With the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the war with Japan there has been a lot of information about the atomic bombs. It is funny how the political motivations of the previous generations get spun by future generations. Most of what I have seen paints the Truman administration as being heartless hate mongers who want to pay back the Japanese for their treachery, and want somebody to use their new toy upon. Oh yeah, and to flex their muscle to show those Russians that we are not to be triffled with!

All of the weapons of war are terrible, they are meant to do horrible traumatic damage to people and their surroundings in order to end their lives. Those who were killed in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no less dead than those fire-bombed in Tokyo. Those who suffered from the burns and radiation sickness from the atomic blasts suffered no more than those ravaged by the fire storms. We can only hope that somehow the end of the hostilities by this dramatic show of force, no matter what the motivation behind it, did save lives on both side of the Pacific Ocean.

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PEOPLE SLEEP PEACEABLY IN THEIR BEDS AT NIGHT ONLY BECAUSE ROUGH MEN STAND READY TO DO VIOLENCE ON THEIR BEHALF. GEORGE ORWELL