It was 80 years ago yesterday that we dropped the big one on Hiroshima. I pulled down my copy of Richard B. Frank’s Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire in honor of the day.
What an excellent book. Given current events, this photo caption struck me: “Perhaps the most ominous feature of Okinawa was the integration of the civilian population into the defense: this led to the deaths of, at minimum, 62,000 noncombatants.”
It’s a good thing the AP wasn’t on hand to document the carnage. This week the AP laments the success of Israel’s grim beeper op, which must be the most precisely targeted military attack of all time. Andrew Stiles laments the AP’s lament in “AP Writes Puff Piece on Hezbollah ‘Victims’ of Israeli Pager Attack.”
The AP just goes to show what Michael Oren calls “The wisdom of Yahya Sinwar.” Emperor Hirohito did not have it so good.
