Comments on The Thomas Sowell Reader, pages 60-61, Anti-American Americans.
Some of the most complicated and difficult things to ponder, outside the topic of religion, are alternate choices in history. Some Americans say we should not have bombed Japan in World War II but are they considering the alternatives. If atomic bombs Little Boy and Fat Man were not used to defeat and bring Japan to a complete surrender, would the alternate war endings be any better than the real one? If an invasion was attempted, American and British troops would have met harsh opposition on the landing beaches and in civilian homes. Besides having military troops, the Japanese were training and propagating civilians, children included, to die defending their homeland. Even if by some miracle the Allies losses were not astronomical, Japan would still have suffered great casualties from combat and suicide. As it was, 90,000–166,000 Japanese were killed in Hiroshima [1] and 60,000–80,000 were killed in Nagasaki [1] while the Allies suffered zero casualties.
We can theorize and calculate statistics of the ‘what if’ scenarios
but we can never know what things would be like if the atomic bombs had never
been dropped.
[1] "Frequently Asked Questions
#1". Radiation
Effects Research Foundation. Archived
from the original on 19 September 2007. Retrieved 18 September 2007.
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