AUGUST 1945: THE MONTH THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

Reprinted courtesy of American Thinker.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/08/august_1945_an_eventful_month_in_world_history.html

Some historians describe both world wars as one prolonged conflict, beginning in Europe in August 1914 and ending in the Pacific in August 1945.  The interim from 1918 to 1939 featured many and varied clashes, including those in Poland, Armenia, Spain and China to name a few. Key interim players included Japan and Russia.

Certainly the apocalyptic end of World War II has been described by eminent historians over the last seven decades.  But in searching for my next book, I applied what I grandiosely call “negative market analysis.”  What has not been covered, or not in recent years with current scholarship?  That was how I conceived Whirlwind (Simon and Schuster, 2010) because there had never been a dedicated study of all air operations over Japan.

It was also how I decided upon When the Shooting Stopped.  There have been excellent studies of the global events of June 1944 (notably D-Day in France and U.S. conquest of the Marianas on the other side of the planet) but I found none devoted to August 1945, the month that shaped the world.

Events accelerated in the spring and summer of 1945.  Germany surrendered on May 8 but Russia already was shipping massive amounts of men and materiel eastward.  Moscow and Berlin had a non-aggression treaty that Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin cancelled on August 9.  That night a three-pronged Russian assault into Japanese-held Manchuria opened the Far East end game, briefly overlapping Japan’s surrender to the Allies.

American forces began deploying from Europe and the continental United States anticipating the two-phase Operation Downfall, invasion of Japan’s home islands.  The first assault, on the southern island of Kyushu, was slated for early November.  The second, on the main island of Honshu, was due in March 1946.

Meanwhile, the atomic age had dawned in a 20-kiloton flash in the New Mexico desert on July 16.  The three-year Manhattan Project yielded awe-inspiring results, and Tokyo’s refusal of the Allies’ Potsdam declaration for unconditional surrender ensured that the atoms would be loosed.  U.S. B-29 Superfortresses from the Mariana Islands 1,500 miles south of Japan were prepared to conduct “special missions” beyond conventional bombing methods.  An A-bomb destroyed Hiroshima on August 6 and, lacking any reply from Tokyo, a second weapon leveled Nagasaki three days later.

Even then, Japan’s war cabinet remained evenly divided between surrender and continued war.  Finally, on August 15, Emperor Hirohito took the unprecedented step of personally intervening in government affairs.  His decision “to bear the unbearable” was met with fierce resistance in the palace guard but the plotters were quickly overcome.  In his announcement Hirohito credited the A-bombs with his decision, citing “a most cruel new weapon.”

For three decades a bitter feud was fought in an information vacuum with academics and others arguing whether the bombs were necessary.  The mantra “Tokyo was about to surrender” gained some public traction despite clear evidence to the contrary.  Then from the 1970s to the 1990s declassified intelligence documents showed that President Harry Truman and his advisers were reading Tokyo’s mail via decoded messages.  Hirohito’s intervention was the only way to break the logjam.

Speculation as to the cost of invading Japan continues today.  General Douglas MacArthur, the vainglorious Army supremo who would command Operation Downfall, discounted intelligence (understated, as it proved) showing the Japanese heavily reinforcing the Kyushu defenses.  His personal goal was leading the greatest military operation of all time.  But that summer the U.S. government ordered an additional half million Purple Heart medals for expected killed and wounded in Downfall--enough to last into the Vietnam War of the 1960s and 1970s.

However, the U.S. Navy had second thoughts.  The Pacific Fleet’s Admiral Chester Nimitz knew all too well the cost of the three-month Okinawa campaign, especially facing Kamikazes that had sunk dozens of ships and damaged hundreds since the Philippines operation from October 1944.

            

Nimitz’s superior in Washington, Admiral Ernest King, shared reservations about Operation Downfall.  Neither admiral doubted it would succeed, but at what cost?

The only viable option was continuing blockade.  At some point Japan would face massive starvation—there were already food riots that spring—with consequences likely exceeding military conquest.  Aside from deaths in Japan itself, postwar analysis estimated more than 100,000 deaths on the Asian mainland, per month, almost entirely from war-related disease and starvation.  As it was, Japan inflicted at least 12 million deaths upon Asia-Pacific nations.

Meanwhile, the postwar world was taking shape.  Outgoing British Prime Minister Winston Churchill coined the phrase “iron curtain” that summer, anticipating Russia’s draconian policies in Eastern Europe.  Residents of Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Balkans and the Baltic states realized that they had exchanged Nazi tyranny for the Soviet variety.

Apart from China, the world was also reshaping itself in Asia.  The colonial era ended in India, Indonesia and Vietnam.  In fact, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh declared a provisional government the same day the surrender was signed in Tokyo Bay.  The war against French occupation lasted until 1954.  

At the same time India’s independence movement under Mahatma Ghandi bore fruit in 1947 while Indonesia fought a long internal war against Communist insurgents until 1949.  

Prior agreement between the U.S. and Russia divided Korea in the middle, at the 38^th parallel, setting the stage for a three-year war launched by Pyongyang in 1950.

Though Japan announced its surrender on the 15^th, Pacific time, those at the sharp end continued fighting, killing, and dying.  Earth’s time zones affected the process, as the last B-29 bombing mission took off the afternoon of the 14^th and was returning to its roosts after midnight.  But U.S. and British Pacific Fleet units in Japanese waters still conducted scheduled missions, resulting in several clashes.  Of six USS Yorktown fighters jumped by enemy aircraft, only two pilots survived.  Other dogfights lasted into the afternoon as some Japanese doubted the surrender announcement—and others chose to ignore it.

            

America’s final combat fatality—Sergeant Anthony Marchione--died on a photographic mission on August 18.  

The formal end of six years of combat occurred in barely a half-hour ceremony aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, September 2.  Among those I interviewed from the 1970s onward were General Jimmy Doolittle, who bombed Tokyo in 1942, and several Navy pilots who participated in “Operation Airshow.”  The overflight of Tokyo Bay made dramatic film footage but a squadron commander confided that the crowded sky beneath low clouds caused more fear than he experienced in combat.

In considering the next book, the August ’45 narrative appealed to me on different levels.  As a baby boomer, I grew up amid relatives and neighbors for whom “the war” was the central event of their lives.  Four decades afterward, a girlfriend and I appreciated the fact that we only met because our fathers survived the war.

The family aspect also entered into When the Shooting Stopped.  In September 1945 my mother was an Oregon rodeo princess who recalled the spirited adventures of some naval aviators who buzzed the arena, nearly blew over fishing boats, and generally had a fine old time violating almost every conceivable safety regulation.  The fliers attached themselves to the round-up court, and I mused on the rarity of writing about one’s parents in a history book.

Elsewhere, of course, the lid was off.  Joyous celebrations erupted around the world, most notably an estimated 2 million New Yorkers who jammed Times Square when Japan’s surrender was confirmed.  The iconic Life magazine photo of a sailor kissing a “nurse” (she was a dental technician) remains a vivid depiction of that ecstatic moment.

But not all celebrations were justifiable.  From Boston to San Francisco, days of riotous behavior broke out with violent clashes between servicemen and police.  Deaths, assaults, and vandalism often went unpunished—ill suiting the misty-eyed image of “the greatest generation.” But in the larger picture, the VJ Generation returned dozens of nations to their rightful owners, and was greatness itself.

From 1939 to 1945 Earth’s 100 or so nation-states lost perhaps 3 percent of their 2.3 billion humans to all war-related causes.  The specific numbers keep increasing (partly due to Soviet juggling) from an estimated 50 million in the 1990s to as high as 85 million today.  All losses to military action, including civilians, run between 50 and 60 million.

About 405,000 American families lost service members—at least two examples with four and five each--plus nearly 700,000 wounded or injured.  Thousands U.S. more civilians added to the toll in the Philippines, China, and elsewhere.

Today there are 195 nation-states with nearly 8 billion inhabitants.  They continue living with the benefits and downsides that characterized the Second World War seven decades ago.

JULY: THE FORGOTTEN MONTH OF 1945

My current book is When the Shooting Stopped: August 1945 from Bloomsbury-Osprey in Britain.  Near as I could tell, no single volume covered “the month that shaped the world.”

Inevitably each August produces another reprise of The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings, though by now it should be obvious there was no acceptable alternative to loosing the atoms.  The options were blockade or invasion, both certain to kill more people on both sides.  And that did not include the enormous toll in Asia—reckoned postwar at about 100,000 per month.  As it was, Japan’s aggression killed at least 17 million people in the Asia-Pacific realm, perhaps closer to 20 million.

For those desiring more analysis, consult the works of John Toland, Richard Frank, and Sir Max Hastings.

Which takes us back to July.

The main event was the Potsdam Conference where the Western Allies and Soviet Union decided the course of the Pacific War and the shape of the postwar world.  It was the same time when outgoing British Prime Minister Winston Churchill coined the enduring phrase “Iron Curtain.”

But from an operational perspective I’m drawn to the U.S. Navy air strikes on the main Japanese naval base at Kure, near Hiroshima.  Much of Tokyo’s inert fleet had laid up there for months, drawing repeated attacks by Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers from March onward.

It’s still argued whether the cost was worth the results.  I’ve had ample opportunity to examine the subject both in Whirlwind (Simon & Schuster 2010) and When the Shooting Stopped.  What follows is a compendium.

On March 19 more than 320 Fifth Fleet planes struck Kure, inflicting marginal damage.  The heavy defenses downed 25 planes in exchange for damage to nine ships.  

That same day Japanese pilots nearly destroyed the fleet carrier USS Franklin  (CV-13), killing 800 men and knocking her out of the war.  The definitive account is Joseph Springer’s Inferno (Zenith, 2007.)

Kure was back in the crosshairs three times in July.

A cogent assessment was offered by then-Lieutenant Commander William N. Leonard of Vice Admiral John McCain’s Task Force 38 staff.  “Some Neanderthals back at PacFleet Headquarters wanted continuation of a navy versus navy fight and we lost many good people to no good purpose.  With the Jap navy lying doggo, PacFleet began to assert itself more and more into the assignment of missions and objectives of the fast carriers.”  

Leonard’s attitude largely mirrored that of McCain, who considered the Kure strikes “a waste of time” but could only go so far.  Occasionally he argued with Third Fleet’s Admiral William F. Halsey, though seldom successfully. 

McCain opposed targeting shipping, preferring to strike airfields and aircraft factories.  However, his priorities also were skewed: Third Fleet knew the benefits of sinking Japanese coastal traffic such as Hokkaido’s rail ferries.  But whatever their service, airmen were magnetically pulled toward the enemy’s aviation industry, while steamers and merchantmen lacked the perceived glamor of aircraft factories.  

Without delving into tactics and targets, the Kure strikes offer a lesson in the morality of military leadership.  

Nobody would admit it—certainly not in writing—but at least some of the impetus for the July operations probably had more to do with service politics than winning the war.  Both the Navy and the Army Air Forces anticipated the inevitable  postwar Washington battle, determining whether there would be an independent air force.  Almost certainly the admirals wanted to run up the score, demonstrating naval aviation’s huge contribution to destroying the enemy fleet, and the fat pickings at Kure became irresistible: over 200,000 tons in major combatants.

In some ways, Kure represented the greatest flak trap in history.  The big harbor contained nothing that could seriously harm the Third Fleet, as the remnants of the Imperial Navy lacked sufficient fuel and crews to pose a major threat.  But geisha-like, Kure smiled (or smirked) behind her ornamental fan, crooked a fetching finger at King, Nimitz, and Halsey, and coyly invited them in.

They rushed to accept.

On July 24 the tailhookers left 57 planes in Kure Harbor and adjacent waters, drowning a battleship and cruiser in the shallow harbor and damaging a dozen lesser vessels.

Kure was part of the next day’s strike menu, though no warships were sunk.

 Results on the 28th were significantly better: totaling severe damage to three battleships, three cruisers, and three carriers plus lesser victims.  Some of the warships were effectively sunk, resting on the muddy bottom.

Overall, Halsey’s three days of strikes on Kure and environs proved costly: at least 126 aircraft with 102 fliers.  Eighteen of the losses occurred in “routine” operations over Shikoku. 

Whether the cost justified the Kure strikes remains questionable.  In his often self-serving memoir, Halsey enumerated four reasons for the strikes.  He opined that America’s national honor and morale required total destruction of the Japanese Navy; that such destruction was necessary to prevent interdiction of future convoys to Russia; that Tokyo might use its remaining fleet for negotiating leverage as Germany had done in 1919; and ultimately that he had orders.  He concluded, “If the other reasons had been invalid, that one alone would have been enough for me.”  

Halsey’s arguments remain transparently unconvincing.  In the first place, American morale in no way turned on destruction of the rusting remnants of the Imperial Navy.  The greatest morale involved was “Bull” Halsey’s.  The huge majority of Americans merely wished the war over, and the main seagoing phase had ended in October 1944.

Secondly, the U.S. Navy could easily dominate the North Pacific in the vastly unlikely event that a Japanese force escaped its mine-choked harbors to deploy more than 1,000 miles from home. Furthermore, absent requests from Moscow, no such requirement pertained.   

Halsey’s third point was even more absurd.  The Allies’ pre-existing demand of unconditional surrender automatically scuttled any naval bargaining that Tokyo might have attempted in such nonexistent proceedings.

The fourth point would seem the strongest, as King and Nimitz had decreed an end to the “defueled doggo fleet.”  But by July 1945 Halsey surely felt bulletproof.  He had escaped all accountability (if not major blame) for the Leyte Gulf debacle and failing to avoid a ship-killing typhoon in December.  

The defenders of his position were five-star guardians: Pacific Fleet commander Chester Nimitz, who allowed sentiment to trump objectivity, and the decidedly unsentimental Ernest King, chief of naval operations in Washington, who refused to hand the Air Force a political victory.  But the fact remained that between Leyte Gulf in October 1944 and “Halsey’s hurricane” in December the Third Fleet commander was widely considered directly or indirectly responsible for the unnecessary loss of seven ships and some 1,450 sailors and aircrew.

Had Halsey declined to expend scores of fliers and over 100 aircraft in a needless exercise, his chances of being replaced approached absolute zero.  But rather than take counsel of the Task Force 38 staff, The Bull was eager to comply with orders that gratified his vanity at the expense of at least 83 young men who died attacking impotent, immobile ships.  

Halsey’s seeming indifference to casualties drew sharp criticism from subordinates.  One aviator spoke for many when he noted, “Halsey is going wild on publicity and we are all fed (up) to the teeth listening to all the crap he is putting out….Halsey is a big disappointment to me as he is to most of us.”  

In this 77th anniversary year we might remember that the WW II generation often was ill served by its leaders.

UVALDE AFTERMATH

 “If you are a police officer and you think for even one second that you will not be able to run towards the gunfire, please quit now.”

Atlantic Beach, Florida, Police Chief Michelle Cook, 2018

Chief Cook (now sheriff of Clay County) referred to reports that a Broward County deputy had “failed to take action” during the Douglas High School shooting that killed 17 people.  The accused deputy’s trial is scheduled this year.

Following the massacre of 21 students and teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, this month, national focus again returned to police actions and obligations.  

After the Columbine, Colorado, school killings in 1999, the public demanded explanations for police actions or inactions.  Following protocol, officers established a perimeter and surrounded the scene, pointing their guns at the building.  Additional time was spent organizing a multi-agency SWAT team, calling for ammunition and equipment.

The two teenaged killers shot themselves about 50 minutes after opening fire.  SWAT entered one hour thereafter.  Subsequently in a televised interview, one of the officers mentioned concern about friendly fire in the confusion.

Professional debriefs noted that even local police had little or no idea of the school’s interior.  Officers interviewed some students who escaped early, trying to visualize the floor plan.

Subsequently, most metropolitan police and sheriff’s offices revised their active shooter policies.  In the Phoenix area at least two departments adopted a “run to the guns” philosophy, preferably with two or more officers first on the scene.  It makes sense, considering that large-scale shootings usually occur in the first ten minutes or less.

Though many PDs emblazon their patrol cars with the slogan “To protect and serve,” the Supreme Court has twice ruled that police have no obligation toward individuals.  The relevant cases are DeShaney v. Winnebago County (1989) and Gonzales v. Castle Rock (2005).

Meanwhile school shootings are nothing new.  The first recorded incident recorded occurred in Virginia in 1840 when a law professor was mortally wounded by a student. 

One of the dangers of focusing on firearms is that “gun myopia” ignores every other means of mass killings.

While excluding nearly 3,000 killed by terrorists on 9-11 and the 1995 Oklahoma City fertilizer bomb, here’s a brief survey of non-firearms mass murders:

In 1910 suspected anarchists killed 38 and wounded 143 using a horse-drawn wagon loaded with dynamite on Wall Street.  

Then in 1927 the Bath School bombing in Michigan killed 38 children and six adults—a worse toll than any U.S. school shooting to date.

 

In 1990 Julio Gonzalez killed 87 people at the Happy Land Social Club in New York City, mostly Hondurans celebrating Carnival.  He used a plastic bucket with $1 worth of gasoline, and a match.

That same year 33 Turkish intellectuals were killed when radical Islamists set fire to the group’s hotel.

In 2003 an unemployed South Korean taxi driver started a fire in a subway, killing 198 people with nearly 150 injured.

In 2014 and 2015, 83 Chinese were knifed to death in two attacks.

Massive school killings are not limited to the U.S.  In 2004 Chechyn nationalists took over a Russian school for three days, killing 333 people including 186 children.  

Among police and security professionals there seems growing frustration that the same mistakes still occur decades after Columbine and other atrocities.  The Uvalde massacre came just two months after area police completed refresher training for an active shooter.

Especially in today’s panicked “defund the police” climate, some officers insist it’s not up to cops to divert scarce resources to guarding schools among rising crime and violence.  To quote one law-enforcement friend: “If people want to have children, the parents need to protect their kids.  The cops have too much to do as it is.”

So what should we do?

One popular option seems limiting school access to a single entrance and exit.  The theory holds that an assailant would have to get past the gate guard—who likely would be unarmed.  But whether the guard or guards carry weapons, they could easily be neutralized.

Then the killer or killers have a building full of victims unable to escape.  Locking students in some rooms could reduce the number of targets, but certainly not all.

And as street cops remind us: “When seconds count, we’re minutes away.”

Think about that.

Meanwhile, trying to head off mass murderers is a complex onion of many layers.  There have been advance notices-warnings by some killers, including the Uvalde cretin who posted his intention online.  Apparently nobody took notice.

But the legality of so-called “red flag” laws remains questionable. The Fifth Amendment says that people’s rights cannot be infringed without “due process.”  Red flag laws rely on unverified, possibly malicious, allegations, with no “due process” opportunity for the accused to refute the allegations.

Schools do not help the situation with contradictory policies.  In just one example, last year a Georgia male teacher was suspended for laying hands on a female student who brought a gun to school and holding her until police arrived.  Apparently the school district dropped charges to avoid witness testimony.

In any case, a quick glance shows a clear pattern: School attacks averaged one or two deaths through most of the 20th century.  So what accounts for the huge increase since the 1990s?  That decade produced a 59% increase in attacks over the previous decade with an 80% increase in deaths.

There are of course several factors including reduced rate of committing potential killers to mental institutions—and then-Senator Joe Biden’s 1990 “gun-free school zone” legislation.  The law was overturned by the Supreme Court five years later (United States v. Lopez) but remains a de facto guideline for policy makers.  Technically, 18 states allow teachers or staff to be armed on-campus (with official permission) but few of those are implemented: they include liberal bastions California, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Oregon.  

The NEA “educators” are solidly opposed to armed staff in schools by an overwhelming 68 percent.  Ironically, that’s one point less than a recent online poll showing Real Americans favor the concept.

So what should the policy involve?

Police can seldom divert scarce resources to guarding schools.  In fact, at two of the worst attacks, on-scene officers failed to purse the killers in time: at Columbine in 1999 and most recently in Florida. 

Much as many would concur with parents,  at least two parents were detained by police when trying to enter the Uvalde school.  One father was tasered and a mother was handcuffed.  

Meanwhile, police continued entering the school after a brief exchange of gunfire minutes after the killer began shooting.  Apparently he then locked himself in a classroom, safe from nearly twenty officers eventually assembled in the hallway.  They remained there until a staffer arrived with a key.  Police increasingly ask why the officers did not have breaching equipment to open the door.

We continue holding school fire drills though apparently the last significant school fire occurred in Chicago in 1958.  So why not expand active-shooter drills?

One solution:

Allow teachers and school staff to carry pistols, all day every day—and night.  Establish meaningful qualifications and training with at least four recertification events annually.

Require the academic “sheepdogs” to keep their weapon on them full time: no stashing in a desk or locker.  For maximum safety and security, wear the pistol unloaded with one or two magazines on the belt.  If the shooter prefers a revolver, carry speed loaders.  In either case, the gun should be worn in a retention holster to prevent an easy snatch-and-grab.  If the gun’s unloaded, it’s no use with the ammunition carried separately.  And in an emergency either type of firearm can be loaded quickly, though revolvers require more practice.

The ten seconds or less to load a pistol and chamber a round beat the best police response times (typically five to six minutes at best) all to hell.

One more thing:

President Donald Trump suggested paying bonuses to teachers or staff who qualify to carry guns in schools.  Some police recommend more: a fund that pays $1 million to anyone who kills or stops a school murderer. 

That’s something most taxpayers would support.