Reporting the Official Position

Analysis:

This story was basically framed as a continuation of the official US government position, which basically says that the bombing of Hiroshima & 3 days later Nagasaki, were necessary to end the war and that it saved American lives. The main perspectives were that of 2 local WWII veterans, both of which state that the Hiroshima bombing was the right thing to do. The veterans also made claims about what was happening in the Pacific war at the time and that the Japanese Army “were the most barbaric fighters imaginable.”

The only other perspectives provided were that of 4 people who were randomly asked the question “Was it the right decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima?” This is a pretty meaningless exercise for the Press, since these people have no apparent knowledge or expertise about this important historical event, it was just a person on the street perspective. The great omission here however, is that no where do other facts appear about the first atomic bombing. For years much of the internal documentation about the Hiroshima bombing had been classified, but now is available for the public to read. The National Security Archives has recently posted much of this documentation online. In reading these documents it becomes clear that the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had more to do with sending a strong message to the Russians at the time and that Japan was on the verge of surrendering, thus few America soldiers would have lost their lives had the bomb not been used.

Story:

Local WWII vets back using atomic weapon
By Ted Roelofs
The Grand Rapids Press

Like a lot of guys on the USS Indianapolis, William Mulvey was curious about the big wooden crate they took on board in San Francisco. He shrugged it off as just another secret of war.

He learned later in a hospital on Guam he had helped deliver the bomb 60 years ago that exploded over Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945.

“I think it was a good thing to do,” the 87-year-old Wyoming resident said. “That’s what ended the war, the bomb.”
Cascade Township resident Bernard Link was stationed in Hawaii, preparing with other members of the 5th Marine Division to invade Japan. He figured there was a good chance he and thousands of grunts like him would die in the effort.

Then he heard about Hiroshima.

Link, 79, never questioned President Harry S. Truman’s decision to unleash that terrible weapon. “I think in the last analysis it was the most humane thing that he could have done,” Link said. “It spared tens of thousands of Japanese lives, and it spared tens of thousands of our lives.”

The bomb incinerated 4 square miles of Hiroshima and killed about 140,000 people instantly or within a few months. Including those initially listed as missing or who died afterward from a loosely defined set of bomb-related ailments, including cancers, Hiroshima officials now put the total number of the dead at 237,062.

The Japanese agreed to surrender Aug. 14, five days after a second bomb decimated Nagasaki. That bomb killed about 80,000 people. Officials now link 137,339 deaths to that attack.

The explosion over Hiroshima ignited a debate with us today about the ethics of war and the use of weapons so potent they could obliterate humanity. Was it a necessary evil to cut short a brutal war? Or did it open a door through which there is no going back?

Link believes that those who pass judgment on Hiroshima gloss over the realities of combat in the Pacific. He learned those lessons first-hand, when he was part of the U.S. invasion of Iwo Jima in February 1945.
Link was a 19-year-old private who came ashore with the first wave of Marines. On the third day, he took shrapnel to the face and jaw that barely missed his carotid artery.

In some of the most vicious fighting of World War II, American forces suffered 25,000 casualties on just 8 square miles of volcanic terrain, including 6,800 killed. Most of the 22,000 Japanese on the island fought to the death, many in night-time bayonet suicide attacks.

“They were the most barbaric fighters imaginable,” he said. “In my mind, they were so fanatical in their devotion to their emperor and their country, and they were absolutely fearless fighters.”

Link sometimes wonders which is worse — the death suffered by the Japanese on Iwo Jima, where soldiers dug into caves and tunnels were incinerated by napalm — or death by atomic bomb. “I have seen people who have been incinerated by napalm, and I would take death by atomic bomb any time,” he said.

In April, American forces reached Okinawa, the last island step before invading Japan. That battle cost 12,000 Americans killed and 36,000 wounded. The Japanese suffered 107,000 soldiers killed and an estimated 100,000 civilian deaths.

War planners used Okinawa as a model to project the number of American lives invasion might cost. Japanese troop strength on the southern island of Kyushu — a likely invasion target — was projected to be at least 350,000. Casualty estimates ranged as high as 220,000.

Truman got word the evening of July 16 the atomic bomb had been successfully tested at Alamogordo, N.M. He never hesitated in approving its use over Japan.

By then, Chief Master at Arms William Mulvey was on a speed run aboard the USS Indianapolis toward the Pacific island of Tinian, near Guam. On board the battle cruiser, inside a black canister and large wooden crate that was sealed and guarded 24 hours a day, lay the components for the bomb.

Mulvey watched as a crane unloaded the crate July 26 on Tinian, while a contingent of high-ranking officers stood by.
“This thing here seemed a little unusual,” Mulvey remembered thinking.

The cargo later would be transported to the airfield on Tinian and loaded onto a B-29 called the Enola Gay. A few days later, a Japanese submarine happened upon the Indianapolis as it steamed toward the Philippines. A pair of torpedoes slammed into the ship, splitting it in two. It slipped to the bottom a few minutes after midnight July 30.
Of 1,196 men aboard, nearly 300 died in the explosion or were trapped when the ship went down. About 900 escaped into the sea, including Mulvey. Four-and-a-half days later, rescuers plucked Mulvey and 320 others from the sea.

The rest had drowned, died of dehydration or were eaten by sharks.
Mulvey was transferred to a Marine hospital on the island of Peleliu, then transported to a hospital on Guam. He dimly recalls a priest administering last rites as he hovered near death.
As he regained strength on Guam, he finally learned about the bomb. He thought then what he thinks today: They did the right thing. “It’s war,” he said.