The sixty-sixth anniversary of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was approaching and a neighbor, a retired fireman and World War II veteran, asked if I thought the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. He said that he thought they were because many American soldiers and marines might have been killed in a land invasion of Japan’s main islands. Okinawa, he said, was bad enough. Invading Japan would have been far worse.
In no way, he said, was he dismissing the killing of so many civilians, but like virtually all Americans at the time he unquestioningly believed the government’s assertions that because of Pearl Harbor and the many American deaths occurred while hopscotching across the islands of the Pacific, it was perfectly all right to kill enemy civilians in a war.
President Truman’s announcement at the time avoided dealing with the issue when he emphasized that Hiroshima was a military base; ergo, the city was a legitimate wartime target. He never sought to explain Nagasaki.
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