Saint Benedict Center was appalled when the news came of the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and then, again, on Nagasaki three days after. Father Feeney and Sister Catherine Clarke and all the members of the Center, including those who had come back home from the war in Europe, voiced unanimous outrage that such a barbaric act of slaughter of innocent civilians by a “Christian” nation was a crime against God’s law and humanity. Just to put a image on the horror of 70,000 instantly killed in Hiroshima and 70,000 more dead within five years, here is an eyewitness description:
“The appearance of people was . . . well, they all had skin blackened by burns. . . . They had no hair because their hair was burned, and at a glance you couldn’t tell whether you were looking at them from in front or in back. . . . They held their arms bent [forward] like this . . . and their skin – not only on their hands, but on their faces and bodies too – hung down. . . . If there had been only one or two such people . . . perhaps I would not have had such a strong impression. But wherever I walked I met these people. . . . Many of them died along the road – I can still picture them in my mind — like walking ghosts.” (Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima)
World Net Daily has provided ample testimony from military leaders, political leaders, and other experts, stating that it was militarily unnecessary to use an atomic bomb, morally reprehensible, a dangerous precedent, and that every indication showed that Japan was ready to surrender. The US wanted the unheard of humiliation of “unconditional” surrender. Japan would have accepted any terms except abolishing the largely symbolic, but, nevertheless, unifying tradition of the reign of the emperor, which the US insisted upon. In the end, when the Peace Treaty was finally signed in 1951 the emperor was allowed to reign anyway.
World Net Daily: The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey group, assigned by President Truman to study the air attacks on Japan, produced a report in July of 1946 that concluded (52-56):
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945 and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
Read the full article here.
