1 I wonder if those Marines had umbrellas.

2 Stories like this often put my mind to wandering into alternative history.  For example, it would be a simple thing now for a ground-penetrating JDAM to reduce the Japanese defense to dust, with no American lives lost. 

3 And today is Armed Forces Day.  Thank a Vet if you see one.

4 Pep, technology sure has saved a lot of lives.

5 Pep, technology sure has saved a lot of lives. Posted by: CSMBigBird at May 18, 2013 09:44 AM (69tAj) So has the threat of MAD, Mutually Assured Distruction.

6 So has the threat of MAD, Mutually Assured Distruction.

Posted by: Oldsailors Poet Palin/Bolton 2016 at May 18, 2013 09:45 AM (XIxXP)

Good thing we're Barky is reducing OUR nuclear arsenal unilaterally!

7 OSP, you're right. I grew up under MAD.

8 Thanks Dave in Texas.  Your military posts always make me stop and reflect on the sheer human price paid by previous generations in defense of freedom. We stand in the shadow of giants.

9 "There is an elderly gentleman I know here in my town in central Texas. I've known him and we've been friends for 22 years. He was in this fight when he was 19 years old.

 

Every time I shake his hand I appreciate his service. But we don't say anything about it. Unspoken respect."

 

Dude - grab a tape recorder and go sit down and talk with him for a couple of weeks.

 

Then write a novella or a full-blown novel about it.

 

Shit like this needs to be recorded for posterity.

 

10 Thanks Dave in Texas. Your military posts always make me stop and reflect on the sheer human price paid by previous generations in defense of freedom. We stand in the shadow of giants. Posted by: Seamus Muldoon at May 18, 2013 09:47 AM (pxDth) ^^^^ This And everyday we lose more of these uncommon common folk.

11 I sit here humbled yet proud that America has men like the old timer in central Tx and his band of brothers that kept at it from the 2nd day on. God Bless America.

12 I visited Kakazu Ridge as a kid in '63 or '64....Sugar Loaf was a little to the SW......part of the Machinato-Shuri defensive lines. Not much was growing there nearly 20 yrs. after the battle. Japenese skeletons still lay in some pill-boxes. Pretty somber place...even for a kid.

13 Both my parents were vets of the Pacific. My mother was one of the first WAC's She drove an ambulance. Her older sister was a nurse.

14 BTW, apropos of my earlier comment, it now appears that the Israelis didn't even penetrate Syrian airspace in taking out that missile shipment at Damascus Intl. Airport.  They "lofted", which basically means accelerated into a climb, thus giving the (presumably guided) bombs enough range to drop onto the target.  Go Team Israel!

15 I shudder to think of this passing generation, after their heroic deeds and sacrifice, what they must think as they look at The One and his followers... to suffer, to be wounded, to see friends blown to bits... so that decades later, a clown like The One and all the rest are in DC? Jesus wept.

16 Thank you for posting this - so much thought & emotion this inspired, words fail me.

17

My father was a Motor Machinst Mate (Engineman) on a Navy AOG (Gasoline Tanker) during the Okinawa Campaign. His ship, like a lot of others, went through quite a few air attacks by the Japanese. After the campaign the allies were gearing up for the invasion of Japan scheduled for that November. His ship began training to be a "tank farm" on one of the invasion beaches. They were to deliberately beach the ship and provide the tanks with gasoline. When the crew found this out he told me they all considered themselves dead men.

 

I have never regretted nor felt sorry the A-bombs ended that war.

18 Dave in Texas,

nothing like it and I suspect we could not do the same miracle war effort again if we had to.

19 >> Dude - grab a tape recorder and go sit down and talk with him for a couple of weeks. I have a video that I will share one day. But not now. He is a kind and gentle soul. A good man who went through hell for 3 years.

20 Shit like this needs to be recorded for posterity.

Posted by: Huma Abedin at May 18, 2013 09:49 AM (dScAL)

My Dad was a WW II Pacific vet (USN volunteer).  How I wish I had had a tape recorder present on those few times he talked about what he had seen there.

21 "Thanks Dave in Texas. Your military posts always make me stop and reflect on the sheer human price paid by previous generations in defense of freedom. We stand in the shadow of giants." -Seamus Muldoon Ah! That's what I found inexpressible. Thanks & well said, Seamus.

22 We turned Imperial Japan into Hello Kitty Japan.

23 Except for the  fact  that Marines don't need umbrellas,  you know who *should* have been holding the umbrella for who(m).

24 Thank you, brave soldiers

25 Rather belatedly, I've gotten around to reading The Greatest Generation. There is no news in it for me, but the individual stories speak volumes about the differences between the millennials and their grandparents/great grandparents.

I was struck by one anecdote that Brokaw tells regarding a fellow named Gordon Larsen. One morning, after Halloween, Larsen stopped in at the Post Office where Brokaw's mother worked. He grumbled a little bit about the rowdiness of the high school teenagers the night before. Brokaw's mother, appealing to his sense of humor, says, "Oh Gordon, what were you  doing when you were seventeen?"
He looked at her for a moment and said, "I was landing on Guadalcanal." Then he turned and left.

26 Posted by: Count de Monet at May 18, 2013 10:02 AM (BAS5M)

One of them is not qualified to shine the shoes of the other!

27 My grandfather was a POW in Japan. My mom didn't meet him until she was five. I was too young when he died to really appreciate what that meant. God bless these men and women. Thanks Dave in Texas for these reminders.

28
    Still a tremendous honor to have worn that uniform in the company of such men.

    Now, seeing the young men and women serving, it humbles me.

29 Uncle Ed had marched across Europe, and was poised for the invasion of Japan in the summer of '45. He wrote it up in a private book. When I was young, I never realized my cousins owed their very existence to The Bomb. And Uncle Ed is still around to enjoy his great- great-grandchildren.

30 Now, seeing the young men and women serving, it humbles me.

Posted by: irongrampa at May 18, 2013 10:07 AM (SAMxH)

When I see them, I think there are still those that understand honor in this country.  I just wish they had a CiC worthy of them!

31 You know that Star Trek episode where they fight war with computers and they pick random people for death to meet the battle casualties?

That's more civilized. At least that way the mincing libs had just as much a chance of being chosen than the alphas like we do now.

I just can't shake the notion that so many of our nanny-state policies of today are a direct result of so many real men--independent, self-sufficient--who were fed into a meat-grinder to save nations that couldn't care less today and for a nation that now run by those types that despise, envy and hate them; a power vacuum filled by cowards and weaklings.

32 This battle is why HST dropped the bomb.

33 God bless your friend, Dave, and all his fellow Marines past and present.

34 There's a fellow I know who fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

Spent his 19th birthday in a foxhole in Luxemburg.

There's either 2 or 3 all that's now left of his unit.

35 My Dad was there. I think that's where he took a piss that washed the cover off of a Japanese booby-trap. There or on the Philippines.

36 32 This battle is why HST dropped the bomb.

eh - HST was going to drop the bomb anyway, because he had two new shiny things that cost a shitload of money and he was determined to use them.

37 eh - HST was going to drop the bomb anyway, because he had two new shiny things that cost a shitload of money and he was determined to use them.

Fine by me.

38

One day, my paternal grandmother gave me a box with patches that had AA in a circle embroidered on them. There were a couple of pin-on badges that had a blue background with a long, frontier-days looking rifle on it and the badges had a wreath around them. There some other patches in that box and all my grandma told me was, "you like to play Army so much, take this, it belonged to my brother." No explanation. Being 9 yrs old, I totally didn't know what this stuff meant. Come to find out it was my uncle's uniform items when he was with the mighty 82nd Airborne Div in WWII and those were his Combat Infantry Badges. I also didn't appreciate the Airborne wings with a gold star in the middle. By the time I learned about and could properly appreciate the meaning of those items, I'd lost them due to carelessness as kid. I was so pissed. Oh well.

39 http://tinyurl.com/aefsyyq

Here's the guy I was talking about, that fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

40 Fine by me.

Posted by: pep at May 18, 2013 10:22 AM (6TB1Z)

Fine by me too, I'm just saying that attributing the decision to nuke Japan to a single battle is probably overstating it.

41 Posted by: pep at May 18, 2013 10:22 AM (6TB1Z)


Yeah, works for me too!

42

"When the crew found this out he told me they all considered themselves dead men." 

 

"When the crew found this out he told me they all considered themselves dead men." 

That's the attitude many if not most of our gyrenes, straight legs, squids, and zoomies had to cultivate just to survive the psychological pressure of being in combat endlessly.

 

 

"When I was young, I never realized my cousins owed their very existence to The Bomb."

My Dad washed out of Air Force flight school in '56 and went on to a long career that included Titan II and Minuteman III silo jock, C-130 Maintenance Squadron commander in the PI, and a bunch of desk jobs before he retired with 22 in.  That flight school washout is why I am alive, as I am a Cuban Missile Crisis baby.  The old man popped up out of the hole for a 24 hour break in October 1962, visited my Mom, and then went back for another 72 hour duty tour.  June '63 I show up.  Dad's told me more than once that had he earned his wings there was no doubt he'd have died in Vietnam like most of his classmates in flight school.

 

43 I'm just saying that attributing the decision to nuke Japan to a single battle is probably overstating it.

Well, you're probably partly right.  I suspect it also had something to do with Truman's real life experiences in WWI. 

44 I have been looking at a website called Generations Lest We Forget which has interviews with veterans of WWII, Korea and Viet Nam and also just people remembering the '20s, '30s and so on.  Pretty good stuff.

45 Generations Lest We Forget link.

46 Dammit.

http://www.generationslestweforget.com/

47 one of the most frightening videos ive ever seen was a short near unknown PBS special on ww2...hell i even forget the name of it.

PBS had secured the rights to show previously unreleased footage of the pacific campaign combat reporters' time with the marines. alot of it is still held onto tightly by the govt.

holy shit.

its the only phrase i can think of when watching it or remembering it.  before the cameraman himself was killed, you saw a line of marines shouting orders and clearing what seemed an ENTIRE line of japs. the action was close enough that my jaw dropped. no hollywood movie can really capture it. and i could never look at another war film the same way.
to put it somewhat mildly...

the marines are fucking scary in combat. NO WAY id wanna go up against those guys.

48 After all of the years of sacrifice so many Americans made for our country it truly disgusts to see what it's turned into and how many Americans are utterly ignorant of that sacrifice. I salute all those who made those sacrifices and condemn all the leftist scum and ignorami who have wrought so much destruction on America.

49

Great post, thanks, Dave.

 

Anyone read the book and have any comments or mini-review of it?

50 ~1770 KIA from hostile action in A-stan...over 10+ year period.

We've forgotten how costly war CAN be.

51 Posted by: southern by the grace of I-95 at May 18, 2013 10:28 AM (DnIpv)

Damn, I'd like to see that.

52 new one

53

After my father died I was going through his stuff, and found a small container with granular stuff in it that looks like demarara (semi-processed) sugar. Puzzled, I turned it over. An old faded label on it said

"Iwo Jima. Beach Yellow 2. 19 Feb. 45. 2nd Bn., 24th Marines"

 

My father, his company's first seargeant, won a battlefield commission on Iwo Jima. Shortly before he died we were going through old photos, one of which had about 40 guys sitting on bleachers. I asked my father if they were a football team.

He said, "No. They're the survivors of B company after Iwo Jima."

 

"How many guys were in the company originally?"

 

"240."

54 Dropping the bombs drove Truman nuts; totally changed him as a man. I don't know if any fellow morons get the obscure monthly Military Magazine, but it had an endless series on the USAF in Korea. Truman ordered that all strategic targets in the North to be bombed with leaflets at least 24 hours before they were bombed with bombs. He was highly anguished from the loss of civilian life from the two Japanese nukes and didn't want any "innocent workers" unnecessarily killed by the bombings. In the meanwhile, the NORKS were all too happy to use the advance warning to evacuate materiel and sandbag equipment -- generally harden the targets. I think Truman set the stage for how LBJ was gonna fight Vietnam.

55 There is footage of the aftermath of Tarawa showing about ninety bodies of Marines washing in and out of the surf amongst debri, in about 25 yards of beach width.  They got slaughtered when they hit the beach and the men just kept pushing through it.

56 Kinda puts that "Coexist" shit in perspective, doesn't it?

57 "How many guys were in the company originally?"

"240." Posted by: Jay Guevara
--------------------------------------

It leaves one at a loss for meaningful words. It seems foolish for me to say it, but I am proud of your dad.

58 When I was young, I never realized my cousins owed their very existence to The Bomb.

There's a lot of us who do.

My grandfather refused to tell any combat stories to women, so I've only got funny mess hall/KP/radio school stories, and the story of coming home: boats loaded with three times as many guys as usual because no one wanted to wait around a day longer for a less uncomfortable trip, overeating at the mess hall in Hawaii after months of sea rations, landing in SF and going out for Chinese food, getting officially discharged in Indiana on Christmas Eve, getting the last bus to Ohio before they shut service down for a blizzard, and finally walking the last seven miles from the bus stop to his in-laws' farm (in the blizzard), where my grandmother and the daughter he had never met were living for the duration.  Better when he used to tell it, obviously.

59 Dave, etc.
We have those people running around in our midst, young and old..And the thing is, you never know where they are.
I was returning some crappy headphones to best buy, and the young man helping me had some interesting tats.  I said something like "roger that" and he snapped up and said "where'd you serve".  I told him a bit.
This former Marine had been in A-stan twice, got hit with two IEDs, and has a Purple Heart and a job at Best Buy to show for it.  (although Im always cautious taking those things at face value)


That's one of the reasons I did write my book, A Flowershop in Baghdad.  Here's a paragraph from page 2 *hand typing because he knows the world will end if he cuts/pastes*
 "The differences are stark.  One group runs to the sound of guns so that the other can roll over and snuggle in their blankets.  Many, especially in this day and age of chosen service, view the military as a place to go when everything is falling apart.  Or, as some have said, if you don't do well in some sort of educational pursuit, you'll get 'stuck in Iraq'.  I'd like you to consider a different view - a view that entertains the idea that the ones who have chosen this type of service are the best this society has to offer.  They may not be the smartest, best looking, richest, or best connected, but you would be surprised by the silent quality of these people. "  

Even this little twit from Kirkus Reviews got that right: "Banzet's wit is a WMD itself....America's armed forces-even the grunts; especially the grunts-feature some of the best souls the country has to offer, Banzet declares."

Go read the reviews on Amazon.  Then go shake the hand on a young/old vet.
Or punch a hipster.
No reason why you cant do both, I suppose.  Good post Drew.

60 53 Gosh, that little post made me cry. A generation of stoic heroes , almost all gone now.

61 I went through Luling yesterday and they were set up on the roadside with US flags, large and small. Old folks and little kids sharing a moment of pride in small town Texas USA. I felt like I was driving through a time warp.

62 By that time it was painfully clear to the Japanese that they couldn't hold any territory the US wanted to take. They saw their best chance in the war as making it too expensive for the US to finish them off. So they set up Okinawa as a clever trap. 1. Don't oppose the landing. Let the troops get ashore where they will require support from the navy. 2. Hold the south part of the island with an insanely built up series of defenses. (Sugar loaf hill was a key point of one of the defensive lines - why the Japanese fought so hard to keep it) 3. With the Navy locked in place (gotta provide air support - gotta keep the ammo supplied) around Okinawa, kamikaze the crap out of it. Rather effective. The US averaged losing 1 warship a day during the battle - one seventh of all USN casualties in WW2 were during the battle of Okinawa. And now the trap has sprung. The ground forces can take the strong defensive lines slowly and relatively safely with their overwhelming firepower. BUT if they're slow then the Navy has to spend more time around Okinawa and suffer the kamikaze losses. So the ground forces are pressured to take the defensive lines quickly. That means you assault them BEFORE artillery blows up the guns. And you get the massive casualties the Marines suffered. So the trap worked in that it forced massive casualties. Did NOT work for the war as the the US upped it's estimates of how costly the invasion of Japan would be and using atomic bombs was the alternative.

63 @40

Not a single battle, but the latest in a bloodletting.  Enough's enough, HST thought.  The alternative to the bomb was a main island invasion. 1 million casualties was the conservative estimate.  The A bombs were cheap to build.  That cost was neglibile, and had nothing to do with HST's decision.  The idea of Marines and soldiers dying while trying to take the Japanese mainland drove HST's very good decision.

64

Semper Fi, Uncle Rick.  You made it off that sonofabitch, Jarhead.

 

....'cuz Chesty never quit.

65 The idea of Marines and soldiers dying while trying to take the Japanese mainland drove HST's very good decision.

Posted by: occam's brassiere at May 18, 2013 11:47 AM (GO77G)

 

What the progtards never mention are the multiple millions of JN causualties that were avoided by not invading.  Trust me.  There are still a great many JNs who are grateful for that.  Very good people.

 

I would posit that:  Using the bomb to end the war also avoided it's use later on and perhaps a shooting war with Russia.  You can test something continuously, but until you have an actual example, people are far less concerned about the ramifications of it's real-world use.

66 This is why my WW2 Navy shop teacher ( wood shop 1981/82) told our class the pacific vets where glad ( Hell, they knew the invasion was off and they would live to see their families) Truman dropped the Bomb . The school children of the 70's and early 80's where the last generation to learn this history from the eyewitness .

67 Go read the reviews on Amazon. Then go shake the hand on a young/old vet.
Or punch a hipster.
No reason why you cant do both, I suppose. Good post Drew.

Posted by: MikeB at May 18, 2013 11:06 AM (8Ik17)

I am going to buy this book. The combat colored M&M story had me laughing my frigging ass off. OMG that was funny.

68

 

that big radio on the marines back made him one big target

69

Quick comment.  In 2006 my now-wife and I spent a week in Okinawa.  Did the battlefield tour.  On our own, we went to Sugar Loaf.  Small hill.  On the top there are some photos under glass (like at Gettysburg) showing the scene above and a few others, as they looked in April/May 1945.

 

Today, at the foot of the hill looking north, is a giant, posh, DFS (duty free) mall.  The incongruity, and the implicit lessons, are wonderful. 

 

Not that much development on Okinawa, but the sub-tropical climate has reclaimed most battle scenes as they appear in photos from the time. 

 

Our guide (who was the guide on a History Channel "Underground Worlds" episode) took us to some nice places, including the (now-surrounded by vegetarion) shisa statue (Okinawa's lion-god protector who usually sits atop houses) from the famous battle photo with US troops looking into the distance (probably at the large cave complex nearby which housed, I think I recall a Japanese field "hospital" among other things).

 

Anyway, thanks for these posts.  Us WWII addicts can never get enough.

 

And the comments here about WWII vets (and those from more recent or current dust-ups) fill me with the pride, fascination, and shocked disgust at today's America that are, increasingly, the contradictory emotions dominating my thoughts at our current disgrace.

 

70

Posted by: 98ZJUSMC Waiting for the Sun at May 18, 2013 12:10 PM (h0Dpu)

 

Amazingly, the Japanese now like the USA as a country *better* than our own citizens do.  

71 Dave in Texas---Thank this man for what he did and the many sacrifices he made.

My dad was an amphib driver over there, with a Canadian Ronson flamethrower.  1st MarDiv. They went up Dakeshi and other places  on the way to Shuri.  It was a killing field sh*thole.

He had been through Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, and Okinawa.  Lots of close calls but the one he and his buddy Smitty thought that they were sure to die was at the end of a day.  An officer told them to go to the following coordinates and gather with others for the night.  They did, secured the amphib, nobody else around, and it got dark.  Then after it got dark, they started getting artillery shells, big uns, all night.  They got literally thrown through the air.  They prayed, they thought small, but despite everything they survived with everything still attached, except some wailed on eardrums.

Next day, they checked out their amphib--no enemy, no booby traps, so they got out of there.  Shortly thereafter they found another platoon nearby.  They told the officer there what happened, and he grew extremely pale.  He said, "The other guy gave you the wrong coordinates.  The navy shells that area every night to keep the Japs away."

72 I always thank vets for their service, especially WW2 vets. I apologize to those ones as well, for letting our country get so screwed-up. When a vet says 'Thank you, it means a lot to me', my wife will later ask me why I didn't tell them about my service. I say 'no comparison'. Baby boomers, we're America's 'lamest generation'. Better than hippies, though.
EROWMER
CPO, USN ret.

73 Great post. I think i will start re-reading Eugene Sledge's excellent riveting WW2 Marine memoir "With the Old Breed" again tonight.

fwiw, Sledge's Kilo 3/5 mortar section buddy R.V. Burgin (Bronze star, Purple Heart) is still alive and lives in Texas...Lancaster i think.

I'm also just now reading volume 1 of Bruce Catton's epic trilogy of the Army of the Potomac titled "Mr. Lincoln's Army." The final few chapters of this book is Catton's unique and incomparable take on the Battle of Antietam/Sharpsburg.

By way of comparison...and w/o taking one thing away from the gallant Marines on Okinawa (or anywhere else) to whom this country owes a debt of gratitude that can never be fully repaid...approx 2,100 Federals and approx 1,500 Confederates died in a single day of fighting Sept 17, 1862 at Antietam.

Approx 16,000 more men on both sides were wounded, & many of those men soon died as a result of wounds received on that fateful day.

Today is Armed Forces Day. Don't forget.

74 Best infantry pacific war memoir I've read (and I've read a few) is Manchester's "Goodbye Darkness". There's a "twist" at the end but that doesn't detract from the book at all. The Okinawa section of Sledge's book is amazing.

75 Go and get "With The Old Breed" by E. B. Sledge. Right now. The most harrowing war narrative I've ever read.

76

9. "Dude - grab a tape recorder and go sit down and talk with him for a couple of weeks."

One of the great regrets I have is that I had an uncle who flew 27 B-17 missions over Western Europe. I always wanted to sit down with him with a couple of good bottles of fine wine and get him to talk about his experiences. He's gone now, so I will never have that opportunity.

 

BTW, I recently found out he had received a DFC in the war.

 

 

77

"By the summer of 1944 the Japanese high command concluded that, while they could not win the war outright, they could force America into a negotiated peace. They were confident the American public would not tolerate a long war with growing casualties in the Pacific.  So they ordered attrition warfare: fighting that would slow the Americans down and inflict maximum casualties."

-James Bradley

“Flags of Our Fathers”

78 "By the time the area was considered secure, 1,656 Marines would be dead and another 7,429 wounded."

That would never go over with the public nowadays. One thousand lost in one battle and many of our countrymen would be shrieking that we already lost.

79 "He's gone now, so I will never have that opportunity."

I just recently found out that a shop teacher I had in junior high school was a pilot/co-pilot of a WW2 B-17 bomber crew that was hit by flak over France on his thirteenth mission and he and his fellow crew had to bail out. He managed to avoid being captured and crossed the Pyrenees and eventually made it back to the UK. He only recently passed away in November of last year.

80 I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this, but William Manchester was a survivor of the battle, and it is covered in depth in his memoir "Goodbye, Darkness." The book is on the USMC reading list, and is well worth anyone's time.

81 49 Great post, thanks, Dave.

Anyone read the book and have any comments or mini-review of it?

-------

Yes.  After reading Manchester's memoir I got this one from Amazon.

It's excellent.  The research is excruciatingly detailed, practically a yard by yard account. 

Looked up Sugar Loaf on Google Streets.   Sugar Loaf is now under what looks like a municipal water tank.  It is about 200 yards south of a McDonalds so, it turns out, the US Marines really did conquer and permanently occupy them.

82

Lothar, I recall the water tank on Sugar Loaf.  We walked up a ramp/walkway with handrails.  There was the tank and the water infrastructure, and a big boulder or two with the photos under glass.  Reminded me a lot of Little Round Top at Gettysburg (or Big Round Top?), where similar photos-under-glass-on-boulders were so helpful and amazing.

 

Need to get that book.  History (esp. WWII) reading has been a big part of my escape the last few years, as I can barely stand to read "news".  This, after being in the news business or working directly on public matters very much in the news most of my life.  But we all know what I'm talking about, I suppose.

 

83 RIP and Semper Fi, Uncle Jack.  He was a tough Boston kid who lied about his age to get in the Marines, survived Pelileu and Okinawa.  He never talked about it and went on to have a long career with IBM and a great family. 

They didn't burn their draft cards, or run to Canada.  What happened?

There are alternate views about the atom bombing of Hiroshima.  I'll take it from my mother-in-law, Japanese, and a survivor of that bombing.  "At least the war was ended."  RIP, kind and gracious lady.  

84 May God bless the United States Marine Corps, and every poor sorry SOM Marine that offered his life on behalf of our freedom. Hi MarkD, Lots of peacenics & anti-nuc loons say horrible things about Truman's decision to nuc two medium sized Japanese cities. For the record, he warned them in advance, and didn't drop the second until it was obvious there was not an immediate complete surrender. > Nagasaki is on the war criminals that were running their military dictatorship, and the crummy weal Emperor. Hope they are rotting in Hell. . . . maybe 100,000 - 125,000 per city, nearly all innocent civilians died (and yeah, many badly). Not often mentioned are the lifes saved, and devastation avoided. Projection for American *dead* (not just casualties) were running around 1/2 million at the time. Lord only knows how many additional Japanese would have been sacrificed if an invasion had to made; few young people recall or know of the sentiment of Americal Leadership of the time; we were *never* going to accept anything less than an unconstional surrender. Very Respectfully,