October 18, 2024
I was visiting Japan’s defense HQ about a decade ago. The official I was to interview was very late and left me cooling my heels in his office.
I kept walking about until I noticed a large diagram on his desk. I looked more closely and was amazed to discover that it was the plan for an atomic device. Japan was supposed to be free of any nuclear devices, both by the choice of its post-war US-installed government and Uncle Sam in Washington. Yet there was the bomb plan on the desk.
I wrote about this at the time – including in my Japanese newspaper column – and was treated by Japanese officials with ill-disguised fury. At least I was spared black-clad ninja assassins flying through my bedroom window at night. But my sushi lunches were cut off by angry Japanese officials.
What I wrote holds true ten years later: Japan – terribly vulnerable, facing bitterly hostile China and the two Koreas – needs nuclear weapons to defend itself. Saying this in today’s Japan is utter blasphemy, but someone must say it. Japan, one of the world’s most important economic powers, is naked before its enemies. Completely naked.
Half of Japan’s cities were turned to rubble or ashes by massive US bombing. In fact, more Japanese civilians were killed by US B-29 heavy bombers than by the two nuclear devices dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This massive bombing campaign was unnecessary: Japan’s industry and armed forces were barely operating due to a crushing naval and air blockade by US forces.
Today, half a century later, Japan is very wealthy thanks to its renowned manufacturing, innovation, and thrift. But it is surrounded by foes.
China has never forgiven Japan for the terrible massacres committed by the Imperial Army. The worst was in Nanjing where Japanese troops went on an orgy of killing. The same was true across China and Manchuria. Yes, Japan was brutal and steeped in blood. But so were Mao’s forces that may have killed or starved up to 30 million. Japan treated Korea, which it ruled for 35 years, as a labor colony. Koreans were treated in Japan as sub-humans and forced labor. Japanese scorned the proud, intelligent Koreans as inferiors and coolies.
Koreans, both North and South, have never forgiven Japan for its brutal ill-treatment. Luckily for Japan, the two Koreas have been too busy feuding with one another to focus their wrath on Japan. In fact, Japan is content with the two-Korea solution. A united Korea would prove a major military and economic rival.
Now, angry China is flexing its muscles. Over the past decade, China has modernized and expanded its military forces so they constitute a major strategic threat to Japan and ally Taiwan. China appears determined to pressure Taiwan into surrender – either by economic blockade or invasion.
The US Navy used to dismiss the threat of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan as ‘the million-man swim.’ That was a decade ago. Now, after modernization, China is almost ready to go to war over Taiwan. Japan and the US would inevitably get drawn into this conflict.
Japan’s armed forces are of very high quality, superbly trained and armed with modern weapons. But they would not be enough to defeat China in a regional war. The big question now is will the US be able to defeat China. Such a conflict would be hugely destructive and likely inconclusive and set both China and the US back a decade in their economic development.
A solution to this problem is for Japan to build its own nuclear arms to face down nuclear-armed China. Only three nuclear weapons from South or North Koreas could destroy Japan. Anti-missile systems will not rectify this dangerous imbalance. Japan has got to rearm and develop nuclear weapons – which it is a few screwdriver turns away from developing. South Korea was stopped by the US from producing nuclear weapons two decades ago.
For Japan, the nuclear writing is on the wall.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2024
This post is in: Japan
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