No Apology for Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The 65th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb leveling Hiroshima was earlier today. The US for the first time sent an official delegate to the ceremony. The Japanese want an apology.

The Japanese never apologized for the sneak attack, a blatant violation of international law, on Pearl Harbor. Nor do I believe that they send an official representative to the solemn Pearl Harbor Anniversary ceremonies.

They have not apologized for the Rape of Nanking.

They have not apologized for the Korean comfort women.

They have not apologized for the executions, including beheadings, of allied POW’s.

They have not apologized for executing the crew of one of the Doolittle bombers.

They have not apologized for the Bataan Death March.

They have not apologized for the forced labor of POW’s.

They have not apologized for their Unit 731 human experimentations in Manchuria.

They have not apologized for their germ and biological warfare

Some general apologies have been made by past Japanese Prime ministers, but successors often express contrary views. Many of their atrocities have not even been acknowledged.

Japan, which understandably is opposed to nuclear proliferation, does not acknowledge that their scientists were also working on The Bomb. Whichever country developed The Bomb first was going to use it.

Their school textbooks are silent on the Japan's 15 years of aggression and war crimes in China and the South Pacific.

Hitler and the Nazi genocides are horrific crimes, but the German people have confronted their past.

I’m not saying the Germans were better than the Japanese. Nor am I saying that the victorious Allies did not engage in what could be viewed as war crimes. Churchill recognized that it was a good thing in terms of war crimes that the Allies won the war.

I am saying that Japan deserves no apology until it is honest with itself and victims.

The two atomic bombs saved millions of lives as they ended the War. The estimates of allied casualties in invading the Japanese home islands ranged up to a million, which does not include the projected Japanese military and civilian casualties.

Tarawa, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa were fair warning of the ferocity with which the Japanese would defend their lands to the death, as well as sacrifice their civilians.

The Military forces fighting the Germans in Europe knew that VE Day bought them some respite, but most were to be redeployed to the Pacific Theatre for the invasion of Japan.

Apologies? No.

Thanks from the veterans who survived the war because they were not sacrificed on the beaches of Japan.

Thanks from the Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Indonesians, Burmese, Indians, Malay, and Russians who lived because of The Bomb. And thanks from the mothers and wives whose sons and husbands returned alive from the brutal Pacific Theatre.