The People’s Republic of China’s Espionage Machine
Chinese President Xi shakes hands with the leader of the Biden Crime Family. (right)
The State of Israel and its close relationship with Communist China – Tucker takes it on.
Communists seem to love pathogens. More here. Federal authorities in Detroit on Tuesday announced charges against a Chinese scholar at the University of Michigan and her boyfriend, a scientific researcher, for allegedly conspiring to smuggle a dangerous biological pathogen into the U.S.—a pathogen capable of damaging crops and causing illness in humans and livestock.
University of Michigan scholar Yunqing Jian, 33, and her boyfriend, Zunyong Liu, 34, both Chinese citizens, were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy, smuggling goods into the U.S., making false statements, and visa fraud, interim Detroit U.S. Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. announced.
(Strategypage) (h/t Claudio) Earlier this year, the Philippines police arrested six Chinese citizens and accused them of espionage. The Chinese were caught using cameras and drones to collect information on American warships in Subic Bay as well as the port facilities. The Chinese used a fishing boat and pretended to be part of the crew. Another group of Chinese was caught using a vacation resort in the hills overlooking the bay to observe and photograph activity in the bay.
The United States long used Subic Bay as a forward operating base in the Pacific, but that ended in 1992 when the end of the Cold War rendered many American military facilities overseas redundant. Twenty years later, China emerged as a threat, prompting the U.S. to revive some of its old naval bases in the Pacific. The Philippines was willing to allow access to Subic Bay, which had been converted into a commercial operation. The Americans are now restoring some of the military facilities, and the Chinese spies were seeking details.
The Philippines has a long history with Chinese spies and gangsters trying to operate out of remote parts of the country. As recently as 2012, Filipino police arrested 357 members of a Chinese gang that committed various types of fraud and theft via the Internet. Most of those arrested were from China and Taiwan and had set up shop in the Philippines to avoid Chinese police. Two of the ringleaders were Filipinos of Chinese ancestry. (more in the article)
Despite years of successful efforts to conceal the extent of their espionage network, that anonymity has unraveled during the last year, and the process continues despite Chinese efforts to delay, disrupt, or stop it.
This result is that Chinese spies and espionage efforts are becoming known in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast and East Asia. An increasing number of arrests have been made and subsequently publicized. It’s not just the espionage that annoys foreigners, but the covert meddling that the Chinese are engaged in worldwide. China sought to influence foreign governments to cooperate with local Chinese goals without disclosing or being aware of what was being covertly done to benefit China.
What is unusual is the scale of the Chinese effort, and that makes a difference. Supporting it all is a Chinese intelligence bureaucracy back home that is huge, with nearly 100,000 people working to keep track of the many Chinese overseas and what they could, or should, be trying to grab for the motherland. This is where many of the graduates of the National Intelligence College program will work.
It’s a good article, and if you’re interested, I recommend reading the entire piece. It underscores the need to quarantine Red China and all of its networks worldwide. The US forestalled their takeover of the Panama Canal and their move against Greenland. President Trump’s action against Harvard and other research schools that cater to the communist Chinese will help, but the scope of the Cold War is global, and the progress made by Red China has been significant.
Bullet Points:
** Ukraine targets Russian Railways – At least seven people were killed and 66 injured when a railway bridge collapsed and a train derailed in Russia’s western Bryansk region overnight, following what one local official said was “an explosion” on the route. A second railway bridge collapsed overnight in the Russian region of Kursk — another border region neighboring Bryansk to its north — derailing a passing freight train.
** Planning your visit to HR.
** Ukraine Peace Proposal? – Russia isn’t interested in peace. They are trying to get America to disassociate from the conflict. Like many of Putin’s actions, it may ultimately have the opposite effect. (Full Text)
** Nuclear stocks moved higher in premarket trading after Meta Platforms signed a power contract with Constellation Energy for emissions-free nuclear energy from the Clinton Clean Energy Center in Clinton, Illinois.
** Appalachia isn’t what it used to be.
** Jordan Peterson discusses what never happened.
A Profound Biblical Question
It’s a Trick Question
Where is the Train to Nowhere going?
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has released a scathing report exposing what he said is the unfeasibility of California’s long-troubled high-speed rail project — and is threatening to pull the plug on a plan that already has the federal government on the hook for $6.9 billion while Californians are underwriting an additional $9 billion.
Duffy said that the federal government is moving to terminate around $4 billion it has currently obligated to the project unless the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) can prove it is tenable.
He blasted it as a “boondoggle,” as zero miles of high-speed track have been laid since ground was broken 10 years ago, and the cost continues to balloon.
Dropping the Bomb (twice)
A discussion of criticisms.
“Estimates of Allied casualties in a conventional invasion/occupation of the home islands were wildly overstated. A conventional military invasion of Japan would have been less deadly than using the atomic bomb.”
During the summer of 1945, Allied war planners forecasted unthinkable casualties if U.S. and supporting British/Australian/Canadian troops attempted to invade the Japanese home islands. Most postwar historians agree.
Although the numbers vary, most estimates for Allied casualties range from 250,000 to nearly one million (dead plus wounded). To put that in perspective, the United States suffered one million casualties in all of World War II, of which 291,000 were battle deaths. In addition to Americans, estimates of Japanese casualties, military and civilian combined, numbered in the several millions. Hence, the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing upwards of 150,000 people.
The civilian death count was still appalling, although mitigated by two factors: First, U.S. bombing warning leaflets had been dropped over most Japanese cities, urging citizens to evacuate, including Hiroshima, reducing its population modestly before the attack…
(see “LeMay Leaflets”) https://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=7350
Additionally, 40,000 of those living in Hiroshima were military personnel, stationed at the Second Army General Headquarters, which was responsible for the southern defense of Kyushu. The presence of the Army Command that would coordinate resistance against the Kyushu invasion was a significant factor in the USA’s decision to select Hiroshima as a target.
Critics of the bombing still maintain Allied casualty estimates have been wildly overstated, both by the U.S. War Department and modern day historians, and that the Allies could have invaded and pacified Japan for far less than 150,000 deaths—Allied soldiers, Japanese military, and Japanese civilians alike.
Using one customary example, the late libertarian historian Ralph Raico, writing for the Ludwig von Mises Institute and making a case for trying Harry Truman as a war criminal, argued, “the worst-case scenario for a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands was forty-six thousand American lives lost.”
Raico’s source was Stanford historian Barton Bernstein, whose research, also criticizing the unnecessary use of the bomb, calculated the exact fatality estimate: only 46,000 Americans dead. Some readers may find such a low forecast unacceptable, while others may find it unbelievable, and for good reason. Simply applying lessons learned from past Pacific battles reveals the absurdity of artificially inflating the numbers to such a high degree. The U.S. suffered nearly 20,000 dead fighting for two rocks in the Pacific—Iwo Jima and Okinawa—with another 56,000 wounded. The Japanese suffered 115,000 dead on the same two islands, and another 40,000-150,000 civilians died in Okinawa. In both battles, the USA enjoyed a 5-to-1 advantage in manpower. Total casualties on both sides- 175,000-285,000 dead and at least 60,000 wounded.
Taking Japan itself would be a monumentally larger operation for which the Allies planned a two-invasion campaign. First would come beach landings on the home island of Kyushu (Operation Olympic), followed by clearing out and occupying the southern third of the island, an area of approximately 4,000 square miles.
Kyushu’s ports and airfields would then be used to stage the second, larger invasion of Tokyo and the Kanto Plain—about 6,200 square miles—in March of 1946, dubbed Operation Coronet.
Thus, the Allies aimed to invade and occupy 10,200 square miles of Japanese territory, more than 13 times larger than Okinawa and Iwo Jima combined. And unlike the latter two, which were surrounded by the ocean in all directions, the occupied regions of Kyushu and Honshu would remain adjacent to Japanese-controlled territory and thus subject to constant infiltration and counterattack.
In January 1945, the U.S. began making plans to invade Kyushu with 766,000 men, ten times the number of Americans at Normandy, which to this day remains the largest amphibious invasion in history. According to intelligence reports, only a single IJA division was defending the island.
However, after losing Okinawa, Japanese strategists correctly anticipated Kyushu would be the Allies’ next objective. By July 1945, the IJA had deployed 900,000 men and several tank brigades to defend the limited number of suitable landing grounds. Ten thousand attack planes were also apportioned to Kyushu, most of which would be used in kamikaze attacks against offshore U.S. Navy ships.
Instead of a 5-to-1 advantage, the Allies were now faced with parity, which U.S. war planners were reluctant to accept.
Furthermore, the Japanese government had mobilized every able-bodied adult, men, women, and students, to resist the invasion for the “Glorious Death of One Hundred Million” campaign. Footage of young Japanese women being trained with bamboo spears still exists in the archives today.
Had the Allied invasion proceeded, then today we would undoubtedly have archival footage of spear-wielding Japanese women being machine-gunned or flame-throwed by U.S. Marines. And today’s A-bomb critics would instead be castigating “the brutal killing of Japanese women when the war could have been ended quickly with the atomic bomb.”
To think that after fighting Japan for 770 square miles, with a 5-to-1 advantage and losing 20,000 dead, the U.S. would somehow only suffer 46,000 dead fighting at parity against 900,000 Japanese soldiers in Kyushu alone, 10,000 attack planes, and two million armed civilians over 4,000 square miles is pure fantasy resembling wartime propaganda.
More casualties were anticipated for 1946’s even larger Operation Coronet, where Allied soldiers would invade the much larger, more heavily populated island of Honshu and engage in door-to-door urban fighting for Japan’s largest city and capital. However, admittedly, a great deal of Tokyo’s structures had been destroyed during the U.S. firebombing in March.
The USA lost nearly 20,000 dead over two rocks that most Japanese never considered part of the homeland. The level of fanatical resistance would have only increased when invading Kyushu and Honshu, the capital city of Tokyo, and the imperial palace.
Also, keep in mind that Iwo Jima was devoid of civilians (already evacuated), and Okinawan civilians were not combatants, yet 40,000-150,000 of them died anyway. In Japan, tens of millions of civilians were mobilized as militia to battle against Allied troops on the home islands.
The painful process of neutralizing militarized civilian resistance may also have extended beyond just southern Kyushu and the Kanto Plain to the entire country if the emperor had never given the order to surrender or perished before he could issue such an order.
Disruption of what little economy Japan had left during the fighting would have also led to more deaths by starvation, as hunger was already gripping Japan by mid-1945. The estimates of many millions of Japanese dead are realistic.
American and Japanese death counts would have to be doubled for those who remember the millions more victims who critics of the bomb callously disregard: the peoples of Japanese-occupied countries who were already dying in large numbers and would continue to die throughout Asia while the invasion dragged on. Assuming very optimistically that the invasion wrapped up by summer of 1946, an estimated 4 to 5.6 million more civilians—mainly in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam—would have perished while waiting for the Japanese surrender to come finally.
Due to the atomic bomb, those 4 to 5.6 million Chinese, Vietnamese, and Indonesians lived instead.
No More Milk?
U.S. officials say Navy Secretary John Phelan has assembled a small team to rename the replenishment oiler, and a new name is expected to be announced this month. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Navy to rename the replenishment oiler Harvey Milk. This move will strip the ship of the moniker of a slain democrat homosexual San Francisco politician whose claim to fame was sodomy.
***
Identify the Aircraft
1
2
Hint, the aircraft set a distance record with an all-female crew.
3
Twelve built
4
41 built, and Ukraine just destroyed 33% of that number. The factory still turns out one each year.
Parting Shot
End
Two of my late uncles were scheduled to be in the first wave of the Australian part of the invasion of Japan. They had both already been through three previous landings. Neither of them had expected to survive the mainland battle. They had no problem with the A bomb.
The opposed landings in the Pacific (and in Europe) were horrible meat grinders. Survival as an attacker or defender was a matter of luck. Okinawa was not an opposed landing, and the Marines had the unoccupied part of the Island initially, while the Army ran into horrible layered defenses. And if civilians get in the way, they’re greased because that’s war.
I going to give the modern historians the benefit of the doubt and say they are correct in their less than 150,000 dead. We’ll say 140,000 would have died and just ignore the dead from China and elsewhere. We’ll divide the 140,000 into 100,000 dead Japanes and 40,000 dead American military. I can totally except those estimates as accurate. Now let’s compare rhe actual numbers, 150,000 dead Japanese and 0 dead American military. So by their estimates we saved 40,000 American lives. Yes it was worth it.
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My brother and I went to Dayton and the Air Force museum in the 80’s. He didn’t want to go, but since I drove he didn’t have a choice. Once we got inside, I had to keep waiting on him, because he had ro read every sign in every exihibit. When we got to BocksCar, he went under the plane (the exihibits weren’t roped off then) and rubbed its belly while repeating ‘This plane, this plane right here, dropped the second atomic bomb’. He was totally overwelmed by the history of it all.
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When I read ‘Clinton Clean Energy Center’, my first thought was ‘please don’t let that be named after willy horndog’. Then I immediately dissuaded myself of that because I knew, not even a sycophant would would combine Clinton and Clean in anything.
It’s incredibly important to read history (lots of history) to frame the arguments, the people, the time they lived, and to understand both what they did and why they did. Eliminating the bulk of history classes from elementary education is a very dangerous path. Allowing people to ‘rewrite’ history even though we do understand that the victors write the books, is hazardous to the future.
“So by their estimates we saved 40,000 American lives. Yes it was worth it.” That says it all!
Identify the Aircraft:
1. Boeing B-29 Superfortress (this plane dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki)
2. Tupolev ANT-37
3. Tupolev Tu-126 Moss
4. Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack
Well done.
Addendum to #1: Bock’s Car and the other aircraft of the 509th Composite Bomb Group were the “Silverlight” variant of the B-29, specially modified to accomodate the size and weight of the atomic weapons. The 509th had been practicing precision bombing with heavy ordnance, dropping “pumpkin bombs” – conventional high explosive bombs that mimicked the size, weight, an aerodynamics of the atomic weapons – on Japanese targets since July.
I was honored to take a WWII history class from Dr. Ray Skates, who literally wrote the book on the invasion of Japan. I asked him, after the class ended, what he would have changed in his book if he could do it over again, he was at the time dying from cancer and was not going to last long enough to actually rework the book, and his reply was that he would have included a chapter on the US blockade, and the inevitable mass starvation of the Japanese people, which would have killed vast numbers as the various Japanese islands would be unable to produce or import enough food to feed themselves through the USN. We can thus assume far higher Japanese deaths, almost entirely civilian, even assuming no US invasion.
There was no good solution. Pres. Truman ripped the bandaid off and ended the fight.
Too many ‘experts’ view the Atomic Bombs as events unto themselves and neglect the actions that preceded them. During the Battle of Okinawa over 20,000 Americans were killed along with 95,000 Japanese and almost 150,000 Okinawans, nearly one quarter of the population. And in the course of the battle almost every man-made structure was destroyed.
Curtis LeMay attacked 67 cities with incendiaries, systematically wiping them off the map one by one. In the raid on Tokyo over 100,000 were killed.
An invasion of the Home Islands would most likely have resulted in over 250,000 Allied KIA, millions of Japanese KIA, and Japan itself left as nothing but smoking ruins.
I left out the actions of the US Navy. Raids by carrier aircraft and shore bombardment, our subs sinking merchant ships, and the mining of harbors. Japanese civilians had already been enduring food rationing. If the war didn’t end when it did starvation would have become a very real problem.
There’s a good chance that the bomb made both me and my wife possible. Both were present at Okinawa, her dad with the Marines, mine with the navy. Both would have likely taken part in the invasion of the home islands.
I knew M.O.H. recipient John Finn. He lived down the road from me. He has no problem with Japan being nuked.
The critics always leave out the fact that by dropping the bombs actual American invasion casualties were zero.
USS Milk. Can we just piss off everyone now and rename it the Obama?
Name it the Big Mike Obama…
In my youth, those that dealt with WW2 were young, raising young families, and their memories of the event were still fresh. Pearl Harbor, Bataan, and the many terrible deaths of loved ones were painful reminders of the war where thousands died capturing small islands that most never even heard of. Many wished their were a few dozen more atomic bombs to drop on the country that caused so much harm, and would have cheered if it happened.
My Dad was in India. Those intellectuals, none who were in combat, would have known combat if they totted out their ideas in front of him. A life long Republican, he always gave Truman credit for him coming home.
———–
Israel/China
Israel will always do what they find in their best interest. They have no friends; only parallel interests. Remember the Liberty?
———-
Ukraine targets Russian Railways
There are numerous reports the Russian rolling stock is failing due to not enough replacement wheel bearings. Ukraine sabotage can only make Russia’s problems worse.
By some accounts, sabotage by the French Resistance greatly helped winning the war in Europe.
———–
“Amateurs talk strategy; professionals talk logistics” is attributed to many leaders, back through history. Seems some Ukraine leaders have taken it to heart.
Remember Pollard the spy.
I don’t know where you’re going with bringing up the Liberty story, WSF. It was a simple case of mistaken identity, an accident. There’s nothing to discuss.
—
But if you must go there, Israel paid weregild for the men accidentally injured and the paltry few 34 men accidentally killed by aerial 30-mm cannon and rocket fire, followed by a second aerial wave accidentally delivering loads of napalm accompanied by more aerial strafing, followed by fire from surface ships, followed by launch of five torpedos. Followed by still more surface fire. Multiple waves of attacks from multiple sources over a period of greater than 30 minutes on a vessel displaying the flag of the nation that rightfully considers you its Greatest Ally, in broad daylight, is undoubtedly a common fog-of-war kind of thing. It was just an unfortunate accident, get it?
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Besides the weregild was $30 million (in current dollars) in 1968. As if that weren’t enough to cover 34 dead Americans and 171 injured Americans, in 1969 Israel paid another $31 million, and yet another $23 million in 1980. Now in 1968 the US gave Israel $107 million in aid, $160 million in 1969, and $5146 million (i.e. over five billion) in 1980, but I don’t see how that is at all relevant to this story. In fact, forget I even brought it up. The point is that Israel gave the US a LOT of money because they felt so bad about their mistake. Which was totally an accident.
—
Now can we get back to talking (like normal well-informed people on the Right Side of History) about how evil Insane Dictator Putin is? Because he’s not only an insane power-mad dictator who attacked totally innocent Ukraine For No Reason At All, but he’s also evil. Like really really evil. Slava Zelenskyy!
Mike C
The point is that Israel gave the US a LOT of money because they felt so bad about their mistake. Which was totally an accident.
——–I’m properly chastened. May I timidly ask if all that money came from Israel coffers, or was it recycled aid money?
USS Milk renaming…about time we distanced ourselves from grody pedophiles in office.
***
Train Boondoggle: Yeah but all Newsom’s pals were handsomely paid to build one piece of concrete next to some farmers house, trashing his place…which is the entire point of the grifter existence. Watch the 4 parter, Scamanda…same thing, only she got prosecuted (as she should) while government cheats and thieves simply move on to the next gambit on the taxpayer nickel. Palisades will NEVER get rebuilt…they want the land. Same thing, only by a different veiled avenue to steal from residents what they can have legally.
***
HR: later in my career had a corporate engineering gig, special projects, so was mostly autonomous. ANYTIME I was asked to see HR – “I am part of the EXECUTIVE TEAM even if what I do is nebulous at best” – I set the tone right away by asking the gal (typically a gal): ”So how’s Personnel these days?” Meetings with her got fewer.
***
Never hung out in front of stores as a kid (the mom eyes were everywhere in our small town and would give a report to mom where I wasn’t supposed to be, which invariably came up during dinner as I thought I got away with riding my Schwinn into town). Instead we hung out in ‘the woods’…exploring…all day…with a pocket knife, fishing pole, canteen of water, and a PBnJ.
*can’t have legally.
The last time I worked for a place with an HR, I was infamous for being the only person who was willing, when hitting an all-hands-on-board crunch, to walk into their cushy air conditioned cubicles and ask each one individually, “Are you doing anything mission critical to the company that must be done before the end of your shift?”
.
If no, “Good, here’s your (equipment), I need you to do (task) now.” If yes, “How long will it take you to finish that?” “Good. I will see you at (ETA +5 minutes), you will report directly to (station) at that time for (task.)”
.
Some poor HR lady was unwise enough to complain to the GM’s right-hand man. He was a former Marine Recon officer with all the tolerance for BS and slacking that such people are… known for… I never heard any official conclusion, but they never objected to meeting critical mission needs afterward, and the GM’s right-hand man never brought it up over all the times we touched base.
.
Our HR was, ah, a lot more responsive and understanding of the needs and problems of the workers after the abstract numbers became real sweat and bruises… and they never seemed to be in hurry to have a meeting with me over blunt assesments of people’s abilities, aptitudes, and future with the company.
Mitsuo Fuchida. “According to one account, Fuchida remarked “You did the right thing. You know the Japanese attitude at that time, how fanatic they were, they’d die for the Emperor…. Every man, woman and child would have resisted that invasion with sticks and stones if necessary.””
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From here:
https://explorethearchive.com/mitsuo-fuchida
We would have had to level the place and sew salt. It’s better that we rebuilt. I understand that there are parties on all sides who feel bitter about the bomb, or triumphant about the bomb, but with history as a lens, it worked out. And it’s good that those were the only two atomic bombs dropped in anger. If the Ukrainians kept their nukes, Russia wouldn’t have invaded.
Since about forever I believed all the above. How the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved untold American, allied, AND Japanese lives. Maybe that’s true. But over the last ten years or so (and at an accelerating pace) I’ve come to doubt nearly everything we’ve been taught about WWII, both Euro and Pacific theaters. Who were The Real Victims. Who were The Real Victors. (Hint, something can be two things at once.) What was the social/cultural/ethnic price the West paid for its “victory”? Why did the leading, and apparently often the most honorable, men of our legal system refuse to participate in some the most influential tribunals post war? And as the meme goes, did the men in the landing boats on D-Day know they were fighting for international banksterism where their grandchildren would own nothing and learn to love licking the bootsoles of their victim-oppressors; for literally demonic-looking pederasts in children’s preschools; for unlimited importation of literally moronic, untrained, untrainable, and completely non-assimilable persons by the millions; so their granddaughters could whore themselves online at rates probably exceeding the rampant prostitution in Weimar Germany; to eat manifestly unhealthy industrial-wasteproduct diets fortified by literally dozens of childhood “immunizations” of dubious benefit and increasingly clear harms? The list goes on.
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So. After that completely neutral, unobjectionable, and of course totally noncontroversial intro…
There is a school of thought that Japan was prepared to surrender, so long as the Imperial Family could stay on as ceremonial figureheads. But the decision was made to nuke Japan to send a message to the Russians. I have no idea if this is true. But considering all the half truths, lies by omissions, and flat out lies, backed by very real threats and examples of careers and lives destroyed for even questioning The Narrative (actually plural, the Narratives laid out by the masters of reversing victim and offender), why not add the Nuking of Japan to the list?
We can also discuss the fact that Japan was goaded into attacking Pearl Harbor and that six Movietone Film Crews were flown in two weeks before (it was a considerable journey then) to sit around and wait for something to happen so that they could record it for posterity). There was also the Gulf of Tonkin Incident that dragged the US into the Vietnam War that we know was a hoax. And the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq that weren’t there but launched the Second Gulf War.
I think that it was important for an unconditional surrender in Japan and coincidentally, it put the Russians on notice not to push it into Japan.
Go back further to the assasination of Archduke Ferdinand which had to be a setup (watch the recreations). If there is no WWI, the colonial order would have been preserved for perhaps decades longer, with many political pathogens never making it out of the crib.
Going back:
In 1904 the totally American investment bank Kuhn and Loeb (yes, American, though both Abraham Kuhn and Solomon Loeb were of German origin) financed Japan against Imperial Russia. In 1905 there was rebellion in the Russian Navy. Allegations that the agitators were bankrolled by Jacob Schiff (the German-born son-in-law of Loeb) are just that, hateful anti-Germanic allegations. But these weakened Imperial Russia, diminished the prestige and thus legitimacy of the rule of the Tsar, and emboldened the Japanese by giving them means to upgrade their military forces.
—
A powerful, expansionist, Imperial Japan was of course a great boon to China, Korea, and eventually all of the Asia-Pacific nations. A Great Boon that improved the lives of millions of Asians from Harbin to Jakarta. Nanking remembers. Manchuria remembers. Korea remembers. (But we are not taught these, and countless others. Nor are we taught about the Holodomor. It’s a mystery why. Some scholars have advocated for deliberate suppression of these because Competing Narrative — their words, not mine — but I’m sure this is not the case. What kind of narcissistic monsters could openly advocate for such a thing?) In 1917 Schiff and the Warburg banking dynasty (also Germans, the Warburgs) funded Trotsky and Lenin and the rest is history. Such history that we were even taught a little about it. (Besides, the Real Winners deserve to crow and preen a little, yeah?)
—
The Republic of China under Sun Yat-Sen and later Chiang Kai-Shek was weak, disorganized, and corrupt. I don’t know if they would have been able to deal with the Japanese alone, or with Mao’s communists (advised by the Russian Mikhail Borodin) alone, but between Japan and Mao the ROC never had a chance. So now we get to deal with the PRC. (And with the toxic legacy of decades of the USSR.) If I were a proper Asian, I’d have a real grudge against those damn Germans, with a special addendum for the Russian Borodin. (Though Borodin’s birth name was Gruzenberg, so maybe it was those damn Germans again.)
https://pearlharbor.org/blog/the-secret-japanese-plan-for-biological-warfare/
Lets not forget about this…. scheduled for 3 months after the bomb was dropped…..
Dropping the Bomb.
Thank you, that was a good article and well balanced.
Two of my uncles came back from combat in the pacific and were very changed, not the same men.
The Japanese soldiers fought in a very evil way and there is no indication their civilians were any less fanatical.
I served during the Vietnam War… but killing old men and old women and young children charging at me with spears and sharp sticks would have destroyed my soul.
God bless Harry Truman, what ever he chose would be criticized.
What’s the significance of the 5 small figures (4 black, 1 red) beneath the glass of BocksCar’s cockpit?
They look like fat man mission icons
I met Gen. Sweeney in Bangor Maine at a book signing for “War’s End”, a copy of which I sent to my father who had been a medic in the Pacific during the war.
I don’t recall Sweeney having ANY regrets.
My dad was scheduled for the first USN conventional attack wave into Nagasaki,
through a valley with hollow mountains full of AA on both sides. He was quite
fond of the Bomb, especially when he was transporting the inspection and
inventory teams around Japan during th Occupation, and he got to look in
those mountains.
*
If we hadn’t nuked Japan, and invaded, there would be no Japan today. Nobody
would speak or read Japanese except some obscure scholars, Japanese culture
would be erased, Japan would be one or more States, in which the Japanese
would likely be second-class citizens. It was a Total War, and everyone was very,
very angry. These professors have no idea. The Japanese fought like deranged
savages, as that is the way of war in Asia, and after fighting them, many of us fought
back exactly the same way. If warning Russia was part of the plan, all well and good.
They were even more evil than Imperial Japan, judging by the way they treated their
own people just as badly as Japan treated Manchu and Koreans. They were also
a vastly greater threat than Japan had ever been.
*
USNS Harvey Milk – I don;t give a crap if the Navy wants to name ships after gay
people, as long as they’re American (or even some Allied) heroes.
Harvey Milk however, was a filthy Commie and a close associate of Jim Jones.
He was an utterly reprehensible human being, and a traitor to the US. The sooner
his name is consigned to the ashbin of history, the better.
– Kle.
X2
“[Russians] were even more evil than Imperial Japan, judging by the way they treated their own people”
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Own people? I guess, in the way that a pig farmer speaks of “my own pigs” maybe. Allow me to quote Solzhenitsyn. “You must remember, the leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse.”
But of course, the man who was lionized in the West for writing The Gulag Archipelago became a non-person in his later years. For largely unclear reasons, but maybe it has to do with the rest of the Solzhenitsyn quote above: “The fact that most of the world is ignorant and uncaring [about the crimes of the Bolsheviks] is proof that the global media is in the hands of the perpetrators.” Clearly ol’ Aleksandr went senile and became a hater in his later years. So sad. We should pity him, but we should also never read his books again. And we should definitely not let any of his later works be translated into English. No sir. Those would diminish the already tarnished legacy of a once-great man. I’m trying to repair his threadbare reputation, you see. Out of love and pity of course.
Good riddance to the Milk name! LONG overdue. His ‘name’ was a sop to the pedos on the left, and thumbing of the nose at the US Navy. Same for the CA rail debacle… But Newsome and his ilk got rich off what ‘wasn’t’ done…sigh
Re Bernstein, I remember that ‘report’ circulating in 1991, and the consensus that he was obviously anti-Nuke, and didn’t do a damned bit of research into ACTUAL death/injury counts (as you pointed out). He also glossed over the fanaticism of the Japanese at the time and their ‘intent’ to defend the home islands to the last civilian. President Truman did what he had to, based on the information he had AT THE TIME, to save American lives. I have no problem with that. This kinda reminds me of the kerfuffle at the Smithsonian over putting the Enola Gay fuselage in Air and Space, and the revisionist history placards that would have been attached to it. That prompted Col Tibbets to speak publically for the first time since WWII about it. The exhibit was pulled, thanks to the protests from the veterans and active duty personnel!!!
Chinese spies? One of the positive elements in this disturbing story is that we can id them. Different eyes, you see.
To add to all of the above about the Fall of Japan, we, the US, had several plans to end it.
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One was to continue and expand the naval blockade of all the islands. To the point of bombing all harbors, blowing away anything larger than a floating coconut, and using naval gunfire against anything on the shore that looked like a boat, or a float, or could float.
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One was widespread deforestation of all the islands while continuing the naval blockade. Kill anything green, including trees, fields, parks, whatever. The damage to the country would have basically made Japan unable to grow anything.
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One was to continue the firebombing while continuing the naval blockade. Expand it to all cities, then to towns, then to any collection of buildings we could find.
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All of the above would have taken years to complete, and basically killed off the Japanese people.
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We could have invaded, but that would also have basically killed off the Japanese people, because the 10th time a field hospital or a first-aid station got wiped out by kids with bombs, there would be nothing holding the anger of the US soldier back.
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A combination of all of the above. Anything requiring direct action near or on or over the islands would have continued the constant bleed of men and equipment.
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Something no ‘expert’ really talks about much at all is that after the surrender and following the occupation, in 1946 the military commissioned a study, using Japanese military assistants, of all the preparations that Japan had for a continued blockade or aerial war or actual invasion. And said US military was shocked and horrified and adjusted the casualty numbers way way up for all options that required continued US military action. Way way up. We would have used up the stock of Purple Hearts that we minted for the invasion. You know, the same stock of PHs that we are still using today.
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My dad was in Japan and Korea right after the Korean War right after the cease-fire, and got assigned to one of the Air Force groups still cleaning up the preparations. And got to talk with the Army guys and the Navy guys and, yeah, they were ready for us, and would have died in wholesale numbers.
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The levels of horror that we would have to have inflicted upon them, death by starvation, death by direct action, would have basically killed our national spirit. We wanted it to be over, done, finis. Thus the two bombs dropped and a quick capitulation.
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Another thing that nobody talks about is that by surrendering quickly after the bombs, that stopped the USSR from invading. Which would have been as horrible as The Fall of Berlin. The USSR had no humor about Japan. And they would have had no problems making Japan pay personally.
And that photo of girls with bamboo sticks? One of my martial arts instructors took a Naginata class (Japanese glaive, basically sword on a long stick) class with a little old Japanese lady. My instructor was very good but had his ass handed to him by the lady, continuously. Every time he racheted up his skills, she countered.
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Then she told her ‘backstory.’ As a 13yo girl, she was a squad leader for a bunch of kids from 6 to 10. She was issued a naginata, her kids had bamboo spears. And they were all ready to die. Her grandmother was squad leader for a bunch of old people, basically same same.
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The people were prepared to die, either in combat or by suicide, rather than be captured.
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She also talked to my instructor about the daily horrors of living near Tokyo. The firestorms. The starvation.
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A good movie about the civilian side of the late war is “In this Corner of the World.” It’s an animated movie, but still damn horrifying. Touches the conventional bombings and the firebombings and then the atomic bombings and centers around one family. It’s pretty horrifying.
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Then there’s “Grave of the Fireflies,” which is about two starving brothers. Another animated movie. I… don’t have the guts to watch it, just reading the description is sickening.
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The atom bombs were the best choice.
I’m a little bit late to the party as I’ve been busy.
Remember having a beer with a former u-boat Commander who had been stationed in Tokyo the train their submarine commanders. He had married a Japanese wife. He told me that they both felt that the bombing was the best thing that could have happened to Japan. If not, as depicted in your post, United States soldiers would have been landing facing old women children and old men with rakes and bamboo spears.
The fire bombing that we did of Japan during the war killed more people than the atomic bombs.
My dad was supposed to set up radios for the Marines on the beach in Japan. He graduated high school at 15 and studied to be a radio engineer at Texas A&M. He e went to California in April and marched with unit after unit of Marines before they shipped out. What started as a small group grew to 1,500 radio engineers. After the bomb in August they shipped him to Shanghai for a year. He was able to visit my mother’s aunt who was a missionary in China. She ended up on a prison boat after the revolution but lived to return to the states. My dad received a letter from her students about 15 years ago. Tom
Wow. What a blessing.