Well, God Bless Uncle Mel. He probably desrves is own page of quotes but Uncle Mel will not win him this debate. Also, ignore his degrees. After all, W has a MBA from Harvard. The last thing you want is a pure academic analyzing war. Explains a lot actually.

But souio is correct. This little site has allowed us to make our cases. Others can scroll around and make their own conclusions or, hopefully, add their take on Truman.

It’s unfortunate that Randall laces all his opinions with nasty insults and things got uglier than I would’ve liked but if the reader can look beyond that we had a great debate.

80. trojan_man - May 27th, 2008 at 10:02 am

Steve and Adam: If it had not been Truman, it may have had to been somebody else. Imperialist Japan was blatanly racist and genocidal. I don’t think the country was as innocent as you are making them seem.

81. SlickWilly - May 27th, 2008 at 10:08 am

Honestly, I don’t know if there is any way to say for sure whether or not dropping the bombs prevented more deaths than it caused. It was a terrible event in our past that we should be ashamed of, but there is no way for us to know now whether or not the use of atomic force was completely necessary.

82. trojan_man - May 27th, 2008 at 10:15 am

Slick: You’re probably correct. But it would have been much more shameful if the Japanese had not been given proper warning…twice.

83. Steve - May 27th, 2008 at 10:42 am

Troj, I never said Japan were innocent. I think that’s obvious. Are you saying that you that America should use the A bomb on non-combatants?

I don’t believe they had a “proper warning”.
Potsdam Declaration? Leaflets dropped? Is they’re a way to properly warn a country about dropping an A bomb on a heavily populated city? Especially a bomb mankind has never dreamed of before?
See above, someone else’s take: 34. PeteFloyd

Einstein had an ongoing corresspodence with Roosevelt and Einstein believed Roosevelt wouldn’t have used the bomb. Yes, it’s true Roosevelt okayed the bombs development but that doesn’t mean he would have used it.

84. Randall - May 27th, 2008 at 11:03 am

Steve:

You’re just an out-and-out asshole. And *that* is why we can’t have a “debate” on this, much less an honest one.

In point of fact I DID answer your points, to the best that time allowed me. I don’t always have the spare time (let alone the inclination) to sit here and write lengthy tome after tome (despite my reputation for occasionally doing so)… but moreover, I am not inclined to do so *when there is no point whatsoever in pursuing it.* I pointed out to you that I could offer at least as many, if not more, quotes from authorities on the subject of the “correctness” of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. If I recall, you said something to the effect that you would ignore them. So what’s the point in answering *your* quoted authorities? Appeals to authority has never impressed me as a method of argument anyway (though clearly it’s your preferred tactic–the clear mark of a lazy thinker)… and as for “insults,” you’ve tossed more than enough at me to make up for anything I’ve called you. And where I have insulted you based on actual things you have said–i.e., I have characterized you by quoting you and citing your arguments—YOU, on the other hand, have insulted me *baselessly,* with no support whatsoever for ANYTHING you have said about me or called me.

I am a “thug,” now, because I disagree with you, because I feel, based on the evidence, that the atomic bombs were both effective and necessary. Okay. You clearly can’t see that, like all small-minded tyrants, you can’t stand to be countered or disagreed with. YOU, in fact, have answered NONE of my points, whereas I’ve given clear argument against yours. You’ve chosen instead to ignore more than half of what I’ve said–and then call me a “thug.” Uh huh.

And I’m a “Ken Burns” historian, now, I see.

My conclusions, you son of a bitch, are MY OWN… unlike YOURS, which clearly HAVE been packaged for you from distorted and slanted books you’ve read which have failed to offer a clear and balanced picture of the situation that actually prevailed during WWII. I have sought out a BALANCED view of this question all my life. What have *you* sought out? Have you given the slightest bit of weight to the countless servicemen and officers of WWII who disagree with your opinions? Clearly not, as you would, by your own admission, prefer that these men have died in enormous numbers rather than civilians be bombed–without acknowledging for a moment that the Japanese themselves guaranteed that their cities would be targeted by embedding war production within vast cottage industries in each city–and by their own philosophy, which was that every citizen of Japan was to be considered a soldier in the service of the emperor and expected to die for him if necessary.

You accuse me of knowing nothing. I accuse you of the same. You either know nothing of Japan before and during WWII, or ignore it because it doesn’t suit your arguments and your own precious moralizing, which repeatedly paints the Japanese as mere victims and the Americans as mere monsters, doling out death for sinister reasons having nothing to do with the proper execution of warfare.

As I have told you time and time again–I could give you at least as many quotes by military men who were IN COMBAT or commanding combat troops in WWII that would counter every quote you’ve presented. Shall we proceed with that? What good would it do? Then it’s a game of MY authorities vs. yours. Clearly you’d think yours superior, because you obviously haven’t the slightest inclination to listen to argument. It’s laughable that you think for a moment that there could have been an honest debate here when it’s plain to see that you have no capacity for honest debate let alone comprehending our respecting an opinion opposite to your own.

I have “no knowledge” short term and long term effects of radiation, you say. And WHAT do you base this statement on? Again–how the hell do you know what I have been trained in and haven’t been trained in? It’s statements like that that show what an utter ass you are, Steve, and what a dishonest one you are to boot–pretending to sound authoritative in order to further your argument. In fact I am VERY well versed in the effects of radiation… but more to the point–WHAT OF IT? No one says the atom bombs were weapons like any other… they were horrible and monstrous—as are all weapons of destruction–and we can very well say that the atomic bombs were of course even more so. But again, you clearly haven’t the slightest bit of knowledge about what went on in WWII… you can only moralize after the fact. Your statements again and again paint the US as a mere aggressor and the Japanese as mere victims. This is not only blatantly wrong but outrageously immature and idiotically biased.

“Rather than thinking he edorses frying 220,000 people including Women, Grand Parents, Children and Babies with 9,000 degree wave of destruction.”

I am sick to death of this kind of disingenuous, pallid moralizing. OH YES, Steve… I’ve endorsed the killing of women, grandparents, children and babies. You sophomoric little troll… your only “argument” here is to spit out half-baked appeals to emotion and appeals to authority without answering a single point in opposition put to you. Read back over the comments I wrote to you. In between the insults were point after point which you failed to heed, let alone address.

City after city was bombed during WWII, Steve. More people died in Hamburg and Tokyo than died at either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. EVEN when taking into account the long term effects of radiation. I would certainly be willing to discuss the efficacy and morality of these bombings–but with someone willing to discuss them, not with someone who simply wants to make moral pronouncements about a war in which morality was compromised and blurred every day. I don’t know why this is such a difficult thing for people like you—WWII was HORRIBLE, it was filled with atrocities, and there is no earthly was to “approve” or “endorse” ANY of it–whether committed or perpetrated by the Nazis or Japanese, or by the allies. The only way one can look at it is as a huge and terrible tragedy, in which some monstrous men and monstrous ideologies and ideas were unleashed upon the world, forcing other men to behave monstrously in their own right, in order to put a stop to it. You want to place “blame” for a single horror without looking at its context or admitting that it was effective and wasn’t merely a bit of “terrorism” (Hiroshima was the home base of not only a portion of the Japanese fleet, but also of a large army group, and that army group was destroyed in the bombing) …I would ask you therefore, about the victims of Japanese terror and aggression in China–about the victims of Nanking, for example, or of Bataan. Of the captured soldiers who were tortured, starved, and executed outright. Of the conquered peoples of Asia who were tortured and brutalized by the Japanese. And I would ask you if you honestly think for a moment that had the Nazis or Japanese developed an atomic bomb, that they would have hesitated for a moment to use it. Of course they would have. And as THEIR soldiers tortured and brutalized OUR soldiers, so did our soldiers do the same to theirs. War ITSELF is an atrocity and a crime—but as Fussell said, what you fail to acknowledge is that not only is it a crime, it is also the *punishment* of a crime.

You have never answered, despite my direct question put to you, how YOU would have ended that war. Your only answer is that it would have ended anyway. (WHEN?) That had we excused the emperor openly, the Japanese would have surrendered. (There is a great deal of evidence contrary to this). That we simply should not have bombed cities/civilians. (What about the massive war production centered in cities? What about the countless cottage industries for war production that the Japanese had embedded throughout those cities?) And what of the soldiers, seamen, and airman of ALL nations who have gone on dying in the meantime, until the war was concluded? What if an invasion HAD been necessary? What of the bloodletting THAT would have resulted in? What of the women and children then, who would have been killed in any case?

You look at all this like a child, Steve. And a spoiled, “I Am Always Right” child to boot, who is incapable of viewing history as a tapestry, but can only see a single thread.

85. Randall - May 27th, 2008 at 11:09 am

a quick correction: in the third to last paragraph, it should read, “Of course they would have used it (the atomic bomb)… and unhesitatingly.”

86. Randall - May 27th, 2008 at 11:28 am

These troops who cried and cheered with relief or who sat stunned by the weight of their experience are very different from the high-minded, guilt-ridden GIs we’re told about by J. Glenn Gray in his sensitive book The Warriors. During the war in Europe Gray was an interrogator in the Army Counterintelligence Corps, and in that capacity he experienced the war at Division level. There’s no denying that Gray’s outlook on everything was admirably noble, elevated, and responsible. After the war he became a much-admired professor of philosophy at Colorado College and an esteemed editor of Heidegger. But The Warriors, his meditation on the moral and psychological dimensions of modern soldiering, gives every sign of error occasioned by remoteness from experience. Division headquarters is miles – miles – behind the line (Page 30) where soldiers experience terror and madness and relieve those pressures by crazy brutality and sadism. Indeed, unless they actually encountered the enemy during the war, most “soldiers” have very little idea what “combat” was like. As William Manchester says, “All who wore uniforms are called veterans, but more than 90 percent of them are as uninformed about the killing zones as those on the home front.” Manchester’s fellow marine E. B. Sledge thoughtfully and responsibly invokes the terms drastically and totally to underline the differences in experience between front and rear, and not even the far rear, but the close rear. “Our code of conduct toward the enemy,” he notes, “differed drastically from that prevailing back at the division CP.” (He’s describing gold-tooth extraction from still-living Japanese.) Again he writes: “We existed in an environment totally incomprehensible to men behind the lines. . . ,” even, he would insist, to men as intelligent and sensitive as Glenn Gray, who missed seeing with his own eyes Sledge’s marine friends sliding under fire down a shell-pocked ridge slimy with mud and liquid dysentery shit into the maggoty Japanese and USMC corpses at the bottom, vomiting as the maggots burrowed into their own foul clothing. “We didn’t talk about such things,” says Sledge. “They were too horrible and obscene even for hardened veterans. . . . Nor do authors normally write about such vileness; unless they have seen it with their own eyes, it is too preposterous to think that men could actually live and fight for days and nights on end under such terrible conditions and not be driven insane.” And Sledge has added a comment on such experience and the insulation provided by even a short distance: “Often people just behind (Page 31) our rifle companies couldn’t understand what we knew.” Glenn Gray was not in a rifle company, or even just behind one. “When the news of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came,” he asks us to believe, “many an American soldier felt shocked and ashamed.” Shocked, OK, but why ashamed?

Because we’d destroyed civilians? We’d been doing that for years, in raids on Hamburg and Berlin and Cologne and Frankfurt and Mannheim and Dresden, and Tokyo, and besides, the two A-bombs wiped out 10,000 Japanese troops, not often thought of now, John Hersey’s kindly physicians and Jesuit priests being more touching. If around division headquarters some of the people Gray talked to felt ashamed, down in the rifle companies no one did, despite Gray’s assertions. “The combat soldier,” he says,

“knew better than did Americans at home what those bombs meant in suffering and injustice. The man of conscience realized intuitively that the vast majority of Japanese in both cities were no more, if no less, guilty of the war than were his own parents, sisters, or brothers.”

I find this canting nonsense. The purpose of the bombs was not to “punish” people but to stop the war. To intensify the shame Gray insists we feel, he seems willing to fiddle the facts. The Hiroshima bomb, he says, was dropped “without any warning.” But actually, two days before, 720,000 leaflets were dropped on the city urging everyone to get out and indicating that the place was going to be (as the Potsdam Declaration has promised) obliterated. Of course few left.

Experience whispers that the pity is not that we used the bomb to end the Japanese war but that it wasn’t ready in time to end the German one. If only it could have been rushed into production faster and dropped at the right moment on the Reich Chancellery or Berchtesgaden or Hitler’s military headquarters in East Prussia (where Colonel Stauffenberg’s July 20 bomb didn’t do the job because it wasn’t big enough), much of the Nazi hierarchy could have been pulverized immediately, saving not just the embarrassment of the Nuremberg trials but the lives of around four million Jews, Poles, Slavs, and gypsies, not to mention the lives and limbs of millions of Allied and German soldiers. If the bomb had only been ready in time, the young men of my infantry platoon would not have been so cruelly killed and wounded.

All this is not to deny that like the Russian Revolution, the atom-bombing of Japan was a vast historical tragedy, and every passing year magnifies the dilemma into which it has lodged the contemporary world. As with the Russian Revolution, there are two sides – that’s why it’s a tragedy instead of a disaster – and unless we are, like Bruce Page, simplemindedly unimaginative and cruel, we will be painfully aware of both sides at once. To observe that from the viewpoint of the war’s victims-to-be the bomb seemed precisely the right thing to drop is to purchase no immunity from horror. To experience both sides, one might study the book Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors, which presents a number of amateur drawings and watercolors of the Hiroshima scene made by middle-aged and elderly survivors for a peace exhibition in 1975. In addition to the almost unbearable pictures, the book offers brief moments of memoir not for the weak-stomached:

“While taking my severely wounded wife out to the river bank. . . , I was horrified indeed at the sight of a stark naked man standing in the rain with his eyeball in his palm. He looked to be in great pain but there was nothing that I could do for him. I wonder what became of him. Even today, I vividly remember the sight. I was simply miserable.”

These childlike drawings and paintings are of skin hanging down, breasts torn off, people bleeding and burning, dying mothers nursing dead babies. A bloody woman holds a bloody child in the ruins of a house, and the artist remembers her calling, “Please help this child! Someone, please help this child. Please help! Someone, please.” As Samuel Johnson said of the smothering of Oesdemona, the innocent in another tragedy, “It is not to be endured.” Nor, it should be noticed, is an infantryman’s account of having his arm blown off in the Arno Valley in Italy in 1944:

I wanted to die and die fast. I wanted to forget this miserable world. I cursed the war, I cursed the people who were responsible for it, I cursed God for putting me here. . . to suffer for something I never did or knew anything about.

(A good place to interrupt and remember Glenn Gray’s noble but hopelessly one-sided remarks about “injustice,” as well as “suffering.”)

“For this was hell,” the soldier goes on, “and I never imagined anything or anyone could suffer so bitterly. I screamed and cursed. Why? What had I done to deserve this? But no answer came. I yelled for medics, because subconsciously I wanted to live. I tried to apply my right hand over my bleeding stump, but I didn’t have the strength to hold it. I looked to the left of me and saw the bloody mess that ,was once my left arm; its fingers and palm were turned upward, like a flower looking to the sun for its strength.”

The future scholar-critic who writes The History of Canting in the Twentieth Century will find much to study and interpret in the utterances of those who dilate on the special wickedness of the A-bomb-droppers. He will realize that such utterance can perform for the speaker a valuable double function. First, it can display the fineness of his moral weave. And second, by implication it can also inform the audience that during the war he was not socially so unfortunate as to find himself down there with the ground forces, where he might have had to compromise the purity and clarity of his moral system by the experience of weighing his own life against someone else’s. Down there, which is where the other people were, is the place where coarse self-interest is the rule. When the young soldier with the wild eyes comes at you, firing, do you shoot him in the foot, hoping he’ll be hurt badly enough to drop or mis-aim the gun with which he’s going to kill you, or do you shoot him in the chest (or, if you’re a prime shot, in the head) and make certain that you and not he will be the survivor of that mortal moment?

It would be not just stupid but would betray a lamentable want of human experience to expect soldiers to be very sensitive humanitarians. The Glenn Grays of this world need to have their attention directed to the testimony of those who know, like, say, Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher, who said, “Moderation in war is imbecility,” or Sir Arthur Harris, director of the admittedly wicked aerial-bombing campaign designed, as Churchill put it, to “de-house” the German civilian population, who observed that “War is immoral,” or our own General W. T. Sherman: “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.” Lord Louis Mountbatten, trying to say something sensible about the dropping of the A-bomb, came up only with “War is crazy.” Or rather, it requires choices among crazinesses. “It would seem even more crazy,” he went on, “if we were to have more casualties on our side to save the Japanese.” One of the unpleasant facts for anyone in the ground armies during the war was that you had to become pro tem a subordinate of the very uncivilian George S. Patton and respond somehow to his unremitting insistence that you embrace his view of things. But in one of his effusions he was right, and his observation tends to suggest the experiential dubiousness of the concept of “just wars.” “War is not a contest with gloves,” he perceived. “It is resorted to only when laws, which are rules, have failed.” Soldiers being like that, only the barest decencies should be expected of (Page 36) them. They did not start the war, except in the terrible sense hinted at in Frederic Manning’s observation based on his front-line experience in the Great War: “War is waged by men; not by beasts, or by gods. It is a peculiarly human activity. To call it a crime against mankind is to miss at least half its significance; it is also the punishment of a crime.” Knowing that unflattering truth by experience, soldiers have every motive for wanting a war stopped, by any means.

87. Randall - May 27th, 2008 at 11:33 am

The previous is a quote from Fussell’s “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” Of all the material I’ve read on the subject (which is substantial) Fussell’s is the most eloquent and ironic. All the quotes in the world pale next to the things Fussell has to say.

People like Steve and Adam need to read this kind of thing, not just the moralizing absurdities to which they’ve limit themselves. Of course, I have little confidence that Steve WILL in fact read it. But I hope it gets through to him, if he does.

Fussell, one should note, was a heavily wounded and decorated lieutenant in WWII, a combat soldier who had commanded a platoon in battles in Europe. He was slated to go to Japan to participate in the planned invasion, as were thousands upon thousands of other soldiers.

88. trojan_man - May 27th, 2008 at 11:47 am

Steve: No, I am not saying that. Are you saying Japan did not kill American non-combatants? Are you the kind of person who would have bitched about Truman not dropping the bomb if an invasion had killed one-twelfth of the US military forces? The bombs were a means to an end (emphasis on end). Starving the people with a blockade or constant carpet-bombing could have led to 4 or 5 more years of war. Dropping two bombs stopped it in 4 or 5 days. I’m sure you see the significance of ending a regime that looked only to world domination.

89. Randall - May 27th, 2008 at 1:24 pm

More of Steve’s loose thinking and incapacity for sticking to the facts is evident in what he wrote to trojan_man:

“Troj, I never said Japan were innocent. I think that’s obvious.”

Actually, it isn’t obvious at all from the things Steve has said. He has repeatedly characterized the US as the aggressor with not a single mention of Japan’s role in the war. Steve’s rhetoric has focused on the evil of Truman, and the US in a larger sense, for having atom-bombed two Japanese cities–without placing this horrible action in context by acknowledging the awful things done by the Japanese to not only Asian civilians, but to American, British, Dutch, Chinese, and Filipino servicemen (AND civilians).

“I don’t believe they had a “proper warning”.”

AGAIN, this is about Steve’s “belief.” Steve, you see, knows better than military men and statesman who were THERE at the time and were responsible for prosecuting that war–not merely for assessing it *after the fact* and/or from a distance.

But this also begs the question–what WOULD have been a “proper warning?” After a time, Japanese cities were routinely warned, by leaflets, that their cities would be bombed. Little action was taken except to fill the cities with additional fire engines, which then went up in flames along with the buildings they were sent to protect.

FEW people–except physicists who could clearly understand what an atomic bomb could do–were capable, in that day and age, of comprehending what an atomic explosion would be like. It came as a shock not only to the Japanese but to Americans as well.

“Potsdam Declaration? Leaflets dropped? Is they’re a way to properly warn a country about dropping an A bomb on a heavily populated city? Especially a bomb mankind has never dreamed of before?”

Well that’s just it, isn’t it? No one had ever dreamed of it before. As I just said above–most people, including people in charge, were not capable of comprehending it. It explains why the Bomb was viewed as “just another weapon” that could shorten the war. Of course it wasn’t “just another weapon,” as we well know now. But we have the benefit of hindsight. Steve is capable of ONLY seeing in hindsight from his moral high-ground.

How does one properly warn ANYONE of the effect of an atomic bomb when no one except a handful of scientists and military men has seen such a thing before? How can one warn about such a thing when one has no comprehension of it in the first place?

“See above, someone else’s take: 34. PeteFloyd”

PeteFloyd’s “take” is, again, childish, naive, and ill-informed, as is Steve’s. There are few “justifications” for ANYTHING in war. War is not, (as per Fussell’s quote above) a gloved contest. War is brutal, horrific, and there is nothing good about it except its ending. The “justification” for dropping the bombs was that it ENDED the war. That’s all there is. And as for Japanese surrender–AGAIN.. all that we know indicates that the Japanese WERE prepared–more than prepared–to wage one last pitched battle in the homeland to “save face.” It took TWO atomic bombings of TWO Japanese cities to convince the *emperor* and the emperor ALONE that further prosecution of the war was pointless. This had been true for well over a year–perhaps for more than two years–but the Japanese up to that point had refused to admit it or see it–because they had no concept in their culture of futility. The emperor and a FEW of his subordinate statesmen finally bowed to the reality of the situation–which was that A) they were facing an additional enemy in the Russians now, and B) that they were facing atomic bombings of their cities. They finally agreed to surrender, which saved the lives of countless servicemen on BOTH sides as well as countless Japanese civilians.

“Einstein had an ongoing corresspodence with Roosevelt and Einstein believed Roosevelt wouldn’t have used the bomb. Yes, it’s true Roosevelt okayed the bombs development but that doesn’t mean he would have used it.”

AGAIN… this is Steve PRESUMING to know things–as though he has some crystal ball that tells him for certain how things would have gone if we’d only have listened to *him.* This is ridiculous. There is no EVIDENCE that Roosevelt would not have dropped the bomb and in fact every indication that he WOULD have. But more to the point, again–there is no evidence for what Steve says. He simply BELIEVES these things to be true. He says that Einstein “believed” Roosevelt wouldn’t have dropped the bomb–but Einstein was not privy to what was going on at high levels in Washington simply because he had a correspondence with the President.

90. bucslim - May 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

Good lord, I am stunned by some people’s blind stupidity and reckless attitudes. I mean, Steve, are you fucking kidding me? Were you not paying attention to the history of the battles in the South Pacific? You can speculate all you want about what might have happened, but what did happen is that the nukes ended the friggen war. Do we rejoice in that? Well yes, a hell of a lot of good men returned to their homes and families because of what Truman had the balls to do. Good men from BOTH SIDES!!!!

And thanks to you Steve, I’m forced to side with my arch enemy Randall. Thanks a lot pal, he’ll never let me forget it.

91. Mom424 - May 27th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

It is far too easy to pontificate while sitting in your warm cozy den.

Good job Randall!

Steve grow-up. Read a little bit about the culture of Japan before the end of the war. You have never heard of Bushido? People die in war, it makes little difference to them how it comes about.

92. Steve - May 27th, 2008 at 4:42 pm