Trinity Site

Trinity Site, the spot on the New Mexico desert where the first test atomic weapon was exploded, is open to the public once again this weekend. It is a National Historic Landmark, but because it is located on the White Sands Missle Range, it is closed to the public except on special occasions.

The site is about 150 miles from my home, and I probably will not go this year. I did make the trip a few years ago, on the 50th Anniversary of the test explosion. On that trip, I was surprised at the number of Japanese film crews on hand.

A group of American protestors was also on hand, holding up long banners that read "We are sorry for Hiroshima and Nagasaki". Most researchers have determined that the loss of life in those two Japanese cities was smaller than the expected deaths in an invasion of the Japanese homeland. The protestors obviously did not agree.

This past week I have been watching the PBS presentation of Ken Burn's film, "The War". While this film advises that World War II was fought in too many places to document them all, they are covering most of the major battle locations. Included was the battle for the tiny volcanic atoll named Iwo Jima. It was expected to be an easy invasion but turned out to be the bloodiest single island in the Pacific, taking over 6,000 American's lives.

Iwo Jima was Japanese trerritory before the war. It was part of the Japanese empire. In the invasion of Iwo Jima, the entire Japanese garrison was lost... every single Japanese soldier on the island was killed. The Japanese commanders gave the order to every man to fight to their death, and every one obeyed.

The film also showed footage of Japanese women and children (in Japan) training for combat with swords. They, too, had been ordered to fight to their death when the Americans invaded Japanese soil. There can be no doubt that they, too, would have obeyed their orders.

Can you imagine the spectacle of the modern U.S. Army facing off against a group of school children swinging swords? The atomic bomb was the only thing that prevented that from happening.

The protestors apologizing for the use of the atomic bombs in August, 1945, are a bunch of fools, as protestors often are. They refuse to believe the findings of analysts who have calculated the loss of life that was to come in an invasion of Japan. And, they have no concept of the brutality of the Japanese Army... the people who murdered more innocents in Nanking, China than the total casualties of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

I was in the South Pacific just one year after the atomic bombs were dropped. I can attest that the Japanese people march to a different drummer. When the Japanese soldiers were told that the war was over and they should now accept the Americans as friends, they obeyed that order, too. I had met some German POWs at Camp Stoneman, California. The Germans displayed no interest in becoming friends with Americans. The Japanese I knew in the Philippines seemed to harbor no hostilities, and, in fact, seemed eagar to participate in the American culture.

Incidentally, there is not much to see at Trinty Site. A marker erected to identify the site and the stubs of a large steel tower that melted in the explosion.