Hope Fell From the Sky in August 1945

And so he began:

Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.

The death that fell from the sky on that "bright cloudless morning" laid a new foundation for peace and restored order. The War with it's 60 million dead had demonstrated man's capacity  to destroy itself. The bomb prevented civilization's self-destruction.

The bomb prevented civilization's self-destruction.

Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in a not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over 100,000 Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner.

The force unleashed that killed so many was unleashed long before the fateful day.  After many envoys had gone from China pursuing peace, Japan invaded Manchuria. It is unclear how many civilians were murdered in that genocide, but it was in the millions. More than 138000 US and Allied soldiers were held in the most horrific conditions. At least 32,000 died gruesome deaths. The people of the Asian nations that Japanese invaded were forced into slavery, including Chinese, Koreans, Philippines. Of those forced to build the Burma - Thailand railroad at least 60,000 died; 300,000 Asians from the Dutch East Indies died; Among Korean forced laborers a conservative estimate puts the death toll between 270,000 - 810,000.  Over the seven years the Japanese occupied Manchuria between between 100,000-200,000 civilians died. The death that fell from the sky that day began with an almost incalculable number of genocidal massacres of Asian populations: In China 42000 - 85000 massacred. In the Philippines over 90,000 civilians were murdered and brutalized. In Indochina over 500,000 were killed and in Malaya 83,000 were killed. The death toll that day put an end to a xenophobic reign of terror.

But Obama continued his lunacy:

The world war that reached its brutal end in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was fought among the wealthiest and most powerful of nations. Their civilizations had given the world great cities and magnificent art. Their thinkers had advanced ideas of justice and harmony and truth. And yet the war grew out of the same base instinct for domination or conquest that had caused conflicts among the simplest tribes, an old pattern amplified by new capabilities and without new constraints.

Far from advancing justice, harmony and truth Japan and her Axis allies sought ethnic domination and conquest without constraints.

Far from advancing justice, harmony and truth Japan and her Axis allies sought ethnic domination and conquest without constraints. The Chinese sued for a peaceful solution with the League of Nations. It failed. The people of Darwin Australia had no desire to go to war when bombs fell from the Japanese planes. Disingenuous envoys of Japan were negotiating peace with our President when bombs fell on a peaceful American people.  The death that fell from the skies had begun with a disease that sought to end justice harmony and truth. The war proved that not all people are peace loving and defenders of human right. That bomb saved the Japanese people from a reign of despotism.

Obama drolled on with his redacted view of history:

Yet in the image of a mushroom cloud that rose into these skies, we are most starkly reminded of humanity’s core contradiction. How the very spark that marks us as a species, our thoughts, our imagination, our language, our toolmaking, our ability to set ourselves apart from nature and bend it to our will — those very things also give us the capacity for unmatched destruction. How often does material advancement or social innovation blind us to this truth? How easily we learn to justify violence in the name of some higher cause.

Yes, Mr. President there are times when violence is justified. When peace and liberty must be defended. This nation was born when people took up arms against an oppressor. Millions of African American slaves were freed by the spilling of blood on our own soil. The higher cause for which this bomb was dropped was the cause of goodness, liberty and peace. There is no contradiction between our countries love of liberty and peace in this bomb. The statistics we have related so far are principally civilian death. 

The fire that burned in that city on that fateful day was kindled in evil. American at the dawn of World War 2 was a nation coming out of the depression. We sought peace and prosperity. Yet we had seen the failure of the cry for peace in our time when on a beautiful quiet Sunday morning fire fell over Pearl Harbor Hawaii. The deaths of US military and civilians in Pearl Harbor were insignificant compare to those that were to follow. America lost hundreds of thousands in the Pacific as did the Australian's, New Zealanders, Canadians and other allies. 

As allied  troops approached Japan death tolls rose to unsustainable levels. Iwo Jima was the first battle fought on the soil of Imperial Japan and the first where US death exceeded Japanese. The cost of victory in Okinawa was high:

Last and biggest of the Pacific island battles of World War II, the Okinawa campaign (April 1—June 22, 1945) involved the 287,000 troops of the U.S. Tenth Army against 130,000 soldiers of the Japanese Thirty-second Army. At stake were air bases vital to the projected invasion of Japan. By the end of the 82-day campaign, Japan had lost more than 77,000 soldiers and the Allies had suffered more than 65,000 casualties—including 14,000 dead.

Conservative estimate were that the planned invasion of Kyoto would involve more than a million allied casualties. Japanese losses in both Civilian and military cost would have been greater. Innumerable death and casualties awaited the Japanese and American in a land invasion of Japan.The Soviets had declared war on Japan and were planning an invasion, and yet the Imperial Government remained unrelenting. Despite the death and destruction that had reign on their great cities Imperial Japan remained committed to their monomaniacal pursuit. Not even the bombing of Hiroshima diminished the Japanese determination to spread tyranny to the nations of the Pacific including the United States. It took a second bomb at Nagasaki to force the Emporer to relent.  

On that bright sunlit day what fell from was a ray of hope for peace. The bomb was a force for peace not for war. It ended the carnage unleashed the Axis Powers. Nuclear power is a force for good not evil. It was the sunset of horror that followed with the rise of hope. It saved not only millions of American and allied lives, it saved millions of Japanese, and brought peace and prosperity to Japan that it had never before seen. We have nothing to apologize for in the use of bomb. We should celebrate it every day. Peaces comes through strength and determination. At this very moment I have a son serving his country in Okinawa. I plan on visiting Japan in the fall of this year. I have no plans to visit memorial as our country need have no remorse for anything we did there. 
Our country has earned the right to be there. The blood we shed there gave the Japanese people the very freedom they exercise to protest our presence there. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has kept the world from erupting into apocalyptic destruction for 50 years. We should celebrate it as an instrument of peace not war. Thank God for the atomic bomb. God bless the USA .