Pay back is a bear

Today is August 6th 2005. I know that I am being about as politically incorrect as one person can be with what I'm about to say but I have come to the point in life that I really don't care if what I believe to be fact offends a few people.

I have come to believe that August 6th should be marked on the calendar as PBAB Day. Also know as “Pay Backs A Bear Day” although some would choose a different word for bear. You see it was sixty years ago today that a lone B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, flew over the city of Hiroshima dropping a single bomb that changed the course of history and the world.

While only in a symbolic way it also became the answer to a challenge issued just four years earlier on December 7th 1941 at Pearl Harbor Hawaii. It was to be almost a decade before I would be born here in the United States but much like September 11th 2001 both of those dates are ingrained in my thoughts and memories.

I will never forget the first time I saw motion pictures and still photographs of the aftermath at Hiroshima. Death and destruction so horrible that it seemed almost unthinkable that one human being could inflict it upon another. As a child I wondered how even in war that such a weapon could have been unleashed.

Growing up in this country I was taught and the general perception was that the bombings at Hiroshima and six days latter at Nagasaki had been necessary to end the war. There were even then a number of people who thought else wise and those that thought using the bomb was a mistake have become more firm in that judgment as the years pass and I will not say that their arguments are completely without merit.

I will tell you though that after reading much material and talking with a number of people far more learned than myself I have come to some conclusions. One is that had that terrible event not taken place there is a very good chance that I would not be sitting here typing on this keyboard. You see, my father was one of the men in the South Pacific in August of 1945. From his location at the time it is almost certain that he would have been involved in the initial invasion of the mainland of Japan had that occurred. The losses at Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have paled in comparison to the number of American and Japanese lives lost by such a confrontation. Despite what anyone may say to the contrary.

I can't begin to imagine the weight that must have been placed on President Truman in making this decision. I also believe that despite all the arguments put fourth since that fateful day his decision was the correct one. You see, war is a terrible thing that should not be entered into lightly. Something that I don't think this generation had come to grips with just yet since the attack of September 11th 2001. War carries with it horrendous price in terms of loss of human life and destruction. War should be avoided whenever possible of that there is no doubt. However, when one group or county wages war on another there can be only one answer to that action. If nations and individuals wish to continue their way of life they have to make the attackers aware in clear uncertain terms that pay back is a bear.