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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (107432)	8/14/2005 10:16:09 PM
From: Jagfan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

Hiroshima, Nagasaki A-bombs were necessary By John D. Marks Sr. Sadly, only people with little sense of reality would write that the use of atomic bombs on Japanese cities in August 1945 "were unnecessary" ("The Myths of Hiroshima Leave the U.S. More Vulnerable," Tribune, Aug. 7). Only people who did not experience the horrors of the 1930s and 1940s could even imagine our use of the atomic bombs was improper. Nazi Germany also was well on the way to achieving nuclear weapons. Fortuitously, we defeated the Nazis before they were able to build any. On Aug. 6, 1945, as a 20-year-old recent graduate of officer candidate school at Fort Belvoir, I was on a troop ship on my way as replacement for the early waves of combat engineers expected to he wiped out in an invasion of Japan. When the news of the atom bomb reached us, I went on the fantail and cried in shear happiness that we would not have to take the action where survival was unlikely. My children and grandchildren clearly understand they might not be here save for the bombs. Japanese soldiers exhibited barbarous cruelty. Thirty percent of Japanese military prisoners died vs. 1 percent of those in Germany, and very few in America. Ask my friend and colleague who survived the infamous Bataan death march if he was glad to see the war end. Ask any surviving Filipino. Ask the surviving U.S. Marines and soldiers of Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Tarawa, Tinian and Iwo Jima who fought determined Japanese occupiers what they think about not having had to invade the mainland of Japan. Ask my former colleague, who as a gunner on a destroyer saved his life and his ship because he kept firing his gun till the kamikaze (read "suicide bomber") disintegrated all over him, if he was glad to have an end to the war. The invasion of Japan would have cost untold Japanese lives, and many U.S. lives. Whether the figure is 1 million, or some other number, is insignificant. In addition, be sure to note more Japanese died in the firebombing of Tokyo than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and Japan still didn't surrender. Stalin may have declared war after the atom bombs were used, but he waited for surrender and it was "safe" for him to steal the northern-most Japanese Island. President Harry Truman made the proper decision. --- John D. Marks, Sr. is an 80-year-old retired rocket scientist who worked nearly 28 years at Hercules Aerospace, now Alliant TechSystems, in Utah. sltrib.com