Erik Svane: Unlike the endgames of the majority of wars, World War II in the Pacific grew increasingly bloody as U.S. forces approached the Japanese homeland (read more)…
Lt. Paul Fussell: On Okinawa, only weeks before Hiroshima, 123,000 Japanese and Americans killed each other … the very idea of more combat made me breathe in gasps and shake all over (read more)…Thomas Sowell:
the atomic bomb spared us (and the Japanese) a bloodbath that would have dwarfed the death toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki (read more)…Charles de Gaulle:
Les trois cent mille morts d'Hiroshima ont épargné bien davantage de Japonais, qui auraient été écrasés sous des bombes ordinaires (read more)…The Wall Street Journal:
The Japanese army was expected to fight to the last man, as it had during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Since the ratio of Japanese to American combat fatalities ran about four to one, a mainland invasion could have resulted in millions of Japanese deaths—and that's not counting civilians (read more)…
Thomas Sowell: Japan's plans for defense against invasion involved mobilizing the civilian population, including women and children, for the customary suicidal battle tactics (read more)…A Japanese-American:
Lance or spear practice was a regular women's exercise to practice for the anticipated U.S. landing (read more)…The New York Times's Martin Fackler on Some Facts About Hiroshima and World War II That You Hear Neither From America's MSM, University Élites, and History Books, Nor From Japan's:
…most Japanese are shocked to hear that their nation also tried to build an atomic bomb. “I have no doubt Japan would have used it if it succeeded,” former schoolteacher Kiwamu Ariga, 81, said (read more)…Bret Stephens:
Whatever side one takes here, the important point is that the debate fundamentally is about results. … In other words, the question here isn't about the intrinsic morality of the bombing. It's about whether the good that flowed from the bombing outweighed the unmistakable evil of the act itself (read more)…Le Monde's Philippe Mesmer:
Although it is not said so openly, Hiroshima also played a purifying role, i.e., the baptism of a new Japan, the event that put an end to fifty years of crimes (read more)…Paul Fussell: Thank God for the Atom Bomb (essay; available for download)
Victor Davis Hanson:
Post-facto critics never tell us what they would have done instead — lay off the German cities and send more ground troops into a pristine Third Reich; don’t bomb, but invade, an untouched Japan in 1946; keep out of WWII entirely; or in its aftermath invade the Soviet Union? (read more)…Japan's defense minister forced to resign for having the gall to admit that
dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 "ended the war," adding, "I think that it couldn't be helped" … Fumio Kyuma [added that] he did not resent the United States because the bombs prevented the Soviet Union from entering the war with Japan [and that] if Japan had not surrendered, northern Japan could have been occupied by the Soviet Union (read more…)Erik Svane: A critical examination of some common charges against the Americans regarding the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (racism, intensification of the war, war on civilians, and the peace feelers ignored) (read more…)
Robert Maddox: the veteran historian ("I regard Hiroshima [revisionism] as the greatest hoax in American history") is interviewed by Victor Fic on every Atomic bombing subject imaginable (read more)…
Father Wilson Miscamble:
Truman's use of the bomb should be seen as his choosing the least awful of the options available to him (4:04, thanks to Instapundit)
Bill Whittle:
But the Japanese were warned … Over one million of these [Office of War Information warning leaflets] were dropped over Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and 33 other Japanese cities on the 1st of August, 1945 — that's five days before the Hiroshima bombing (01:10, aligato to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit)In addition, check out the information below the subhead "Watching for the 'Fool-Proof' Cards", about two thirds to three fourths down the drag zone of the AA page…
