In article N7kEb.423166$ao4.1358042@attbi_s51, plumb bob wrote:
It's just a chunk of metal... that was used to kill much more than 3,000
innocent civilians - I believe we would call it state sponsored terrorism
these days.

Thinking selfishly, it's a chunk of metal that probably saved my life.
Or allowed me to exist in the first place.

My dad's father was shortly to be sent to the Pacific in the Royal Navy
had the war not ended (Britain would have gone to help out in the
Pacific theatre had Japan not surrendered). It is very likely my
mother's father would have ended up out there too - he was an engineer
in the Royal Air Force. If they had gone out there, there chances of
surviving the war - and thousands of other British and American
servicemen - would have been dramatically reduced.

It wouldn't be called state-sponsored terrorism these days - it was and
is an act of war. The Japanese started the Pacific war by attacking the
United States. Destroying Japan's infrastructure and will to fight was a
perfectly valid method of stopping Japan - and history shows that it had
the intended effect. Were the B-17 bomber crews in Europe state
sponsored terrorists? Would they be if the same happened now? No. They
were servicemen fighting a war and would still be considered so today.

How many Japanese civilians would have died had the war continued into a
land invasion of Japan? We can never know for sure, but it's not
unreasonable to assume that the number would be larger.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"