Reflections on THE NEW YORK TIMES Reflecting on V-J DAY

On Sunday, September 6, 2020, the NEW YORK TIMES published a special section on the 75^th Anniversary of the ending of World War II, V-J DAY. Seemingly it was either edited, or inspired by that expert on combat, the actor Tom Hanks. 

One article in the section caught this Blogger’s undivided attention; it was by an uber righteous and moral lecturer at  Cardiff University in Wales, UK, Anne I. Harrington.

The article was about wicked America unleashing the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, killing all those Japanese civilians. Ninety American fly boys flew the mission to vaporize  Hiroshima; only one. Major Claude Eatherly expressed guilt. He expressed supreme guilt until he contracted throat cancer and could no longer express guilt. 

The following is excerpted from Professor Harrington’s article. It grievously upset this Blogger, for obvious reasons. It is a liberal revision of History. 

“In a 1961 interview with reporter Ronnie Dugger, Eatherly explained that he was not convinced by the orthodox explanation about the atomic bomb as a war winning weapon; the Japanese were putting up so little resistance by early August that Eatherly believed the war would have ended even without the nuclear devastation. ……NEW YORK TIMES.’ 

This Blogger is a VERY LATE child; his father was born when Benjamin Harrison was President. This Blogger’s father was in World War I, and had two sons fighting in World War II. 

Every parent who had sons in combat, every wife with a husband in combat, knew the Japanese were not ready to meekly surrender. Everyone in America, from General Marshall on down to the local milk man knew the Japanese intended to put up a ferocious defense for their homeland, as Americans would have done if invaded. 

The last three great battles of the Pacific Campaign before the planned invasion of Imperial Japan went the following ways: 

“IWO JIMA-Approximately 70,000 U.S. Marines and 18,000 Japanese soldiers took part in the battle. In thirty-six days of fighting on the island, nearly 7,000 U.S. Marines were killed. Another 20,000 were wounded. Marines captured 216 Japanese soldiers; the rest were killed in action. 

SAIPAN-The brutal three-week Battle of Saipan resulted in more than 3,000 U.S. deaths and over 13,000 wounded. For their part, the Japanese lost at least 27,000 soldiers, by some estimates. 

OKINAWA- The Americans bore over 49,000 casualties including 12,520 killed. General Buckner was killed in action on June 18, just days before the battle ended. Japanese losses were even greater—about 110,000 Japanese soldiers lost their lives. It's estimated between 40,000 and 150,000 Okinawa citizens were also killed.” 

It was reasonable to expect, ONE MILLION AMERICAN casualties in an Invasion of the Japanese Islands.

It seems that every day, during the war,  this Blogger’s mother would do her chores, and then sit on the stoop of her home, waiting to see if she would get a telegram from the War Department telling her that one or both of her sons had been killed. 

When the bomb was dropped, her oldest son was finishing up combat in Italy, embarking on a troop ship to Okinawa, for the Invasion of Japan; her second oldest son had finished combat on Saipan, and had received orders he would be part of the invasion of Japan. 

One of the seminal films of the 20^th Century was THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS, about the war in Algeria between the French Army and Arab Nationalists. It is about the death of civilians in war. 

“At the height of the street fighting in Algiers, the French stage a press conference for a captured FLN leader. "Tell me, general," a Parisian journalist asks the revolutionary, "do you not consider it cowardly to send your women carrying bombs in their handbags, to blow up civilians?" The rebel replies in a flat tone of voice: "And do you not think it cowardly to bomb our people with napalm?" A pause. "Give us your airplanes and we will give you our women and their handbags." 

(the Director) Pontecorvo ….is aware that innocent civilians die and are tortured on both sides, that bombs cannot choose their victims, that both armies have heroes and that everyone fighting a war can supply rational arguments to prove he is on the side of morality. .....His protagonists are a French colonel, who respects his opponents but believes (correctly, no doubt) that ruthless methods are necessary, and Ali, a petty criminal who becomes an FLN leader….. 

The French colonel (himself a veteran of the anti-Nazi resistance), learns that Sartre supports the FLN. "Why are the liberals always on the other side?" he asks….ROGER EBERT.” 

What possesses the NEW YORK TIMES, all Liberals, to be on the side of Japanese civilians and not on the side of American moms, waiting to hear if their sons will be slain on Japanese beaches, or villages or mountain tops? 

THE NEW YORK TIMES proclaims the righteousness of the Diversity and Multiculturalism of its newsroom…..in all that Diversity, the NEW YORK TIMES seems to lack the representation of American Moms,with sons at  war. 

This Blogger was once a Liberal; at the height of his Liberal moral superiority, he once asked his mother: Did she feel bad about all the innocent Japanese civilians killed in the bombing of Hiroshima, or the firebombing of Tokyo? 

This Blogger’s sweet, kind mother, who never cursed, nor drank,   nor did harm, put aside her crossword puzzle to respond thus: 

“No, better their children die than my sons.” 

Memo to NEW YORK TIMES: that is what war is all about; and no Liberal hypocrisy can change it.