I agree with everything in the Aug. 5 Letter to the Editor from sincere and benevolent members of veteran groups advocating peace and complete destruction of atomic bombs.
However, everyone should know that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved millions of American lives and many more millions of Japanese lives. Everyone should go back and reread “The Chrysanthemum and the Sword” by Ruth Benedict. In 1953, I took a course in college called Humanities 2, taught by Clyde Kluckhohn and citing Ruth Benedict, two academic social psychologists who influenced and effectively wrote many of the terms for the Japanese surrender. Japanese psychology at that time was based on complete devotion to the emperor, Hirohito. The Americans left Hirohito as Emperor because any effort to depose him would never have resulted in Japanese surrender. The Japanese virtually never surrendered in battle. Americans took islands in the Pacific in which all the Japanese defenders died because none would surrender.
Americans who surrendered to the Japanese were killed because they did not fight to their deaths. Kamikaze pilots flew their planes into American battleships and certain death. American planes had already wiped out entire cities and killed countless Japanese civilians living in wooden houses with their firebombing and the Japanese had already made plans to fight to their deaths rather than surrender. President Harry Truman had no choice but to order the dropping of the two atomic bombs in Japan.
Dr. Gabe Mirkin is a columnist for Villages-News.com.
