I have a lot on my mind this week. I’ll start with the top.
As I was reading Kathy Paulsen’s column, I found some inaccuracies. The dropping of the Atomic Bombs in World War II did not save a million lives. It took that many. I’m sure a lot of people don’t know that Japan had been trying to find a peaceful way to surrender for almost a year prior to the dropping of the bombs.
Harry Truman wrote in his journal after the testing of the atomic bombs, “We’ll really have the hammer on those boys.” He wasn’t talking about Japan; he was talking about the Soviet Union. He was a fierce anti-Communist and despised the Soviet Union. At the meeting at Potsdam, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin shared that Japan was looking for a way to surrender peacefully.
Despite the fact the Soviets made great gains on Japan, Truman insisted we bomb them. After the first bomb was dropped, Japan again said it was willing to surrender. We still bombed again. Truman told the pilots of the plane that dropped the second nuke that they saved “Thousands of lives.” The myth that the bombs saved a million lives took a couple months for Truman to come up with. He worked his way up from saying thousands to a hundred thousand, then half a million and eventually worked up to saying it saved a million lives. There was not one force depletion estimate that put the number of U.S. soldiers needed at a million.
I am positive that if I grew up in the ‘40s I would see this situation differently. I’m sure I would have agreed with the President at that time and still would. The tragedies experienced in WWII are horrible. The old newspapers here at the office mention letters sent home every week. Every edition talked about the struggles of our troops. I have the utmost respect for our veterans and our troops who served and are serving today. That doesn’t excuse the fact that what we did when we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have resulted in any other leader of any other country going on trial for war crimes. I can’t excuse the fact that we murdered over a million people, including American prisoners of war. The dropping of the bombs was not controversial. It was just plain wrong.
I apologize for any inaccuracies in my little rant, but I remember learning about this topic in college and it really struck a nerve. My grandfather fought in WWII and if we had lost, we would have been viewed as the bad guys. I can’t imagine how I would feel about another country if it had murdered that many people in the place I call home.
I don’t like to write about negative things in life. I try to keep things positive and I feel my column usually reflects my willingness to try and stay on the lighter side of things. Today is not one of those days. Last week we received a press release about the raid and seizure of 16 cats from a Hartland home. I am genuinely furious and upset with the situation.
I have spoken with the supposed “crazy cat lady.” She is not crazy, her home is not a mess, and her cats are well cared for. She told me story after story about the cats she rescued and took care of. Her house was clean, and she took excellent care of her pets. It was obvious these friendly felines were part of her family.
Now, after the raid, all of her cats were taken. They were most likely taken to a kill shelter. I can’t imagine how this lady is feeling now. One of her pets was 16 years old and needed special grooming because of his age. He was still healthy but needed special care. Another pet she rescued from a frozen snow bank nearly dead. Now, after this tragedy, she has to go get registration just to keep two of the animals. This is the result of her neighbor’s dislike of cats and because the mayor doesn’t like this woman.
This infuriates me. I remember losing my first pet back in January. It still hurts. I can’t imagine experiencing that 16-fold. I would be devastated. So I say shame on the mayor of Hartland. I say shame on that neighbor.
Thought for the day: If you don’t make people mad in news once in awhile, you’re not doing your job.