Asia Betrayed by John Bell Smithback

Author:John Bell Smithback
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-11-08T05:31:15+00:00

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1 Max Hastings and others, Beheaded at whim and worked to death: Japan’s repugnant treatment of Allied PoWs. Last updated on 18 September 2007 by Daily Mail, UK

2 See Page 251, THEY SURVIVED

Part III

Hiroshima and Nagasaki

“Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans. We shall continue to use it until we completely destroy Japan’s power to make war. Only a Japanese surrender will stop us.”

President Harry S. Truman, August 9, 1945

“I didn’t hate the Americans that dropped the bomb. It was such a horrible time. I hated air raids. I hated war. To my child’s mind, the bomb ended it all.”

Nine-year-old Hiroshima survivor Kimura Yasuko

Japanese intelligence chief Lieutenant General Arisue Seizo sat at his desk examining a top secret report that one of his aides had just handed him. It was July 1945, and the war was going badly. The once mighty Imperial Japanese Empire that had so recently included the Alaskan islands of Attu and Kiska in the north and swept south to the Solomon Islands near Australia had been eroded like the sands of a shore washed by relentless tides.

General Arisue was exhausted. He closed his eyes momentarily to rub them, and when he did an array of names flashed through his mind: Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Guadalcanal, The Celebes, Guam, Leyte, Tarawa, Kwajalein, Eniwetok, Saipan...

The endeavors of so many years of planning, and the lives of so many valiant Japanese warriors, now all lost. In the far reaches of the Pacific, the fragmented fruits of Japan’s swift victories had been encircled and were slowly being isolated. And since spring the American enemy had occupied the Japanese islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

An air raid warning sounded and General Arisue went to the windows to pull the black curtains closed. Unconsciously, he first looked up for signs of approaching planes, and then he thought to himself that he had never before seen so many stars in the night skies over Tokyo. But that would be understandable, his logical mind told him: sixty percent of the sprawling metropolis no longer existed. The American bombers had become increasingly meticulous in their destruction of the cities of Japan, and Tokyo still remained their number one target.

A smoldering stench penetrated his office and stung his nostrils. General Arisue pulled the curtains together wrathfully and returned to his desk. Sitting down, he picked up the report and heaved a sigh. What hope remained for victory was in that handful of papers that had just been handed him.

The report was titled Operation Ketsugo—Operation Decision—and it was in two parts. Complex and detailed, it was the operational defense plan designed to repulse the enemy from the beaches of the Home Islands.

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