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^[[The Journal Gazette]]
Wednesday * August 2, 1995 * Page 80

[[margin note]]
^[[They have not studied this issue in depth. Japan would not have surrendered without the use of both atomic bombs. Our invasion would have failed with extra losses. Our incendiary
bombings killed more people.]]
[/margin note]]

next.
CAREER KISMET: [[right side of this paragraph is cut off too much]]

Dropping the Bomb
[[image: photo of bomb]]
[[pencil underlined]] Fifty years after Hiroshima, a recent poll shows young adults disagree with their elders when it comes to what we did during World War II. [/pencil underlined]]

BY CHARLES SAVAGE
Next writer
Karen Paszek, 22, looks her friend firmly in the eye and says, "it was evil."

"We were defending ourselves," 25-year-old Brian Williams fires back. "It was action-reaction."

The pair's conversation may be a little heavy for lunchtime at Pizza Hut, but it's one likely to be repeated many times during the next few days. Sunday, America confronts the 50th anniversary of what many believe to be the defining event of the 20th century: the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

The statistics: 140,000 dead instantly or within a few months in Hiroshima alone (but how many would have died if the war continued?). The old photographs: charred bodies of women and children piled on top of each other like so much rubbish (but would an invasion have been more terrible?).

The question: Was it right?
A new wave of public debate is swelling over the 50-year-old decision. And in this debate, the new generation's views are markedly different from those of its elders.

A recent Gallup Poll showed that almost two-thirds of Americans aged 50 and older approve of the decision to use the atomic bomb on two Japanese cities in 1945. That percentage drops to 51 percent for those aged 30-49, and to 48 percent for those 18 to 29 years old. Seven percent of the 18-29 group said that they didn't have an opinion.

"I think it stopped more killing that would have gone on, and I think it stopped a lot of wars from escalating to this day because they know the threat is there," says Gloria Byerley, 62.

Her view is shared by Larry Ley, 23. "I think it was right", he says. "It ended the war. There would have been a lot more people - Americans - who would have died if they wouldn't have used the atomic bomb.

His friend, Pam Beber, represents a substantial faction of twentysomethings: the ill-informed. "I have no opinion," she admits. "I'm not a history buff. I don't really care much."

But Tellis Young, 19, does. And he firmly denounces the U.S. decision to use the bomb. "I think it was wrong," he says. "Regardless what they were fighting over, that's too many people dead. It's like it you and I got into it, but then I went over and killed your whole family. It was just wrong to kill all those people, all those little kids."

But Young tempers his opinion with the realization that hindsight offers a different light than President Harry Truman saw. "You don't now what the people who made the decision were thinking back then," He says. "The people in higher office were feeling a lot of pressure from Americans to look out for American interests...But it just makes no sense. I don't understand it."

Young's situation is typical, according to Michael McGerr, professor of history at the Bloomington campus on Indiana University.

"I think it's hard for (young people today) to imagine that there were circumstances that might have caused us to use the bomb," he says.

Because today's young adults didn't experience the shock of Pearl Harbor and didn't fight in the war, or have contemporaries fighting in the war, they just can't understand, he says.

But James Loewen, a sociology professor at the University of Vermont and the author of "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong," says that older Americans tend to embrace the conservative view on this issue because "when you're around when they're making that decision, you somehow feel identified with that decision, even if you really had nothing to do with it." Simplified: This happened on their watch, so it must be right.

Youthful skepticism might also stem from the growing number of revisionist historians who are re-examining America's motivation for dropping the bomb.

At first, Loewen says, the atomic bombing was viewed simply as a war effort. Now, some say we did it to minimalize casualties, others say that the bomb was dropped to scare the Russians, and still others think we did it simply because we had it and couldn't resist the urge to use it.

Father Thomas Blantz, a professor of history at University of Notre Dame, says it was Vietnam that sparked younger people's skepticism of the decision.

"Since the Vietnam War," he says, "there is a lot more distrust of the military. More people are willing to accept that the military makes bad decisions. People are more suspicious, or need a little more proof to accept" a military action like dropping the bomb.

Young people in America are stereotypically more idealistic, and this, too, may factor into the debate. Perhaps, more young people judge the decision to use the bomb in moral terms, while the generation which was there employs a more pragmatic set of premises.

And no premise is more pragmatic than that of 75-year-old Glenn Walters, who flew in the 868th Bombardment Squadron and says the bomb probably saved his life. His squadron was being moved to Okinawa in preparation for the massive invasion of Japan's home islands, a bloodbath averted when the bombs forced Japan to surrender.

"I can understand the younger generation for feeling that (using the bomb was wrong)," Walters said. "I regret that innocent civilians got killed, but innocent civilians got killed on the other side. I think the alternative was too horrible to contemplate."

Steve Byrne and Valerie Vinyard contributed to this report.

[[images: facial photos of Tellis Young, Gloria Byerley, Karen Paszek, Brian Williams, Pam Beber and Larry Ley]]