Russell Catania: We rebuilt Japan

We dropped millions of leaflets on Hiroshima, Nagasaki and over two dozen other targeted cities to urge all civilians to evacuate. If Japan had surrendered after Hiroshima, we wouldn’t have had to bomb Nagasaki three days later.

As unfortunate as it was, we saved years of more fighting, and many more lives on both sides would have been lost.

The writer also stated that at least Pearl Harbor was a military target; what he omits is that we were not at war with Japan at that time, and it was a sleepy Sunday morning when it attacked, killing over 2,000 people. Was the writer not taught about the Bataan Death March and all the other Japanese atrocities during the war?

It was indeed horrific that we used the atomic bomb twice, but not only should we not apologize for it, we should be thanked for helping the Japanese rebuild their country afterward. Consider that our apology.

This story was originally published August 10, 2015 at 4:33 PM with the headline "Russell Catania: We rebuilt Japan."