"Grandma, Why Did We Bomb Japan?"
When I was 10 years old, I asked my Grandmother that question.
Before I tell you her response, I thought of my Grandmother when reading Greg Mitchell's column at the Daily Beast America Killed 90,000 People for No Good Reason, and Then Just Forgot About It.
Instead of me answering Mitchell's stab at revisionist history, I will let her answer Greg Mitchell, who is looking at 1945 from a 2020 lens, not a 1945 lens.
"Listen Freddy, 100,000 Japanese citizens died when we bombed Japan with nuclear weapons, but you know how many Americans died in the bombing? Zero. If we didn't bomb Japan, a million Americans could have died in a Japanese Invasion. You know how many Japanese would have died in a Japanese Invasion? Probably two million.
If you don't believe me, look it up. People who didn't want to drop the nuclear weapons didn't live through the fatigue of World War II."
I looked it up. Technically it would have been over a million casualties for the Americans and an incalculable loss of life for the Japanese. But if you look at cold, hard numbers, 100,000 is less than 2 to 3 million.
America was either going to drop nuclear weapons on Japan or invade Japan. There was no magical third choice where no one died. There wasn't.
Editor's Note: You see how Sensationalized Headlines work?