I have been reading through this thread and have seen enough. With all due respect, dear narses, you are using the liberal line of “the children” to gain sympathy for your argument, and that is wrong.
My father, too, was set to be a part of the invasion of Japan. His unit was in battle against the Japanese on the island of Luzon for 99 days. He saw the atrocities of the Japanese against the Filipinos - and to our soldiers.
I attended a reunion of some of the members of dad’s battalion after his death. They told me that, when they were preparing for the invasion of Japan, they all had to make out wills. The casualty rate was expected to be up to 90 percent. They said, when they went into Japan during the occupation, that every home was armed - even down to sharpened sticks. Every man, woman and child was expected to fight. The loss of life would have been massive on both sides.
I stop short of calling the dropping of those bombs ‘humane’, but it certainly saved more lives than what were lost in those two cities. Also, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were industrial centers for the Japanese war machine. What happened there was a horrible thing, but it was necessary. It was a brutal measure that needed to be taken for the sake of both sides. It brought the war to a swift end, saving lives of many more of “the children” than were, unfortunately, killed with the dropping of the bombs.
When I see the pictures of those who were directly affected by the bombing of those cities, my heart breaks. But I think of the events that lead up to it, and what started it in the first place. The Emperor of Japan brought judgment down upon his people - not us.
I know I won’t change your mind, narses. But those of us whose fathers were there are here today because of the actions taken to end the war.
All soldiers going into combat have to prepare wills, at least they did in WWII. Many choices other than deliberate targeting of civilians were possible. The US chose terror as a weapon. It was an immoral choice. Your father could have been ‘saved’ by choosing demonstration targets that destroyed military installations, instead we burned alive and poisoned civilians. I am glad our fathers and grandfathers who survived came home. That doesn’t stop me from recognizing a great moral crime for what it was.