Endings...

(Source)

As I finish up Hornfischer's excellent book, The Fleet at Flood Tide, many emotions well up, amazement at the will of the American people in the fight against Imperial Japan, sadness that so many had to die, and, ultimately, sheer disbelief at the effort required to convince the militarists, especially in the Japanese Army, that the war was lost, that there was no point to continuing.

Of course, one automatically thinks of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and whether or not that should have happened. One thing I do know, in talking to World War II veterans back in the early 70s, they were, to a man, glad that President Truman gave the order. Many of those I spoke with, all guys I worked in a factory with, would not have been there had Truman not given that command. Many would have died in the last assault, the one planned for the Japanese Home Islands.

What I did not know, until reading this book, is that there was a third bomb being assembled on Tinian. That bomb was destined for Tokyo itself.

I have been driven through Tokyo, going from one airfield to another, and was impressed by the cleanliness, the orderliness of the city. Everything shipshape, so to speak, everything in its place. The sidewalks neat and obviously swept every day.

As the bus I was on motored past the Imperial Palace - which looked like a wooded oasis in that bustling city - somewhere within those walls, past the moats, and the pine trees, sat the Emperor Hirohito. This was in 1980, so he was still on the throne.

It was his word that commanded the militarists to quit, saying that Japan must "endure the unendurable and suffer what is unsufferable." Yet, the war would not really have been possible without his assent.

Maybe.

In my own view, the men who controlled Japan, the men who perpetrated the atrocities throughout China, and later all of Asia, held the real power. Though the shogunate had been overthrown in the Meiji Restoration, the Emperor's power was more symbolic than physical. Still and all, as I rode past the Imperial Palace, I wondered what thoughts occupied the man within.

Did he ever think of the war? What were his memories of those days, when his armies raped, murdered, and pillaged their way across Asia and the Pacific? I often wonder.

I hold no animus towards the Japanese people. I lived there for a time, I found them to be polite, courteous to a fault, but as a gaijin, a foreigner both culturally and racially, could I ever begin to understand them? Perhaps a little.

I knew people who fought the Japanese. They hated them at the time, though years had passed, they still remembered the war years. One veteran of Guadalcanal that I worked with didn't like them at all, but respected them, in a back handed sort of way -

"Tough little bastards."

Yes, they were.

Now they are our allies, faithful to the alliance I think.

As China looms as a potential adversary, I am very glad that the Japanese are on our side. Very glad indeed. But I understand why that makes the Chinese unhappy, they remember Nanjing.

As do I.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were brutal acts of war, but absolutely necessary. Casualties would have run into the millions had an invasion of the Home Islands been necessary, mostly Japanese but thousands of Americans would have died as well.

Japan drew the sword.

We made the final cut.

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.  - William Tecumseh Sherman

True indeed.