Taiwan newspaper oped by Joe Hung trashes...

[torasan]

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

[torasan]

edaan 77 aslo commmented;'' I have no doubt America would have helped. They fought in the Korean War 1950-53, and in Vietnam. From 1950 till the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, White House foreign policy was clear; the containment of communism. It didn't matter which continent the threat occurred, America needed to stop or defeat the communists.

To those who do not know, the Japanese are descendants of Korean and Chinese migrants, mixed with island aborigines. A false sense of national superiority led them into buying up the Nazi doctrine and joining the Axis. Old habits die hard. The belief in Japanese superiority (culturally, I suppose after WWII), led to a closed immigration policy that continues to exist today to their detriment.''

AND FROM THE OPED ITSELF:
It was a long time ago when Masaru Ogawa, editor of the Japan Times for eight years till 1977, told me of his encounter with U.S. ambassador in Tokyo Edwin O. Reischauer. Ogawa, a Nisei born in Los Angeles, told Reischauer, the son born in Tokyo of Presbyterian educational missionary parents, he didn't believe the United States would come to the rescue of Japan if the Soviets attacked Japan with atomic bombs, though mutual defense is obligated in the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty.




“Reischauer was shocked,” said Ogawa, who was 17 years my senior. The American authority in Japanology who taught at Harvard before he was assigned to Tokyo truly believed the United States would keep its promise to fight against the Soviets if Japan was attacked. A young Ogawa returned to Japan shortly before the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and wasn't forced into the Japanese Imperial Army through a timely intercession of his maternal uncle, General Kenji Dohihara. Ogawa and I were agreed that the Americans wouldn't fight for Japan, because the Japs are Asians. Well, that's the reason President Harry S. Truman decided to drop two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the Second World War.


'Superior'

But most of the Japanese believe they are superior Asians. Some of them even believe they are — unlike the Chinese, Koreans, Malaysians, Koreans, Thais, Filipinos, and Indonesians — offspring of the ten lost tribes of Israel. Their conviction was reflected in a declaration by Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita in June of 1940. In his “International Situation and Japan's Position” speech, Arita pronounced the creation of a Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere (GEACS) as “a self-sufficient bloc of nations led by the Japanese and free of Western powers.”

[Russell]

Oh, I see...