Model Forum / General / Rockets / February 2006

I saw a replica of the fat boy at Oshkosh. those are too shiny!

PMC!

<rant>

One of my pet peeves is about the way commentators (including Mr. Jones)
wax so eloquently about the "horrors" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I
would remind these folks that dropping the bomb on Japan was perhaps the
most humane act in the annals of warfare.  These two bombs convinced a
nation prepared to fight to the last man, woman, and/or child that they
just might want to reconsider.

Mr Jones makes the mistake of thinking that the Japanese of WWII had the
same values as we did.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The
Japanese Bushido code held that the greatest disgrace one could
experience was to lose or to be captured in battle.  A soldier should
kill himself before surrendering, and any soldier (or for that mater,
any civilian) who either surrendered or allowed himself to be captured
was beneath contempt.  (Just ask the folks who survived the Bataan death
march.)

On researching the subject of the bombing of Hiroshima, I discovered the
diary of a physician who survived the bomb and described the horrible
aftermath.  (I don't remember the name of the book, something like
"Hiroshima Diary.")  What I found most astonishing was that, even amid
the carnage of a nuclear explosion, this doctor was devestated when the
Emperor announced the surrender.  How could he disgrace the Japanese
people this way?  Surely this was a mistake!

Look at it another way.  The Japanese were a warlike military power
determined to conquer the Pacific and eventually the world and wipe out
all the Yankee Dogs they could in the process.  Two nukes later, they
were pacifists who wanted to sell us cars and electronics, and they are
our best buddies in the world.

Condemn the bomb?  Thank God for the bomb!