Measure Truman’s Decision In Lives Saved
CORRECTION (August 8, 1995, page B4): This is Robert O. Johnson, 69, of Pullman, who wrote Saturday’s “Your Turn” column about his World War II experiences. The wrong photograph appeared with the column when it was published. (Correction included correct photo of Robert O. Johnson.)
I had turned 19 only two weeks before the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. I was on an ammunition ship in the Pacific. We had delivered our bombs and rockets to the Philippines and were on our way back for more.
When President Truman’s announcement came over the radio we were ecstatic. No more Americans would be killed. In my 19-year-old’s naivete I thought that the new bomb meant the end of war for all time.
Fifty years later I’m convinced that President Truman did the right thing. Nearly 400,000 Americans were killed in that war. How many more should we have lost?
Invasion of a southern Japanese island was being planned for November and invasion of the main island of Honshu for spring, 1946. The services were stockpiling pine coffins on nearby islands.
Troops and air crews who had fought the vicious and bitter war in Europe were being transferred to the Pacific for that invasion. Hadn’t they had enough?
My friend Randy, a nice, quiet kid, was about two years older than I. We played tennis together - badly - in high school, and I once dropped a water-filled balloon that narrowly missed him. As soon as he graduated, Randy joined the Air Corps. At 19 he was co-pilot of a B-24 flying over Europe. On one mission the pilot was killed in the seat next to him, so Randy had to get the plane back and land it. After they washed out the blood and whatever else, Randy was appointed pilot.
I ran into him in downtown Seattle a few weeks after the war, walking with his mother. I was shocked. Never before had I seen such hard eyes. My friend had been through hell. How many more of those kids should we have sacrificed?
War brutalizes. Randy’s eyes told me that. At the time, no Americans cared about Japanese dead. Nor did the Japanese care about our dead.
Should we have demonstrated the bomb instead? Suppose it didn’t work. We just had to get the war over, and the atom bombs did that.
Fifty years later, I think we should not celebrate victory over the Japanese. Average people like ourselves were locked into the same tragedy. Let’s just celebrate the end of the war. But let’s call it what it was called then, V-J Day. Leave the rewriting of history to others.
ILLUSTRATION: Photo