A Chilling Letter

[boughtwithaprice]

Got this in Karl Keatings letter today. I recounts the autobiography of the man that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. I always thought that the US use of the atomic bomb was to avoid unecessary casualties, but this letter made me rethink my position. It gave me a chill when I thought of the faithfulness of Japanese Catholics during that time. What do others think?

AN UNHAPPY ANNIVERSAY

Unless you are a World War II history buff, you probably do not recall
the name of Charles W. Sweeney, who died on July 16 at the age of 84.
He had finished his Army career as a major general, but he became famous
while a major for piloting the plane the dropped the atomic bomb on
Nagasaki. That was on August 9, 1945.

Sweeney's obituary explained that "At 11:01 a.m., the pumpkin-shaped
bomb called Fat Man was dropped on the industrial city of Nagasaki,
killing and wounding tens of thousands, heavily damaging a steelworks and
arms plant, and demolishing an estimated 14,000 residential buildings."

In a ghostwritten autobiography published in 1997, Sweeney said, "I
took no pride or pleasure then, nor do I take any now, in the brutality of
war, whether suffered by my people or those of another nation. Every
life is precious. But I felt no remorse or guilt that I had bombed the
city." Those who should have felt remorse and guilt, said Sweeney, were
the Japanese leaders who brought the war upon their own people.

Many justify the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima by saying the
abrupt end to the war saved as many as a million American lives that would
have been lost had Japan been invaded. I don't know where the figure of
one million came from. My understanding is that the War Department
estimated a maximum of 46,000 casualties in an invasion. That was a
worst-case scenario, meaning the likely number of casualties would have been
far lower.

Some commentators have argued that no invasion was needed at all, since
Japan no longer had an air force or navy and had no domestic source of
oil for its industries. A blockade would have resulted in the Japanese
war machine and economy grinding to a halt. The war thus could have
ended without an invasion, though the end probably would have come long
after the summer of 1945.

Be that as it may, what concerns me is the attitude, so prevalent among
political conservatives (most of whom are religious conservatives),
that there are no limits in defensive warfare: If the other guys started
the fight, they deserve whatever they get. In a defensive war it is not
a matter of "My country right or wrong" but of "My country can do no
wrong," which is an odd thing coming from conservatives who, on domestic
matters, can be highly critical of their government's moral failings
(as regards abortion or homosexuality, say).

Catholic moral principles are easy to apply to other people, difficult
to apply to ourselves. This is as true in public life as in private
life. During World War II our enemies did atrocious things on the
battlefield, to conquered nations, and even to their own people. Many of these
evils we knew about during the war; others came to light only after the
cessation of hostilities.

Even those evils we knew about during the war were so prevalent and so
gross that, to many, it seemed permissible, for the duration, to lay
aside a principle that we insisted be followed by our enemies: The end
does not justify the means.

Rephrase that in Catholic terms: To achieve a good, you may not perform
a sin. To provide your family financial security, you may not rob a
bank. To protect your wife's health, you may not abort the child she is
carrying. And to defeat an enemy in war, you may not violate just war
principles. But we did--and more than once, sad to say.

The atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, like the fire bombings
of Dresden and other German cities, cannot be squared with Catholic
moral principles because the bombings deliberately targeted non-combatants.
The evil done by our enemies did not exonerate us from the moral law.
Their evils did not provide us justification for evils of our own. Being
a Christian in peacetime is difficult; it is more difficult, but even
more necessary, in wartime.

Fat Man exploded directly above the Catholic cathedral in Nagasaki. The
city was the historical center of Catholicism in Japan and contained
about a tenth of the entire Catholic population. The cathedral was filled
with worshipers who had gathered to pray for a speedy and just end to
the war. It is said their prayers included a petition to offer
themselves, if God so willed it, in reparation for the evils perpetrated by
their country.

Until next time,

Karl

 

[geocajun]

wow, that ending is pretty heavy.

 

[NDIrish]

.

 

[going_crazy_am_i_me2]

wow... that really makes you think...

 

[Servant of the Kingdom]

The bombing of Dresden while less spectacular was even worse from a moral point of view because there was absolutely anything that could possibly justify it. Devoid of any important war industry, filled with refugees Festung Dresden was about to be taken by the red army (which they shortly did)

 

[Servant of the Kingdom]

Wasn't Dresden bombed by the brits?

 

[CeeBee]

I still think it was justified. I mean, so many U.S. soldiers woudl have died. That articel amde me rethink my viewpoint, but overall, my view remains the same.

 

[Servant of the Kingdom]

I don't think the question has nothing to do with invading Japan. Japan would not have been invaded. The question was Korea and China. At the time the Sovietaskaya Armeya was smashing the japanese blitzkrieg style. They japanese were good fighters in the jungle but anywhere else their tech was simply impossible. Japan had only a handful of armored formations worthy only of target practice for the soviet crews, nor could their 40 something mm antitank guns stop a T34 (but mabe kill of laughter the crew of a IS2) They even lacked good submachine guns. Had the war lasted a bit longer, Korea might have became completely soviet...

 

[KennySe]

http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.asp?ID=3993

http://www.udayton.edu/mary/questions/yq/yq255.html

 

[Servant of the Kingdom]

An excellent manga on the issue is :"Grave of the fireflies" one of the best movies of all time.

I am a Miyazake/Ghibli fan

 

[boughtwithaprice]

Excellent links, KennySe

My point of this thread was to have us think on the christian lives lost in time of war, not necesssarily to question US policy, but it does make me think

 

[Cjwinnit]

Wasn't Dresden bombed by the brits?

Not with a nuke, but more people died.

Edit: maybe..

"The precise number of dead is difficult to ascertain and is not known. Estimates vary from 25,000 to more than 135,000 dead. Such estimates are made very difficult by the fact that the city (Dresden) was crowded at that time by many unregistered refugees and wounded soldiers. The foreign forced labourers may represent a large number of dead, since they were usually employed in the squads to fight fire storms. (In comparison, some 100,000 died in the bombing of Hiroshima, about 50,000 in the bombing of Nagasaki)"

 

[stray bullet]

Got this in Karl Keatings letter today. I recounts the autobiography of the man that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan in 1945. I always thought that the US use of the atomic bomb was to avoid unecessary casualties, but this letter made me rethink my position. It gave me a chill when I thought of the faithfulness of Japanese Catholics during that time. What do others think?

It seems to be nothing more than unrealistic criticism of the war. Even taking some of the outlying islands in Japan resulted in tens of thousands of American lives. I have never heard any WWII military leader suggest losses anywhere near that low.

The article also fails to mention the mentality of the Japanese and what occurred on islands with Japanese civilians following US invasion. Japanese would throw their children off cliffs before jumping themselves. We must remember the concept held by the Japanese military at the time, "Shattered Jewel". Japan knew they weren't going to beat the US, however, under the shattered jewel idea, Japan would die in an honorable, glorious way. The jewel would be destroyed, but in the process, something beautiful would be seen. The Japanese also believed that prolonging the war would eventually cause the US to stop fighting them, due to the strain of years of fighting. Many Japanese saved up knives or poisons to take their own lives when the US invaded their islands. The Japanese had been taught that surrender was worse than death, this was not some unrealistic ideal the government expected of their people, it was taken to heart.

With Japan's stockpile of biological and chemical weapons, a civilian population ready to defend their homeland to the death and the high rate of suicides already occurring, the invasion of Japan would have been a mess. Let's not also forget that immediately after Japan surrendered, the US had to send in massive amounts of food, because the population was already beginning to starve to death.

I have no problem with the atomic bomb being used. I do have a problem with someone that leaves out the mentality of the WWII Japanese population to condemn the act. The civilians that didn't take their own lives, or had their lives taken for them, would have been weapons against any invading force. But, if one thinks a Japan partially occupied by Soviet troops, hundreds of thousands of dead US personnel, and an entire nation ready to commit suicide and fight invasion, while millions starved is better than what happened- that is an opinion and any is welcomed to it, however historically inaccurate it is.

 

[raptor13]

Yea i just watched Japan: The Invastion That Never Was on the History Channel. Stray makes a lot of good points.

 

[Veritas]

I think Karl Keating is entitled to his opinion just like anyone else. The mistake he makes is in trying to superimpose Catholic teaching on a secular government. The Roosevelt administration was under no obligation to follow Catholic principles to advance his military objectives. We were at war and just like all wars, it's ugly and horrific. It's easy with 20/20 hindsight to second guess decisions that were made and the intent behind them. We will truly never know.

That said: I think it's possible that there were ulterior motives for dropping the bombs. One, we had developed the bomb and wanted to use it in a real situation. Two, the US needed to demonstrate it's military dominance to the world...much like we did under Regean during the Cold War. It's also true that the US was fighting a war on several different fronts and it would have been difficult spare more troops in the Asia Pacific arena. The A bomb was just plain expedient.

 

[Wolseley]

It's true that Nagasaki was the center of Catholicism in Japan.

It's also true that Nagasaki was not the target. The target was Kokura (present-day Kitakyushu).

Nagasaki wasn't supposed to be bombed on August 9 at all; however, Kokura was clouded over by the time the aircraft arrived over the target, and after three passes, the aircraft commander, Major Charles Sweeny, ordered the plane to the alternate target, Nagasaki. That, too, was clouded over, but by this time the B-29 was running low enough on fuel that they did not have time to waste over Nagasaki, or to fly back to Kokura. They had enough time to make one pass, and hightail it back to Tinian.

Nobody had ever landed an aircraft with an atomic bomb on board before, and Sweeny did not relish the idea of being the first one to try it. Ergo, Commander Fred Ashworth, who was the weaponeer for the bomb aboard, ordered the bomb run to be made by radar. Air-to-ground radar being what it was at that time, the bombardier missed his aiming point by three miles; the greater devastation from a plutonium-core bomb (rather than a uranium-core bomb) being what it was, one can only imagine what the damage would have been like if they had actually hit the city center of Nagasaki.

But the point is, we were never supposed to bomb Nagasaki to begin with. It was a case of too many clouds and too little fuel.

 

[Dominus Fidelis]

Kind of off-topic, but I read a story about a family in a house only 8 blocks from ground-zero that were busy praying the Rosary when the bomb went off, and they were not harmed.

 

[geocajun]

Kind of off-topic, but I read a story about a family in a house only 8 blocks from ground-zero that were busy praying the Rosary when the bomb went off, and they were not harmed.

those were 8 priests who survived hiroshima 8 blocks from the where the bomb fell.
One of them moved to nagasaki the next day, and survived that bomb as well.

http://www.yearoftherosary.org/hiroshima_miracle.htm

Its a great story, and a great message about devotion to Our Lady!http://members.tripod.com/~Emmaus1/hiroshima.html

 

[Servant of the Kingdom]

geo: tell me the name of that priest, I don't want to be close to him

 

[geocajun]

geo: tell me the name of that priest, I don't want to be close to him

haahaha