Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
On August 14th in 1945 Imperial Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration and averted Operation Downfall, the two stage invasion of Japan. This invasion would have resulted in at least a million American casualties and likely millions of Japanese dead from direct effects of the invasion plus the mass starvation that would have been sure to occur in its aftermath.
This is a map from the 6th Army Operation Olympic Assault Plan
The best web site presentation on the “Invasion that Never Was” I have found is here.
Were it not for the two atom bombings and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria shocking the Imperial Japanese into surrender, many of us would not be here today because our parents and grandparents would have died on the shores of Kyushu and Honshu.
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.
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.
The fighting on Okinawa saw many M4 Sherman tanks destroyed by the improved Japanese anti-tank defense build around the 47mm Type 01 anti-tank gun. Mid-May 1945 the US Army Ordnance branch took upon itself the task to send 12 of the Sherman’s successor tank, the M26 Pershing, to Okinawa. In my previous post on the priority shipments to Okinawa spoke of a LCT convoy from Okinawa to Hawaii to pick up M26 Pershings on Hawaii.
That story was wrong.
Korean War Mail Delivery, M26 Pershing Style
I found several references after that post including Kenneth Estes’ MARINES UNDER ARMOR: The Marine Corps ans Armored fighting Vehicles, 1916-2000 that had dates of Pershing Delivery varying from 21 July to 31 July 1945. It turns the 31 July 1945 date is correct and the landing craft tank (LCT) I mentioned were at Okinawa the whole time, not in a round trip convoy to Hawaii.
I ran across more data on the priority shipping CDL Tanks and deploying Recoilless Rifles for Okinawa that made some of the things I posted my here factually wrong. There was also additional information of the “VT” proximity fuse in US Army artillery.
Taken together, what didn’t make it to Okinawa would amount to a technological surprise for the Japanese defending the beaches of Kyushu, had the A-bomb failed to get a surrender.
The M3 CDL tanks were assembled at Rock Island Arsenal. Instead of a main gun turret the tank chassis mounted a steel box containing a 13 million candle power carbon arc lamp backed by mirrors to focus the beam, a machine gun and fake cannon. A 10Kw generator was mounted on the back and run by a power take off from the engine. The 75mm sponson gun was retained. Some 500 M3 CDLs were produced in 1943-44. Some 300 entered US Army service with a few used during the battle for the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, Germany. Eighteen CDL arrived on Okinawa in June 1945 after the fighting ended
First, it turns out that the June 1945 arrival of the M3 Grant medium tank based “Canal Defense Light” (CDL) tanks was not based on a April 1945 emergency request during Okinawa fighting like the Pershing, but instead was due to a trip by a US Army Ordnance officer working for 10th Army to Washington DC months earlier.
See below:
ON BEACHHEAD AND BATTLEFRONT
Chapter 23, pages 453-453
Colonel Daniels thought good use could be made of Canal Defense Light tanks. The Japanese in their campaign in Malaya had successfully made end runs at night along the coast, landing tanks from boats, and could be expected to do the same thing along the coast of Okinawa. Against such attacks, the CDL’s with their blinding searchlights might be used to very good effect. General Buckner had never heard of the CDL’s but after having been furnished a description he gave Daniels permission for a flight to Washington to round up a company. When Daniels got to Washington, he found that all of these special tanks had gone to England for shipment to France, but that he might expect some in several months. Accordingly, he put in a request for about 18 or 20 CDL’s, and an officer and men trained in operating them. They did not arrive until late June 1945, after the Okinawa campaign was over.25
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25. Ltr, Brig Gen Robert W. Daniels to Lida Mayo, 23 Nov 63, OCMH. When the CDL’s arrived Daniels got one ashore and showed it to Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, who had succeeded Buckner as Commanding General of Tenth Army. Stilwell was impressed. Ibid.
