It is sad to see President Lee Myung-bak equating the murdering of a South Korean civilian by North Korea with the current Dokdo nonsense:

President Lee Myung-bak called for national unity Wednesday to counter Japan’s claim to South Korea’s easternmost islets of Dokdo and the killing of a South Korean tourist by the North Korean military.

Expressing concerns over a split in the society, Lee reaffirmed that the government will take stern actions against Japan and North Korea.

“Non-partisan and strategic actions are necessary to counter the attempts to cause a rift within our society,” Lee said at a weekly Cabinet meeting.  [Korea Times]

President Lee needs national unity in regards to Dokdo?  Who the heck in Korea isn’t already united to defend Dokdo?   So much for Lee being a leader above playing petty nationalist politics for short term political gain.  So far I am failing to see how Lee is an improvement over Roh Moo-hyun.

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It just makes you wonder who works at the State Department when they make comments like this:

“I think you leave it to both South Korea and Japan to each describe that relationship,” State Department Sean McCormack was quoted as saying in a daily briefing by Yonhap News. “We independently have good relationships with them.”

“It’s an issue for the two countries,” McCormack said. “As I understand, it relates to a long-standing territorial dispute between the two countries.”

“But this is not a new issue,” he said. “And I think every three years or so it’s an issue that comes up, specifically on this territorial dispute.” [Korea Times]

You think every three to four years? Dokdo nonsense happens every year. I had to create an entire category just to archive the Dokdo Madness in. Likewise this will end the way it always does, a lot of huffing and puffing from the Korean public, Korean politicians scoring maximum political points from it, soldiers “alerted” on the islets, and the coast guard sends more ships to defend Dokdo. Meanwhile life in Japan goes on where the vast majority of the people have no idea what the Takeshima/Dokdo dispute is.

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Charles Jenkins has been granted permanent residency in Japan:

The Japanese government will grant U.S. citizen Charles Jenkins, the husband of a repatriated Japanese abductee to North Korea, permanent residency status, Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama said Friday.

Jenkins, a former U.S. Army sergeant who deserted to North Korea, married Hitomi Soga there and lived in the country almost 40 years, came to Japan with the couple’s two North Korean-born daughters in July 2004 after being reunited with Soga in Jakarta.

The Justice Ministry made the decision only half a month after Jenkins applied for the status June 24. Usually, foreign nationals need about six months to obtain permanent residency status.

Hatoyama told a regular news conference that his ministry’s screening work went smoothly as no problems were found in the documents Jenkins submitted.

Jenkins, 68, has been living in his wife’s hometown on Sado Island in the Sea of Japan since completing a 30-day detention for desertion at a U.S. Army base in Japan.

He acquired temporary residency status as Soga’s spouse and is required to renew it every three years. With permanent residency status, Jenkins will not be required to go through further renewals.  [Japan Probe]

You can read more about Charles Jenkins here.

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A crazed man has just recently went on a stabbing rampage in Japan’s Akihabara district of Tokyo:

 

A MAN went on a stabbing spree yesterday in a busy Tokyo neighbourhood famed for comic-book subculture, killing at least seven people and leaving around a dozen injured in Japan’s deadliest crime in years.

The assailant, who later told police he was “tired of living,” drove a truck into a crowd of pedestrians shortly after noon in Tokyo’s bustling Akihabara area before jumping out and stabbing strangers while screaming.

The assailant was identified as Tomohiro Kato, 25, from central Shizuoka prefecture.

He said he was a gangster before retracting his story.

“I came to Akihabara to kill people. It didn’t matter whom I’d kill,” he was quoted by Jiji Press as telling police.

Mr Kato, bespectacled in a beige suit and black-and-white sneakers, was armed with a survival knife and duelled with a police officer who fought back with a baton.

By the time Mr Kato finally dropped his knife with an officer’s gun pointed at him, 17 people lay bloodied on the street of the crowded district, according to fire department and police officials.

Jiji Press and other Japanese media said seven people were dead - six men aged 19, 20, 29, 33, 47 and 74, and a 21-year-old woman.

Mr Kato had blood running down the side of his face as he was taken into custody.

Kyodo News reported that he was a temporary worker at an auto component factory in Shizuoka.  [AFP]

The Akihabara neighborhood I have been to a few times because it is the place to go for electronics in Tokyo.  Think of it as a Yongsan Electronics Market on steroids.  It is also a good place to go to see Otaku dressed up in their Cosplay outfits as well. 

The place during the day is usually pretty packed and may be why the killer chose this area to go on his rampage.  Here is a picture of the killer as he is being arrested by police:

He apparently had a duel with a Japanese policeman who fought him with a baton.  In some of the pictures I have seen there is one with a wounded policeman that I wonder if he was the one fighting off the man?  Sad story and just goes to show that there are crazy people in every society.

Japan Probe has running updates on the rampage with plenty of pictures to check out.

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All you eco-loons out there should find this of interest:

Iceland and Norway resumed whale meat exports to Japan this year after an 18-year interruption, industry representatives from both Scandinavian countries said. “Iceland and Norway resumed exporting whale meat to Japan,” said Gunnar Bergmann Jonsson, president of the Icelandic association representing Minke whale hunters.

“We have exported to Japan 80 tons of fine whale’s meat about two weeks ago. The meat is now in Japan. We got the authorization from the government in 2006. And the last exports before those were in 1990,” said Jonsson.

Despite Japan being the largest market for whale meat, Norwegian whalers prior to now met with no uptake from Japanese buyers who worried mercury and dioxin levels were abnormally high in the Scandinavian product.

“Norway announced in 2001 that it would resume its exports. Up to now, our sales were limited to Iceland and the Faroe Islands but, this year, meat has also been exported to Japan,” said Halvard Johansen, an official with Norway’s fishing ministry. [Japan Today]

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With all the rhetoric you hear about resurgent Japanese nationalism and the re-arming of the Japanese military, you would think the second bombing of Pearl Harbor is just around the corner. However, in reality the Japanese are actually not doing enough for their own defense:

Over the last decade China has increased military expenditures by an average of 14.2 percent annually, and South Korea’s defense budget has grown 73 percent, said J. Thomas Schieffer, U.S. ambassador in Japan since 2005.

In contrast, Japan’s ratio of defense spending to gross domestic product has been declining, he said.

Japan’s Ministry of Defense expects a budget of $46 billion this fiscal year through March 2009, down 0.8 percent from the previous year _ a trend Schieffer called “troubling.”

“We believe that Japan should consider the benefits of increasing its own defense spending to make a greater, not lesser, contribution to its own security,” Schieffer said in a speech at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. [AP via Japan Probe]

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This rape case on Okinawa has been greatly overshadowed by the Marine rape case, but ended with the same conclusion, rape charges being dropped:

Charges were dropped late Thursday against a soldier accused of raping a 21-year-old Philippine woman in February.

The Naha District Public Prosecutor’s Office deputy chief Takafumi Sato said Friday his office did not have sufficient evidence to indict Sgt. Ronald Edward Hopstock Jr., 25, of the 1st Battalion, 1st Air Defense Artillery Regiment.

“Three points at issue were the place where the alleged act took place, the relation of the two individuals and the circumstances before and after the alleged event,” Sato said.

The Army will conduct its own investigation, said Maj. James Crawford, a U.S. Army spokesman at Camp Zama, Japan. [Stars & Stripes]

What you will probably end up seeing happen is that this soldier will be charged under UCMJ in regards to violating prostitution regulations. I would expect he will receive a stiff sentence too, in order to send a message to Okinawa based servicemembers that any incident no matter how small will be dealt with harshly.

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It is a tad bit ironic that this announcement has happened right after the violence from Chinese students on the streets of Seoul:

The Defense Ministry on Monday announced it is working on the details of a comprehensive military cooperation agreement with Japan. A ministry official said in order to upgrade military cooperation between the two countries, which is minimal to date, the two governments are pushing a comprehensive military cooperation agreement to be signed by their defense ministers.

The official said the agreement includes exchange of military personnel and joint search-and-rescue naval exercises in humanitarian causes. The agreement will be the first codified agreement on military cooperation since the end of Japanese colonial rule in Korea. It reflects the Lee Myung-bak administration’s pragmatic policy that aims to open a new era of bilateral relations by stressing future goals over the fraught past. Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and Lee agreed to forge a more “future-oriented” relationship during Lee’s state visit to Japan earlier this month. [Chosun Ilbo]

This is actually a common sense agreement that has been prevented from happening in past years by nationalist politics in South Korea from the Roh administration. Japan is a major military power in the region that has no territorial ambitions over Korea if you discount the Dokdo nonsense which new Korean President Lee Myung-bak has clearly decided to do.

A defense cooperation agreement works in favor of both countries because it will reduce suspicions about each other and will increase coordination in joint operations.  With the ever growing North Korean and Chinese military capabilities it is wise for these two countries to work together in regards to national defense.

However, I think defense cooperation between the two countries can go beyond regional issues.  I have always felt that since Japan has a pacifist constitution that conducting joint peacekeeping operations between the two countries could be an area the two countries could work closely together on. For example the Japanese deployed a reconstruction taskforce to southern Iraq and were defended by other allied nations because of the pacifist constitution. If Korea and Japan had a defense cooperation agreement back then, the ROK Army possibly could have worked together with the Japanese by providing security for them while they conducted their reconstruction mission.

Korea could have saved money in such an operation because the cost of setting up the forward operating base could of either been shared or more likely the Japanese picking up the majority of the cost. Compare this to the ROK Army building and entirely funding their own base currently in Kurdistan right now.  With cooperating with Japan, Korea could have saved money while still showing their commitment to the US-ROK alliance by deploying troops.

Such an arrangement could be something that could be tried in other areas Korea has peacekeeping troops in such as Lebanon as well.  President Lee has said Korea is going to get more involved in global peacekeeping efforts and joint operations with the Japanese may be a good way to go about doing this.

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In what would become the final days of World War II, the two Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were destroyed by atomic bombs dropped by the US Air Force, first on August 6, 1945 and then again on August 9, killing at least 120,000 people initially, and around twice as many over time due to radiation poisoning.

The primary reasons given for dropping the two bombs was that it would force Japan to unconditionally surrender. Japan did ultimately surrender on August 15, 1945. The other reason was that it would save American and Japanese lives overall due to the US military not needing to invade the Japanese main land.

With this week’s anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there has been a run up of articles in the media and elsewhere chronicling the anniversary of this event.

First of all the main question many people ask is if the atomic bombings of Japan were necessary?

Setting up surrender talks sanctioned by both the U.S. and the Japanese governments would likely have been difficult. But there is no easy way of ending a war. The primary question is not what is the easier path, but what path will bring a lasting peace while sparing the most Allied lives and, secondarily, “enemy” civilian lives.

While it cannot be proven, had officially sanctioned communication been made by the Allies or the U.S. to Japan thru Konoye, the various peace feelers, or other credible diplomatic channel stating that Japan’s time had completely run out due to the impending threats of nuclear destruction and Soviet invasion, and that immediate surrender would mean the opportunity to retain their throne, there is a good chance the Japanese doves would have enlisted the Emperor to bring Japan to surrender in late July or early August of 1945.

I disagree that setting up surrender talks would of led to the unconditional surrender of Japan. The Japanese at the time still practice the samurai code of Bushido where they would not surrender. Any deal made in peace talks would not be called a surrender but a cease fire to save face for the Japanese militarists in charge of the country. Plus the militarists would never of allowed an American occupation because then that would be a symbol of defeat.

With a cease fire in a place and no allied occupation how different would Japan be today? The militarists would of still been in power after the war and deeply bitter about their failure to win the war. This scenario sounds very familiar to World War I when the Germans were not forced to unconditionally surrender due to the allied armies, particularly the French and English, being worn down with heavy casualties and looking to end the war any way possible, thus the Armistice Agreement was reached. The Armistice directly led to Hitler’s popularity and rise because the Germans never felt defeated after World War I. The average German at the time felt more like, “We had them, and the government signed that damn Armistice. We’ll get them next time.”

The attitude in Japan would of been much the same way if the militarists stayed in power. Why do I think this you ask. The samurai mentality in Japan would never accept surrender. It took the fire bombing of Tokyo, the bloody fights on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the Russian entry into the war, plus not one but two atomic bombs before they finally surrendered nearly a week after the second atomic bomb on August 15th. The Japanese did not initially feel compelled to surrender when they believed they could win a bloody fight on their home islands which could of caused the US to eventually seek a ceasefire instead of conquering all of Japan.

So yes, I agree surrender talks may have potentially worked and saved the lives lost from the atomic bombings, but without the unconditional surrender of Japan would it have led to another war years later? Who knows, but this is the thought that General MacArthur and many other people of this generation that fought in World War I had in the back of their minds. They did not want to repeat the mistakes of World War I, thus MacArthur’s famous saying, “There is no substitute for victory.”

In addition there was great thought put into determining the amount of American casualties that the US would potentially lose in an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Operation Olympic was the code name for the US military operational plan to invade the southern Japanese mainland island of Kyushu. The casualty estimate of the invasion of this island range anywhere from 63,000 - 100,000 US lives. Keep in mind these are just the estimates of the one southern Japanese island.

The Japanese were preparing for the all out defense of their homeland called Operation Ketsu-go. Read the link for an in depth look at the defensive plan to protect the Japanese main land. It is obvious that this would have been a bloody fight which was backed up by the American losses of 10,000 Americans dead and missing in the Marianas, 5,500 dead at Leyte, 9,000 dead during the Luzon campaign, 6,800 at Iwo Jima, 12,600 at Okinawa, and 2,000 killed at Peleliu that weighed heavily on the minds of America’s leaders.

The vicious fighting on Okinawa saw the US versus Japanese casualties approaching a 2-1 ratio. Just imagine if someone invaded the United States how hard would Americans fight to protect their homeland? I can guarantee that just about every able body person with a gun besides the citizens of San Francisco and Berkley would take up arms against the invaders. Plus the amount of civilians killed on Okinawa due to the fighting was heavy, not to mention villagers that killed themselves by jumping off of cliffs with their children instead of surrendering to the Americans. Would the Japanese mainland be any different?

Operation Olympic, the proposed invasion plan of the Japanese main land during World War II. Notice no plans were ever made to occupy Korea initially.

An additional factor weighing on the minds of US leaders was the fact this would be primarily a lone US invasion. The fall of Germany was helped by the combined allied armies in the western front and the Russian offensive in the east. In fact, the Russian Army during their 23 day invasion of East Germany lost 78,291 dead. Just an incredible number. Should the US leaders have expected anything different in Japan?

Then the final factor is the, Revenge Factor. Any politician that would of allowed the Japanese to end the war without unconditional surrender would have committed political suicide. The American public wanted revenge and complete victory after what happened at Pearl Harbor. Allowing the Japanese regime that initiated the attack on Pearl Harbor to stay in place would not be acceptable to the American public.

As you can see there are many factors that went into the nuclear bombings. This was not a rash decision made to kill as many people as possible. It was a shrewd calculated strategic decision made at the highest echelons of the US leadership to end the war quickly with the least amount of lives lost. I know many people would also dispute bombing civilians but World War II was fought by the rules of “total war” where civilians were considered legitimate targets in order to break national will power. Look what the Japanese did in China and other areas in Asia. Look what the Germans did in their bombing of Britian. The US military and other allied nations responded in kind in both theaters with the carpet bombings of Germany most notably Dresden and the fire bombings of Japan. In fact the fire bombing of Tokyo cost more lives than dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. “Total War” may not seem like a humanitarian concept but when the survival of the nation is at stake countries will do whatever is necessary to save their country. Does anyone doubt if the Germans or the Japanese developed the bomb before the Americans that they would of use it on American or allied targets?

I really do not see another alternative that would of worked that would of caused the unconditional surrender of Japan and the occupation of Japan that followed other than dropping the atomic bomb.

Now one thing I do dispute was the need to drop the second atomic bomb. I can understand Hiroshima, but Truman may have been to quick to bomb Nagasaki. The city must not have been a big military target since it had not received heavy bombing prior to the dropping of the nuclear bomb. So for stategic purposes it was not necessary to bomb for any other reason to break national will power.

A factor I think Truman probably took into account was the fact that the Soviet military entered the war on August 8, 1945 one day before the bombing of Nagasaki. The Soviet invasion had both pros and cons for Truman. The pro was that the invasion would put more pressure on the Japanese to surrender. The negative was that the Soviets were gobbling up territory before the US military could claim territory which I think Truman took into account. If the war dragged on any longer the Soviets could of very welled occupied all of Korea and the northern Japanese main land island of Hokkaido since they had already occupied the Kuril islands.

Maybe a few more days should have been alloted for the Japanese leadership to judge the effects of the Russian entry into the war. Maybe the threat of Soviet occupation would of finally made the Japanese surrender and allow the Americans to occupy them. If this didn’t work then the nuclear option was available.

I feel Truman didn’t take this option into account because he ordered the bombing of Nagasaki only one day after the Soviet entry into the war. I think the fear of the Soviets gobbling up large chunks of territory in Japan is what forced Truman’s hand to bomb Nagasaki. The American leadership felt that the occupation of Japan was critical in the soon to be developed containment policy of the Soviet Union. If the United States did not control all of Japan or ended up with a split Japan then the Soviets would have the advantage in controlling all of northeast Asia. This was definitely geo-politics at its most cunning level.

In a history class I took in college a Japanese student explained in class that he believed the US should have dropped the first atomic bomb out in the ocean in order to show ruling militarist the might of the atomic bomb without targeting civilians. I countered his point that if dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima did not force the militarists to surrender than how was dropping a bomb in the ocean going to make them surrender? In fact it took two atomic bombings of Japanese cities and the entry of the Russians into the war in order to get the Japanese to finally surrender.

The other argument the Japanese student brought up was why the US did not drop a nuclear bomb on Berlin. That is because the US did not have a nuclear capability by the time Germany surrendered and even if it did the casualty ratio of an invasion of Germany is much lower compared to Japan. First of all it was a land battle where US tanks were able to roll right into Germany from France, secondly Germany was beat and actually was fighting harder to stop the Russian advance in order to be occupied by the Americans. With Japan the US forces would have had to do an amphibious landing followed by a vicious fight against fanatical defenders, which would have made casualties on both sides extremely high. There are clear differences between nuking Japan and Germany.

With 50 years of hindsight it is easy to sharpshoot Truman’s decision, but ultimately he did what he felt was in the best interest of the United States; not the best interest of Japan. This is important to keep in mind because I’m sure he felt the cost of Japanese civilian lives were secondary to protecting the lives of US serviceman and the geo-politics of protecting US national security by implementing the containment strategy of the Soviet Union. I still think that the bombing of Nagasaki may have been to quick, but today you really can’t argue with the results because the Soviet Union is history and Japan is one of the world’s wealthiest countries with the world’s second largest economy. However, I do fully agree with the Hiroshima Peace Park’s motto of never letting this tragedy happen again.

Previous Posting: Remembering Nagasaki

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The atomic bombing of Nagasaki

The city of Nagasaki during World War II was one of the largest sea ports on the southern island of Kyushu. Along with the seaports the city was also home to many important industrial companies. During the course of the war for whatever reason the city had escaped the B-29 bombings that were ravaging other areas of Japan. However, on August 9, 1945 the bombing the city received would more than make up for the prior lack of bombing.

On August 9, 1945, the crew of the American B-29 Superfortress “Bockscar,” flown by Major Charles W. Sweeney and carrying the nuclear bomb nicknamed “Fat Man,” found their primary target, Kokura, and it was obscured by heavy clouds. After three runs over the city and running low on fuel Major Sweeney decided to head for the secondary target, Nagasaki.

The aftermath of the Nagasaki bombing.

At 11:02, a break in the clouds over Nagasaki allowed the bombardier, to visually sight the target. The weapon, containing a core of 8 kg of plutonium-239, was dropped over the city’s industrial sector. It exploded 1,540 feet above the ground between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, in the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (Torpedo Works), in the north, the two main targets in the city.

Some 75,000 of Nagasaki’s 240,000 residents were killed, followed by the death of at least as many from resulting sickness and injury.

Nagasaki before and after the bombing

I haven’t had a chance to travel to Nagasaki, but I would really like to in the future. The city actually has a very colorful history despite the nuclear bombing. The city was the first port to be visited by and opened up to European traders in the late 1500’s.

Nagasaki today

A very interesting book about this period of time and the city of Nagasaki is the book Samurai William, by Giles Milton. Judging by the above picture the city appears to have remarkably recovered since the atomic bombing. The big question is if the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were necessary? That is something we will look at tomorrow.

Next Posting: The Decision to Drop the Bomb

Previous Posting: From the Trinity Site to Hiroshima 

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Today is the anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. There is much controversy centering around whether the US should of dropped the atomic bomb on Japan to end World War II. In this series of postings I will discuss this issue along with providing the historical context that went into the decision to use nuclear weapons.

From the Trinity Site to Hiroshima

The first nuclear weapon was tested at the Trinity Site on White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico at 5:29:45 a.m. Mountain Time on July 16, 1945. The 19 kiloton bomb was put on a 100 foot steel tower and exploded, causing what witnesses said, the sun to rise twice that day.

I have actually visited the Trinity Site on the White Sands Missile Range which is open to the public only twice a year. One girder of the original tower remains, the rest was evaporated, and the sand below the explosion was turned into a emerald green colored glass called Trinitite. Visitors are told not to pick it up because the glass is still radioactive.

In this photo notice the lack of vegetation compared to the green brush you see in the distance. This is because of the remaining radiation due to the Trinitite that remains in the ground that effects plant life there.

This is the memorial at the center of the Trinity Site.

The MacDonald Ranch house is where the nuclear bomb was assembled and also served as home to the scientists during the assembly phase of the nuclear bomb. When it came time to test the bomb the house was vacated, but some how the house survived the nuclear explosion:

The MacDonald farmhouse about 3 kilometers from the Trinity Site.

What makes the house’s survival more amazing is that structures around the farmhouse were leveled by the bomb:

But even more amazing then the house surviving is that this windmill some how survived:

This same phenomenon of singular structures remaining while others were completely obliterated by the bomb would happen again the next month in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

Hiroshima after the bombing in 1945

Hiroshima was a city of military importance. The city contained the headquarters of the Fifth Division and the 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was also a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for the Japanese military. There was military justification for the attack to go along with the perceived need of the US leadership to break the will of the Japanese people by destroying an entire city. The weather was good, and the crew and equipment of the Enola Gay B-29 aircraft piloted and commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbets, took off to bomb their primary target of Hiroshima. The Enola Gay dropped the nuclear bomb called “Little Boy” over the central part of the city. It exploded about 600 meters (2,000 feet) above the city, killing initially an estimated 80,000 civilians. The radiation poisoning would claim twice as many lives as the initial bombing.

Today Hiroshima is a thriving city that has a deep memory of the tragedy of August 6, 1945. The city has erected a museum and memorial to mourn the victims of the atomic bombing. It is almost hard to believe today that Hiroshima was the site of an atomic bombing:

Hiroshima today is a thriving city.

Next Posting: Remembering Nagasaki

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