THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, August 10, 1995 TAG: 9508100003
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By JACK CARPER
LENGTH: Medium: 58 lines
There, in the picture published in your paper July 2, was proof that the old Army captain knew what he was talking abut 50 years ago.
The picture showed Japanese women practicing with sharpened sticks they would use to fight off Americans as we invaded Japan in 1945.
The captain, a retread from World War I, told a bunch of Marines the task of putting up a command post at Tokyo Bay was ``going to be very, very bloody.''
We are invading their homeland, he continued, and everyone is going to be there to meet you with every kind of weapon. Women, old men and children will fight with sticks and everything else they can get their hands on to kill you, he warned that night in the Philippines where we were planning the invasion of Japan on Halloween. The detachment of Marines had joined the 6th Army at its headquarters near Manila.
The A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki changed all plans. Thank goodness they ended World War II. For thousands, maybe a million, Americans and Japanese would die if Japan had to be conquered city by city, village by village. Or until that fake god, Hirohito, said ``Enough.''
Fifty years later, on the anniversary eve of the first atomic bomb blast used in war, some are still debating whether the A-bombs should have been dropped. It was a horrible end to a horrible war.
Critics and second-guessers say Japan was already beaten. I agree. But the Japanese would not acknowledge the fact even after earlier in the year Iwo Jima and Okinawa, right at Japan's doorsteps, had fallen to the Americans. Instead of thinking about surrendering, they were feverishly building defenses on their principal islands of Kyushu and Honshu. Aerial photographs we studied daily at 6th Army headquarters showed new gun emplacements being built to repel us.
Hirohito, their emperor ``god,'' could have stopped sending Japanese soldiers and kamikaze pilots to their deaths months earlier, but he refused to bow to the inevitable, and the fighting and bombing of Japanese cities raged on.
Finally, President Truman ordered the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6. Still, Hirohito, Tojo and the other war lords weren't convinced the war was over, so a second A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Japan finally surrendered. Many, many lives were saved even though thousands died in the two atomic bombings. The tenacious Japanese citizens would have fought to the very end. Old men, women and children would have joined their soldiers and sailors in death. They believed their emperor was a god and they would forever rest in heaven if they died for him.
Let the critics argue. As for me, I am grateful to Harry Truman. The lives he saved probably included me.There, in the picture published in your paper July 2, was proof that the old Army captain knew what he was talking about 50 years ago. by CNB