Recent events in Iraq and Lebanon brought to mind this letter to the editor I wrote eleven years ago on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. Today, we see Muslim children as young as five years old chanting "Death to America", "Death to Israel" and pledging themselves to be suicide bomb martyrs. In a war, there are no innocents.

Dear Editor,

"Over the past week or two I have read a number of editorials and letters to the editor, in both the Times and the P.I., from revisionist apologists like Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon in their column “Media Beat”, concerning the bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki in Japan and of Dresden in Germany. The articles and letters all seem to condemn the United States for the huge number of “innocent” civilians lost in these bombings. The writers seem to think we should all feel guilty for these deaths, but in war there are no “innocents.”

In the years following W.W. II, reasoned arguments were put forward explaining the need to use the atomic bombs to end the war before more allied lives were lost. However, putting those arguments aside, I would like to point out to the authors of these recent letters and editorials, that someone in Japan and Germany was building the war machine. Someone had to be building the airplanes, ships, trucks, tanks, arms, and ammunition, that were being used to kill American and allied, soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen. Someone in Japan and Germany had to be stitching uniforms, growing food, manufacturing medicines and first aid supplies. Someone had to transport these items from factory and farm to distribution points for delivery to the military. The Hitler Youth took up arms and civilians, designed and built the gas chambers and crematoria for the concentration camps, for the express purpose of killing and disposing of some seven million Jewish and Gypsy souls.

The Japanese and the Nazis had little regard for “innocent” civilian lives, as those millions in China, the Phillipines, Poland and Russia can attest to. Even the minister that married my Mother and Father, who was in the Phillipines when the Japanese invaded, died in the Bataan Death March.

In this country, my father was employed in a strategic industry helping to build trucks and tanks for U.S. military use. "Rosy the Riveter," everyone’s mom, wife, sister, or daughter, became legend in American aircraft production during the war and helped build all those B-17s, B-24s, B-25s and B-29s that dropped all those bombs, on Japan and Germany including the A-bombs. And I, as a child under five years of age, was saving the aluminum foil from gum wrappers to contribute to the cause, as evidenced by this picture of my Grandmother and me in 1942 at the local aluminum collection point.

In the 1950s I helped build B-52s that probably dropped bombs on Hanoi and participated in the Gulf War. I also worked on Bomark and Minuteman missiles and their support systems and some early work on the ALCM (Air Launched Cruise Missile) program and later, I worked on the development of the B-2 Bomber. Are we “innocent” civilians who built the weapons any less responsible for all those deaths than those who actually dropped the bombs? Are we “innocent” civilians any less responsible for our final victories, or defeats, than those who actually fought the fight? I hope not. If we are, then all of our sacrifices and “innocent” efforts at home to help win the war were in vain.

The Japanese and German “innocents” were working just as hard to build and supply their war machine. The Butcher, the Baker, the Airplane Maker, there are no “innocent” civilians in a nation at war."

Proud to be an American,
J.M.
My Town, U.S.A.