After being bombed on New Years Day 1945 Europe(German “Operation Baseplate”)...My Dad survived to be loaded on a ship and sent towards the South Pacific...He had just exited through the Straits of Gibraltar when they got the news of the Atomic bombing of Japan...
I am a Baby Boomer that probably would not be here if not for the Manhattan Project and God’s Grace for our Country.
(I have read of hardened Combat Veterans breaking down in tears with the News of the Bomb...they were going to live...
after seeing so much death.)
They had bombs, bullets, beans...but needed the 17 year olds out of High School....(Dad’s youngest brother)
1,000,000 Americans would be dead or wounded in Japan...The war was planned to end in 1948.
Millions of Japanese would have been starved, gassed-Yes we were preparing to exterminate...The Bomb saved us both.
And Yes the Japanese were brutal beyond belief...Bush 41 was shot down near an Island where several Japanese officers were later executed for cannibalism after butchering captured American pilots(on the same raid as Bush 41).
Very few Japanese were punished for war crimes.
Many Pacific Theater Allied combatants were very upset about it.
Just finished reading James Bradley's 2003 book, Flyboys: A True Story of Courage. You may remember Bradley's father was 1 of the 6 Marines to raise the 2nd flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima. It was a disturbing read on several levels. Yes, he described in detail the 6 U.S. Naval aviators who were captured on Chi Chi Jima, executed, and some partly canabalized. He also provided an accouting of the Japanese war crimes trials - most of which I had never heard before.
~5,700 Japanese were indicted for war crimes in tribunals scattered across the Pacific and East Asia. Of these, 920 were executed, 525 received life sentences, 2,944 were sentenced to more limited prison terms, 1,018 were acquitted, and 279 were never brought to trial.
Contrast that with the Wikipedia account of the Nazi war crime trials. The Allies tried 23 of the most important political and military leaders of the Third Reich at Nuremburg with 12 convicted and 10 executed (Martin Bormann was tried in absentia and Herman Goering committed suicide the night before his hanging). After the main Nuremburg trial, the Allies conducted 12 additional Nuremburg Military Tribunals in which 142 of the 185 defendants were found guilty of at least 1 of the charges. Twenty-four persons received death sentences, of which 11 were subsequently converted into life sentences; 20 were sentenced to life imprisonment, 98 were handed down sentences of varying lengths, and 35 were acquitted. Four defendants had to be removed from trials due to illness, and 4 more committed suicide during the trials. 22
It is unfortunate that the Gen-X and younger seem to think of Truman as a Genocial evil, when he saved many lives. ‘Saint’ FDR would have dropped it if he had lived... I am no Dem, but in that instance those two were patriotic Americans.