75 Years Later

Sometimes I just don't get why atom bombs - and later nuclear weapons - were considered worse than conventional means of warfare.

Yes, tens of thousands of (largely civilian) Japanese civilians died as the result of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

But thousands of civilians were killed in the Dresden fire bombing six months earlier. Even more died during the course of the Blitz. It's estimated that nearly 4 million civilians in China were killed by Japanese operations during World War II. Overall, 80 million souls were killed during that war, 50 million+ were civilians. 

War is always hell. Twentieth century war was even heller due in no small part to the ability to use bombs to kill masses of people without having to look them in the eye. They're all weapons of mass destruction.

But the A-Bomb...

All those people killed in a fell swoop. Their cities leveled. Survivors suffering hideous aftermath effects from radiation exposure. A weapon of truly massive destruction.

I'm on the side of believing that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki hastened the end of the war, and prevented a tremendous number of American casualties. (One of them could have been my father. He was in the Navy, and if the war had lasted long enough, his understanding was that he would have deployed to the Pacific. As things turned out, he ended out the war at Navy Pier in Chicago, doing Navy paperwork and dating my mother.)

Most believe that, without the demonstration of Allied power and will, the Japanese people would have suicidally fought to a very bitter end. Throughout my childhood, there were occasional stories of Japanese soldiers surfacing in the Pacific 10, 15, 20 years after the war had ended. Even well into the 1970's. There was even a story of two soldiers emerging from the jungle in 2005, 60 years after the war had ended. Surrender unthinkable, they'd soldiered-on in solitary non-battle on remote Pacific islands, eventually emerging, shaggy and a bit crazy. 

It was reasonable to fear that the Japanese military would never give up, and that they'd drag the cultish elements of the population down with them.

Still, the stories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are horrific, the images haunting. Even after these 75 years. (Hiroshima was August 6th, Nagasaki, August 9th.) 

The stuff of history.

Little Boy. Fat Man. 

The bombs had names. Amusing ones. 

The plane used to bomb Hiroshima, had a name, too. Pretty and feminine, Enola Gay. Named for the pilot's mother. Awww...

I had to look up the other plane. Bockscar. (Bock's Car.) Named for the plane's original pilot. Witty. A play on his name, a play on train names (Box Car).

The Hiroshima bombing took place 75 years ago today. Nagasaki, 75 years ago this coming Sunday.

We haven't learned much. War is still hell. 

But I'll say this about those bombings: except for testing, no one's set off a nuclear bomb since...