Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to take this opportunity to thank those who volunteered then to fight in that awful war so that we can live free today, because freedom is not free; it is earned. Every generation, it appears, needs to pay a price for that freedom because, unfortunately, we appear not to learn those lessons of history and therefore we tend to repeat them. Today, on behalf of the people of Tangney I thank those who served then and now.

The Americans have a wonderful term they use to describe the generation that fought in World War II. They refer to them as the Greatest Generation. However, it is critical that, in acknowledging the service and sacrifice of those that have gone before, our generation does not seek to rewrite history or try through the comfort of time and distance to seek to change fundamental truths of what happened in that conflict.

Relativism is a danger—a danger to world order and stability. Red lines simply do not exist when it comes to a relativist world view, and relativism allows evil to prosper in the world. But relativism is not the only danger; the second modern danger is that of revisionism. Revisionist history, while popular in parts, can be immensely damaging. History—or a common and shared history—is the usual starting point for the birth a new state. History is wound up by a thread of common values and beliefs. Going back and unravelling that thread questions the motives of those that acted. It goes to the question of who was right and who was wrong.

Before I go into the details of one of the biggest pieces of revisionism that tends to happen in the West, I think it is important to note that there are things that absolutely shock in war and that indeed shock us now. We see the images today of, for instance, the Daesh cult and the killings that they do. We see the issue of suicide bombers with horror. Similarly, in World War II, among a whole lot of other things there was massive horror and lack of understanding of the whole issue of kamikaze. So we need to realise that many of these things we are seeing as unique now simply because we do not look back far enough. If we look back far enough, we see similar things, and we need to realise that we need to deal with some of these things just as comprehensively and conclusively as those in the past.

But, to get back to the issue of World War II and revisionism: in the case of the Pacific War there is one standout incident that is periodically subject to historical revisionism—namely, was the US justified in dropping the atomic bomb on Japan?

Yes. There can be no other answer. Yes, it definitely was necessary. The US was, like the rest of the world, soldiering on towards the end of a dark period of human history that had seen the single most costly conflict in all factors in history, and they chose to adopt a stance that seemed to limit the amount of casualties in the war by significantly shortening it. That was by use of atomic weapons.

It was certainly a reasonable view for the USA to take since they had suffered the loss of more than 418,000 lives both military and civilian. To the top rank of the US military the 135,000 death toll was worth it to prevent the 'many thousands of American troops that would be killed in invading Japan'—a view attributed to the president himself.

It must be remembered as well that the largest single-day death toll in Japan was the incendiary bombing raid that was conducted against Tokyo in April 1945 which likely killed over 100,000 Japanese. The issue of nuclear bombs was a consequence that was taken seriously by the US. Ordering the deployment of the atomic bombs was a terrible act but one they were certainly justified in doing.

The atom bombs achieved their desired effects by causing maximum devastation. It might seem a terrible thing—and it is—to talk about maximum devastation being an aim that has been achieved, but, as I will go to show, this maximum devastation was very much necessary to the Japanese psyche to result in them suing for peace. Just six days after the Nagasaki bombing, the emperor's speech was broadcast to the nation, detailing the Japanese surrender. Indeed, if you listen to or read Hirohito's effective non-acceptance of the course of the war when suing for peace that was unconditional, when he announced that unconditional surrender, he stated among other things that 'the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage'—this despite the devastation and two atomic bombs dropped.

Another argument defending the bomb is the observation that, even after the first two bombs were dropped and the Russians had declared war, the Japanese still almost did not surrender. The Japanese convened in emergency session on 7 August. Military authorities refused to concede that the Hiroshima bomb was atomic in nature and refused to consider surrender. The following day, Emperor Hirohito privately expressed to Prime Minister Tojo his determination that the war should end, and the cabinet was convened again on 9 August. At this point, Prime Minister Suzuki was in agreement, but a unanimous decision was required, and three of the military chiefs still refused to acknowledge defeat. Some in the leadership argued that there was no way the Americans could have refined enough fissionable material to produce more than one bomb.

But then the bombing of Nagasaki demonstrated otherwise, and a lie told by a downed American pilot convinced the war minister, Korechika Anami, that the Americans had as many as 100 bombs. The official scientific report confirming that the bomb was atomic arrived at the imperial headquarters on 10 August. Even so, hours of meetings and debates, lasting well into the early morning hours of the 10th, still resulted in a three-all deadlock. Prime Minister Suzuki then took the unprecedented step of asking Emperor Hirohito, who never spoke at cabinet meetings, to break the deadlock. Hirohito responded:

I have given serious thought to the situation prevailing at home and abroad and have concluded that continuing the war can only mean destruction for the nation and prolongation of bloodshed and cruelty in the world.

He concluded:

I cannot bear to see my innocent people suffer any longer.

In his 1947 article published in Harper's, former Secretary of War Stimson expressed his opinion that only the atomic bomb convinced the emperor to step in:

… all the evidence I have seen indicates that the controlling factor in the final Japanese decision to accept our terms of surrender was the atomic bomb.

There was a coup attempt. The coup failed, but the fanaticism required to make such an attempt is further evidence to the supporters of the view that the atomic bombs were required to end the war. Without the bomb, Japan would never have surrendered. The attempted coup was to try to continue the progress of the war. In the end, the military leaders accepted surrender partly because of the Emperor's intervention and partly because the atomic bomb helped them 'save face' by rationalising that they had not been defeated because of a lack of spiritual power or strategic decisions but by science. In other words, the Japanese military had not lost the war; Japanese science did. You can see that of course in Hirohito's own statement calling for the unconditional surrender. If the atomic bombs had not had the devastating effect they had, they would have been utterly pointless. They replaced thousands of US bombing missions that would have been required to achieve the same effect of the two bombs that, individually, had the explosive power of the payload of 2,000 B29 Superfortresses. Additionally, it showed the unequivocal power of nuclear weapons, and following World War II it kept the peace between the US and the USSR. There are no cases of a direct all-out war between the US and the Soviets, and that can obviously be attributed to the potentially devastating effects of atomic weaponry. Indeed, there were a number of occasions where, had it not been for the possession of nuclear weapons, a war would have been close to inevitable. The Cuban missile crisis is just one case in point.

Revisionist historians should be queried on both sides. By this I mean that there is an equal measure of danger in allowing a revisionist history view that Japan was a victim of Allied aggression. The same goes for revisionist historians who would dare question the reality of the holocaust. Our society should never cower from calling a spade a spade and should speak out in favour of good against evil. Those who advocate expressing remorse for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, such as Nancy Pelosi, should be aware that such gestures will be misrepresented by the revisionist right in Japan to paint Truman as a war criminal. We must forgive, but we must never forget.

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