Hiroshima - 60 Years

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. The death toll exceeded 100,000, with countless dying for years afterwards due to radiation sickness.

There have been 60 years of debate as to whether the United States should have dropped it. Some argue it hastened an end to the war. The alternative was to invade Japan & fight a long, protracted ground battle with the resultant deaths of thousands of G.I.'s as well as Japanese citizens. Others argue that Japan was on the verge of surrender & there was no need to drop the bomb.

We are inclined to believe that dropping the bomb was a surgical way of ending the war without a single U.S. soldier being killed. To that end, Japanese civilians were sacrificed over our soldiers. Whether or not Japan was on the verge of surrendering is a question that we will never be able to answer. Maybe they were. But war marches on & sitting around waiting to see if a surrender would come is not a luxury to be envied in battle.

On a less emotional level, we are sure that the powers that be in Washington were curious to "field test" this new weapon, as opposed to the antiseptic desert test.

What piques our interest in the yearly protests against the bombing of Hiroshima are the reasons for the protests. Are they protesting the use of a new horrible weapon of 1945? Well, if the U.S. did not develop the a-bomb, in time some predatory country would. So the U.S. did not let the "genie" out of the bottle, as it is accused. There were many bottles out there for any country determined enough to find them.

Are they protesting the number who died in the bombing or the manner in which they died? It is truly regrettable, but no more than the fire bombing of Dresden, Germany in 1944 in which up to 130,000 may have died. The manner of death in Dresden was equally horrifying, with temperatures reaching 3,000 degrees as a result of the incendiary bombs. What of the daily London bombings by Germany where thousands died. What is the starting point of protest? 100,000 dead? 50,000? 10,000? 100?

Twentieth Century-era war was not a gentleman's game. It came with a price - to soldiers, civilians & many countries' resources. The aggressors, the initiators of such conflicts, paid the most heavily in their losing endeavors.

As terrible as war is, it will always be with us, it will usually be necessary to thwart an aggressor & it will always have its innocent victims. It matters not whether a bullet or an atomic bomb does the killing.