A roundup of old reflections on Aug. 6 & Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I have written extensively about this over the years at Blogger, but with this being the anniversary date, it is probably a good idea to drop a roundup of some of those old posts here.

An overview summary?

First, my thoughts on both uses of the atomic bomb fall in line with what I posted earlier today about what my non-twosiderism entails, including a SKEPTICAL leftism:

That’s that. My more specific thoughts are framed in part by Walter Kaufmann’s “Without Guilt and Justice.” Seeing “justice,” whether retributive or distributive justice, as he does, as Platonic ideals, I reject using either the word “justified” or the word “unjustified” about either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. (Kaufmann’s book was written largely as a takedown of John Rawls’ theory of ethics.)

From 2015 and the 70th anniversary of the two bombings, here’s some of my specific application of Kaufmann.

Newer than that, just two years ago, I wrote about ex post facto judgmentalism about the bombings engaged in by some less-skeptical leftists. The TL/DR is that atomic scientists then didn’t have fully detailed knowledge of radioactivity effects in general, though they did have a broad idea, and had zero idea of beta decay effects of plutonium, since it was an artificial element.

A year ago, on the 80th anniversary, I once again referenced Hirohito’s imperial rescript to show that he officially surrendered Japan because of the two bombs, and because of both of them, not just Hiroshima, but also and above all, because of the two bombs and NOT the Russian invasion of Manchuria.

In a related thought, it’s both laughable and odious to claim that dropping even Hiroshima was meant as a “signal” to Joe Stalin.

Related and specific to Nagasaki? Contra the once-followed Tim Shorrock, while it may have indirectly contributed to the division of Korea, no, it did NOT directly and deliberately cause that. As I noted, that had already been discussed at Yalta. Beyond that, already at Potsdam, Stalin was trying to get his claws into Libya. See what actual reading will do for you?

Speaking of reading? Per this long piece, I have read Richard Frank’s “Downfall” multiple times. More recently than that, I have read Marc Gallicchio’s “Unconditional.” Riffing off that Imperial rescript, both will tell you that Hirohito was far from a figurehead, too. So too will Ian Toll in “The Conquering Tide.” Remembering that is also important when we talk about “bombs” in the plural.

Finally, refuting not just unskeptical leftists, but many mainstream conservatives and liberals, after reading Gallicchio’s “Unconditional,” I read yet more recently a third excellent book in this stream: A.M Giangreco’s “Truman and the Bomb.” Truman, he shows, was no naif about the bomb even before FDR’s death. Beyond that, like the two other books, he talks about casualty estimates for a land invasion (Frank also gives good estimates of ongoing POW deaths, military deaths in other theaters, and Japanese deaths from starvation if we had done a close land blockade of Japan combined with totally disrupting shipping between each of the Home Islands. The Japanese civilian deaths alone would have outweighed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

Besides the above, and Gar Alperovitz, mentioned more than once, a special “shout-out” on this issue to Counterpunch magazine in general and senior editor Jeff St. Clair in particular for being regularly and repeatedly wrong on this issue from a standpoint of leftist tribalism.

For yet more, see my Hiroshima and nuclear weapons tags at Blogger.