70 years ago today the world first saw the terrifying power of the atom bomb when the United States Army Air Forces dropped "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan. The world had actually entered the Atomic Age three weeks earlier with the test of "the gadget," but that was kept secret until after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Various revisionist historians, the militantly ignorant, and members of the Church of the perpetually outraged are certain to be offended by the title of this post, which doesn't bother me in the least. They can all fuck off, because all of their spinning, and bullshit, and hatred for America doesn't change the fact that this was the first of a one-two punch that did indeed end WWII and saved millions, yes millions of Allied and Japanese lives.
Under normal circumstances I, like every sane person, would be horrified at the thought of 70,000 people suddenly killed by any means. But August of 1945 in the Pacific Theater was not "normal circumstances" in any way, shape, or form. Japan was losing the war, but it was only wounded and not yet defeated. Every man being gathered for the invasion of Japan knew he was possibly, even probably for many, staring directly into the face of death.
That's the context, and people who 70 years later blithely dismiss it and condemn the bombing are just a bunch of privileged assholes incapable of truly understanding the savagery and brutality of that war and the urgency, the personal urgency for millions of people in ending it not one minute later than possible.
I offer two items that are pretty long and serious for the Age of Twitter and the vacuous snark of Jon Stewart. The first is a long essay(via Instapundit) first published in 1981, and written by one of those men who had survived the war in Europe only to be told his unit would be heading for Japan. The second is an even better video response from 2009 to Jon Stewart's utterly moronic assertion that Harry Truman was a war criminal for ordering the A-bomb drop on Hiroshima:
PJTV - Jon Stewart, War Criminals & The True... by dm_507c8d3897e4c
It is a harsh thing to be glad that the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, but I am. I am glad for all of those Allied servicemembers, now mostly gone, and the millions of their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who would not have had their chance at life if it hadn't happened.
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