This thread has strayed into some unpredictable and esoteric areas. I am not equipped to argue theology, or military history, with most of you. However, I wonder how many of you actually lived through WWII and the aftermath? The following outline some of my experiences:
How many of you actually knew survivors of the Bataan Death march? How many of you actually went to school with Japanese children who returned from the re-location camps? How many of you learned at an early age the difference between Japanese and Chinese surnames in order to identify your classmates (and then became confused when the Koreans moved in)? How many of you sent packages to orphans and refugees in Europe through the many agencies set up to help after Hitler fell? How many of you were ever taught in school by a surviving POW? How many of you remember the rationing and privations that the American people gladly endured at home — restrictions on the purchase of butter, meat, rubber, metals, sugar, flour?
I consider living through such experiences ALMOST first hand knowledge — not tainted by the personal biases of historians.
Allow me to add that the Manhatten Project was not a small group of scientists working in one secret location, as the movies lead us to imagine. There was a large network of people working on different aspects in many locations — often not aware what the others were doing. Members ranged from highly educated scientists — even captured Germans — to skilled craftsmen whose formal education had ceased in 8th grade. From my reading and from knowing some of those people personally, I do not believe that many of them knew the full effects of the A Bomb in advance. If so, they would have protected themselves from the radiation. Do you know that most of the pioneers of the modern nuclear field died of leukemia?
Those who say that women and children were specifically targeted in Japan and Europe, instead of industrial targets, are ignoring the fact that targets were everywhere, just as they were here. I personally have known people who machined military airplane parts in their basements in Detroit during WWII and supplied them to the government during the war. Are you telling me that this did not happen overseas too?
How about my grandmother in CA whose entire dairy production was taken over by the military? It wasn’t her choice. Would she be considered a military target because her milk and cream was feeding our soldiers?
This day, I honor 2 uncles (Annapolis grads) who were lost in WWII, another uncle who survived Pearl Harbor as a young recruit, an uncle who served as a medic, an uncle (too old to serve) but whose business manufactured airplanes and was taken over by the govt., and every other male in the family who aided the war effort in whatever way. And then there were my aunt and uncle who, through the auspices of the US Army, moved their young children to Japan for several years after the Japanese surrender to restablish a school system for a particular town during the Occupation.
I guarantee that none of these folks deliberately targeted civilians and children. They were supporting our troops and our country.
I should have added to the above, how many of you were herded into your badroom (away from the ears of your grandmother who had 2 sons serving) to hear your parents discuss in hushed tones the capture of a Japanese sub off the coast of Oregan and the recovery of dud bombs in the hills of San Diego?
And I haven’t even mentioned the periodic Air Raid warnings when we had to draw the black out curtains and sit in darkness and silence until the all clear warnings were sounded.
Point: we lived with terror at home in the good old USA too.
This thread has strayed into some unpredictable and esoteric areas.
Most, if not all who read the article neglected to read it all the way through where it states:
A Song for Nagasaki tells the moving story of this extraordinary man, beginning with his boyhood and the heroic tales and stoic virtues of his family's Shinto religion. It reveals the inspiring story of Nagai's remarkable spiritual journey from Shintoism to atheism to Catholicism.
Thank you for your excellent post and ping!