Modern apologetic commentary about Hiroshima neglects the fact that for the Japanese people themselves, the nuclear attacks more than arguably reduced casualties. If the intensity of fighting at Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima is any guide, a conventional invasion would have created an even larger bloodbath, for Allied troops but even more so for Japanese civilians.
Just as importantly, the use of the nuclear weapon in Japan is an exceedingly rare example of a situation where its use would be primarily to take or reclaim territory. Usually, the nuclear weapon would be used as a "tripwire" device triggered by a conventional invasion. As Paul Luttwak pointed out in the July 1982 issue, the level of conventional forces needed to defend the West against a Soviet conventional attack would be staggering. The Maginot and Bar-Lev lines did not hold since they were not, and could not be thick enough to resist enemy attack.
Thus, without nuclear weapons, more young men under arms to fight, not build lives.
Link to related article, excerpts below
August 9, 2010 is the 65th anniversary of the attack on Nagasaki, the second and final of two nuclear bombings by the U.S. of Japan. Today’s ceremony commemorating the 65th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima had something new: the presence of the U.S. ambassador to Japan.
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Mourning the loss of so many lives in the bombing is both understandable and appropriate. But the problem lies in the way Japan remembers World War II. One of the reasons why it would have been appropriate for the United States to avoid its official presence at this ceremony is that the Japanese have never taken full responsibility for their own conduct during the war that the Hiroshima bombing helped end. Indeed, to listen to the Japanese, their involvement in the war sounds limited to the incineration of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the fire bombings of many other urban centers in the country, followed by a humiliating American occupation. The horror of the two nuclear bombs didn’t just wipe out two cities and force Japan’s government to finally bow to the inevitable and surrender. For 65 years it has served as a magic event that has erased from the collective memory of the Japanese people the vicious aggression and countless war crimes committed against not only the Allied powers but also the peoples of Asia who fell under their cruel rule in the 1930s and 1940s. The bombing of Hiroshima was horrible, but it ought not, as it has for all these years, to serve as an excuse for the Japanese people to forget the crimes their government and armed forces committed throughout their empire during the years that preceded the dropping of the first nuclear bomb.
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The other troubling context to this event is the emphasis on banning nuclear weapons as the end all of contemporary foreign policy — a message reinforced by United Nations General-Secretary Ban Ki Moon, who cited President Obama’s support for this cause in his remarks at Hiroshima. The notion that nuclear weapons themselves are a threat to the world and must be banned is the sort of piety we expect to be mouthed at Hiroshima, but it betrays a lack of both historical and contemporary understanding of strategic realities. These weapons may be terrible, but the plain truth is that their existence kept the peace between the rival superpowers during the Cold War. America’s nuclear arsenal ensured the freedom of Western Europe as well as that of Japan after World War II.
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