Indeed.
My Dad was in WW2 in the Navy. He was at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. After the surrender, his ship was instructed to liberate a Japanese POW Camp on some forsaken island. They assumed that the Americans would need immediate medical attention and prepared the ship for 250. When they got there, they found that the Japanese had fled, after beheading nearly 250 American Marines.
The crew of Dad’s ship, originally jubilant about the War’s end, had to match the heads to the bodies and identify them.
Dad shared a LOT of stories about those years, but never that one, until he was in his late 70’s, and only to my brother.
Oh...Dad was 17 at the time.
I met Gen Paul Tibbets in 2000, and told him the story. We both agreed that the Nuke was the right thing to do. He signed a book for my Dad whichI promptly mailed to him from Florida.
I have heard very few veterans of the Pacific war who opposed the use of nuclear weapons.
In one of my favorite books, “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman”, Richard Feynman talked about the supposed hand-wringing in the scientific community about the bomb, and said there was very little of it. Everyone thought it should be used, and was of the opinion that all the hand-wringing and soiled consciences came after the fact...