So Cruel A Crime As This

Hopefully, America will always be ashamed, if only in our collective hearts, of having the distinction of being the only country to use an atom bomb against another country. 

                 

In 1937 while Japan and China were once again fighting, it was unavoidable for Japan to have to deal with the Pacific sooner or later.  They believed the USA was a sleepy, lazy, neutral, even cowardly mass of people who'd never enter another's war.  After all, our closest ally, Britain, was fighting facism all alone on her island soil and no matter how Churchill pushed and proded, FDR was staying out of it.  We sent money, food, clothing, munitions, even initiated embargoes, but sent no soldiers to Europe until 1942 when we became fully engaged.

When Japan came slicing through Pearl Harbor in 1941 to better defeat their Indochinese enemy, they awoke a sleeping giant and this country immediately set out into the Paciific isles on our way to Tokyo.  How did we end up fighting Hitler, many ask.  Well, if a country that you support is attacked, you're expected to aid your friend in its battle.  Germany was allied with Japan, so when Japan struck us, we declared war not just on Japan but essentially, her allies as well.  That meant Germany.  This is pretty basic history, though I leave out alot.

So we're fighting Hitler, we're fighting Hirohito.  When Russian beat back the Germans and the European war was basically over, we still had Japan to deal with.  It was 1944-1945.  Not many know that all the while we were experimenting with hydrogen atoms in "The Manhattan Project" and trying to perfect the first atomic bomb, Japan was doing the exact same thing.  Japanese scientists were also hard at work on atomic secrets, we just figured it out sooner.  If you're a boomer, you'll recognize the name Dr. Robert Oppenheimer as the "father of the A-bomb" a sobriquet he despised.  In fact, this great genius later in his life petitioned hard for nuclear weapons never to be assembled, never to be deployed.  He was jailed for a communist.  Anyway, as the war dragged on, he watched the first nuclear blast and whispered a quote from an ancient sanskrit text:

"NOW I AM BECOME DEATH, THE DESTROYER OF WORLDS."

Dr. Oppenheimer did not trust his genius, did not care for his invention, and knew we'd use it.  Herein lies the terrible crime we're still suffering for:

That atom bomb, called "Little Boy" was dropped on civilians.  Not soldiers, not military outposts, not munitions factories, but the Japanese civilians made mostly at the time of old people, women and babies.  The rest were at war.  We wanted it all to stop, and quickly.  After Truman announced what he'd authorized, well...who can forget the sight of those aerial photos taken of Hiroshima?  Nothing was left standing.  People were incinerated where they stood.  They were civilians.  Then we did it again.

At Nakasaki we repeated the carnage of boiling humans in an instant.  Those who were further out in the perimeter suffered all their lives, as did so many Americans.  The fateful decision to "drop the bomb" certainly brought the war in the Pacific to a halt, but will history ever explain the decision to bomb civilians?  Isn't that one of the first acts considered to be a crime during warfare? 

I ask you.