The Bomb - 8 Aug 45

Adolf Hitler died by suicide in April 30 of 1945. Here the Japanese were still fighting three months later. The United States had no interest in dragging the war into 1946 and desired an immediate end by whatever means possible. I don't blame them and think the general Douglas MacArthur did a great job as the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers and effective ruler of Japan from 1945 to 1951.

One thing not mentioned yet is the Japanese philosophy of bushido (武士道), meaning the "way of the warrior." The classical book on this is Bushido, by Japanese educator Nitobe Inazo. He was a Christian and brilliant, but hugely nationalistic, so that he once said, "I love 2 'J's', Japan and Jesus, and I don't know which I love more." The book was based on the samurai warrior class of feudal Japan, and he painted them as kind of gentleman knights. In reality, though, they were vicious and immoral. I could give many examples, but one is enough. During the war between the samurai forces and the Ainu (the indigenous people of Japan) in the 17th century, the Ainu asked for a peace treaty. The Japanese agreed, and then slaughtered all of the Ainu leaders at the peace conference.

So, these were the guys running WW2 on the Japanese side: a warrior mentality that says never surrender, but commit seppuku first (切腹, otherwise known as harakiri) before the dishonor of surrender. If you are judging Japan in WW2 after American Christian values (surrender to save everyone), you simply do not understand the samurai. Japan refused to surrender until the A-bombs were dropped because of the samurai mentality. Even if defeated by Russia in N. China, they would have fought on literally until the last man in China. The A-bomb and it's absolutely huge destruction finally caused the leadership to overrule the samurai factions, but even then many Japanese warriors wanted to keep fighting.

You have to know, I've witnessed to Japanese WW2 soldiers, and even won one to Christ, Unokatsu, the father of a man in my church. He had fought the Russians in N. China as a machine gunner, and had a very dark place in his heart, telling me he had killed 100's of Russians with his machine gun. Add to these things that I have high rank in both Judo and Karate, and have even trained in jujutsu some. So, I know the samurai mentality well. I firmly believe that it took the A-bomb to defeat them.

Frankly, the Japanese were much better at war than the Russians, and it would have taken much for the Russians to win.

John - Very interesting report!
Thanks for the input

I have to backtrack on one thing. It was Uchimura Kanzo, another Japanese Christian leader in the days of WW2, not Nitobe Inazo.

Concerning which factor was stronger in the Japanese surrender, two of my scholarly sources apparently gave both events equal footing in the Japanese decision to surrender: the A-bomb and the entrance of Russia into the war against Japan. Edwin Reischauer was the son of Presbyterian missionaries to Japan, so he knew the culture and language well. He was the US ambassador to Japan from 1961 to 1966. He wrote, "The situation was hopeless, but the Japanese social order remained surprisingly strong, and the military continued in its proud tradition of no surrender. Only after the Americans dropped two atomic bombs...on August 6 and 9, 1945, and the Soviet Union came crashing into Manchuria on August 8 in an eager effort to get in on the kill and the disposition of the Japanese carcass, did an anguished Japanese government bow to the inevitable" (The Japanese, p. 192). Interesting that both the bomb and the Russian attack were within only a day of each other.

About the samurai culture of the Japanese military, I'll never forget stopping to witness to an old man in his garden. I asked him, "Aren't you concerned about sin and death?" He told me that he had fought in WW2 on the Russian front in Manchuria. He was a tanker, and Japanese tanks were notably thin-armored, and one shell could take out a Japanese tank. For some reason his tank stopped suddenly, just in time to avoid a Russian shell, which exploded just in front of his tank. He told me, "I have looked death in the eye, and am not afraid of it. As for sin, I sinned in the war, and did terrible things. My country sinned and did terrible things. But I do not repent." He went back to his gardening, and I went around the corner and wept. Someday God will be glorified before his eyes, and he will bow the knee before Christ before being cast into the lake of fire.

I was just looking at the Dokkodo, "The Way of Walking Alone," by famous samurai "Two Sword Musashi." His Precept 6 is: "Do not regret what you have done." The old man in the garden was living according to this samurai precept.

Salty said:

John - Very interesting report!
Thanks for the input

Click to expand...

It's a great discussion.

I remember the day Emperor Hirohito died, or maybe it was the day after. I was headed up into Tokyo from Yokohama to teach at a Bible School. Nothing seemed unusual, but the news that the Emperor had died was out there. I had to transfer trains between stations at the city of Machida when I passed a small demonstration by Christians with signs and what not, protesting the Imperial system! Of course such opposition was miniscule. There was national mourning for Hirohito the war criminal for some time after that.

MacArthur was very gracious to Hirohito in not calling him a war criminal and putting him on trial, but I believe Hirohito was a war criminal and very complicit in the whole war effort. However, putting him on trial would have produced huge protests among the Japanese. After all, until Mac had forced Hirohito to deny his deity on the radio, they had worshipped him as a god. Imagine if your god got on the radio and said, "Nope, don't pray to me any more. The whole thing was a lie. I'm not a god!"

Most Americans don't know the sins of Japan in the war. There was the wholesale murder of non-combatants all through the war in China, the Philippines, etc. There was Unit 731, which did biological and chemical warfare experiments on prisoners. There was the extremely harsh treatment of American prisoners of war. (Remember that the samurai never surrendered, and believed it was extremely shameful to surrender.) There was the Bataan Death March, where weak American prisoners were killed when they could no longer walk. I could go on and on. Yet somehow God gave love for those people to us missionaries. God's love is incredible.