This is a reissue of a chapter first published on July 18, 2018, under the title: “As Professor Watanabe’s research shows, even more than seventy years after the war, there are still facts newly brought to light through the careful examination of historical materials.”
The passage argues for the importance of recognizing that “there is no such thing as a just war,” examining the real intent behind the atomic bombings, the judgments of Churchill and Truman, and the wartime worldview of Roosevelt and the Anglo-American leadership.
It further contends that the postwar world order was formed through the partition and annexation of territory by the victors, and that only a sober view of war can enable Japan to pursue genuine peace diplomacy and a lucid national strategy.

2019-03-06
In historical understanding, and also in order to heal the grave maladjustment into which Japan has fallen in the real international community, nothing is more important than to possess this clear-eyed view of war: that there is no such thing as a just war.

I am reposting a chapter I published on 2018-07-18 under the title, “As Professor Watanabe’s research shows, even more than seventy years after the war, there are still facts newly brought to light through the careful examination of historical materials.”
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.

There Is No Such Thing as a Just War.

Nakanishi
As Professor Watanabe’s research shows, even more than seventy years after the war, there are still facts newly brought to light through the careful examination of historical materials.
That is precisely why history remains so fascinating that one can never stop engaging with it, no matter one’s age.
In relation to Japan, regarding the last U.S.-Japan war, a question that stands alongside the issue of how Japan was driven into the attack on Pearl Harbor is this: why did America drop two atomic bombs on Japan?
In May 1945, Grew, who was then serving as Under Secretary of State, advised Truman that Japan would surely surrender at once if only the preservation of the Imperial Household were clearly stated.
However, for “undisclosed military reasons,” this proposal was rejected.
What was the reason that could not be disclosed?
It was, in other words, the atomic bomb.
As the title of the monumental work by the modern historian Torii Tamotsu, Do Not Let Japan Surrender Until the Atomic Bomb Is Dropped (Soshisha Bunko), indicates, that was exactly the situation, and one cannot help but say that this was an immeasurably grave and enormous sin committed by the United States in the Second World War, a crime on the scale of human history.

Watanabe
I regret that Professor Torii did not live a little longer.
As I wrote in my column in this magazine’s July issue, Churchill discussed with Truman in Potsdam, Germany, together with military advisers, whether the atomic bomb should be used.
This was on July 24, 1945.
At that time, Churchill said, “Japan attacked Pearl Harbor without warning and killed your country’s young men,” and pushed Truman forward when he hesitated over dropping the atomic bomb without warning.
For some reason, there are many commentators in Japan who praise Churchill, but it is hardly an exaggeration to say that both the First and Second World Wars were wars caused by Churchill.
I consider him to have been a man who was like a model of inconsistency between word and deed, and the worst politician in history.

Nakanishi
Personally, I have always regarded Churchill as an interesting man with many lovable traits, and in terms of character assessment I have always rated him highly.
Roosevelt, however, is entirely different.
Still, both men possessed a cunning and viciousness as power politicians that was truly world-historical in scale, and in that respect, leaving aside the specific content of what they actually did, I think they were exactly the same type of human being as Stalin and Hitler.
In fact, throughout the entire period of the war against Japan, that is, from the Atlantic Charter to the Potsdam Declaration and the San Francisco Peace Treaty, the ideals of “peace,” “freedom,” and “civilization” proclaimed by the American and British leadership were in reality nothing more than wartime propaganda convenient to themselves as victorious powers seeking to establish world hegemony.
The Japanese after defeat, who took that at face value in earnest and built their own historical view on that basis, were far too naïve.
As I studied the history of international politics, I came to embrace the thesis that all wars are imperialist wars.
Since the twentieth century, and even today in the twenty-first century, many nations competing for hegemony do not hesitate to go to war in order to defend their own exclusive national interests and expand their domination over others.
Even in the modern age, there can be no such thing as a so-called “just war,” that is, a war that is one hundred percent “for self-defense.”
In particular, the postwar world order after the Second World War was formed by dividing and annexing “territory” and partitioning it accordingly.
The territories distributed there were, exactly as Putin says, in effect “spoils of war” for the victorious nations.
Of course, I do not mean to say that the world is nothing but the logic of the jungle and that it is meaningless to uphold lofty ideals.
Rather, it is precisely in order to protect such inherently human ideals and values that we need the sober historical view that all wars are wars of aggression.
Only when Japan acquires such a cold eye for history can it truly commit itself to peace diplomacy and construct a lucid national strategy.
In historical understanding, and also in order to heal the grave maladjustment into which Japan has fallen in the real international community, nothing is more important than to possess this clear-eyed view of war: that there is no such thing as a just war.