OPINION:
Today we mark the 75th anniversary of dropping atomic bombs to end Wordl War II. As the Greatest Generation that lived into and through that history dies, we listen increasingly to revisionist, asymmetrical analyses expounding the immorality of the atomic bomb decision.
Customary rebuttals extrapolate over 23,000 American and 265,000 Japanese deaths on Saipan and Okinawa, to early estimates of 500,000 American and millions of Japanese deaths for mainland invasions. Such estimates could have substantially understated casualties, because Kyushu and Honshu, at 100,000 non-arable square miles, mathematically enables at least 500 vast redoubts.
The American “island hopping” strategy had ended. The Japanese knew the few regions within their mountainous country that could accommodate the huge armies and air forces needed. In preparation, they redeployed veteran Kwantung divisions from China. They mobilized home-defense armies by drafting able citizens aged 17 to 60 for Peoples Volunteer Corps and Home Defense Units. They were determined to wage a total war of upmost savagery rather than contemplate the shame of surrender.
If there was any alternative, Harry Truman, Henry Stimson and George Marshall would end the war immediately. As far as they and the country were concerned, the only innocent civilian lives at stake were the American citizen soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who would invade Japan. The Greatest Generation, their parents and grandparents would have been enraged to discover a cabal had ignored the nuclear option just to indulge some incestuous moral orthodoxy.
NOLAN NELSON
Eugene, Ore.
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