On April 6, 1945, I served as navigator on a plane carrying
some 200 combat troops returning from the German front to the
United States. When I announced that the United States had
dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the troops cheered because
they thought their services in Japan might not be necessary.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote in his memoir, "The White
House Years:" "In 1945, Secretary of War Stimson informed me
that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on
Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of
cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act ... first
on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and
that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly
because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world
opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought,
no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after interviewing
hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders, reported:
"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts... it is the
Survey's opinion that certainly before Dec. 31, 1945, Japan
would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been
dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no
invasion had been planned or contemplated."
Is it possible that the deaths of the estimated 210,000
Japanese, who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, might not have
been necessary?
Joe Stern,
Fort Collins
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originally
published in the Fort Collins Coloradoan |
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