Operation Downfall. The invasion plan for the mainland of Japan. Estimates of at least 50,000 dead and hundreds of thousands wounded on the Allies side. Millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians would also be dead. MILLIONS……
War is cruel. It is the nature of the premise. We found after the occupation began that the mainland of Japan was far more heavily armed and ready to counter an invasion that we had thought. This blows the initial death estimates out of the water. Odds are that the death toll would be multiples higher.
There has not been a war fought that has not escalated in violence and death right up to the end. The rolls of the dead and the wounded attest to this. We did not start WWII. Atrocious and barbaric acts of an enemy sworn to destroy us created this calamity we call WWII. As the war went on it became obvious that both Germany and Japan were fighting to the last man. The tally of casualties rose higher and higher from one battle to the next ever increasing in intensity and ferocity.
This left us with few choices short of making a fragile peace not all that different from the results of WWI which merely set the stage for this calamity. The chances of a WWIII, essentially repeating WWI and WWII was something that the Allied leadership did not want to see happen.
Striking a mortal blow was the only choice we had if we wanted to expedite the conclusion of the war in the Pacific. The Atomic bomb and its use was inevitable.
History traces the evolution of weaponry and the Hydrogen bomb that followed the atomic bomb just as well as the precision guided munitions we have today are increases in precision and lethality that are equally inevitable. That is the nature of technically evolving war. That we used the Atomic Bomb first to end a vicious and stubborn war was a wise choice given our options.
Should we mourn the non-combatants who died in the atomic bombings as a result? Yes, just as we mourn the victims of the Rape of Nanking; the civilian prisoners who died of abuse, starvation and torture in Japanese and German prison camps; the men women and children exterminated by Hitler and his efforts to create a Third Reich; and every other victim of the actions taken by both sides waging this horrific war.
No one deserves to die at the hands of others. We each deserve to live and die as a result of our own choices and destiny. Once this concept is tossed aside, all bets are off. Nations can act in ways that humans on their own may not choose. This is the failing of rule by consensus. Statistics become anonymous numbers that lose their humanity when nations make essentially what should be human choices.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki along with every other tragedy in the war are lessons hopefully mankind will consider before ever starting such a world wide conflagration again.
Glenda T. Goode 