Assume the Lie

I once met an old Marine who served in Okinawa during World War II. He told horrendous stories of machine gun nests opening up every 75 feet, and American GIs tied to stakes and turned into Swiss cheese for the amusement of Japanese soldiers. Picture a dead kid from Kansas with one inch deep bayonet wounds all over his body. As a consequence of this and other horrors, my Marine friend absolutely loved the atom bomb, but like the vast majority of Americans, he didn’t know anything about it until Hiroshima and Nagasaki signaled the end of the war.

Newspapers.com is a marvelous tool for taking the measure of what America is talking about. Consider the following table. It’s a picture of how many times the term “atom bomb” was seen in English language newspapers.

When you ponder how much of the American economy was dedicated to building the bomb, it’s a miracle so many people managed to keep their mouths shut. Obviously, many of them were officially allowed, and sometimes ordered, to lie about the nature of their work—and we’re talking about 130,000 people engaged in the effort. During those years, an extraordinary number of Americans considered it their patriotic duty to lie their way to victory over a cruel and remorseless enemy. The cause was clear. You don’t have any obligation to tell an armed thief that your kinfolk on the second floor have him in their crosshairs.

Continue reading at American Greatness.