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.