World War II Revisited

"Washington war planners knew it would be the bloodiest battle ever fought. Millions would die."

As Memorial Day approaches, we once again think about all the people who have sacrificed so much to preserve our freedom and liberty. This year I started thinking about it even earlier than Memorial Day as our current Commander in Chief is visiting Hiroshima. Many today still think that dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were about the cruelest thing that mankind could do to itself. My answer to that is maybe not.

I often think about what could have happened in World War II. We were not the only ones tying to develop the bomb. So were the Nazis. Plus, they had the number one rocket scientist in the world - Wernher von Braun. If the Nazis had been successful in developing the bomb before us, it would not have taken much to strap one to a V-2 rocket and then take out London. If that had happened, the allies might have been forced to surrender or face atomic devastation.

In addition, as we proved with the German city of Dresden, we became very good at reducing cities to rubble using only conventional bombing. In 1945 towards the end of the war, United States and British heavy bombers dropped almost 4,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Dresden. Over 25,000 civilians were killed, most probably burned to death. Also in 1945, we did the same thing to Tokyo. The casualty count was even higher in Japan - maybe as high as 130,000 civilians.

Plans had already been drawn up for an Allied invasion of the Japanese homeland. Washington war planners knew it would be the bloodiest battle ever fought. Millions would die. Tokyo would be left in ruins. The war planners also knew that dropping two highly destructive bombs taking on two smaller cities in Japan might break the will of the Japanese government causing them to surrender. Our war planners called this one right.

Today, there really is no animosity between Japan and the United States about using atomic bombs. I think in their hearts they know it brought the war to an end and stopped the misery on all sides. Japan is a staunch ally of ours right now. We trust them, we trade with them. In fact we have sold them state of the art AEGIS ships for their self defense forces. All the former Axis Powers are now close allies of ours. 

War is a terrible business. There really are no real winners other than the last one standing. Considering we did not start World War II, we sure helped end it. The total of dead and wounded from our side was slightly over 1,000,000. Worldwide, World War II took out 3% of the population (at that time) - about 60,000,000 people.

On Monday, I will think of the valor of all of those young men, their lives barely started, going off to a distant shore to fight for this thing called freedom. It is our duty to ensure their great sacrifice, their honor, shall never go forgotten or unrecognized. That to me, is what Memorial Day is all about.