Dear Editor
There was hardly any mention in the major news media of the terrible event that occurred in 1945 when for the first time ever an atomic bomb was dropped on two large cities. We Americans committed this awful sin. We need to recognize it, and repent of our deeds. We have yet to apologize to the Japanese people for bombing Hiroshima and and Nagasaki which led to so much loss of life and property and terrific suffering still being felt in Japan to today.
There are two very noteworthy quotes made about these bombings. First, military analyst Hanson Baldwin said, "The Japanese, in a military sense, were in a hopeless strategic situation by the time the Potsdam insistence on Japan’s unconditional surrender was made on July 26, 1945." Secondly, Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman, said in his war memoirs, "I Was There. It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages." And General Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed.
Some of the reasons stated for dropping the bombs were: 1) We spent $2 billion investing in the bomb, and we wanted to try it out. 2) We wanted revenge for the Pearl Harbor attack. Mercy was not in our vocabulary. 3) Hiroshima’s bomb was made with uranium while Nagasaki’s was made with plutonium. Scientists were curious as to how each of these would work. 4) We did not want the Japanese to surrender first to the Russians before they did so with the U.S. Over 100,000 virtually defenseless Japanese died, and two cities were virtually annihilated by our use of these horrible bombs. May God have mercy on us.
Rev. Don Timmerman