In which I find myself for the umpteenth time refuting the same bad history. If people are going to bloviate on this subject they really should become acquainted with the basic facts. 1945 was only eight decades ago, but the historical amnesia and rank ignorance many people display would befit a discussion of the First Punic War, more than twenty-two centuries in the rear view mirror.
Go here to read historian Robert James Maddox dispatching some of the bad historical arguments claimed about the use of the a-bombs. Anyone who has not read his books and attempt to use those recycled arguments are the blind, relying upon the blind or the blatantly dishonest.
One American life saved made it all worthwhile. Japan did not believe in the BomB. Some scientists believed that the atmosphere would ignite and destroy all the oxygen on the planet.
World War II was caused by the anger about the loss of WWI by the Germans.
Will WWIII be caused by the loss of WWII by the Japanese?
Oppenheimer: “ they, the Japanese -need a shock.”
(Otherwise, they will not surrender and millions will die.)
I’m especially annoyed by churchmen who judge without caring to know all the facts. My understanding that is, or can be a very serious sin.
There were 2,000 flag rank officers in 1945. Which ones is he actually quoting?
==
Would you like to see the latest in performative signaling courtesy some of our supposedly educated?
==
https://x.com/arctotherium42/status/1953138542537855084
==
Mr. Sailer has noted that the gutting of college board tests after 1995 made them a butter knife for distinguishing between applicants at the most selective institutions (where the acceptance rate is in the single digits). The admissions algorithm is a black box which screens out people with common sense.
The people in the present who insist the atomic bombings were unnecessary are especially obtuse in their thinking that Japan would just negotiate an end to the hostilities.
This is yet another example of how the lacking of a direct existential crisis has caused so many flabby minds in our society.
I refer tho the radteads at Crisis Magazine loudly telling readers that Catholics can not support the dropping of the atomic bombs.
Virtually every person that thinks that they will be able to negotiate an end to war, especially after the war has been going on for a while, is just deluded unless both sides are just spent and can’t comtinue the war. Japan thought that they could do it after bombing Pearl Harbor. Hitler thought he could through World War II, thinking he would negotiate with Britain. It just doesn’t work that way. I’m with Sherman. You keep it up until they can’t fight anymore. When you add in the samurai warrior code that was so prevalent in World War II Japan, even among civilians, there really was no other option. They did need a shock. I’m more inclined to talk about the evil of bombing Dresden than about dropping the atomic bomb on Japan. Was it tragic? Absolutely. Did it put an end to the war stopping the loss of American lives and the loss of Japanese lives. Absolutely.
Honest question: was there a route to peace other than total Japanese surrender? Was there anything we could have given them to let them save face while stopping their murderous conquests/ attempts at conquest?
That’s been an argument I’ve heard, that we sound have given them an honorable way out, Sun Tzu’s golden bridge, so to speak.
(I haven’t thought of any)
I can’t think of anything. The Japanese leadership was delusional. “Kill enough Yankees and they will allow us to keep some of our conquests, they will not occupy us and there will be no trials of Japanese war criminals”, sums up their policy prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In hindsight the Japanese got off pretty light. A few years occupation during which MacArthur engineered changes to the benefit of Japan, a handful of war crime trials and Japan was protected by America for the next eight decades, spending little on its defense. Many Japanese said at the time that if they had known the Americans would be so benevolent, they should have surrendered immediately after Pearl Harbor.
Thanks for the Maddox article link. In his recent book “Truman and the Bomb: The Untold Story” by D. M. Giangreco he has an appendix taking on the revisionist historians. He cites Maddox in this appendix as part of a group of historians taking on the revisionist histories. I’ve heard it said that there are people who made statements during the war that were contradicted by what they said after the war.
[…] ConclaveJust Another Week in the Post-Catholic Carnival – Chris Jackson at Hiraeth In ExileAugust Nuclear Bomb on Japan Follies 2025 – Donald R. McClarey, J.D., at The American CatholicThis Has to Be a First, a Priestly […]
Yeah, and I can’t imagine a way we could have convinced them we would be so benevolent before the war ended.
The Japanese civilians were told that Marines were cannibals and would eat them. Grimly amusing considering the cannibalism some Japanese troops resorted to.
Gird your loins, it’s gone wide-ranging. Again.
https://almatcboykin.wordpress.com/2025/08/11/thats-nice-but-why-was-there-a-war-on-hmm/
Victor Davis Hanson did a video that is on YouTube “VDH | Revisionists Get It Wrong: Why the Atomic Bombings Ended WWII”:
*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK-3DdB1QPE
*
He brings attention to the deaths that were ongoing in the Pacific Theater and many other points as well.
LKL:
“I’m more inclined to talk about the evil of bombing Dresden than about dropping the atomic bomb on Japan”
Dresden was a munitions manufacturing city. Its glory in making porcelain was replaced by Hitler.
Hitler carpet bombed Poland and Britain. There was no GPS. and Hitler was planning to bomb the USA. I saved tin foil to fool the Nazi radar. We did not bomb the concentration camps.
Thank God that you and I were spared the carpet bombs.
Why do otherwise solid thinkers like Ed Feser act like he could have been the love child of an illicit affair between Tony Annett and Mark Shea when it comes to this issue?
Greg Mockeridge: One of the problems is that many people fail to consider that the Japanese leadership of the era didn’t think or act like most westerners think or act. D. M. Giangreco, author of “Hell to Pay,” in a video compared the Japanese leadership of WWII with the Middle East terrorists. That they both treated their own people like hostages who could be sacrificed in the name of their own goals and objectives.
Yeah, but when you present clear proof of it to these folks, they just brush it aside and continue to lazily parrot the same claptrap they have for decades. This is discrediting to themselves and the Church. But they don’t seem to care.