A-bombs saved U.S. lives

Bob Stilger’s Aug. 9 op-ed and Rusty Nelson’s Aug. 16 letter to the editor would have us believe that the dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese 70 years ago had nothing to do with ending World War II. This would come as a surprise to Lester Tenney, a prisoner of war who was being held 30 miles from Nagasaki when the bomb was dropped.

In an article in the Aug. 8 Wall Street Journal, he noted that his captors told him all POWs would be killed when the U.S. invasion began; that women and children were given sharpened sticks to fight with; that young men were trained for kamikaze missions on wooden gliders and small boats; and that Emperor Hirohito himself acknowledged the bombings were the only reason they surrendered.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur estimated an invasion of Japan could have led to up to 1 million U.S. casualties. Nelson states that we treated the Japanese “savagely.” He must have forgotten that the Japanese started the war by bombing Pearl Harbor, and their treatment of war captives was particularly brutal.

Using nuclear weapons against Japan, while horrible, saved hundreds of thousands of U.S. lives and ended the war. Let’s never forget that.

Hal Dixon

Spokane