PUNK ROCK REPUBLICAN

Charles Pellegrino has been a frequent guest on The John Batchelor Show for a while now talking about his new book on the survivors of the nuclear bombings of BOTH Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ‘The Last Train To Hiroshima: The Survivors Look Back’.

I’ve read John Hersey’s Hiroshima so it’s not like I don’t already have a pretty good idea of what went on there but last night Mr. Pellegrino added one new fact to the mix that really puts President Truman’s decision to go nuclear and end World War II quickly in perspective.

In anticipation of a final Allied invasion of Japan President Truman ordered the minting of 400,000 Purple Hearts to award to those expected to be wounded.

To put 400,000 wounded into perspective D-Day had about 2,500 American killed and wounded.

But because of Japan’s quick surrender after the two nuclear bombings those medals didn’t have to be issued and the U.S. was left with all of those medals in storage to be doled out in the future as needed.

Ever since the end of World War II every single Purple Heart issued to every single wounded American service person has been one of those Purple Hearts minted in 1945. And we haven’t run out of them yet.

Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Desert Storm, the War on Terror … that’s how many Americans were saved by the dropping of those two nuclear bombs.

The Battle of Shiloh at the dawn of the Civil War was notable because in its two brief days more Americans were killed in battle than in every single American conflict up to that point in American history – combined! More Americans killed in two days than in the entire American Revolutionary War, plus.

Truman’s decision to drop those two nuclear bombs was the Battle of Shiloh in reverse and saved an entire American generation. And if it saved more wounded than have yet to be wounded in every single American conflict since - how many lives did it save?

A note: John Batchelor’s father would have been part of the invasion of Japan. Charles Pellegrino’s father would have been also. As would have been my father.

Or as Mr. Batchelor said, “Without President Truman’s decision we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

And I wouldn’t have been listening.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Alec. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.