Writings - A-bomb Anniversary
Debate still simmers about the need to drop the bomb
Some local veterans say it saved lives; others say it was used on the wrong targets or dropped too soon
Sunday, August 6, 1995
TRAVERSE CITY - Fifty years after the Enola Gay dropped its devastating payload over Hiroshima, debate continues over the wisdom of dropping the bomb.
Even some soldiers who fought the war that culminated in atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki are divided over their use. While most argue that the bombings were necessary to shock Japan into surrendering, some believe the Japanese government already was willing to end the war, or could have been forced to surrender without resorting to atomic weapons.
Retired Army Colonel Bart Collings, who now lives in Cedar, has no doubt that the bombing forced Japan to capitulate and saved the lives of more than a million American troops. He was stationed at Fort Lawton in Washington State with 20,000 soldiers under his command at the time.
"I was on my way to be part of that million and a half of Americans who were going to invade Japan," Collings said. "The bombing couldn't have been better timed as far as I was concerned. It's too darned bad that we didn't have that capability when we were doing all the fighting in Europe. We could have stopped all that, too."
While the earlier firebombing of Tokyo produced similar damage and casualties as the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Collings argued that the atom bomb made a stronger psychological impact.
"It was one fell swoop, bang, one bomb dropped," he said. "And when you can destroy 160,000 people with one bomb, that is a shocker."
Empire resident Alice Diggins was a nurse stationed on Tinian, the island 1,400 miles south of Japan that was used to launch a series of devastating firebombing raids on Japan as well as the atomic-bomb-bearing Enola Gay. After Japan's surrender, Diggins went to Tokyo with the U.S. occupation force, where some Japanese military personnel still refused to give up the fight.
Given their resistance, she believes the atomic bombings prevented a costly invasion.
"I think we probably some lives; quite a few," she said.
Bob Miller of Traverse, now a member of Veterans for Peace, believes the bombs were used too soon.
As an intelligence clerk at Pearl Harbor, Miller said he saw proof of Japan's willingness to surrender before August 6. Miller's work involved processing decoded Japanese messages and sending them to Washington. Several messages in the weeks before the bombings suggested that Emperor Hirohito was ready to surrender, and had approached the Russians to broker an agreement, he said.
"The messages mentioned that the emperor was ready for peace terms and he was pretty much ready to surrender completely provided he could stay in office," Miller said. "There were several of us in this particular section that were processing these messages, and boy we were getting all excited, thinking 'Oh boy, Japan's getting ready to surrender.' "
"Thinking back on it, I thought 'What the heck was going on, why weren't these peace overtures pursued before they dropped the bomb?' "
John Rockwood of Maple City watched the start of American involvement in the war as chief engineer on the destroyer McDonough during the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. He is now a board member of the Center for Defense Information, a watchdog group that monitors defense spending. The group was formed by retired Rear Adm. Gene R. LaRocque, a friend and fellow ensign on the McDonough during the Pearl Harbor attack.
By the time Japan surrendered, Rockwood was in Chicago on leave but was about to be sent back to the Pacific. While he was grateful to be spared a return trip, Rockwood had doubts about the timing of the bombing.
"The administration, I'm sure, hurried it up, first to demonstrate to the Russians that we had the bomb and would use it, and second to end the war quickly before they could get in," he said.
Rockwood also argued that the bomb should not have been dropped on such a heavily populated city as Hiroshima but on a more purely military target.
"I thought that we could have waited a little longer and made a demonstration drop," he said. "I had my doubts from the beginning, and they just strengthened as time went on."