Goodbye, Farewell and Amen
Update: 2020-07-30
44
44Description
How do we remember one of the deadliest nights in human history? We don't. Part four.
Get Revisionist History updates first by signing up for our newsletter at pushkin.fm.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
In Channel
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States00:00
00:00
x
There is a great deal of Revisionist History arising around the war in the Pacific as the veterans of that war die off. My father was in the Pacific on a carrier in that war. There was very little dissent of opinion among those who fought the Imperial army and navy as to the cost of an invasion of the homeland. This is a good episode, I enjoyed it and it is factual and interesting. My father bore no ill will toward the Japanese, in fact he told me that the average Japanese soldier was simply doing what he was doing because his country was at war. However, he was also aware of the fanaticism of the Japanese troops and civilians, as seen in their defense of islands leading to the home islands. Most didn't feel good about the firebombing or atomic bomb but there was also almost universal agreement that lives were saved because of them. Certainly American lives, and it was war we did not start or want, but Japan was saved the horrendous fate of Eastern Europe under the Soviet Union as well. Given my parents generation I grew up familiar with others of that Era too. Never, from veteran or people who waited on the homefront, did I hear second guessing of the means of war. I did hear empathy and sympathy for enemy dead; while also implicitly reminded that sympathy also was warranted by the Allied victims of the war. There was great cost to the winners too. Great cost from a war thrust on them by the initiators and ultimate losers of that war. Without the catalyst of war the men profiled in this episode would not have been tempted to create such weapons.
I've known at least 2 men who believed the bomb saved their lives. Because of it my grandfather never saw the Pacific. I might owe my existence to it.