Today marks the eightieth anniversary of the ending of the attempt of Japan to conquer East Asia and form a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In that attempt, Japanese forces murdered some three to ten million civilians. This figure does not include civilian deaths caused from military operations which resulted from Japanese aggression or famines that ensued. It is estimated that some 20,000,000 Chinese died as a result of Japan’s invasion. Approximately a million Filipinos died during the military occupation of the Philippines by the Japanese. The video above depicts the battle of Manila in which 100,000 Filipino civilians died. During lulls in the fighting, Japanese troops, to amuse themselves, would engage in orgies of rape and murder, with decapitation being a common method of killing. Special targets were Red Cross workers, young women, children, nuns, priests, prisoners of war and hospital patients.
Victory by the US and its allies brought this Asian Holocaust to a stop. Perhaps something else to recall on Catholic blogs each August.
The mainstream “orthodox” Catholic media types’ smearing of Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs has been some of the most shameful bad faith bloviation I’ve seen online.
What our troops saw during this battle was another reason why MacArthur gave approval to the 11th Airborne’s plan to liberate the Los Banos prison camp. The only two fates awaiting the 2000 plus people there were death or a very unlikely intervention from the Angels.
We lived in the P.I. 1985-87. The Filipinos then were still bitter about the treatment under the occupanying Japan. Who could blame them.
I have some Phillipine pesos from the Japanese occupation period that I bought from a street vendor in Olongapo City back in the 1980s. Years later, a Filipino coworker told me they used those as play money as kids.
The radtrads have a perpetual ax to grind. It as if they are not happy unless they are angry about something. Fr. Z has frequently admonished trads who are constantly mad over something.
The articles I referred to at Crisis, which is a pretty good publication overall, highlight Greg’s point. Imperial Japan was as cruel as Nazi Germany. If the bomb had been ready six months earlier Berlin would have experienced it first. Crisis has a number of writers who are men 20-30 years younger than me and while they have the fire of faith they lack the wisdom of experience and this world will never be what they hope for (monarchy, et al). It is likely they – the ones who call it anti Catholic to drop the bomb- never knew anyone who fought in the Pacific.
My great Uncle Mike fought at D Day and the Battle of the Bulge. It is possible he could have been sent to fight in Japan had the bombs not been dropped.
Monday morning quarterbacks are always right in their own minds. My father finished army boot camp in July 1945. He was most relieved. Thirteen yrs later that bomb allowed me and a lot of other kids to be born. I am thankful for Truman’s action. So should a lot of other naysayers.
Hindsight is always 20-20.
Dialog is only useful if the other is of good will.
Hirohito and Hitler did not celebrate Christmas nor good will.
The A-bomb was well used.
“Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or of extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”[Gaudium et Spes, 80].
Cities in Japan were going to be destroyed Lepanto no matter whether the a-bombs had been used or not. Amphibious invasions of Kyushu and Honshu would have resulted in millions of death and cities pounded flat, much like the Japanese destruction of Manila.
Your argument is not with me.
The Church herself teaches that the intentional targeting and killing of noncombattants is morally wrong. This is true for atomic bombs, for conventional bombs, and for bayonets.
One cannot defend committing a war crime by arguing that my backup plan is a bigger war crime.
One cannot defend committing a war crime by arguing that my backup plan is a bigger war crime.
Of course I can. You can’t simply support setting in motion a train of events that will lead to mass deaths and then wipe your hands and walk away. If this type of idiocy had been taken seriously by a majority in the West during World War II, the world would now be divided between The Third Reich and Imperial Japan. The Church is not a suicide pact, no matter what born again pacifists say.
I would also note a paradox here. All popes up to the Francis the Worst gave at least tentative support to the balance of terror that prevented a nuclear war. That deterrence only worked if the weapons would be used in the event of their use by the enemy.
Pius the XII understood this:
In regard to Pius XII, the rules that he laid down for the use of nuclear weapons on September 30, 1954 strike me as common sense:
1. Such use must be “imposed by an evident and extremely grave injustice;”
2. Such injustice cannot be avoided without the use of nuclear weapons;
3. One should pursue diplomatic solutions that avoid or limit the use of such weapons;
4. There use must be indispensable to and in accordance with a nation’s defense needs;
5. That same use would be immoral if the destruction caused by the nuclear weapons were to result in harm so widespread as to be uncontrollable by man.
6. Unjustified uses should be severely punished as “crimes” under national and international law.
Penguins Fan:
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Speaking of Berlin. If people want to see how conventional land invasions go they should study the Soviet battle for Berlin. Just about every horror story predicted for the Japanese land invasion took place in that siege. Hitler was just as fanatical as the Japanese leadership. He ordered a fight to the death. Old men and Hitler Youth made up part of the Volkssturm, a militia. The Germans had a recoilless anti-tank weapon called the Panzerfaust. There are pictures of civilians being trained it its use. There were roving bands of extremists who could execute on the spot those Germans suspected of desertion, usually public hanging. The siege was brutal and left the city a wreck. The casualty count was up there with Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yeah, sure. We must, for instance, remember Unit 731 besides Auschwitz.