Important Anniversaries

Where were you 62 years ago? I've given it a lot of thought and we were wrong. We never should have dropped those bombs. Conventional wisdom aside, Japan wasn't prepared to fight any longer. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey corroborates this. According to McClain, the army estimates of a 1,000,000 US casualties upon invasion were completely made up. The real estimates produced put the number closer to 30,000.

Some also defend Hiroshima on the grounds that between 80,000 and 200,000 died in the Tokyo fire bombings of the previous year. Those were conventional weapons and the number killed was significantly larger than Hiroshima's 140,000. Far more than Nagasaki's 74,000. They were unnecessary deaths. That's why it was wrong.