Since the 1960’s, historians and social critics with political agendas have highjacked the story about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They told the nation the bombings were unnecessary, and were done merely to satisfy the blood lust of our military.
When others said the bombings were necessary, these revisionists shouted down their critics as moral monsters. They wanted our nation to be ashamed of the bombings. They have succeeded beyond their wildest expectations.
These experts claim, without much proof at all, that Japan, by the summer of 1945, was on the verge of surrendering. They also claim, without proof, that United State intelligence officers knew Japan was close to collapse and suppressed these “facts” so the military could justify using their new weapon.
The news media has blindly followed right along, never raising counter arguments. The media feared the moral condemnation of the revisionists.
The claims of the revisionists were totally destroyed in Richard Frank’s superb 1999 book on the fall of Japan titled, Downfall. Yet, with Frank’s work setting the record straight, our nation still embraces a culture of shame towards the bombings.
Shame is a very powerful and a very corrosive emotion. It destroys self-esteem. It emotionally freezes up the victim. Healing is yearned for, but impossible.
Healing is impossible because the lifeblood of shame is silence. It is the horror that cannot be discussed. Historians have hoisted this culture of shame upon us, have forced upon us a politically correct silence which has had horrible unintended consequences.
Because of this shame, because of this silence, the amazing stories of the 150,000 domestic soldiers who worked on the Manhattan Project have been thrown onto the trash heap of history. This is wrong. This gross mistake of history must be fixed.
This does not mean we should be proud. I would not want to live in a country where August 6th and 9th. were national holidays There must be a middle way between shame and pride.
I live in Oak Ridge. A few facts from that story which revisionists are determined to keep hidden from the American public.
In 1942 the government condemned thousands of acres of farmland in east Tennessee. In the blink of an eye, hundreds of family farms disappeared. In less than two years, 40,000 construction workers built the 5th largest city in Tennessee. At 93 square miles, the town of 75,000 was larger than Baltimore. The secret colony would not appear on any map until years after the war.
The scale of the effort reads like science fiction. Enriching uranium demanded massive amounts of electricity. Huge electric plants were build overnight and TVA supplied even more power. Oak Ridge consumed ten per cent of the nation’s electrical supply during the war.
K-25, the largest of the enrichment plants, covered 44 acres. For a brief time, it was the largest building in the world, but then the Pentagon was completed.
Fearing a nuclear accident would be catastrophic, workers lived many miles from the plants. The sixth largest bus system in the country was built to ferry workers back and forth in the colony that did not exist.
The average age of the workers was 27. Most of them were women and most were single. Into the electric atmosphere of speed, scale, great fear and isolation, you can throw in a healthy dose of hormones too. The workers will tell you it was the most exciting time of their lives.
The workers will also tell it was the scariest of times. The loss of American life during the war would equal a 9/11 attack every five days for three and a half years. Every second counted. They did their jobs. They ended the deadliest conflict known to mankind in eight days.
The historians who peddle their propaganda of shame want us to look at only one side of the story: the lives we destroyed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki . If we do as they insist, then these workers are war criminals.
It will destroy the reputations of the revisionists, but we must look at both the lives which were destroyed and the lives which were saved. This is the middle ground our nation needs. This is called balance.
Conservative estimates by the Department of War projected that these domestic workers saved the lives of 400,000 American soldiers who would have died in an invasion of Japan. This is equal to everyone living in the city limits of Atlanta. They saved the lives of five million Japanese. These Japanese and American lives surpass everyone in the Atlanta metroplex.
Why in the world have we shunned these workers as war criminals? We must undo 40 years of politically correct poppycock. These workers are heroes.
