Oliver Stone and the A-bomb.

• Author: Johnston, William F.
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the editor

Whenever the question of dropping the A-bomb on Japan (An Interview with Oliver Stone, February issue) came up, my dad would always say, "Anyone against dropping the bomb wasn't on the deck of a ship off the coast of Japan in August 1945."

My father was at Iwo Jima, where the Japanese fought almost to the last man, and Okinawa, where not only did almost every enemy soldier die but they murdered thousands of civilians before the final attacks on U.S. troops.

One million allied casualties were expected in the invasion of Japan. Plus the prospect of thousands of civilians being forced by militaristic fanatics to charge invading American troops with sticks, forcing American troops to shoot down men, women, and children.

Truman the "equivalent to George W. Bush"?

The President Truman who integrated the U.S. military?

The last Democratic President who actually supported the labor movement?

The President who pushed for national health insurance and a full employment economy?

Please, Mr. Stone, get in touch with reality!

William R Johnston

Tacoma, Washington

Oliver Stone and his co-author, Peter Kuznick, respond:

Memory serves an important purpose, but it is not the same as history. Your father, much like all the brave men and women who served in the Pacific in World War II, was told that the atomic bombings on August 6 and 9, 1945, prevented an invasion of Japan and probably saved his life. He had no reason to doubt that this was true.

History, however, is more complicated. It requires evidence, not hearsay.

As we show in The Untold History of the United States, our book and documentary film series, the Soviet invasion of Japan, not the atomic bombings, was the decisive factor in forcing Japan's surrender. The United States had already firebombed 100 Japanese cities since March, burning many to the ground.

The Soviet invasion at midnight on August 8 was something fundamentally different that, U.S. officials knew, Japanese leaders dreaded. It proved the bankruptcy of Japan's diplomatic and its military strategies. It dashed Japanese leaders' hopes that the USSR would help them get better surrender terms and made it impossible for Japan to hold on long enough to deliver a decisive blow to U.S. forces in an invasion...