"The U.S. justifies the bombings saying they saved many American lives," said Nobuo Miyake, 78, ... "It's outrageous for a Japanese politician to voice such thinking. Japan is a victim."
Japan is a VICTIM?
Excuse me, but this is the nation who, in addition to murdering over 2,600 American servicemen in a cowardly sneak attack on December 7th, 1941, gave us the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March, and brought brutality in the form of deliberate sadistic torture and death to every people that it's armies overran until the United States came back in Round Two and kicked their little yellow asses clean back to Honshu. And even then, when they were clearly beaten and their civilian population was starving, they rejected every offer of surrender that we gave them. It finally came down to either invading their home islands and suffering an estimated one million US casualties (and the Japanese death toll would have been off the charts) or demonstrating once and for all the futility of their continued belligerence. So we bombed them once and asked them nicely to surrender, but they refused and we had to bomb them again. It was their choice 100% to catch a second bomb and if the Japanese were a victim of any kind, it was a victim of their own stubborn arrogance.
My only regret is that we somehow missed Nobuo Miyake with those A-bombs.
And let us not forget the Japanese occupation of the Philippines!
ReplyDeleteInteresting aside: in anticipation of the invasion of the japanese home islands, the war department had around 500,000 Purple Heart medals prepare in anticipation of the expected american wounded from the invasion.
ReplyDeleteThere are still 120,000 in stock and we're still handing out these vintage medals to troops who are wounded currently in iraq and Afghanistan.