Bonner F. Fellers Quotes

Other war criminals had committed suicide in conformity with the Japanese custom. But Tojo stayed alive so that he could take the responsibility from the Emperor Herohito who many Americans wanted tried for his actions and inactions during the war. But Tojo made an error. At the beginning of his trial he testified that he always obeyed the Emperor even though he was the Prime Minister and the head of government. Therefore, the Emperor was guilty of those crimes he had discussed with Tojo and the cabinet. Later, he was persuaded to change his testimony and said that he led the country to war and the Emperor wanted peace, a statement that few believed. See {587278}. While the Emperor had committed war crimes General MacArthur believed that the Emperor left in place and unpunished would make it easier to govern Japan, than if he were tried and punished. However, he and his staff fabricated a report to exonerate the Emperor rather than make his recommendation to his superiors and the President so they could either accept his view or not. He was a unilateralist in the administrative sense of the word. See {587279} for additional material on the Emperor’s guilt.

Although Emperor Hirohito had the status of a God, and his Prime Minister and Chief of the Military testified that they had never disobeyed the Emperor {587278}, there was a thorough attempt to whitewash the Emperor’s role—{587279}. Few Japanese, even years later would suggest that Hirohito might bear some personal responsibility. The Mayor was one of the few who made the statement of the obvious. He received 181 death threats and he was shot shortly thereafter by a right wing supporter of the Emperor’s.

This statement caused great consternation. NcNutt did try to explain that he was speaking personally and not for the Government, but there was a small proportion of America who had concluded that all Japanese should be killed. Such an concept which was unthinkable 5 years earlier was considered as a result of several factors: The Japanese had murdered many American prisoners of war. Killed millions of civilians throughout Asia including doing medical and weapons experiments on live human beings. They had practiced torture, compulsory prostitution and mass rape of conquered territories. At the same time, the Germans had tried to exterminate all the Jews and, with some Japanese help, did kill two-thirds. The concept of genocide had been introduced to Americans as the concentration camps were liberated. And American casualties in the Pacific had been heavy. Vengeance was desired by many. Fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Americans never considered genocide seriously.

This has been true in just about every conflict. In WWII however, there were a highly disproportionate ration of atrocities with those of the axis forces dwarfing those of the U. S. and its allies. Further, after the war, those allied atrocities that did take place were published. In addition, one basic difference is in the policies of the fighting forces and their governments as opposed to individual actions by soldiers. In WWII, the allied atrocities were of the latter type, but the axis atrocities involved both.

The Colonel defined people capable of bearing arms as males and females over 20 years of age. Many were slaughtered. Fortunately, most of his officers and men did not follow this order but enough did to make it one of the most disgraceful events in American military history. Smith was court marshaled and found guilty but his punishment was to be cashiered from the army. There were many atrocities committed by the minorities of both sides in this brutal war. Military and Congressional Investigations caused the army manual to be revised military policies reformed.

He was a brutal, sadistic war criminal who was assassinated by one of his many enemies in 2000 before he could be brought to trial.

The second atomic bomb had just been dropped.

Emperor Hirohito was never indicted at the behest of General MacArthur’s recommendations {605727}. Yet Bernard felt compelled to address the missing defendant’s guilt as did the English Judge {43999}

The soldiers obeyed their orders and killed every man, woman and child they could find outside the city. They beheaded captured prisoners, bayoneted pregnant women and children. All civilian houses were burned, often with the people trapped inside.

On March 9-10, 1945, over three hundred B-29 Superfortresses loaded with 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs flew over Tokyo bombing the city in waves for 6 hours. Over 250,000 buildings were destroyed and more people were killed than would be in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki which were destroyed by atomic bombs. See {615730} and {615733}. The technique called area bombing was then implemented on Japanese cities 66 more times. Stimson was seriously worried that there would be no large targets in Japan left on which the dramatic effect of the atomic bomb could be demonstrated. And without such a demonstration, there would not be a likely Japanese surrender as all the devastating conventional bombing had not persuaded the Japanese. A land invasion with perhaps millions of casualties might be required.

On March 9-10, 1945, over three hundred B-29 Superfortresses, loaded with 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs flew over Tokyo bombing the city in waves for 6 hours. Over 250,000 buildings were destroyed and more people killed than would be in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki which were destroyed by atomic bombs. The fact that the Japanese would not surrender even after such complete destruction of their capital and largest industrial city, was used by American leaders in assessing whether to use the atomic bomb afterwards. There were many who believed that the atomic bomb would not be enough for motivate a Japanese surrender as Japanese culture prohibited surrender. Indeed, even after the 1st atomoc bomb, the Japanese did not surrender, and after the 2nd, the war council was split 3-3 and the Emperor historically broke the tie. Even the atomic bomb might not have worked. Later generations found this resistance to surrender hard to understand but Japanese culture was amazingly strong then.