Dear Editor,
In addition to being factually and historically accurate in print, superior writing offers three main strengths: Effectiveness in that the intended message promotes the writer’s purpose in writing; Clarity in that the reader can easily understand the message, and Correctness So that there are no grammatical/spelling mistakes. Two articles last week by Mr. Harrison failed in two of the three requirements: Clarity and Effectiveness.
In the first instance of very high fog content (Political Basics 7) the writer asks how to find the Truth about what to believe from the media these days. He answers the question with more questions but provides no real answer, despite over 700 words in print. What was the point of this pseudo intellectual rehash of generic boilerplate platitudes?
In the second instance, the writer starkly misquotes the Japanese Emperor, Hirohito, as warning of catastrophic casualties for the American invasion of the home islands, threatening a “fight to the last man” etc. He never made such statements since he was not ever a part of the Japanese government; his office was a religious and symbolic one. Premier Tojo and the militarists made such warnings repeatedly; Hirohito never did.
The third instance of high fog contact is simply ignorance of historical fact: the first bomb (Hiroshima) was a uranium bomb; the second one (Nagasaki) was plutonium device. There was no inventory of atom bombs after these two (per Dr. Oppenheimer, weeks away at earliest). Repeated A-bomb attacks were not a practical opportunity then.
The fourth instance is the writer’s statement that the objective of war is to defeat the enemy with “minimal loss of [civilian] life (writer’s words)”. Truth: war’s object is VICTORY with minimal loss of American lives. Compassion and reconstruction necessarily can come after victory.
The final example of illogical questions without answers is Does the end justify the means? Sometimes it does and must in extreme situations. For the proposed Operation Typhoon (invasion of Japanese home islands scheduled for early 1946), General MacArthur estimated over 1,000,000 American casualties and as many as 5,000,000 Japanese ones. Those figures equate to 450,000 dead Americans and almost 4,000,000 Japanese in addition to Japanese civilian dead. Plainly with these truths in hand, the end (saving 4,450,000 human lives!) was the moral and ethical choice. We should be grateful for the courage of leadership demonstrated by President Truman.
Most tragically it is missing in Washington today.
God bless America!
El Sellers
Fairfield, Texas
