Sometimes ya just gotta nuke em

[Timothy C. May]

At 4:12 AM 2/3/96, Rich Graves wrote:

>Who holds up the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as great victories
>against tyranny?

Since you ask, I do.

A land invasion of Japan would've likely cost half a million American
lives, and perhaps a million or more Japanese citizen lives, according to
comprehensive studies I think are on the mark.

(Anecdotally, my father was on Guam at that time, and was part of the force
being prepared for the land invasion of Japan. He was mighty happy to hear
about the new wonder weapon and how it ended the war in days rather than
months.)

If the war was just, then ending it quickly and decisively was more just
than ending it more slowly and painfully. That some Japanese died in a
nuclear fireball rather than in conventional firestorms or blockbuster
bombings is neither here nor there.

Sometimes ya just gotta nuke em.


--Tim

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