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The atomic murder of tens of thousands of civilian children, women, and mmen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not what ended the war, and it did not "save upwards of a million American lives." The New York Herald-Tribune was then the only American paper other than the NY Times to have universal respect. It wrote, Aug. 10, 1945, of the Soviet drive against the Japanese army in Manchuria: "That it will be militarily decisive in the Far East one can hardly doubt....The Kwantung Army [the Japanese in Manchuria] itself is believed to represent the cream of Japan's ground forces....What the reduction of Manchuria would do, however, would be to put an end to hope....All this is implicit in the Russian invasion of Manchuria; and there is the atomic bomb besides. [This was four days AFTER Hiroshima.] It cannot be long now before the last flames of war are in fact extinguished from the tortured world." Gen. Claire Chennault, a bitter anti-Communist and former commander of the U.S. Air Forces in China, saw the situation as follows: "The Soviet Union's entry was a decisive factor speeding the termination of the Pacific war, and would have been even if no atomic bombs were employed....The Red Army's swift stroke against Japan completed the encirclement which brought Japan to her knees." These quotes are no new discoveries of revisionist history. They are from my book of 1946, A Guide to the Soviet Union, Dial Press, which was one of the first two works ever used as texts about the USSR in American higher education (at Stanford, Yale, etc.) William Mandel Jerry West wrote: > > William Mandel wrote: > > The pilot of the Enola Gay was a war criminal because he knew he was > dropping a weapon that would exterminate civilians indiscriminately. > > JW reply: > > First, let me say that I am personally at odds with the decision to use > nuclear weapons against Japan and am not defending Truman's decision. > The Japanese were beat already, but that is another debate. > > Now, William, Hiroshima was a valid military target being an Army > headquarters, and neighboring Kure was a major naval base, so one could > make an argument for bombing it. What if the pilot truly believed that > by dropping his weapon he would save upwards of a million American > lives? (the estimates on the invasion of Japan, another needless > exercise in my opinion, were horrendous). Is he more of a war criminal > for bringing a quick end to the war, or for refusing and maybe dragging > the war on for who knows how long at great cost of life on both sides? > > Remember, the question here is not whether the bombing of Hiroshima was > right or wrong, we probably agree on that, but whether the pilot was > wrong and a war criminal if he truly believed that he was saving lives > by doing so. > > -- > Jerry West > Editor/publisher/janitor > ---------------------------------------------------- > THE RECORD > On line news from Nootka Sound & Canada's West Coast > An independent, progressive regional publication > http://www.island.net/~record/
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