Japan's Peace Constitution and An Emerging Stronger SDF

[Mouse McCoy]

I read this topic, and it started me thinking about another anecdote I heard about WW2 a few days earlier, that is explained in the second half of this post:

It looks like an aircraft carrier, it sounds like an aircraft carrier... but the Japanese are adamant their biggest ship since WW2 is a 'flat-topped destroyer'

* Japan launches 250m destroyer Izumo which it says will be used for defence
* Critics claim the large flat-topped ship can function as aircraft carrier
* Country is banned from warfare thanks to post-WW2 pacifist constitution
* But prime minister is keen to strike a more aggressive stance against China

By Hugo Gye and Anthony Bond

PUBLISHED: 08:49 EST, 6 August 2013 | UPDATED: 13:57 EST, 6 August 2013

Japan has been accused of ignoring its policy of self-defence after launching its largest warship since the end of the Second World War as the government faces down China over a disputed chain of islands.

The new ship is designed to carry up to 14 helicopters at once - but Japanese officials insist it is not an aircraft carrier and will not be used to launch military jets.

The 250m vessel, named 'Izumo', is officially labelled a destroyer, although it has a flat top which functions as a flight deck like that on an aircraft carrier.

The country is officially banned from all military actions apart from self-defence and humanitarian aid under the terms of the constitution imposed on it by the U.S. after the Second World War.............

MORE:

Japan warship 'Izumo' is not aircraft carrier but 'flat-topped destroyer' | Mail Online

Japan Unveils Its Latest Helicopter Destroyer - YouTube


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... To us, then, Hiroshima was unique, and the move to atomic weaponry was a great leap, military and moral. But Hasegawa argues the change was incremental. “Once we had accepted strategic bombing as an acceptable weapon of war, the atomic bomb was a very small step,†he says. To Japan’s leaders, Hiroshima was yet another population center leveled, albeit in a novel way. If they didn’t surrender after Tokyo, they weren’t going to after Hiroshima.

Hasegawa’s work is an important new entry into the scholarly conversation, reconstructing the conflicting perspectives of Russians, Americans, and Japanese, and concluding that the bomb played a secondary role. Barton Bernstein, a professor of history emeritus at Stanford University, is the unofficial dean of American atomic bomb scholarship and counts himself as both a fan and a critic of Hasegawa. Hasegawa’s ability to read three languages, Bernstein says, gives him a unique advantage over other scholars. Hasegawa spent years working through primary documents, with a deep understanding of linguistic and cultural nuance. His knowledge was especially valuable because historians of the period face such fragmentary and contradictory evidence, in part because the Japanese destroyed many documents.

But therein lies the weakness of the Hasegawa interpretation as well, Bernstein says. After a long war and in the space of a few days, the Japanese leadership was hit with two extraordinary events - Hiroshima and the Soviet invasion - and sorting out cause and effect, based on incomplete documentation, may prove impossible.

“When you look through all the evidence, I think it is hard to weigh one or the other more heavily,†Bernstein said. “The analysis is well intentioned, but more fine-grained than the evidence comfortably allows.â€

Yet Bernstein, Hasegawa, and many historians agree on one startling point. The public view that the atomic bomb was the decisive event that ended World War II is not supported by the facts.

What happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki has framed the world’s thinking about nuclear weapons. Those days in August remain the only instance of nuclear war. The sheer horrors of the destruction, and the lingering poison of radioactivity, inform what has come to be called nuclear deterrence: No sane nation would bring a nuclear attack on itself, and so having nuclear weapons deters your enemies from attacking. When two rival nations have nuclear weapons, as during the Cold War, the result is stalemate.

Hasegawa’s scholarship disturbs this simple logic. If the atomic bomb alone could not compel the Japanese to submit, then perhaps the nuclear deterrent is not as strong as it seems. In fact, Wilson argues, history suggests that leveling population centers, by whatever method, does not force surrender. The Allied firebombing of Dresden in February of 1945 killed many people, but the Germans did not capitulate. The long-range German bombing of London did not push Churchill towards acquiescence. And it is nearly impossible to imagine that a bomb detonated on American soil, even one that immolated a large city, would prompt the nation to bow in surrender.

If killing large numbers of civilians does not have a military impact, then what, Wilson asks, is the purpose of keeping nuclear weapons? We know they are dangerous. If they turn out not to be strategically effective, then nuclear weapons are not trump cards, but time bombs beneath our feet.

Whatever the merits of this position, it suffers the great handicap of trying to change, fundamentally, how several generations have thought about the atomic age, says Linton Brooks, who has served in arms control and nuclear policy positions in several administrations. “Fifty years of telling ourselves that these things are different has sort of made them different,†says Linton. “That is the mystique of nuclear weapons.â€

Hasegawa’s own relationship to the events of August of 1945 testifies to the degree to which, all these years later, they resist clear appraisal. As a child, Hasegawa watched the Tokyo firebombing from his roof, and he can still recall the eerie orange glow on the horizon. Growing up, he felt anger at the Japanese government for bringing the conflict onto its people. Later, working as a scholar in America, he accepted the position that the atomic bombing was necessary to end the war. Today he views America’s bombings of Japan’s cities - Hiroshima and Tokyo included - as war crimes. Yet, he adds, they are crimes America should not apologize for until Japan comes to terms with war crimes of its own. These are the evolving views of a man who has mustered the courage to look at an ugly period of history without flinching - something that most people, Americans and Japanese alike, have found themselves unable to do.

Source: Why did Japan surrender? - The Boston Globe

 

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