The Hiroshima Myth

August 3rd, 2006 at 19:02 Björn Hallberg

You know it’s that time of the year again, when apologists for empire scurry to defend their genocidal all-time high. It would seem the U.S. still isn’t ready to show even the most rudimentary remorse. Thankfully there are those that have seen the bigger picture and managed to digg themselves out of the propaganda. John V. Denson writes for Lew Rockwell

Every year during the first two weeks of August the mass news media and many politicians at the national level trot out the “patriotic” political myth that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in August of 1945 caused them to surrender, and thereby saved the lives of anywhere from five hundred thousand to one million American soldiers, who did not have to invade the islands. Opinion polls over the last fifty years show that American citizens overwhelmingly (between 80 and 90%) believe this false history which, of course, makes them feel better about killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians (mostly women and children) and saving American lives to accomplish the ending of the war.

The best book, in my opinion, to explode this myth is The Decision to Use the Bomb by Gar Alperovitz, because it not only explains the real reasons the bombs were dropped, but also gives a detailed history of how and why the myth was created that this slaughter of innocent civilians was justified, and therefore morally acceptable. The essential problem starts with President Franklin Roosevelt’s policy of unconditional surrender, which was reluctantly adopted by Churchill and Stalin, and which President Truman decided to adopt when he succeeded Roosevelt in April of 1945. Hanson Baldwin was the principal writer for The New York Times who covered World War II and he wrote an important book immediately after the war entitled Great Mistakes of the War. Baldwin concludes that the unconditional surrender policy “. . . was perhaps the biggest political mistake of the war . . . . Unconditional surrender was an open invitation to unconditional resistance; it discouraged opposition to Hitler, probably lengthened the war, costs us lives, and helped to lead to the present aborted peace.”

It is supremely important to attack America’s big lies, even if they seem distant today. Because America itself remains — unlike the Japanese Empire or the Third Reich — and it is on these monumental lies that the American Empire rests and gains much of its clout, both foreign and domestic. It is time to question not only the nuclear attacks but America’s contrived entry into the war itself, and more importantly the tireless imperialism that not only inspired Japan to act in its own back yard but also provided the means for it to do so. It has been said by many an apologist that America saved the world by its entry into World War II. Be that as it may, but had it not been for the United States, World War II would likely not even have ignited, not in Europe and certainly not in the Pacific. So thanks for nothing. It is only a matter of time before enough people see the truth and you will reap what you have sown.

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