TRUMP AND TRUMAN
[This Monday’s Archive was originally published on August 6, 2018. It is even more critically relevant now than back then. America failed to heed its message six years ago, it is mortally important it succeed this time, for this is our country’s last chance.]
TTP, August 6, 2018
[This essay is in honor of the 73rd anniversary of August 6, 1945]
Tinian Island, Pacific Ocean. It’s a small island, less than 40 square miles, a flat green dot in the vastness of Pacific blue. Fly over it and you notice a slash across its north end of uninhabited bush, a long thin line that looks like an overgrown dirt runway. If you didn’t know what it was, you wouldn’t give it a second glance out your airplane window.
On the ground, you see the runway isn’t dirt but tarmac and crushed limestone, abandoned with weeds sticking out of it. Yet seventy-three years ago today, August 6, this became the most historical airstrip on earth. This is where World War II was won. This is Runway Able:
On July 24, 1944, 30,000 US Marines landed on the beaches of Tinian. Eight days later, over 8,000 of the 8,800 Japanese soldiers on the island were dead (vs. 328 Marines), and four months later the Seabees had built the busiest airfield of WWII – dubbed North Field – enabling B-29 Superfortresses to launch air attacks on the Philippines, Okinawa, and mainland Japan.
Late in the afternoon of August 5, 1945, a B-29 was maneuvered over a bomb loading pit, then after lengthy preparations, taxied to the east end of North Field’s main runway, Runway Able, and at 2:45am in the early morning darkness of August 6, took off. Seventy-three years ago today.
The B-29 was piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets of the US Army Air Force, who had named the plane after his mother, Enola Gay. The crew named the bomb they were carrying Little Boy. 6½ hours later at 8:15am Japan time, the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Three days later, in the pre-dawn hours of August 9, a B-29 named Bockscar (a pun on “boxcar” after its flight commander Capt. Fred Bock), piloted by Major Charles Sweeney took off from Runway Able. Finding its primary target of Kokura obscured by clouds, Sweeney proceeded to the secondary target of Nagasaki, over which, at 11:01am, bombardier Kermit Beahan released the atomic bomb dubbed Fat Man.
Here is “Atomic Bomb Pit #1” where Little Boy was loaded onto Enola Gay:
There are pictures displayed in the pit, now glass-enclosed. This is Little Boy before being hoisted into Enola Gay‘s bomb bay.
And here on the other side of ramp is “Atomic Bomb Pit #2” where Fat Man was loaded onto Bockscar.
The commemorative plaque records that 16 hours after the nuking of Nagasaki, “On August 10, 1945 at 0300, the Japanese Emperor without his cabinet’s consent decided to end the Pacific War.”
Take a good look at these pictures, folks. This is where World War II ended with total victory of America over Japan. I was there all alone. There were no other visitors and no one lives anywhere near for miles. Visiting the Bomb Pits, walking along deserted Runway Able in solitude, was a moment of extraordinarily powerful solemnity.
It was a moment of deep reflection. Most people, when they think of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, reflect on the numbers of lives killed in the nuclear blasts – at least 70,000 and 50,000 respectively. Being here caused me to reflect on the number of lives saved – how many more Japanese and Americans would have died in a continuation of the war had the nukes not been dropped.
Yet that was not all. It’s not just that the nukes obviated the US invasion of Japan, Operation Downfall, that would have caused upwards of a million American and Japanese deaths or more. It’s that nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki were of extraordinary humanitarian benefit to the nation and people of Japan.
Let’s go to this cliff on the nearby island of Saipan to learn why:
Saipan is less than a mile north of Tinian.. The month before the Marines took Tinian, on June 15, 1944, 71,000 Marines landed on Saipan. They faced 31,000 Japanese soldiers determined not to surrender.
Japan had colonized Saipan after World War I and turned the island into a giant sugar cane plantation. By the time of the Marine invasion, in addition to the 31,000 entrenched soldiers, some 25,000 Japanese settlers were living on Saipan, plus thousands more Okinawans, Koreans, and native islanders brutalized as slaves to cut the sugar cane.
There were also one or two thousand Korean “comfort women” (kanji in Japanese), abducted young women from Japan’s colony of Korea to service the Japanese soldiers as sex slaves. (See The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War, by George Hicks.)
Within a week of their landing, the Marines set up a civilian prisoner encampment that quickly attracted a couple thousand Japanese and others wanting US food and protection. When word of this reached Emperor Hirohito – who contrary to the myth was in full charge of the war – he became alarmed that radio interviews of the well-treated prisoners broadcast to Japan would subvert his people’s will to fight.
As meticulously documented by historian Herbert Bix in Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, the Emperor issued an order for all Japanese civilians on Saipan to commit suicide. The order included the promise that, although the civilians were of low caste, their suicide would grant them a status in heaven equal to those honored soldiers who died in combat for their Emperor.
And that is why the precipice in the picture above is known as Suicide Cliff, off which over 20,000 Japanese civilians jumped to their deaths to comply with their fascist emperor’s desire – mothers flinging their babies off the cliff first or in their arms as they jumped.
Anyone reluctant or refused, such as the Okinawan or Korean slaves, were shoved off at gunpoint by the Japanese soldiers. Then the soldiers themselves proceeded to hurl themselves into the ocean to drown off a sea cliff afterwards called Banzai Cliff.
Of the 31,000 Japanese soldiers on Saipan, the Marines killed 25,000, 5,000 jumped off Banzai Cliff, and only the remaining thousand were taken prisoner.
The extent of this demented fanaticism is very hard for any civilized mind to fathom – especially when it is devoted not to anything noble but barbarian evil instead. The vast brutalities inflicted by the Japanese on their conquered and colonized peoples of China, Korea, the Philippines, and throughout their “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” was a hideously depraved horror.
And they were willing to fight to the death to defend it. So they had to be nuked. The only way to put an end to the Japanese barbarian horror was unimaginably colossal destruction against which they had no defense whatever. Nuking Japan was not a matter of justice, revenge, or it getting what it deserved. It was the only way to end the Japanese dementia.
And it worked – for the Japanese. They stopped being barbarians and started being civilized. They achieved more prosperity – and peace – than they ever knew, or could have achieved had they continued fighting and not been nuked. The shock of getting nuked is responsible.
The result? There has been a genuine peace between Japan and America for 73 years. The reason? The Japanese are not the same people as they were before and during World War II – ever since they have been a morally better people. They are our friends deserving of our and the world’s respect. That’s real peace.
And also real prosperity. The prosperousness of the Japanese is something to celebrate. It is propitious that just three days ago (August 3, 2018), the Japanese stock market overtook China’s to become the world’s second-biggest. The Japanese have every right to be proud of what they have now achieved.
The profoundest lessons of history are to be learned here. We achieved this because we had a president determined to achieve victory – President Harry Truman. Victory without apologies. Despite perennial liberal demands we do so, America and its government has never apologized for nuking Japan. Hopefully, America never will.
Today, America is faced with another barbaric evil that wishes to destroy it. A greater danger than Islamofascist terrorism or Chicom subversion and imperialism. A barbarism that demands America jump off a Suicide Cliff, and has been doing its fanatical best to push America off that Suicide Cliff since November 8, 2016.
The explicit goal of the Democrat Fascist Party has become the destruction, the suicide, of American freedom and prosperity.
How Democrats became this way is not the question, any more than how the Japanese became demented. The question is: are enough Americans determined to do what it takes to stop the Democrats’ attempt to destroy their own country?
President Truman had the courage to achieve victory over a fascist enemy because he knew the American people would vindicate it.
President Trump has that same courage. His presidency is a gift to America from Providence. Now the moment is arriving when Americans must prove worthy of that gift.
November 6th is three months from today. Yesterday he tweeted:
We do not want “might be.” In fact, we do not want a Red Wave at all – we want and can achieve a Red Tsunami. An electoral victory over the Dem Fascisti so overwhelming they will feel it’s their political Hiroshima.
In the House, the current count is 236R-193D, with 41R and 18D retiring/resigned. With 218 for majority, the Dems would have to flip 25 R seats if they kept all their 193. For every seat they lose, add one to that 25. This is a steep rough road, given POTUS’ reasons above, the Dems offering nothing but a Hate Trump-Hate American Citizens agenda – and this daunting Congressional District map of the 2016 presidential election:
In the Senate, the odds are even steeper – with one huge caveat, even insurmountable. Every two years, roughly one-third of the Senate is up. But the R-to-D ratio can vary considerably. This year it’s devastating for the Dems: 26D vs. 9R, with 10 of the Dems in states won by Trump and only 1 Pub in a state won by Hillary (Heller in NV).
Granted, with a razor-thin R majority of 51-49, the Dems only have to net 2+. (50-50 keeps R majority with VP Pence the tie breaker.) But the only maybe chance the Dems have is in Nevada – big maybe. Elsewhere it’s Slim Pickens for the Dems.
The Pubs by contrast are highly likely to kick out Bill Nelson in Florida, Joe Donnelly in Indiana, Air Claire McCaskill in Missouri, Jon Tester in Montana, and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota.
Kevin Nicholson has a good shot to defeat Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, as does John James to defeat Dumb Debbie Stabenow in Michigan. Karin Housley might pull it off against Tina Smith in Minnesota.
All told, the odds are good POTUS will have a solid 6 to 7 seat Senate majority and a solid House majority to boot when the Nov 6 dust settles. With that, he can order a B-29 loaded and gassed up on Runway Able to give the Dems their Nagasaki.
This is far from given. As James Woods puts the caveat referred to above:
All the Dems have is anger and hate to motivate them – and in many states the ability to cheat with the dead and illegals. We have love for our country to motivate us – and that has to give us the fire in the belly to swamp the Dems with a Red Tsunami in November.
They’ll be no stopping Trump if there is. You’ll see Mueller swept aside, the Comey-Brennan cabal in jail, the Wall built, illegals deprived of welfare and deported, the economy soar with more and more regulatory hamstrings cut, on and on.
But best of all, with the Dems crushed and defeated, they have the chance to become real Americans again. Just like the Japanese in total defeat transformed their souls, so can the Democrats. We can disagree on many things, but we can be friends as fellow Americans with them again.
That should be our goal. And if it turns out too Pollyannic, well, we just have to keep politically nuking them until they fully give up and/or see the light of patriotism.
Donald Trump is the Harry Truman of our day. Remember this day of August 6 and celebrate it. Dedicate yourself to the Red Tsunami on November 6. It will save America – and just might make the Dems civilized once again.
[As we know now, the 2018 elections were a GOP disaster losing 41 House seats with Nancy Pelosi becoming Speaker – caused by the execrable RINO Speaker Paul Ryan stymying Trump’s agenda. The Senate fared better, increasing the GOP 1-seat majority by 2 to 53-47.]