BARRY NOREEN: 63 years after fact, Hiroshima disputed

America, for better or worse, dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima 63 years ago today.

Coupled with another bomb three days later at Nagasaki, the bomb ended World War II. The debate over whether the bombs were necessary has raged ever since, but a majority seems to think it was the right thing to do.

"Yes, you betcha," said Bill Browning, a member of the Pikes Peak chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association. "I couldn't see losing another 100,000 men over there. Thank God Truman decided to do it."

Browning and other members of the group held their monthly meeting Tuesday; they were unanimous about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Without the atomic bomb, "We would have had to destroy the island of Japan," said Elmo Clark, another Pearl Harbor veteran.

You couldn't blame Pearl Harbor vets for wanting to get back at Japan, but none used revenge as a rationale for the bombings. They all said avoiding more American casualties was reason enough.

Others from the era, especially conservatives, criticized the bombings, which resulted in the deaths of more than 200,000 people, mostly civilians. Former President Dwight Eisenhower said "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

Other critics have included Time Magazine owner Henry Luce, columnist William F. Buckley, and former Gen. Douglas MacArthur. In recent years conservatives have changed their tune and are nearly unanimous in their defense of dropping the bombs.

Earl Lash, a Navy veteran from the Pacific theater, said the bombs "killed so many civilians, I think it was wrong." Lash, 83, and a member of Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, admitted that as a youngster when he first heard the news of the bomb, "I was tickled to death."

He said he had a change of heart about 10 years later when he read a piece in the Kansas City Star, which said a naval blockade of Japan would have resulted in a surrender.

Pete Haney, another member of the Justice and Peace group, said: "My general sense is that it's a great crime that the United States has never owned up to. We have created this myth that dropping the bomb saved a lot of lives."

Some may question what good it does to rehash the bombing decision, but being aware of history helps guide our future. President Harry Truman, who made the bombing decision, once said that "The only thing new is the history we haven't read."

Right or wrong, the nuclear age began Aug. 6, 1945. We let the genie out of the bottle, and we've been struggling to control it ever since.

By now, other nations would have figured out how to build nuclear weapons even if we had not used them. The world is a much more dangerous place.

"I don't think they should allow any more people to have them," Browning said. "It's not a matter of fairness. They're prone to fanaticism."

Ours is the only nation that ever used nuclear weapons, a fact thrown in our faces when we try to stop nuclear proliferation or campaign against human rights violations. We're all concerned that more nations will acquire nuclear weapons.

Maybe it's not as important to condemn or defend the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as it is to recognize that we need to be more reluctant about killing innocents - whether nuclear weapons are used or not.

Sixty-three years after we unleashed the tempest we can lead the world in making sure it never happens again.

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Contact noreen at 636-0363 or noreen@gazette.com. He appears every other Friday on KOAA's Comcast Channel 9 at 4 p.m.