Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 6 · column 1 of 3 · from the scan, no model involved
Our View
Looking back
This week marks two historic events tied to
aviation: the opening of the National Air and
Space Museum Annex at Dulles International Airport on Dec. 15, and the “Centennial of Flight” celebration at Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17, marking the 100th anniversary of the Wright brothers’ flight.
While there were no protests at the North Carolina event, the first day at the Air and Space annex was marred by protesters.
A small but vocal group slipped into the museum and positioned themselves around the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber from which an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and chanted anti-war slogans.
One man smashed a container filled with red liquid — presumably meant to look like blood — on the side of the airplane, denting the fuselage.
While this newspaper would never discourage peaceful protest by sincere citizens, the ineffective way they went about making their point is matched only by their ignorance of history. x
No one can imagine the horror when the atomic bomb exploded on Hiroshima.
But the loss of life there, and later at Nagasaki, was only a small fraction of the death and destruction that would have resulted, had Allied forces invaded Japan.
Those charged with strategic planning of the invasion figured that there would be at least 1,000,000 allied casualties, and perhaps as many as three million Japanese killed or wounded during ah invasion of the home islands.
At least three fleet aircraft carriers would be lost — probably to Kamikaze attacks, as well as large percentages of Army and Marine Corps regiments.
"That the Japanese decided to surrender when they did saved millions of lives. It is a little known fact that President Truman had at his disposal nine more atomic bombs, which would have been dropped on Japan in a “Rain of Ruin.”
Instead of the mass carnage that could have been, many lives were spared, the post-war occupation was short, and the U. S. and Japan later became allies.
Wasn’t that better than sacrificing a large part of a generation of Americans and more innocent Japanese?
96.2%