Well, just ''who'' is he trashing here? The old man, a senior journo in Taiwan, a ROC passsport holder, 80 yrs old, he writes:
in '' oped headlined -- If you can't beat them, join them''
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/commentary/ ... If-you.htm
one reader PAUL LEE comments: In Monday's CHINA POST expat newspaper in Taiwan former editor Joe Hung stated that USA President Truman dropped the atomic bomb on Japan because the citizens of that country are Asian. ..........Mr. Hung needs to re-examine the original purpose for the atomic bomb, & why it wasn’t, as intended, used on Germany - they were out of the war. .....I would also suggest he look into the Japanese response to the Potsdam declaration; the casualty figures for both civilians & military in the battle of Okinawa & why they included so much mass suicide; the projected casualty figures for the respective militaries, and civilian population of an invasion of the Japanese mainland; the Japanese response after Hiroshima was bombed, and why Hirohito had to intervene when his cabinet was deadlocked after the second bombing of Nagasaki. Perhaps Mr. Hung should also do some research into the evidence of Japan’s own nuclear program. He could also ask himself the obvious question that if Truman loathed Asian people as much as he implies, why did he then not give General MacArthur the permission he so desperately sought to use the weapon during the Korean war? Many years before China had their own weapon. Why was Japan able to recover so quickly under the hegemony of a government which supposedly loathed Asian people?
What happened to the people of Hiroshima & Nagasaki was horrific, but no less deadly than those who were caught up in, and obliterated, by more traditional, and ‘acceptable’ means in the slaughter that is war, and the mores that determined its conduct at that time. In my opinion, the atomic bomb dramatically shortened the war in both time (Important due to the Soviet attack on Japan - north Korea being one legacy remaining today) & more importantly, casualty figures.
America will always bear the stigma of being the only country to have used a nuclear weapon. But they have that stigma because they were the first to create a nuclear weapon, though they weren’t the only ones trying. Mr. Hung needs acquaint himself with the careers of scientists such as Yoshio Nishina, and his sponsor Lieutenant-General Takeo Yashuda and Okochi Masatoshi at the Riiken Institute in Japan; and Erich Schumann, Kurt Diebner and Walther Gerlach in Germany.
I wonder what the population of China would be today had a ‘racially superior’ Japanese military, led by their divine emperor, been successful.
As horrific as the atomic bombing was, it was not genocidal murder. It cannot be compared to the racial, systematic slaughter carried out by the Nazis, nor the rabid slaughter of civilians in places like Nanking, or by units like 731 under General Shiro Ishii, which, incidentally, was based in Manchuria, a place Mr. Hung implies was wise to join the GEACS.
Good commentaries surely involve presenting all the facts, and then presenting logical arguments and conclusions. Great journalism guides the better angels of our nature. Bigotry and indulging one's prejudices have no place.
Paul Lee, non- American