Japan

Just Say “No”

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(or at least “less”)

…to rare earths

There has been much concern, and rightly so, about the increasing dependence of the U.S. and other economies on the elements known as rare earths, for which the primary current supplier is China. These concerns have been further increased by the rather high-handed manner in which the Chinese government has conducted itself in this matter. As a result, stocks of companies with access to rare-earth mineral deposits outside of China have been doing pretty well.

A couple of weeks ago, General Electric posted about their efforts to reduce the need for rhenium in jet engines. Although it is not technically a rare earth, rhenium is indeed rare–world production about 50 tons per year–and expensive. GE’s rhenium-reduction project has three elements: recycling metal grindings from the manufacturing process, developing alloys that require less or no rhenium, and reclaiming rhenium from used engine parts.

When reading the GE post, it struck me that just about every company that is highly dependent on rare earths probably has similar projects underway. Comes now Toyota, with an announcement that it’s making good progress in developing an electric motor (for hybrids) which has no need of neodymium, a mainly-Chinese-source element that is a key component in today’s hybrid motors. (Toyota’s new motor is based on the induction-motor principle–scarcely a new technology, but one that has required considerable reengineering to meet the weight and efficiency needs of the hybrid application.)

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Busting the Hiroshima Narrative

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Richard Fernandez, AKA blogger Wretchard the Cat, has a post on Pajamas Media titled The Foundations of Our World on the modern politically correct myths surrounding Hiroshima — America was the original “nuclear sinner” and war criminal while Japan was “innocent victim” — that have become “The Narrative” that the Ruling classes promulgate through the Western education establishment and main stream media.

Just because this is “The Narrative” does not make it the objective truth. There is still a lot of historical information still being unearthed about that era. Information highly destructive of the politically correct narrative in the form of the unearthed history of the Japanese chemical warfare program.

The bottom line up front is that Hiroshima was a center of chemical weapons production for the Japanese and the weapons produced there were used in against Chinese, British and American troops in World War Two.

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Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Saving Hirohito’s Phony Baloney Job

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On August 6th, the Enola Gay took off for Hiroshima.

On August 9th, Bockscar took off for Nagasaki.

File:Bocks-Car-enlisted-flight-crew.png
Bock’s Car crew photo Source: Wikipedia

 

They both delivered the psychological blows to the Japanese leadership necessary to allowed them to surrender.

It took;

1) Two Atom bomb strikes, and

2) The destruction of the Imperial Japanese Manchurian Army by the Soviets (See August Storm: Soviet Tactical and Operational Combat in Manchuria, 1945 and August Storm: Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria, by David Glantz.),

…to shock the IJA generals into inaction for long enough so Emperor Hirohito could surrender to the Allies over the armed objections of IJA junior officers.

Lacking either of those factors, and America would have had to conduct a genocidal campaign of extermination against the Japanese people.

Point in fact, the USAAF has already destroyed more urban space and killed more Japanese in the Tokyo firebombings than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The USAAF was also starving the Japanese people via it’s aerial B-29 mining campaign and was set to go after Japan’s railroads, which would have destroyed remaining Japanese urban food distribution.

Yet the IJA was still raring to fight on.

The Japanese military had in all but name turned into a death cult that was set to consume millions.

The Japanese Emperor Hirohito knew from his viewing of the aftermath of the B-29 firbombing raid of Tokyo that if he allowed the irrational Samurai death cult military leaders running his government to fight to the end, the Japanese people would turn against the institution of the emperor.

Too paraphrase Mel Brooks in the movie “Blazing Saddles,” our air power made the continuation of the war “a threat to his phony baloney job.”

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Hiroshima — The A-bomb plus 65 years

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These are pre-strike and post-strike USAAF photo of the Aug 06, 1945 atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima Photo Source: Wikipedia.

The best way I can think of to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is to review an article by historian Richard B. Frank that was published in the Weekly Standard in 2005. In it, Frank lays out the competing visions of history that have grown up after the event, and its most recent turns, that refresh our understanding of that day.

Why Truman Dropped the Bomb
Sixty years after Hiroshima, we now have the secret intercepts that influenced his decision.
by Richard B. Frank
08/08/2005, Volume 010, Issue 44

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The sixtieth anniversary of Hiroshima seems to be shaping up as a subdued affair–though not for any lack of significance. A survey of news editors in 1999 ranked the dropping of the atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, first among the top one hundred stories of the twentieth century. And any thoughtful list of controversies in American history would place it near the top again. It was not always so. In 1945, an overwhelming majority of Americans regarded as a matter of course that the United States had used atomic bombs to end the Pacific war. They further believed that those bombs had actually ended the war and saved countless lives. This set of beliefs is now sometimes labeled by academic historians the “traditionalist” view. One unkindly dubbed it the “patriotic orthodoxy.”

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But in the 1960s, what were previously modest and scattered challenges of the decision to use the bombs began to crystallize into a rival canon. The challengers were branded “revisionists,” but this is inapt. Any historian who gains possession of significant new evidence has a duty to revise his appreciation of the relevant events. These challengers are better termed critics.

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The critics share three fundamental premises. The first is that Japan’s situation in 1945 was catastrophically hopeless. The second is that Japan’s leaders recognized that fact and were seeking to surrender in the summer of 1945. The third is that thanks to decoded Japanese diplomatic messages, American leaders knew that Japan was about to surrender when they unleashed needless nuclear devastation. The critics divide over what prompted the decision to drop the bombs in spite of the impending surrender, with the most provocative arguments focusing on Washington’s desire to intimidate the Kremlin. Among an important stratum of American society–and still more perhaps abroad–the critics’ interpretation displaced the traditionalist view.

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These rival narratives clashed in a major battle over the exhibition of the Enola Gay, the airplane from which the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, at the Smithsonian Institution in 1995. That confrontation froze many people’s understanding of the competing views. Since then, however, a sheaf of new archival discoveries and publications has expanded our understanding of the events of August 1945. This new evidence requires serious revision of the terms of the debate. What is perhaps the most interesting feature of the new findings is that they make a case President Harry S. Truman deliberately chose not to make publicly in defense of his decision to use the bomb.

I hope the last line whets your curiosity enough to go to the link and finish reading the article.

It is well worth your time.

Gas Warfare in Manila — February 1945

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In researching old, on-line, US Army records on the use of flame throwing tanks and napalm bombs by US Army forces in 1945, Luzon, Philippines fighting. I found a 15 March 1945 report by the US Sixth Army Chemical Warfare officer. He stated that some time between 03 Feb thru 03 Mar 1945 — during the bitter urban fighting between American troops and a combination of Japanese naval base troops and three Imperial Japanese Army infantry battalions of the Shimbu Group — Japanese troops attacked troopers of the American 1st Cavalry Division with hand held and 75mm gun fired chemical munitions.

The Japanese crossed the chemical warfare threshold in World War 2.

See:

Report of the Luzon campaign, 9 January 1945 – 30 June 1945 in four Volumes, Volume III.
 
REPORTS OF GENERAL AND SPECIAL STAFF SECTIONS
 
Annex No. 2 Annex 5 to Adm 0 17,
Chemical Plan
 
ANNEX N O. 2
HEADQUARTERS SIXTH ARMY
A. P. O. 442
0800 15 March 1945
 
Page 93
 
1. Enemy Chemical warfare Activities.
 
Catured enemy toxic munitions on Luzon to date consist of tear gas (CN), vomiting gas (DC), and Chlorpicrin (ps). Isolated instances were reported of the use of tear gas and vomiting gas in the form of self projecting gas candles and artillery shells against elements of the 1st Cavalry Division in Manila. Indications are that the employment of these munitions was against the policy of the Imperial Japanese Army as no large scale coordinated attack utilizing available toxic munitions was attempted. The gas was employed by fanatical suicide squads defending the city. The enemy is capable of using blister gas in chemical land mines only. In case of such action. The contaminated areas must be by-passed as no protective clothing will be carried into the operation.

And American military commanders choose not to retaliate…immediately.

But they did plan to retaliate.

The senior officers who planned Operation DETACHMENT, the invasion of Iwo Jima in Feb 45, had agreed to attack the island with gas first.

It was to be struck by a combination of the naval gun bombardment from landing ships LCI(M) mortar gunboats fitted with Chemical Warfare Service 4.2 inch chemical mortars (US naval guns lacked shells with lethal gas filling) and air delivered M47A1 100 lb bombs carrying phosgene and mustard gas.

This gas bombardment was personally vetoed President Roosevelt, who died two months after Iwo Jima.

When I first read about that Roosevelt veto, I had wondered why it was necessary. The USA had a chemical warfare “No-First-Use” policy in WW2. The American military did not initiate what we call “weapon of mass destruction” attacks independent of specific political authorization then, any more than they would today.

What this Sixth Army document means is that President Roosevelt didn’t veto American chemical warfare _first use_ at Iwo Jima by the US military.

He vetoed American Military RETALIATION.

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