Talk:Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night

Some clarity needed on cancellation of project

I have looked up some of the sources cited for Umezu vetoing the planning. All of the ones cited — except the Gold one, which I cannot get access to — appear to me to say he vetoed it for moral/strategic/public opinion reasons, not logistical ones. And none of them give any indication that he changed his mind, or was even leaning that way, by August 1945.

This is worth clarifying on here given how Wikipedia is a major source for people understanding this. I see this operation cited many times as a justification for the atomic bombings, with the suggesting that the atomic bombings stopped this from happening. Separate from the question of the role of the atomic bombings in the end of World War II, it is important to make sure that this article is exceedingly accurate on this point. There is a big difference between "they were planning to do this in late 1945" and "they cancelled this program in March 1945" (for whatever reason, but if it was for moral reasons, it actually creates a very different narrative).

Here is what Reiter says (202):

The head of the chiefs of staff, Umezu, canceled the operation before it could be carried out because he recognized that such a mission would accomplish no military objectives and would only stoke American fury.

Here is what Barenblatt, _A Plague Upon Humanity_ (Harper, 2004), on 190 says (this is a source cited by Reitner):

The "Cherry Blossoms" plan was approved by the chiefs of staff in March 1945, and Ishii began meeting with Unit 731-trained soldiers in his Pingfan Administration Building office to sternly inform them that they had been chosen to participate in a raid on the continental United States, a BW assignment which could only be considered a suicide mission from which they had no hope of returning home. However, the plan was canceled in its final preparation stages by the head of the chiefs of staff, General Yoshijiro Umezu, who had previously overseen the activities of the Unit 731 and Unit 100 BW network in his former post as the top general of the Kwantung Army. Umezu understood the obvious fact that the desperate attack could serve no practical military purpose, and would only result in strengthening the fury and resolve of the United States to utterly defeat the nation that would stoop to such evil and universally condemned measures.

Here is what Geoghegan says:

Approval was only momentary, however. In a March 26 meeting to discuss the operation, one of the army’s most senior officers, Yoshijiro Umezu, chief of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff, rejected the plan. “The operation is unpardonable on humanitarian grounds,” Umezu declared. “If a virus is used, war between Japan and the U.S. will escalate to war against all humanity and Japan will be the subject of derision.” Naval authorities opposed Umezu’s decision, but once the army had withdrawn its support, there was nothing they could do. Operation PX was killed before the Sen-toku squadron was any the wiser.”

Here is what Gold says in a different book (Unit 731 Testimony, Tuttle Press, 2004):

The project moved forward from a foundation of biological warfare intelligence provided by Ishii and Unit 731, and the plan was finalized on March 26, 1945. Then, at the last moment, General Umezu Yoshijiro, Chief of the General Staff, stepped in and ordered the plan scrapped. He reasoned that "if bacteriological warfare is conducted, it will grow from the dimension of war between Japan and America to an endless battle of humanity against bacteria. Japan will earn the derision of the world." The officers working on the attack plan objected fiercely, but Umezu's decision prevailed.

If there is a reliable source that says it was canceled for logistical reasons, I haven't seen it. If there is one that suggests they were considering putting it back on the table again, I haven't seen it. I am not saying these don't exist, but I haven't been able to see it, despite looking into a bit of the cited literature here. --NuclearSecrets (talk) 17:38, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Follow-up: I got the Gold work referenced in the footnotes. It says exactly the same thing as I posed above (it seems to be the same book but slightly re-written). Given that none of the cited sources say that they were reconsidering it, I am going to delete it from the article. If someone finds a reliable source that states otherwise, please feel free to add the text in with a correct citation. --NuclearSecrets (talk) 14:27, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Historical Revisionism - Revision as of 14:33, 19 November 2021

I’d like to point out that the Wiki page had provided historical information that said that the mission wasn’t canceled until after the Atomic bombs had been dropped. Instead it was changed to “canceled after completion” on the contemporary view it wasn’t “honorable” or even worse, that it justified dropping the bombs. Matter of fact the Japanese military council could not reach an agreement whether to continue the war or not and reached out to the Emperor. Honestly that doesn’t sound like that decision was made based on the merits of being “honorable or dishonorable”

On these historical facts alone I think this page is historical revisionism and active misinformation

The previous entry was properly cited by verifiable sources and truthful. That’s the problem for Wikipedia, anybody can edit anything and cite whatever “source” they want. 2600:100F:B063:C86A:DC61:6076:4D0C:99F (talk) 00:48, 6 March 2022 (UTC)

As I explain in detail in the section above on this page, I took the time to check the sources that were cited in the previous version of the page, and they simply did not say what they were being claimed to say (I quote the relevant passages at length above, so you can see for yourself — don't take my word for it). The same sources are actually cited — they were just not quoted accurately before.

This isn't "revisionism," it's called actually citing what the sources say. If you have access to reliable sources that say otherwise, please feel free to add them, cite them, etc. This page should reflect what the scholarship says. As of now, it does. Before, it didn't. The only sources removed were non-academic ones that did not cite their own sources (so who knows where they got their information from — they may have gotten it from this very page!) or were peripheral to the specific topic at hand (about bio warfare in general, not about this operation). --NuclearSecrets (talk) 06:11, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

Reverted edits

An IP-user (perhaps the one above), attempted to add this to the page:

In the last months of the war, Umezu was in the die-hard “fight-to-the-last Japanese” camp, and developed a renewed interest in the plan in August 1945 with the possibility that more I-400s might be completed by the proposed September attack date.

The link provided did not work for me, but I figured out it must be attempting to link to this article. The author seems like a respectable-enough source, but most of the sources he lists at the end (Geoghegan and Gold — I haven't been able to check Polmar yet) do _not_ say this at all, as I have noted above. Given that this the IP's contribution to Wikipedia was just a lazy copy-paste plagiarism of that article as well, I have removed it for now.

If there are people who make the argument, with evidence, that this was actually formally reconsidered, it would be very interesting to add it here, and to cite it well.

But I fear — and this is just a fear — that this has become a "talking point" of people who are looking to justify the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki more than it is about ferreting out the truth about this. There are many reasons to argue for and against the atomic bombings, but we should be arguing about it on the basis of very hypothetical things, is my thinking.

I also fear that since the Wikipedia article itself had very strong-but-unsourced sentiments about this topic for many years, it is possible that this unsupported assertion has adopted the status of "truth" in many, many web pages on the Internet, an example of what Randall Munroe called Cytogenesis many years back. So I think we need to be _very_ vigilant in making sure we are citing things that are being rigorous about their claims and citations. I do not the above article really does that; even the text of it is vague ("developed a renewed interest" — how so? in what way? how serious? how evidenced?). --NuclearSecrets (talk) 03:02, 16 April 2022 (UTC)