Scott,

I've listened with a lot of interest to your show the past couple of days because I've always been fascinated with the topic of the atom bomb and the history of it's dropping during WW2. I strongly disagree with your "take" on history with respect to the dropping of the bomb on Nagasaki. Dropping the bomb was the only viable option that Truman had to bring the war to a conclusion with a minimal loss of American lives.

You mentioned that you watched the PBS show on Nagasaki last evening. It's too bad you were apparently not watching the previous evening when PBS had two solid hours of documentary shows detailing the necessity of dropping the Nagasaki bomb. For example, it was two solid hours of interviews, footage and research detailing how Japan had pulled back many divisions of troops from the Chinese and Korean territories to mount a last-ditch defense of the homeland. It detailed the skilled and meticulously planned defense of Okinawa by Japanese troops. It detailed the extensive campaign by the Japanese government to train the citizenry to fight to the death by being suicide bombers, fighting with sticks, etc. whatever it took, down to the last man, woman and child. It documented the growing use of kamikaze, and how they sent out their big battleship with no air cover on a suicide mission to draw American fighters away from Okinawa - hundreds of Japanese sailors went down with the ship willingly.

As far as some of the general staff wanting to surrender, ever heard of trial balloons? What better way to buy time and blunt the American onslaught than to make them think surrender is imminent. Nuts!

Instead, you caught that female narrator who narrates every PBS documentary with her voice that drips with liberal indignation and talks with such difficulty that it sounds like she's on quaaludes.

Today on your show you put forth that tired theory that we were worried the Russians were somehow going to load up non-existent barges and stage a Normandy-style invasion and subdue the Japanese mainland before we could.

Actually, Truman was hedging his bets by drawing the Russians into the war. He was marshalling every possible avenue to bring the war to an end, stop the death and destruction and force the Japanese surrender.

Look at it this way. Say there was a sudden, serious fire in your kitchen. You grab a fire extinguisher and start fighting the blaze, and yell out, "Jackie, call 911!!". Five minutes later the fire trucks arrive simultaneous with you having put out the fire with the fire extinguisher. Are you to be accused of putting out the fire because you didn't want the firemen ruining your house spraying with their fire hoses? No, you wanted the damn fire out! A confluence of circumstances at the end of the war does not necessarily constitute a conspiracy, although it may result in consonance.

Jim