Het volgende artikel vond ik 17 maart jl. op het blog van Stan van Houcke. Het artikel komt oorspronkelijk van Global Research en maakt gehakt van de leugen, dat het bombarderen van twee dichtbevolkte Japanse steden met een atoombom, nodig was om een eind te maken aan de oorlog met Japan (WOII). Een grotere oorlogsmisdaad is bijna niet te bedenken……..
De echte reden voor de atoomaanvallen was al bekend, maar goed te zien, dat e.e.a. nu ruimschoots terug te vinden is in (officiële) documenten.
Zelfs veel hooggeplaatste militairen spraken zich destijds uit tegen het gebruik van dit barbaarse wapen……….
Jammer dat de meeste mensen die getuige waren van deze vreselijke oorlogsmisdaad (ook de ‘getuigen op afstand’ zoals in Nederland), intussen zijn overleden….. Hen werd, precies als latere generaties, de leugen ingeprent, dat dit de enige manier was om de oorlog met Japan te beëindigen…….
U kunt in het volgende artikel o.a. lezen, dat de VS, voorafgaand aan het tot 2 keer toe bombarderen met atoombommen, van een dichtbevolkte Japanse stad, een wapenstilstand met Japan weigerde, daar Japan de keizer niet wilde afzetten, laat staan vervolgen. Met die voorwaarde ging de VS na de 2 aanvallen met atoombommen toch akkoord……… Daarmee was het overduidelijk, dat de VS deze aanvallen met atoombommen heeft gebruikt, om de effecten daarvan te zien en te onderzoeken…… De Japanse burgers werden in feite als proefdier gebruikt…….
Hier het artikel (dat overigens op 2 november 2012 werd gepubliceerd):
The
Real Reason America Used Nuclear Weapons Against Japan. It Was Not To
End the War Or Save Lives.
By Washington’s
Blog / globalresearch.ca / Nov
2, 2012
Like
all Americans, I was taught that the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to end WWII and save both American
and Japanese lives.
But
most of the top American military officials at the time
said otherwise.
The
U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to
study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946
that concluded (52-56):
Based
on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the
testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the
Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in
all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have
surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even
if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been
planned or contemplated.
General
(and later president) Dwight Eisenhower – then Supreme
Commander of all Allied Forces,
and the officer who created most of America’s WWII military plans
for Europe and Japan – said:
The
Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to
hit them with that awful thing.
Newsweek,
11/11/63, Ike
on Ike
Eisenhower
also noted (pg.
380):
In
[July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in
Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an
atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a
number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. …the
Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New
Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction,
apparently expecting a vigorous assent.
During
his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a
feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my
grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was
already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely
unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should
avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment
was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American
lives. It was my
belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to
surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face’.
The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude….
Admiral
William Leahy –
the highest ranking member of the U.S. military from 1942 until
retiring in 1949, who was the first de facto Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, and who was at the center of all major American
military decisions in World War II – wrote (pg.
441):
It
is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The
Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the
effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional
weapons.
The
lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening.
My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted
an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was
not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by
destroying women and children.
General
Douglas MacArthur agreed (pg.
65, 70-71):
MacArthur’s
views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed
…. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to
drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been
consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that
he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The
war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had
agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution
of the emperor.
Moreover (pg.
512):
The
Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender
unconditionally or face ‘prompt and utter destruction.’ MacArthur
was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their
emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be
impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied
occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did
come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the
imperial reign. Had the General’s advice been followed, the resort
to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been
unnecessary.
Similarly,
Assistant Secretary of War John McLoy noted (pg.
500):
I
have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government
issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention
of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and had made some
reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the
future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I
believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some
disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable
consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion
after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been
closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government,
to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I
believe we missed the opportunity of effecting a
Japanese
surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of
dropping the bombs.
Under
Secretary of the Navy Ralph Bird said:
I
think that the Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had
approached the Russians and, I think, the Swiss. And that
suggestion of [giving] a
warning [of
the atomic
bomb] was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could
have readily accepted.
***
In
my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the
atom bomb. Thus, it wouldn’t have been necessary for us to
disclose our nuclear position and stimulate the Russians to develop
the same thing much more rapidly than they would have if we had not
dropped the bomb.
War
Was Really Won Before We Used A-Bomb,
U.S. News and World Report, 8/15/60, pg. 73-75.
He
also noted (pg.
144-145, 324):
It
definitely seemed to me that the Japanese were becoming weaker and
weaker. They were surrounded by the Navy. They couldn’t get any
imports and they couldn’t export anything. Naturally, as time went
on and the war developed in our favor it was quite logical to hope
and expect that with the proper kind of a warning the Japanese would
then be in a position to make peace, which would have made
it unnecessary for us to drop the bomb and have had
to bring Russia in.
General
Curtis LeMay, the tough cigar-smoking Army Air Force “hawk,” stated
publiclyshortly
before the nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan:
The
war would have been over in two weeks. . . . The atomic bomb had
nothing to do with the end of the war at all.
The
Vice Chairman of the U.S. Bombing Survey Paul Nitze wrote (pg.
36-37, 44-45):
[I]
concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely
to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan
would capitulate by November 1945.
***
Even
without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly
unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese
government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands [scheduled for
November 1, 1945] would have been necessary.
Deputy
Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence Ellis Zacharias wrote:
Just
when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and
introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen
and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern
Asia.
Washington
decided that Japan had been given its chance and now it was time to
use the A-bomb.
I
submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic
grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.
Ellis
Zacharias, How
We Bungled the Japanese Surrender,
Look, 6/6/50, pg. 19-21.
Brigadier
General Carter Clarke – the military intelligence officer in charge
of preparing summaries of intercepted Japanese cables for President
Truman and his advisors – said (pg.
359):
When
we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and
they knew that we knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an
experiment for two atomic bombs.
Many
other high-level military officers concurred. For
example:
The
commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations,
Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of
Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that
the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also,
the opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was reported to have
said in a press conference on September 22, 1945, that “The Admiral
took the opportunity of adding his voice to those insisting that
Japan had been defeated before the atomic bombing and Russia’s
entry into the war.” In a subsequent speech at the Washington
Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated “The Japanese
had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was
announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before
the Russian entry into the war.” It was learned also that on or
about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower had urged Truman, in a
personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s assessment
was “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . .
to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even
attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.” Eisenhower also
stated that it wasn’t necessary for Truman to “succumb” to [the
tiny handful of people putting pressure on the president to drop atom
bombs on Japan.]
British
officers were of the same mind. For example, General Sir Hastings
Ismay, Chief of Staff to the British Minister of Defence, said to
Prime Minister Churchill that “when Russia came into the war
against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost
any terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor.”
On
hearing that the atomic test was successful, Ismay’s private
reaction was one of “revulsion.”
Why
Were Bombs Dropped on Populated Cities Without
Military Value?
Even
military officers who favored use of nuclear weapons mainly favored
using them on unpopulated areas or Japanese military targets … not
cities.
For
example, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss
proposed to Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal that a non-lethal
demonstration of
atomic weapons would be enough to convince the Japanese to surrender
… and the Navy Secretary agreed (pg. 145, 325):
I
proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be
demonstrated before it was used. Primarily it was because it was
clear to a number of people, myself among them, that the war was very
nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate… My
proposal to the Secretary was that the weapon should be demonstrated
over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects
would be dramatic. I remember suggesting that a satisfactory place
for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees
notfar
from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our
redwood… I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height
above such a forest… would lay the trees out in windrows from the
center of the explosion in all directions as though they were
matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed
to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese
that we could destroy any of their cities at will… Secretary
Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation…
It
seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring
the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find
its way into the armaments of the world…
General
George Marshall agreed:
Contemporary
documents show that Marshall felt “these weapons might first be
used against straight military objectives such as a large naval
installation and then if no complete result was derived from the
effect of that, he thought we ought to designate a number of large
manufacturing areas from which the people would be warned to
leave–telling the Japanese that we intend to destroy such
centers….”
As
the document concerning Marshall’s views suggests, the question of
whether the use of the atomic bomb was justified turns … on whether
the bombs had to be used against a largely civilian target rather
than a strictly military target—which, in fact, was the explicit
choice since although there were Japanese troops in the cities,
neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki was deemed militarily vital by U.S.
planners. (This is one of the reasons neither had been heavily bombed
up to this point in the war.) Moreover, targeting [at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki] was aimed explicitly on non-military facilities surrounded
by workers’ homes.
Historians
Agree that the Bomb Wasn’t Needed
Historians
agree that nuclear weapons did not need to be used to stop the war or
save lives.
As
historian Doug Long notes:
U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission historian J. Samuel Walker has studied
the history of research on the decision to use nuclear weapons on
Japan. In his conclusion he writes, “The
consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an
invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time.
It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and
his advisors knew it.”
(J. Samuel Walker, The
Decision to Use the Bomb: A Historiographical Update, Diplomatic
History, Winter 1990, pg. 110).
Politicians
Agreed
Many
high-level politicians agreed. For example, Herbert Hoover said (pg.
142):
The
Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945…up
to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; …if such
leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion
to drop the [atomic] bombs.
Under
Secretary of State Joseph Grew noted (pg.
29-32):
In
the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such
a categorical statement about the [retention of the] dynasty had been
issued in May, 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the [Japanese]
Government might well have been afforded by
such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to
an early clearcut decision.
If
surrender could have been brought about in May, 1945, or even in June
or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the [Pacific] war
and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer.
Why
Then Were Atom Bombs Dropped on Japan?
If
dropping nuclear bombs was unnecessary to end the war or to save
lives, why was the decision to drop them made? Especially over the
objections of so many top military and political figures?
One
theory is that scientists like
to play with their toys:
On
September 9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third
Fleet, was publicly quoted extensively as stating that the atomic
bomb was used because the scientists had a “toy and they wanted to
try it out . . . .” He further stated, “The first atomic bomb was
an unnecessary experiment . . . . It was a mistake to ever drop it.”
However,
most of the Manhattan Project scientists who developed the atom bomb
were opposed to using it on Japan.
Albert
Einstein – an important catalyst for the development of the atom
bomb (but not directly connected with the Manhattan Project) – said
differently:
“A
great majority of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of
the atom bomb.” In Einstein’s judgment, the dropping of the bomb
was a political – diplomatic decision rather than a military or
scientific decision.
Indeed,
some of the Manhattan Project scientists wrote
directly to the secretary of defense in
1945 to try to dissuade him from dropping the bomb:
We
believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for
an early, unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable. If the United
States would be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate
destruction upon mankind, she would sacrifice public support
throughout the world, precipitate the race of armaments, and
prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on
the future control of such weapons.
Political
and Social Problems,
Manhattan Engineer District Records, Harrison-Bundy files, folder #
76, National Archives (also contained in: Martin Sherwin, A
World Destroyed,
1987 edition, pg. 323-333).
The
scientists questioned the ability of destroying Japanese cities with
atomic bombs to bring surrender when destroying Japanese cities with
conventional bombs had not done so, and – like some of the military
officers quoted above – recommended a demonstration of the atomic
bomb for Japan in an unpopulated area.
The
Real Explanation?
History.com notes:
In
the years since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan, a number
of historians have suggested that the weapons had a two-pronged
objective …. It has been suggested that the second objective was to
demonstrate the new weapon of mass destruction to the Soviet Union.
By August 1945, relations between the Soviet Union and the United
States had deteriorated badly. The Potsdam Conference between U.S.
President Harry S. Truman, Russian leader Joseph Stalin, and Winston
Churchill (before being replaced by Clement Attlee) ended just four
days before the bombing of Hiroshima. The meeting was marked by
recriminations and suspicion between the Americans and Soviets.
Russian armies were occupying most of Eastern Europe. Truman
and many of his advisers hoped that the U.S. atomic monopoly might
offer diplomatic leverage with the Soviets. In this fashion, the
dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan can be seen as the first shot of
the Cold War.
New
Scientist reported in
2005:
The
US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945
was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end
the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say
they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.
Causing
a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and
killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to
impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US
President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they
add.
“He
knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species,”
says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at
American University in Washington DC, US. “It was not just a war
crime; it was a crime against humanity.”
***
[The
conventional explanation of using the bombs to end the war and save
lives] is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from
Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US.
***
New
studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest
that Truman’s main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in
Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union
began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because
of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.
According
to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of
state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the
bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was “looking for peace”.
Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight
Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there
was no military need to use the bomb.
“Impressing
Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan,” says
Selden.
John
Pilger points
out:
The
US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was
“fearful” that the US air force would have Japan so “bombed
out” that the new weapon would not be able “to show its
strength”. He later admitted that “no effort was made, and none
was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to
have to use the bomb”. His foreign policy colleagues were eager
“to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously
on our hip”. General Leslie Groves, director of the
Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified:
“There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy,
and that the project was conducted on that basis.” The day
after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his
satisfaction with the “overwhelming success” of “the
experiment”.
We’ll
give the last
word to
University of Maryland professor of political economy – and former
Legislative Director in the U.S. House of Representatives and the
U.S. Senate, and Special Assistant in the Department of State – Gar
Alperovitz:
Though
most Americans are unaware of the fact, increasing numbers of
historians now recognize the United States did not need to use the
atomic bomb to end the war against Japan in 1945. Moreover, this
essential judgment was expressed by the vast majority of top American
military leaders in all three services in the years after the war
ended: Army, Navy and Army Air Force. Nor was this the judgment of
“liberals,” as is sometimes thought today. In fact, leading
conservatives were far more outspoken in challenging the decision as
unjustified and immoral than American liberals in the years following
World War II.
***
Instead
[of allowing other options to end the war, such as letting the
Soviets attack Japan with ground forces], the United States rushed to
use two atomic bombs at almost exactly the time that an August 8
Soviet attack had originally been scheduled: Hiroshima on August 6
and Nagasaki on August 9. The timing itself has obviously raised
questions among many historians. The available evidence, though not
conclusive, strongly suggests that the atomic bombs may well have
been used in part because American leaders “preferred”—as
Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Martin Sherwin has put it—to end
the war with the bombs rather than the Soviet attack. Impressing the
Soviets during the early diplomatic sparring that ultimately became
the Cold War also appears likely to have been a significant factor.
***
The
most illuminating perspective, however, comes from top World War II
American military leaders. The conventional wisdom that the atomic
bomb saved a million lives is so widespread that … most Americans
haven’t paused to ponder something rather striking to anyone
seriously concerned with the issue: Not only did most top U.S.
military leaders think the bombings were unnecessary and unjustified,
many were morally offended by what they regarded as the unnecessary
destruction of Japanese cities and what were essentially noncombat
populations. Moreover, they spoke about it quite openly and publicly.
***
Shortly
before his death General George C. Marshall quietly defended the
decision, but for the most part he is on record as repeatedly saying
that it was not a military decision, but rather a political
one.
========================
Zie ook:
‘In de VS berichtte men in 1945, dat Hiroshima ‘a military base’ was…….‘
‘Hiroshima, één van de grootste oorlogsmisdaden ooit, 71 jaar later redenen te over voor herdenking!‘
‘Overlevenden atoomaanval op Hiroshima vragen om een verbod op kernwapens‘
‘Hashima en de Japanse ontkenning van wreedheden tijdens WOII‘
en zie voor verdere VS-terreur na WOII:
‘VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII……..‘
‘VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen……….‘
‘List of wars involving the United States‘
Voor meer berichten n.a.v. het bovenstaande, klik op één van de labels, die u onder dit bericht terug kan vinden, dit geldt niet voor de labels: Halsey, MacArthur, Manhattan Project, Marshall en Potsdam,
