PragerU produced the below video to support the contention that Harry Truman was justified dropping the atomic bombs in Japan. Start at the 55 second mark.
The video presumes that our involvement in the war was justified. In fact, Pearl Harbor did not occur in a vacuum. Franklin D. Roosevelt provoked the Japanese and engaged in warlike measures prior to Pearl Harbor:
I have read various accounts regarding the USA and Japanese relations prior to Pearl Harbor and WWll in the Pacific. I recall that there were allegations that FDRkept the military command in the dark while knowing that the attack was imminent.
Truman’s decision to drop the A-Bombs ( Little Boy ) on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was indeed the correct step to the eventual surrender of Japan.
I had the opportunity while in Japan ( 1954 ) to visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
That must have been quite a visit, Fred. As you can tell, I am increasingly of the opinion that WW2 was not our war to fight. Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh were right, in my opinion.
It is fairly well-documented at this point that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor well in advance. And that he had done all in his power to manipulate it into happening. They had broken the Japanese code. They had kept secret from Congress the Japanese peace efforts (responding the economic war the US declared on Japan) during the summer of 1941.
Robert Stinett’s book Day of Deceit provides the receipts.
I don’t doubt it, J. Sobran. Even then, there were highly placed Jewish Americans within his Administration beating the drum for us to get involved even though we had not been attacked until Pearl Harbor. Henry Morgenthau, the Treasury Secretary, was one of them. In fact, he was getting the country ready for WWII from a treasury standpoint as early as 1939.
I’m glad awareness of this is growing, Triad. Knowledge of Morgenthau plan for post-war Germany made them ready to fight to the death…at the end of the war extended the killing and dying in Germany hugely.
My recollection, J. Sobran, is that Morgenthau was not the only one within FDR’s administration, but don’t recall the details.
No, sir. FDR was more provocative towards Nazi Germany than he was towards Japan. Regarding Japan, his main reason for cutting petroleum and scrap iron sales was the Empire’s persistent refusal, since 1931, to back off from its ongoing invasions of the entire Orient, threatening our interests in the region. We could not in good conscience continue to support the Japanese war machine. The petroleum embargo was the issue that made the Japanese decide to take the Dutch facilities in the East Indies, and of course, to do so, the US had to be prevented from intervening. They would knock out our Pacific forces in a preemptive strike.
When it came to our awareness of the impending hostilities with Japan, the problem was that US intelligence was watching the activity farther to the east, anticipating that the main attack would be at the Philippines where troop and naval movements had already been spotted. Forces in Hawaii were simply instructed to watch out for sabotage activity from Japanese nationals and sympathizers on the islands. The Japanese feint worked. See Gordon Prange’s “At Dawn We Slept.” The movie “Torah! Torah! Torah” is based on Prange’s research. Roosevelt (mind you, I am no fan of his) knew no more than his intelligence people could tell him, so the idea that he just let the attack on Hawaii happen is poppycock.
Good video by Praeger. As for the bomb, other grounds have been offered to condemn the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they do not hold water. (1) Why not a blockade and siege? Because the Japanese would have starved by the millions before giving up and in the meantime the attacks on the besieging forces would have gone on for as much as two years, inflicting many casualties on our people running into the tens of thousands — not to mention the slaughter and suffering of POWs in Japanese hands. (2) What about the “peace feelers” that some in the Japanese government were sending out? No — the last such enterprise had been the diplomatic delegation that came to the US to negotiate while their fleet was sailing towards Pearl Harbor! (3) As for the option of a demonstration drop of a bomb, say offshore, so the Japanese could see it, there was an additional risk — what if the device did not detonate? Those two bombs were, after all, more or less prototypes! Even though the odds were miniscule, what if Japanese divers went out and fetched the thing?
WE, I will defer to J. Sobran for response. But it is up to the reader as to whether FDR’s embargo was justified because Japan was “threatening our interests in the region”. When you take such actions, you risk escalation to war.
W.E., there are some things I could say in support of the way you lay out the start of the war. FDR was having his ships fire on German subs, but the Germans wouldn’t bite. And what you say about the strategy Japan laid out is roughly right.
But the thing about Japan negotiating dishonestly (like the US did with Iran, followed by sucker-punch) as a distraction is just propaganda. Japan made several earnest attempts to negotiate a peaceful resolution with the US. FDR did not even let Congress know of them. The US Ambassador to Japan was pulling his hair out over the FDR treatment of Japan. The more peaceful Japanese administration actually fell from power ~June 1941 because they made peace feelers that were ignored by the US.
FDR sought that war out with all his being. A lot of research has come out verifying that. He had one of his Japan-knowledgeable staff map out how you would provoke war with Japan and then followed the 8 step formula to T.
Might be too big a subject for this forum.
You are reading some really weird history books. Sounds like stuff from the pen of Alex Jones or somebody like that.
Prager is displaying its Neocon, war-loving blood. Secretary of the Navy James Forestal made efforts to secure Japanese surrender that were not total unconditional surrender that would have ended the war much sooner but was thwarted by others in the administration. (Zionists assassinated Forestal in 1949.)
Roosevelt’s insistence on unconditional surrender (ostensibly said initially by FDR–to the horror of the US Army–to impress Stalin) added on the order of 20 million deaths to the WWII total. It was what helped Communism enslave Eastern Europe. It definitely was the reason North Korea became and remains a Communist slave state–that’s undebatable.
The US and Britain had been as ruthless and blood-thirsty as they could possibly be in fire-bombing civilian targets in Germany and Japan. There was nothing humane, Christian, or civilized about the way the Allies finished off WWII. Even this author admits that more people were killed in the FIREBOMBING of Tokyo than the nuclear attacks.
Japanese surrender could have been had much earlier, the main sticking point being keeping the Emperor, which eventually happened anyway.
WWII converted the US into a war-loving entity. The US ruling class (ignoring the Constitution) has initiated 80% of all wars since 1948.
J. Sobran, when I hear our efforts during WWII being discussed in almost reverential tones, even by the left, it makes it clear that something bigger is at play than just the usual conflicts between nations. As you suggest, the outcome wasn’t really great given the fact that the Soviet Union was a key beneficiary. In fact, the Soviet Union played a huge role in assuring victory on the eastern front in Europe.
WWII, from which all the wrong lessons are used, is now the foundational myth of the US oligarchy*…having fully replaced the libertarian emphasis of the country’s founding.
*there’s a Hitler under every rock, and you are Neville Chamberlin if you say otherwise.
Speaking of Chamberlin, he said something to Joseph Kennedy relating to your “highly placed Jewish Americans within his Administration beating the drum for us to get involved”…Chamberlain is quoted by JFK’s father as saying in a personal conversation “America and the world Jews forced England into the war.” It helps to understand this that most people in Charmberlain’s administration did not want to declare war on Germany, since they thought Hitler had a very good point on which Poland should reasonably have negotiated. The Polish corridor was ethnically German. It also helps to understand the strength of Jewish grip on media and Hollywood in 1939.
It really wasn’t England’s war until Hitler attacked, J. Sobran.
I continue to have difficulty comprehending why Stalin was an acceptable partner, while Hitler had to be the adversary. Stalin was just as bad as Hitler, if not worse.
Britain declared war on Germany, not the reverse! (Chamberlain cabinet didn’t want to; the MEDIA-aroused British public demanded it). Subsequently, Churchill hid from everyone Hitler’s efforts to make peace. Britain initiated the bombing of civilians, not the other way around!
Germany had absolutely no interest in fighting Britain.
Stalin made Hitler seem like a choir boy. Patton stated at the end of the war we had been on the wrong side. (Not to condone all that was wrong with Nazism and Hitler.) An America First president would have let the Nazis and Commies fight each other to a bloody knub. A president following G. Washingtons advice would have prevented the Communist enslavement of eastern Europe, China, and N. Korea. By minding his own business.
Good grief! So much error here. Hitler started the bombing of civilians from the very invasion of Poland (1939). Rotterdam was flattened (1940) so that the Dutch would understand they dare not resist the Nazis. Yes, Britain Declared war on Germany after backing away again and again in the 1930’s to Germany’s territorial aggressions against Austria, the Sudetenland and then all of Czechoslovakia — and finally, that jackass Chamberlain realized the Nazis would never stop and he and the French gave the Germans an ultimatum — stop the invasion of Poland or there will be war.
No one in Britain greeted the news of the war’s outbreak in 1939, with Britain and France coming in against Germany, with joy. After WWI, the news was greeted with dread and with grit. No “media aroused” factor was involved.
Yes, the Soviets collaborated with the Nazis (August 1939) after giving up on forming a coalition with the British and French (Chamberlain was aghast at the idea of combining with the USSR to stop Germany) and helped Hitler devour Poland. Then when Hitler turned on Stalin (1941), Churchill said he would make league with the devil to stop Hitler — the principle is, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” And as the war reached its later stages, Churchill was persistent in warning FDR not to make concessions to or to trust the Soviets (he favored an invasion through the Balkans rather than into France to head off a Russian invasion of eastern Europe), but Roosevelt was too full of himself to heed those warnings, and was getting ill and doddery by the beginning of 1945 anyway.
You know, W.E., Germany didn’t really have what Britain/US would call bombers. There lack of these large planes limited their bombing. The really inhumane bombing–especially fire-bombing of entirely civilian cities– was done pretty much by Britain and the US.
Re: W. E. James says:
April 15, 2026 at 11:22 pm
You are reading some really weird history books. Sounds like stuff from the pen of Alex Jones or somebody like that.
Read “Freedom Betrayed, Herbert Hoover’s Secret History of WWII”. Former President Hoover had contacts and inside information in high degree.
Britain started bombing Germany 19 March 1940. Germany bombed Rotterdam in May of 1940 because of several days of its resistance to conquest, not to randomly terrorize civilians as Britain did.
The Soviets started what Britain/France converted into WWII as equally as Germany. Then it invaded exactly the same number of countries that Germany did, and indeed their invasion of Finland almost did get them in trouble with Britain. The Soviets killed grossly more Poles than the Germans, including death camps for thousands of Polish officers (guilty of nothing). As bad as fascism is, it isn’t half as bad as soul-stealing Communism. Yet the Brits/US joined with them to fight a war that killed 80 million people and made the world safe for Communism. Communism was the winner of WWII. Poland & Britain both would have been so much better off if Britain had done nothing. WWII created decades of misery for both countries.
This is true in medicine also, J. Sobran. Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something. It can be hard to accept, but it is nevertheless true.
I’m glad to hear you say that, Triad! The physician must always remember that he is second-guessing an unimaginably complex system (the human body) that has incredibly subtle inherent intelligence. Naturally focused on the desired effect (often a particular symptom) of his therapy, his tendency is to not see the other effects on which he doesn’t focus. We only see what we aim at.
Are you aware of the study indicating that people who had mumps, measles, and rubella live longer than people who didn’t or people who got the vaccine for those? (details may be off; if you aren’t familiar with it I’ll research it)
Hitler didn’t intend a world war or to take over the world or even a big part of Europe. He wanted the largely German (ethnically) “Polish Corridor” separating Germany from E. Prussia. His subsequent aggressiveness once Britain and France declared war on them was defensive: With Britain’s control of the sea, Germany couldn’t sustain an extended war. Like WWI, WWII was stumbled into.
Yes, J. Sobran, I recently became aware of that type of research you mentioned in your second paragraph. Just like world wars, vaccine recommendations became subject to manipulation and politicization.