Nihon no Senso - 日本の戦争カラービデオ - Japan's War - Japanese filmed color movies pre-war and World War II

I have found a very interesting TV documentary that was made in the UK. It includes much footage shot in Japan by the Japanese before, during and after World War II. Some propaganda. Very interesting.

This is in English with Japanese subtitles. I don't recommend watching the videos in larger screens as the picture quality is not the best.

This is some of, if not the best World War II film footage I've ever seen that was shot by the Japanese. I wish the picture quality was better but, it is what it is.

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World War Two Historical Revisionism - Were Japanese Soldiers in China the Animals We Have Been Taught to Believe They Were?

"History is written by the victors" - Winston Churchill


There is much historical revisionism going on today, especially in the USA. I think it is good. Through this revisionism we have learned the truth about a great many things that, through, the historical record have been greatly distorted to make the victors in war look innocent.

Japanese officer Yasuyuki Hashimoto now 95-years old and my 

friend. Read his interesting story here.

I think the best book ever written on the subject concerning American History is by Thomas Woods and it is entitled, "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History." It was in that book that I first learned that the so-called US Civil War was not a war fought to free the slaves at all, it was a war about taxation. Simply put, even some Northern States had slavery even two years after the war had started so, if the war were about slavery, then how come two Northern states still had slaves?


And, when you stop to think about it, when has the USA ever gone to war to protect the rights of dark-skinned people? I'd have to say "Never!"


Over the years, after World War II ended, the Japanese army has definitely been painted as a bunch of savage animals committing atrocities in China. Many of these atrocities are undeniable as war, in and of itself, is an atrocity... But was it as bad as we were lead to believe?


I have always wondered about this. I have also wondered if, sometimes, the governments of China and the Koreas have sometimes seemingly use Japan as a whipping boy to divert attention from domestic problems.


There is another thing that has always confused me and, if you ever go to Taiwan, it will confuse you too. Get this, most all of the older Taiwanese like the Japanese and speak Japanese. The Japanese built the roads, tunnels, bridges, hospitals.... Bear with me for a second here... If the Japanese did that in Taiwan China, then why would policy be so different in Mainland China? Or did we have some sort of blame game going on between the communists of Mao Tse Tung and the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-Shek?


Just questions I'm asking, folks. Just questions. Just something to ponder.


Here is a video that I stumbled upon of pictures and postcards sent from mainland China in the late 1930s and early 1940s. What do you think of this?

Watch the video and decide for yourself.   


NOTE: I especially find the shot at about 0:54 of the video where the Japanese soldiers are respectfully putting a Chinese flag over a fallen statue of Sun Yat-sen the former president of China who died about 13 years before this photo was taken to be a complete contrast to the savage and staged destruction of Saddam Hussein's statue by US military forces in Iraq in 2003.   

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Japan WWII Anime: Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors

Once again, I'd like to present for your pleasure and interest a Japanese World War II cartoon. I showed a clip from this cartoon in Holy Sh*t! World War Two Japanese Propaganda Anime of the Attack on Pearl Harbor. That was a very popular blog post, so I searched and found an entire feature length cartoon.

The cartoon is not nearly as bloody and gutsy as American anime at the time, but you can sense the subtleties of the Japanese mindset and just how "dark" a society Japan really was at the time (I still think, in many ways, Japan is a very "dark" country... But that's a post for another time).


The cartoon is Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors. In Japanese: 桃太郎 海の神兵（ももたろう うみのしんぺい）"Momotaro Umi no shinpei." Interestingly, there's an entire Wikipedia entry in English no less (saves me a lot of work!)


Wikipedia says:

Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei (桃太郎 海の神兵, lit. Momotaro's Gods-Blessed Sea Warriors or Momotaro, Sacred Sailors) is the first Japanese feature-length animated film.[3] It was directed by Mitsuyo Seo, who was ordered to make a propaganda film for the war by the Japanese Naval Ministry. Shochiku Moving Picture Laboratory shot the 74-minute film in 1944 and screened it on April 12, 1945. It is a sequel to Momotarō no Umiwashi, a 37-minute film released in 1943 by the same director. It is black and white.

Plot: After completing naval training, a bear cub, a monkey, a pheasant, and a puppy say goodbye to their families. Like the prior film, the movie features the "Peach Boy" character of Japanese folklore. The film is about the surprise maneuver on Sulawesi island, depicting parachute troops' actions. The monkey, puppy and bear cub are the ones that become parachute jumpers while the pheasant becomes a pilot. The whole movie also depicts the Japanese "liberation of Asia", as proclaimed by the Government at the time.

There are some musical scenes. Of note is The Song of AIUEO (アイウエオの歌AIUEO no Uta), a scene where Japanese soldiers teach local animals how to speak.

Background: The Naval Ministry previously showed Seo Fantasia, a 1940 Disney film. Inspired by this, Seo tried to give dreams to children, as well as to instill the hope for peace, just as he did in the prequel movie, Momotaro's Sea Eagles.

The Song of AIUEO (アイウエオの歌 AIUEO no Uta) is famous for being given a homage in the series Kimba the White Lion (ジャングル大帝 Janguru Taitei) by Osamu Tezuka (Tezuka watched the film in April 1945. He later said that he was moved to tears by the movie's hints of dreams and hopes, hidden under the appearance of war propaganda).

For a long time, the film was presumed to have been confiscated and burnt by the American occupation. However, a negative copy of the film was found in Shochiku's Ofuna warehouse in 1983 and was re released in 1984. A reproduced movie was later screened and the VHS package is now available in Japan.

So, without further ado, here is the cartoon Momotaro's Divine Sea Warriors in it's entirety (parts 1/9 to 9/9). I placed them all here for your convenience so you wouldn't have to search for them.


If you just want to get the gist of the film, I suggest watching the first part and the very last part... The lunacy of war. Why do we do this?

By the way, the foreign soldiers in the final scene are British and not Americans... But the very last scene where the Japanese kids are jumping out of a tree onto a map of the USA drawn on the ground is, quite, well, "interesting." 

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Holy Sh*t! World War Two Japanese Propaganda Anime of Attack on Pearl Harbor!

Yesterday's blog was extremely, er, "popular"... Actually, I posted about this sort of stuff on this blog long ago when this blog was just in infancy, but at those times, I guess I only had 5 readers (4 of those being my family). 

This brings me to being able to coin a new word in the blogosphere. And that word is "Blag." "Blag" means a blog post that brags. OK? So I brag that I have made a new term because I am so fricking superior that I can show you stupid white imperialist trash just how superior our Japanese air-forces are to your corrupt Rooseveltian power-hungry scum are. Damn! I'm great!


Also just how cool and suave and debonair I am because I have come up with new terminology.


Anyhow, here's another cool Japanese anti-American anime is that I want to introduce to you uncultured foreign savages....


From Youtube (especially watch from 1:00 in the video...) Ha! Ha! Ha! We bomb Pearl Harbor in Momotaro's Sea Eagles and kick some serious American butt!) Die! Die! Die! Amerikanischer Swine!: 


Momotaro's Sea Eagles

American cartoons weren't afraid of stereotypes during World War II; Popeye and Bugs Bunny battled racist visions of Japanese soldiers, and one can easily guess why the short "Tokio Jokio" wasn't part of regularLooney Tunes TV rotation. Of course, Japan had its own school of WWII cartoon propaganda, and the most famous are Momotaro's Sea Eagles and its sequel, the first feature-length Japanese cartoon, Momotaro's Divine Warriors.

Unlike the slapstick of Popeye shorts, the Momotaro cartoons are relatively serious children's films in which Prince Momotaro and his cuddly animal friends don sailor suits and bomb Pearl Harbor. Well, they don't actually say it's Pearl Harbor, but Momotaro's Sea Eagles glorifies its heroes' attack on the ogres and other vicious foreign devils of Onigashima. Momotaro's Divine Warriors tells much the same story, but with even more scenes of cute little bears and squirrels and monkeys crowding into realistic airplanes and parachuting down to slay their racial inferiors.




Momotaro's Divine Warriors isn't available on DVD in North America, but Momotaro's Sea Eagles is. Zakka Films released it as part of a "Roots of Japanese Anime" collection, along with less offensive animated works. Historical value aside, the film is both insidious and surreal, like a Funny Little Bunnies version of Triumph of the Will.

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Reactions to the Truth About Atomic Bombings Nearly 70 Years Later

Yesterday, I posted an article filled with quotes from high ranking US and Allied military leaders about their misgivings of the atomic bombing of Japan both before and after he event. I even posted quotes from Douglas MacArthur the top US Commander in Asia and Dwight D. Eisenhower the Supreme Allied Commander and former two time US president in that article.


Eisenhower was firmly against the bombings, MacArthur wasn't even consulted and many others were firmly against. Read that article, "Why did the USA drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima?" here.


Even so, I got several comments and emails that completely missed the point and accused me of revisionism and called me not nice names (I've deleted those - if I want be be called names, I'll talk to my kids).... Besides the usual, "But they attacked us first!" nonsense that is the level of 5-year-old school yard argument that has fallen by the wayside from serious defenders of the bombings, some still think this and wrote that. I've deleted those too.

Remind me again of who this woman 

and child attacked in China or the USA?

As far as the "But they attacked us first" argument, here is a snippet from an article that I researched and wrote that appeared on Lew Rockwell in 2005 called "Dying for the emperor? No Way":

Japan attacked the United States first.

If you mean that the Japanese bombed the military base of Pearl Harbor, before the US bombed the Japanese, then this is a difficult question to answer (see #1 below). If you mean that Japan committed acts of war against the United States first, then the answer is a definitive, "No!" The United States committed at least two acts of war under international law against Japan before December 7, 1941. 

They were:

1. US military pilots — 40 from the Army Air Corps and 60 from the US Navy and Marine Corps — in a clandestine operation organized by and funded by the Whitehouse — flying bombing missions against Japanese forces in the famed Flying Tigers as early as 1937. These people did “volunteer” to fly for the Flying Tigers but they were paid employees of the US government. US pilots flying bombing missions for the Chinese was an act of war under international law by America against Japan. Even with the weak argument that these professional military men were “volunteers” (when they were actually sent by the US government), under international law, a nation is responsible for the actions of its nationals. To claim otherwise is hypocritical and completely irresponsible.
   
   
2. US initiated oil embargo against Japan. This is unquestionably an act of war under international law. The US was also totally hypocritical on this point as they forced the British and the Dutch to uphold the embargo, yet secretly allowed Japan oil from the United States as a way to spy on Japanese shipping. See: Day of Deceit by Robert Stinnett.

Counting the above two, then President Roosevelt had a total of eight plans to incite hostilities with the Japanese. The rest, as they say "is history." There are a great many excellent books and articles on what really happened in World War II. The serious student (and professor) would do themselves and their country good to seek out the truth. Things are not as black and white as US public schooling and US history books would lead us to believe. The true causes of the Pacific War were the clash of the US empire in Asia and the Japanese empire. 


Of course, the next important point to consider here is that Pearl Harbor was a military base. Hiroshima was a civilian city. Under international law, attacks on military bases are not crimes. Attacks on civilian targets were and still are war crimes.


Some other readers sent messages that, today, are actually the reason I am posting. Their arguments about my post yesterday are painfully inadequate and ill conceived. Here are two. First from a US citizen:

"Seriously Mike? Keep in mind that revisionist views of history usually cause bad things to be repeated. What do you suppose the Chinese view of this perspective would be?"

Seriously? What sort of convoluted logic is it that takes the discussion of bombing a civilian city with a nuclear weapon into the "well they deserved it!" argument. How is this logical? Are you saying that the women and children of Hiroshima committed war crimes in China? Extraordinary!

The insinuation here is that the atomic bombings of Japan are, in some sort, of revenge for China. Let me quote what the great historian Ralph Raico has to say about that in a quote from his book, "Hiroshima and Nagasaki":

Great controversy has always surrounded the bombings. One thing Truman insisted on from the start: The decision to use the bombs, and the responsibility it entailed, was his. Over the years, he gave different, and contradictory, grounds for his decision. Sometimes he implied that he had acted simply out of revenge. To a clergyman who criticized him, Truman responded, testily:

Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war. The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.

Such reasoning will not impress anyone who fails to see how the brutality of the Japanese military could justify deadly retaliation against innocent men, women, and children. Truman doubtless was aware of this, so from time to time he advanced other pretexts. On August 9, 1945, he stated: "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."

Seriously. This argument is so bad and illogical, that it would be nice to end it forever. If, say, in my commenter's post, I were to use the very same logic it would run like this: 

Japan had been at war with China since 1931 (well, actually, in recent times, on and off since 1894). If the USA were so concerned with Japanese actions in China, then why didn't they intervene earlier?

Secondly, taking it to an even more ridiculous extreme:

Japan had been at war with China on and off since 1894; continuously since 1931. The USA didn't intervene. But in early 1941, when the USA committed an oil embargo against Japan (an act of war under international law)... Japan had no choice but to attack the USA at Pearl Harbor. After all, what did the Japanese think about millions of native American Indians getting wiped out by US federal forces over the past 100 years - the most recent was a massacre at Wounded Knee in 1895 - where US forces exterminated nearly 300 native men, women and children? 

See? This argument doesn't hold water at all. What happened in China doesn't justify incinerating women and children. People, especially American people, deserve the title of Boobus Americanus if, after all this time of being lied to by our government, cannot see that they've been snookered. 

The next comment is just plain sad. She wrote:

"It's strange that it's not mentioned how many lives were massacred outside of Japan and my country suffered under the Japanese occupation. As for the dropping of the bombs, it remains controversial." 


No. It's not strange that the article doesn't mention Japanese atrocities. This was not an article about Japanese invasion and occupation. This was an article about use of a weapon of mass destruction on a civilian population.


If you want to read articles filled with vitriol that justify your racism and feelings for revenge, then, you've come to the wrong place. If you want to deal with those feelings, I'd suggest a counselor.


As a people, we're supposed to be getting smarter than the people of the past. When will people learn that it's not that country versus us. It is us versus our government. We as a people are supposed to be getting more forgiving and understanding to each other. 


The children are not guilty of the crimes of the parents. Racism, sexism and homophobia should not have anyplace in society today.


Frankly speaking, to the lady who wrote the comment above, I want to say, "Your racism is showing. It's 2011, get out of the 1940's." 


One more guy claimed that the bombings saved millions of lives: 

"I knew people that were part of our first occupying force in Japan. Even after the war ended, the japanese police were still hacking apart their own citizens that were happy the war was over.... Every single person I knew that was there, in actual combat, said they believed millions more people would have died if we had invaded." 

The idea that there was some sort of revolution against US occupation is not steeped in reality. In another Lew Rockwell article concerning this sort of propaganda, this time concerning Iraq, as some US commentators claimed such in early 2005 when the Iraq revolt was just getting off the ground. From Darkest before the Dawn:

I have heard before Rush Limbaugh claiming that Japan and Germany had a post-war insurrection. I do not want to make any claims about Germany — a subject that I am not well versed in — but I do consider myself much more of an expert on Japan than Rush Limbaugh or just about any person on American TV or radio and I can tell you for a fact: No postwar insurrection in Japan.

Which is it for Rush Limbaugh? Is he shamelessly lying or is he just ignorant on Japan's history and knows that no one will call him on it? Well, Mr. Limbaugh, I'm calling you on it now.

I have even heard Fox TV's Bill O'Reilly make the statement that "Postwar Iraqi is going better than Postwar Japan." With the insinuation that Japan's insurrection was worse than Iraq's.

Which is it for Bill O'Reilly? Is he lying again or is he just ignorant on Japan's history and knows that no one will call him on it? Well, Mr. O'Reilly, I'm calling you on it now.

Today, for the third time in the last few months, I heard this blatant lie — sans challenge to its validity — being made on CNN as Larry King interviewed a guest during his coverage of the Presidential Inauguration. I'm sorry, I didn't catch the name of the young man who made this absurd assertion, but he was wrong. There was no insurgency in Japan after the war. To claim that there was is out-and-out fabrication.

Which is it for CNN? Are they blatantly lying or are they just ignorant on Japan's history and knows that no one will call them? Well, CNN, I'm calling you on it now.

I have searched for months through Japanese language documentation and haven't found one single piece of evidence that there ever was any political violence against the U.S. occupation in Japan after World War II. There absolutely was no postwar insurrection in Japan.

Here are the facts from USA Today:

Iraq: 14-month occupation scheduled to end June 30 [2004]. Iraqis are to hold elections no later than Jan. 31, 2005, and write a constitution by the end of 2005. Occupation troops are attacked daily. There was no formal surrender by the former regime.

Japan: Adopted a constitution 15 months after the war ended, and put it into effect in May 1947. There was no postwar insurgency. Japan formally surrendered and was much more badly damaged than Iraq after the war.

Germany: Took three years to write a constitution and four years to hold elections. There was almost no postwar insurgency. Also badly damaged after the war and formally surrendered.

Certainly, from reading the above, it seems to me that I am not the one who is guilty of revisionism, but the one who is guilty of disseminating facts... Perhaps someone could show me where I am wrong.

Addendum! Excellent article today from the Boston Globe: 

Why did Japan surrender?

Sixty-six years ago, we dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. Now, some historians say that’s not what ended the war.

".... a highly respected historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara - has marshaled compelling evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the Pacific conflict, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that forced Japan’s surrender. His interpretation could force a new accounting of the moral meaning of the atomic attack. It also raises provocative questions about nuclear deterrence, a foundation stone of military strategy in the postwar period. And it suggests that we could be headed towards an utterly different understanding of how, and why, the Second World War came to its conclusion.

“Hasegawa has changed my mind,” says Richard Rhodes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” “The Japanese decision to surrender was not driven by the two bombings.”


More: Why did Japan surrender?


Thanks to Michael Di Stacio of Rock Challenge Japan

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Why Did the USA Drop the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima?

Hiroshima. A fishing city with no munitions or bases that wasn't even on the list of the top 35 military and industrial bombing targets of the US military. 

It's that day again. In exactly one hour from the writing of this article, it will be anniversary of one of the biggest war crimes in history: The incineration of a hundred thousand innocent civilian men, women and children in Hiroshima Japan on August 6, 1945. 

Truman says, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in the first attack to avoid, in so far as possible, the killing of civilians." 


No, that is is simply not true. Pure Propaganda.


This is a military base. Note the battleships:

This is a civilian city. Note the houses and buildings:

Model of pre bomb Hiroshima

Not only was Truman a war criminal he was a liar too... And not a very good one at that. Read on...


Why did the USA drop the bomb?

In a previous article at Lew Rockwell, I showed that the notion of a Japanese citizenry worshipping the emperor as their God and being prepared to fight to the death in World War II is a post-war myth, and most probably an excuse forwarded by American post-war atomic bomb apologists. 

From "Dying For the Emperor? No Way!" I quoted the people who were on the ground and involved with high ranking US military decisions concerning the war. 

First General Douglas McArthur:

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different than what the general public supposed. When I asked MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn that he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed — as it did later anyway — to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

~ Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70—71

General Dwight D. Eisenhower:

"In [July] 1945… Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act… The Secretary, upon giving me the news of a successful bomb test in New Mexico, and the plan for using it, asked for my reaction expecting a vigorous assent. 

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at the very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude…"

Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate for Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

Brigadier General Carter Clarke (The military officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables — MAGIC summaries — for Truman and his advisors):

"When we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

~ Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.

Once again, considering the above, one has to wonder just where did this idea that the Japanese were ready to fight to the death for the emperor come from anyway? It is obvious that this is US military propaganda. They used it then to dehumanize the enemy... They use it today for the very same purposes. 

Aside from the militarists in Japan, the average soldiers fought only to protect their homes and families. That's it. And that's what every Japanese who fought in the war I've spoken to has said. In fact, my own Japanese mother told me that people from the southern part of Japan hated the emperor and the militarists because it was the people in southern Japan who were being discriminated against and sent off to do insane things like fly Kamikaze planes (Kamikaze pilots were, by the way, pumped full of drugs before flying on missions — that was the only way they could get those guys to do those missions - not for the love of the emperor, that's for sure).

Many Okinawans still to this day hold ill-will towards the emperor and his masters for what happened on their island. All of the elderly Japanese I have spoken to (12 in all) thought it was ludicrous when I told them that Americans were taught to believe that all Japanese would die for the emperor. All the Japanese I spoke to (yes, and these were regular soldiers or navy) were shocked or laughed at this notion.

One guy, Mr. Nishikawa, now past 90, who was a captain in the imperial Japanese navy, said it the best when he replied to me, 

"We wanted to protect our families and our homes. Sure, it's a part of Japanese culture to say that we did care about the emperor in front of each other — that's Tatemae (a kind of little white lie) — but no one really wanted to go to war. No one really cared about the emperor. We were merely told that if we won this war, then we could finally have peace. That's all we wanted. We were sick and tired of war."

We were told that if we won this war, then we could have peace? This should sound hauntingly familiar to today's American.

John McCloy (Assistant Secretary of War):

"I have always felt that if, in our ultimatum to the Japanese government issued from Potsdam [in July 1945], we had referred to the retention of the emperor as a constitutional monarch and made some reference to the reasonable accessibility of raw materials to the future Japanese government, it would have been accepted. Indeed, I believe that even in the form it was delivered, there was some disposition on the part of the Japanese to give it favorable consideration. When the war was over I arrived at this conclusion after talking with a number of Japanese officials who had been closely associated with the decision of the then Japanese government, to reject the ultimatum, as it was presented. I believe that we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender that was satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs."

~ McCloy quoted in James Reston, Deadline, pg. 500

World War II Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral William Leahy:

"I was not taught to make war in that fashion… And wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

The above proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that many of America's top military and civilian commanders disagreed with Truman (or didn't even know about) the planned dropping of the atomic bomb, and all thought that the A-bombs were unnecessary. It goes without saying that many never considered the absurdist notion that the Japanese would fight to the death for their "emperor God."

That article garnered a landslide of protests by readers who all rejected my assertions. In reply, I asked everyone who wrote to send me any quote (with a referenced link) from any high-ranking US government official, civilian or military, who went on the public record condoning the atomic bombings of Japan for the purpose of ending the war. Only one reader replied, and he found only one source: Truman's memoirs.

The truth of the matter is that most of the high-ranking American military men publicly disagreed with the atomic bombing of Japan (including Eisenhower and  MacArthur) or were unaware of the bomb's existence. I cannot find any trace of any American military leader going on the public record in favor of dropping the bomb on the Japanese to end the war. As for the Japanese nation being prepared to die for the emperor, here is what historian Peter Metevelis had to say about it:

"Few believed they were dying for the emperor as a war leader or for military purposes. Rather, the state was apparently able to manipulate a deep intellectual and aesthetic tradition of painful beauty to convince the pilots that it was their honor to "die like beautiful falling cherry petals" for their real and fictive families, including parents, fellow pilots and the emperor and people of Japan."

~ E. Ohnuki-Tierney: Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalism(University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002), pp 204—205.

Proving that the average Japanese during World War II was not the suicidal maniac that American history books would lead us to believe isn't all that difficult. It just took a bit of research and a little common sense. Yet, there were still more than a few who wouldn't accept the facts — Truman himself gave varying excuses for dropping the bomb.

So, if it wasn't done solely in order to force Japan to surrender, why did Truman order the bombings? The answer seems obvious. Besides my own cynical — but most certainly realistic — view that the US government, having spent millions of tax dollars on the A-Bomb project, had to use the bombs in order to continue feeding the American military-industrial complex (and the Japanese happened to be the enemy at the time), I also would consider that the US used the bombs to scare the USSR. This is a most believable rationale; much more rational than the idea that the Japanese were suicidal fanatics — who suddenly weren't after the surrender — or that the bombs saved a million US lives.

After Franklin Roosevelt's death in 1945, Harry S. Truman became President of the United States. Upon becoming president, Truman was informed of the Manhattan Project — the project to build the atomic bomb. Truman was not elected to the presidency, although he desperately wanted to be elected later on. Even though the public reasons for dropping the bomb are weak on their own, the rarely mentioned notion of scaring the Soviets can still be found quite easily in the public domain.

Searching for the reasons Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Japan, I found this concerning the informing of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin of the existence of the atomic bomb:

I was perhaps five yards away, and I watched with the closest attention the momentous talk. I knew what the President was going to do. What was vital to measure was its effect on Stalin. I can see it all as if it were yesterday. He seemed to be delighted. A new bomb! Of extraordinary power! Probably decisive on the whole Japanese war! What a bit of luck!

Winston Churchill: Triumph and Tragedy, pp 669—70.

Probably one of the most damning of all accounts comes from then Soviet Marshal Georgii Zhukov:

I do not recall the exact date, but after the close of one of the formal meetings Truman informed Stalin that the United States now possessed a bomb of exceptional power, without, however, naming it the atomic bomb. 

As was later written abroad, at that moment Churchill fixed his gaze on Stalin's face, closely observing his reaction. However, Stalin did not betray his feelings and pretended that he saw nothing special in what Truman had imparted to him. Both Churchill and many other Anglo-American authors subsequently assumed that Stalin had really failed to fathom the significance of what he had heard. 

In actual fact, on returning to his quarters after this meeting Stalin, in my presence, told Molotov about his conversation with Truman. The latter reacted almost immediately. "Let them. We'll have to talk it over with Kurchatov and get him to speed things up." 

I realized that they were talking about research on the atomic bomb.

It was clear already then that the US Government intended to use the atomic weapon for the purpose of achieving its Imperialist goals from a position of strength in "the cold war." This was amply corroborated on August 6 and 8. Without any military need whatsoever, the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on the peaceful and densely-populated Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Georgii Konstantinovich Zhukov:
The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov(New York: Delacorte Press, 1971) pp 674—675.

A Soviet Marshal calling US intentions in Asia imperialistic sounds like the pot calling the kettle black, doesn't it? But here is wartime US Secretary of State James Byrnes, recalling Truman informing Stalin about successful tests of the atomic bomb:

I am just as convinced now as I was when I wrote that first book, Speaking Frankly, in 1947, that Stalin did not appreciate the significance of the statement. I have read stories by so-called historians who assert that he must have known, but they were not present. I was. I watched Stalin's face. He smiled and said only a few words, and Mr. Truman shook hands with him, left, coming back to where I was seated and the two of us went to our automobile. 

I recall telling the President at the time, as we were driving back to our headquarters, that, after Stalin left the room and got back to his own headquarters, it would dawn on him, and the following day the President would have a lot of questions to answer. President Truman thought that most probable. He devoted some time in talking to me that evening as to how far he could go — or should go. 

Stalin never asked him a question about it. I am satisfied that Stalin did not appreciate the significance of President Truman's statement. I'm pretty certain that they knew we were working on the bomb, but we had kept secret how far that development had gone.

James Byrnes, interview in US News and World Report,
August 15, 1960, pp 67—68.

The above strongly suggests that for the US Secretary of State, the motivation for using the bomb had nothing to do with Japan. The quote below supports that:

"[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Rumania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from these countries, that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia."

Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts

Stalin was a shrewd imperialist dictator, most probably the most successful of his type the world has yet seen. You'd think that he of all men could recognize the truth over announcements made for domestic or propaganda purposes. After all, he was one of the masters.

Finally, even Truman's own writings about the bomb and the Soviets point to the USSR's expansionism as the one truly big reason for dropping the bomb:

All he (Stalin) said was he was glad to hear it and hoped we would make "good use of it against the Japanese."

~ Harry S. Truman, Year of Decisions, p. 416

Harry S. Truman was a war criminal. 

For more information I recommend Ralph Raico's Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Here's a few quotes from that article:

On other occasions, Truman claimed that Hiroshima was bombed because it was an industrial center. But, as noted in the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, "all major factories in Hiroshima were on the periphery of the city – and escaped serious damage."⁹⁰ The target was the center of the city. That Truman realized the kind of victims the bombs consumed is evident from his comment to his cabinet on August 10, explaining his reluctance to drop a third bomb: "The thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible," he said; he didn't like the idea of killing "all those kids."⁹¹ Wiping out another one hundred thousand people . . . all those kids.

Moreover, the notion that Hiroshima was a major military or industrial center is implausible on the face of it. The city had remained untouched through years of devastating air attacks on the Japanese home islands, and never figured in Bomber Command's list of the 33 primary targets.⁹²

Portions of this article previously appeared on Lew Rockwell

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