Saturday, April 7, 2007

Why we should never regret dropping The Bomb on Japan

On September 2, 1945 - VJ Day, Bernard Williams was a Naval Aviator in Utility Squadron 13 located on Samar Island in the Philippine Islands. They had quite a celebration there when the news came of Japan's surrender.

Bernie, like most of us, was never aware of the extent of the planning for a massive invasion of the Japanese home islands. The extent of the projected casualties from such an invasion makes the losses now happening in Iraq, though individually tragic, seem minimal.

In a recent email to some friends Bernie wrote, "I never had any regrets about the using of atomic bombs to end WW 2 and I thank God that it got me home to the states alive!"

At the time, Burnie did not realize that the use of those nuclear weapons averted what we now know, from the release of formerly classified documents, was
an invasion not found in the history books that saved the lives of perhaps millions of Allied (primarily US) and Japanese soldiers and Japanese civilians. Now that the books are open, it is very apparent that the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were acts of mercy for the millions saved.

Thank you Bernie, for your service to our nation. Yours indeed was the Greatest Generation of the 20th Century. I pray that the likes of that generation will be with us again in the 21st Century, and perhaps they already are -- deployed in Iraq, Afganistan and elsewhere.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very good point.

Did you also notice that for all the 'fears' of nuclear weapons, that nuclear weapons not only saved lives in WWII, they maintained a balance of power (some would say of terror) during the COld War, and have NOT been dangerous since?

Think of the millions killed in Communist China's Cultural Revolution, those killed by Pol Pot, genocides of Saddam, those killed in wars in Africa and the Rwanda genocide, or mideast wars since WWII, such as Iran-Iraq war that killed over a million. A death count of several million, some by weapons as primitive as machetes - none of them killed by nuclear weapons.

It's not the weapon but who wields it that makes it dangerous.

Lina said...

you should never regret dropping The bomb on Japan. Japanese do not feel guilty. They still do not know what is "WRONG". That is why it never stops farfetched claims about the territory of it's neighbouring country! Dokdo of South Korea too!