"That awful thing"

The pilot of the Enola Gay died Thursday. And he died still believing the attack was justified. That belief has been thoroughly discredited as is explained in the article entitled "Hiroshima Bomber Unrepentant till Death":

Perhaps the dean among this group of scholars is Professor Gar Alperovitz, who has written a number of books on the subject, including the magisterial “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” which in 1995 demolished once and for all the arguments for obliterating Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In an op-ed two years ago for The Progressive’s sister organization, the Progressive Media Project, Alperovitz cited a number of recent studies that further bolstered his case.

“Long before the bombings, top American and British policy-makers were aware that a declaration of war by the Soviet Union, combined with assurances for the Japanese emperor, would likely end the conflict,” Alperovitz wrote. “As early as April 29, 1945, for instance, U.S. intelligence advised that entry of the Soviet Union into the war would ‘convince most Japanese at once of the inevitability of complete defeat,’ and further, that if they were persuaded that unconditional surrender ‘did not imply annihilation, surrender might follow fairly quickly.’ ”

Alperovitz listed several prominent generals as decrying the bomb. (Eisenhower said after the war that “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”) The most surprising of this bunch is right-wing extremist (and inspiration for Jack D. Ripper in the movie “Dr. Strangelove”) General Curtis LeMay. Even he publicly proclaimed afterward that the war would have been done with in two weeks and that the bomb played no part in hastening its end.

We have much to answer for as a nation.