The A-bombs of 1945

World War II is slowly fading into history. The leaders of that era have been dead for decades. You have to pretty much be over 80 to have been a combatant. Even those who were children during the war are in their late 60s and 70s.

I can't stand up and say something about The 1991 Gulf War or the Bosnian civil war without people who were a part of it standing up and reacting to what I might say.

But, Hitler and Stalin are close to joining Napolean and Ceasar as the number of people who lived when they did gets smaller and smaller and soon becomes zero.

When no living witnesses are left, historians can operate with more speculation.

Which brings me to the 2 Atomic bombs that hit Japan in 1945. WW II was such a massive thing, decisions were sometimes made based on numbers of projected deaths. Oh yes, very heartless indeed, but how the hell else could it have been done? It is easy to look back 60 years and condemn The Americans for dropping those bombs, but I understand why they did it.

As an aside, they have not been used in any war since, by anyone, have they?

Maybe we've seen too many WW II movies where The Japanese are depicted as fools, perhaps even less than human. NONSENSE. They were a formibable foe. A conventional invasion of the Japanese homeland would have gone on for years and have entailed even more deaths of Japanese civilians than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined (not to mention the deaths of American servicemen).

Nobody likes to see those films about the radiation in those cities but you cannot light up a doob, crank up the U2, yell "No nukes" and rip those events of 1945 out of their context.

TF