"The Bomb Hastened the End of World War II"

     There is a movement today that would like to re-write history of World War II, especially the use of the atomic bomb to end the war.  These are generally people that were either born after World War II or were not closely involved.  It's easy to pass moral judgment on actions taken during war time if you don't understand the situation or weren't involved.  It's very hard for people who did not live through that era to really understand the situation as it existed.

     We were forced into a war we didn't want by the infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, by the Japanese Empire.  This was total war; indeed the sun never set on the world's battlefields throughout most of the war.  War is never a pleasant thing and all agree it should be avoided if at all possible; however, once committed to war you either kill more of the enemy than they kill of you or you lose.

     The Japanese conquered Korea in 1910, overrun Manchuria in 1931 and attacked China in 1937.  The infamous rape of Nanking occurred in 1938 resulting in 300,000 Chinese deaths.  By 1941 it is estimated that the Japanese had killed over 20 million Chinese.  This is the kind of enemy we faced on Dec. 7, 1941.  For several months the fate of the United States, indeed the free world, hung in the balance.

     Before the start of WWII we were breaking some of the Japanese diplomatic codes.  We got better as the war progressed.  This information was very valuable from a military standpoint, a good example being the battle of Midway.  We continued to read the codes until Nov. 3, 1945 (over two months after the end of WWII), when a congressional investigation revealed to the Japanese our secret and they stopped transmitting.  It is interesting to note that the first mention of the atomic bomb in these messages was on Sept. 1, 1945.  The purpose of this message was to initiate a campaign against the use of the bomb to help offset the many atrocities committed against the POW's they held during the war.  This campaign is still being waged today.

     A long series of battles were required, beginning in the summer of 1942, to retake territory overrun by the Japanese.  By late '44 the battle for the Phillipines had started and in early '45 the battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa had begun.  These battles were to set the stage for ending the war and also indicated the increasing fanatical resistance we could expect from the Japanese forces when we invaded Japan.  Our casualties in these campaigns ranged from 20 percent to 35 percent of the total invasion force, this force included the ground assault force plus the naval and air support forces.  The figures indicate that the casualty rate was increasing as the closer we got to Japan.  A new devastating weapon emerged during the battle for the Phillipines, the Kamikaze, used to sink our ships.  Kamikaze attacks were more frequent during the battle for Okinawa where our naval forces suffered devastating losses.  As the battle for Okinawa was nearing an end the two commanding generals for the Japanese army committed hari kari by disemboweling themselves, their junior officers used hand grenades held to their midsections. 

     By 1945, the Japanese still held about 400,000 allied prisoners of war in Japan and the other territories they still held.  These POWs had been treated badly; tortured, killed, used as slave labor, poorly fed and were being slowly starved to death; many had only a few months to live.  It is interesting to note that 4 percent of all U.S. POWs held by the Germans died in captivity while 28 percent of our POWs held by the Japanese died in captivity.  An order had been issued by the Japanese to execute all POWs when the home islands were invaded, this had already begun in some of the Phillipine POW camps.