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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 9, 1985
PAGE 7
I just received my August GOOD NEWS and I didn't put it down until
I had read every article. I'm so grateful to the Eternal for the
nutritious spiritual food He provides for us from headquarters.
M.D. (San Antonio, TX)
Thank you most sincerely for The GOOD NEWS--that it truly is!
The articles in the May issue, "What Does Pentecost Mean to You?"
by Mr. Armstrong, and "Pentecost in God's Master Plan" by Mr.
Aust, are invaluable in clearing my thinking and helping me to
understand the true meaning of Pentecost.
ON THE WORLD SCENE
Mrs. C.H. (Bradenton, FL)
--Richard Rice, Mail Processing Center
LOOKING BACK AT THE ATOMIC BOMB; IF TODAY'S PRESS HAD
COVERED WORLD WAR II; TOP NUCLEAR SCIENTIST SPEAKS OUT
This past week newspapers, newsmagazines and TV documentaries have had
extensive coverage of the historic events of 40 years ago, specifically the
A-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which hastened the end of the war
in the Pacific. There was even live coverage of a memorial service in Hiro
shima at the exact 8:16 a.m. time of the blast.
The news media has been full of what is known in America as "Monday morning
quarterbacking"--a hindsight from 40 years. Should the U.S. have dropped
the two bombs or not?
Should there have been only a demonstration
explosion? The nuclear-free(ze) community says (and so did Soviet party
chief Mikhail Gorbachev) that the U.S. committed an act of barbarism in
dropping the bombs.
Not a few experts, however, have said that trying to make judgments four
decades down the road is bound to be faulty; that one can only understand
what happened on August 6 and 9, 1945, by having lived through the war--with
all of its barbarity (including Pearl Harbor, the Bataan death march and
other Japanese acts)--in other words, knowing the true temper of the times.
The noted author William Manchester, injured in the fierce fighting on
Okinawa, believes the atomic bomb saved his life, and the lives of millions
of American troops, Japanese defenders and much of the Japanese civilian
population, by making an invasion of the Japanese home islands unnecessary.
In the following account (partly an interview of Manchester) written by
Cathryn Donohue of THE WASHINGTON TIMES (August 7), many die-hard Japanese
military officers were prepared to fight on--and sacrifice the entire
n �tion if necessary--� after� second bomb had been dropped on Nagasa
Js.!.
A "demonstration bomb," an idea advocated by some second-guessers,
would not have convinced them at all.
Okinawa was three months of the bloodiest island battles of the
Pacific, and that stood to reason: The closer the Allies got to
Japan, the more suicidal the defense. Okinawa was what led Mr.
Manchester, in "Goodbye, Darkness," his personal memoir of the
war, to write: "You think of the lives which would have been lost
in an invasion of Japan's home islands--a staggering number of
American lives but millions� of Japanese--and you thank God