Similar Posts

“Fire on the Flightdeck!”: 14 Jan 1969

BySteeljawscribe

14/0819L Jan 1969: USS Enterprise (CVAN-65) is conducting workups in preparations for combat operations off North Vietnam with CVW-9 embarked.  First event for the day has just been launched and respot for second event is underway.  USS Bainbridge and Rogers are in company.  Aft of the isalnd, the exhaust from an  "huffer" (jet starting unit) has…

| | | | |

Restructuring the Military: 2009 Edition

BySteeljawscribe

… (T)his budget represents an opportunity; one of those rare chances to match virtue to necessity, to critically and ruthlessly separate appetites from real requirements, those things that are desirable in a perfect world from those things that are truly needed in light of the threats America faces and the missions we are likely to…

This Date in Naval History: 27 May 1942 – Prelude to Midway

BySteeljawscribe

“The Inland Sea of Japan was still veiled in darkness when the anchorage at Hashirajima began to awaken. On board the aircraft carrier Akagi, white-clad crewmen, ghostly in the deep twilight on the forecastle, began raising the ship’s anchors. The clatter of the capstan was overlain with the bright sound of spraying water as the…

3 Comments

  1. That bombing saved millions of lives. Had Truman not given the orders to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a million American men and ten million Japanese civilians would have died in the invasion. Sometimes the most merciful option is the one which seems the most brutal.

  2. Agreed and on two fronts. On the one hand, the research I have conducted on just the naval side of the planned invasion of the Japanese homeland affirms this with the lives saved on both sides from not having to deal with a kamikaze counterassualt that would have made the acion at Okinawa pale in comparison.

    A second, and more subtle point, is that in the post-war years, whenever one wanted to highlight the potential cost of nuclear war, the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were always at the ready. The destruction of manequins and occupant-less buildings in a remote desert location, or even the vaporization of part of an island in the Pacific fail to convey the potential human toll as exemplified by those two cities. And that, perhaps, is their enduring legacy.

    -SJS

  3. I feel sorta sheepish posting this after two serious comments, but…What The Hell, eh?

    The last company I worked at was a small IT start-up in SFO, staffed primarily by stereotypical flaming, politically-correct SFO liberals, and I do NOT jest. By my count there were three conservatives in the whole company, which, at its high-water mark, had a total of 300+ folks. Anyway… We got the usual complement of Federal and State holidays, five sick days, and one “Diversity Day,” which one could use to celebrate an occasion of personal importance. But you had to designate the day in advance. I informed my superiors that I intended to take August 6th as my “DD.” When asked what the occasion was… I replied “Hiroshima Day. It’s a celebration of American Power.” And I did take it, too, to the delight of the company’s other two conservatives and the shock of the PC Brigade.

Comments are closed.