Hiroshima Bombing

Today is the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. For some reason this decision has been vigorously debated in some circles. Was the bombing justified, was it a war crime was it racist?



Somehow, the suffering of the Japanese at the hands of Fat Man and Little Boy dominate the narrative, while those of Chinese, Korean, Filipino, British, American, and Australian POWs is being forgotten. Review the movie, The Great Raid, about the American liberation of Japanese POW camp, a New York Times critic noted, 'Its scenes of torture and murder also unapologetically revive the uncomfortable stereotype of the Japanese soldier as a sadistic, slant-eyed fiend.'



Sorry old boy, but the Rape of Nanking, Unit 731, the Manila Massacre, to name a few incidents, were not hoaxes. They happened. The Japanese were cruel occupiers, and revelled in recreational brutality. You see, it's not a stereotype, if that's what they really did.

Oh, and we didn't drop the bomb on the Japanese because we were racists. In fact, the bomb was developed because our nulcear physicists, Fermi, Oppenheimer, Scillard, et al, were concerned that their German colleague, Heisenberg, was building one for Hitler. So they wrote a letter and had a certain A. Einstein deliver it to President Roosevelt.

One last thing, in the spring of 1945, my grandfather joined a medical unit, attached to the 4th Infantry Division, which would have gone ashore with the first wave. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki spared him that. Thank you, President Truman.

The Japanese deserved everything they received at the hands of the United States. They started the war, we finished it.





Will Stroock's Novel about Operation Desert Storm can be purchased at Amazon.