ONE analyst points out: Didn’t Japan surrender only in World War II when America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
The question references the possibility of the United States doing a take two of World War II in its current war with Iran.
That is, US holding back on its punches, allowing Iran to do all the damaging for the time being. But just wait until another Hiroshima and Nagasaki come around.
By chronology, the historical citation is valid.
Despite the Potsdam Declaration demanding its unconditional surrender, Japan maintained its defiance of the Allies. Next, then-US president Harry Truman unleashed his “rain of ruin,” firebombs that exploded over Tokyo, reportedly killing 100,000 civilians.
Still undaunted, Japan would not surrender.
Until finally on Aug. 6, 1945, the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and on Nagasaki on Aug. 9.
It had been a popular impression — including by this writer — that the atomic bombs that killed an estimated 400,000 Japanese and razed to the ground the communities targeted prompted the Japanese emperor then to go on radio, announcing Japan’s final surrender. But a very recent account on social media disclosed the fact that even with the two atomic bombings, Japan still had its million-strong troops intact by which to push the fight on. At that point, however, the Soviet Union had invaded and occupied Manchuria. Japan was thus faced with having to contend with the Soviet Union or align with the US.
Emperor Hirohito finally chose the pragmatism of siding with the US — all the way to the present when it ironically continues to toe the US line.
The foregoing analogy of the Japanese model to the current US-Israel war against Iran clearly attempts to predict a scenario whereby the US would again unleash its decisive blow at the programmed opportunity and that the US is ready to do that anytime at its bidding.
With Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the case was not so.
As I narrate in my book “Nation Above Self” (on the wartime travails of President Jose P. Laurel, published in 2019), as late as the retreat of Japan from Manila in 1945 to shift the fight from the Cordilleras, America was still scrambling with the Manhattan Project, for the development of the atomic bomb.
The Philippine wartime government had to move to Japan to avoid the expected return of Gen. Douglas MacArthur. In President Laurel’s entourage were his family and some key members of his Cabinet. Through the Cordilleras, on to Cagayan, from where they flew to Formosa (now Taiwan), where the entourage waited for ultimate transport to Japan, the journey was replete with so much sacrifice, danger and horror that President Laurel called it, according to the late Vice President Salvador Laurel in his book “A Youth’s Footnote to History,” a “journey of death.”
What the whole entourage was completely unaware of was that at that very moment, transpiring at a frenzied pace was the Trinity Test, the final stage of the Manhattan Project — the test for exploding the first atomic bomb.
And where was this test being conducted?
In a desert in New Mexico called Jornada del Muerto.
Exact translation of President Laurel’s “journey of death.”
Quite strange that President Laurel’s journey to Japan is in direct parallel to the final development of the atomic bomb.
Note this aspect, the Laurel entourage finally ended up in Nara Hotel, Nara City.
And where is that city?
Just some 300 kilometers from where America exploded its first atomic bomb — Hiroshima!
The Laurel entourage were all in the area when the first atomic bomb was exploded by America.
All this parallelism, to drive home the point that America was never ready with the atomic bomb in WW2.
The Manhattan Project began in August 1942, months after the massive Japanese Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941. Clearly it was that attack that set the Manhattan Project to full throttle. Called a “day of infamy” by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the attack destroyed the entire US Pacific fleet and killed thousands of US troops, quite in contrast to below a hundred of Japanese casualties.
With such horrendous damage and human casualties, would America have waited four long years to unleash the atomic bomb if it already had it in 1941?
The same question is asked now.
After suffering massive destruction from unceasing Iran attacks — damage to infrastructure, supply chains, huge devastation in military bases, in the case of Israel, the pulverization of Tel Aviv and shattering of its much-touted Iron Dome Defense System now derisively deemed Paper Dome, etc., etc., everything corresponded by the Pearl Harbor catastrophe — would the US hold back on releasing any nuclear armaments if it already had ones incapable of being countered by its enemies?
It’s been years since top generals of the US defense and security sector admitted in a hearing of the US Senate that the United States hadn’t got any defense against the hypersonic missiles China already got from Russia.
That should be a telltale sign that Iran has got that same level of nuclear weaponry.
What Russia has, China gets.
And so must Iran.
To show that there is such an effective modus vivendi existing among the three, China and Russia are privileged by Iran free access to the Strait of Hormuz, otherwise denied to other countries without standard negotiations.
Particularly for the United States, passing the strait is a total ban.
Of late, the famed US aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was hit by cruise missiles fired by the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps Navy when it tried to approach the strait.
Trump’s evident foremost agenda is to prevent Iran’s nuclearization in war weaponry.
Why prevent others from achieving what you yourself started in the first place?
Or your advancement in war weapons technology hasn’t really progressed beyond the quality of the atomic bombs you first blasted in WW2?
For the record, America has not really used such weapons of mass destruction in any of the post-WW2 wars it has engaged in — the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, the Syrian War, what else?
Until now, the US’ touted possession of nuclear weaponry quite superior to the atomic bombs it dropped on Japan in WW2 must have been all for show.
Absence of actual blasting, the US’ touted nuclear weapons of mutual annihilation with the enemy must amount to bluff, pure and simple.
That bluff is bolstered at best by Tomahawk ballistic missiles used in the Syrian conflict. Also, reportedly, in various instances in the Ukraine crisis.
But on no occasions has the US deployed any weaponry that could not be matched by Iran’s own.
And to Trump’s undiminished insinuation of US readiness to negotiate for ending the war, Iran insists there is no reason to negotiate.
Iran must already have the nuclear say-so to let the fight carry on to the logical end: victory to the just, defeat to the evil one.
