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8 - Wednesday, August 14, 1985 - North Shore News

What do they know of peace?

PEOPLE HAVE been asking why I’ve had
nothing to say about last weck’s orgy of regret
and recrimination that marked the 40th anniver-
sary of the dropping of atomic bombs on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The omission is made

good herewith.

get this
straight

"Dy.
Deoug Collins
ST

One lady — a former New
Zealander — said she was 19
at the time and ‘‘the Japs
were half an hour’s flight
from Auckland’’. As far as
she was concerned, the
bomb was a bloody good
thing. So it was for those
who stood to get their rears
shot off in the invasion of
Japan. Thus in his moving
oral history ‘‘The Good
War,’’ Studs Terkel quotes a
G.L. who numbered among
them:

“We're sitting on the pier,

sharpening bayonets, when’

Harry dropped that
beautiful bomb. The greatest
thing that ever happened.
Anybody sitting at the pier
at that time would have to

The noble folk who have
been busy painting the
shadows of atomized bodies
on sidewalks, etc., do not
agree, of course. That's
because they weren't on that
pier. The same applies to
most members of the so-
called anti-nuclear move-
ment (a silly name, really,
since no one from Ronald
Reagan down really loves the
bomb). But argurment is lost
on them. People from dif-
ferent planets find it hard to
communicate.

The war generation, for
example, cannot communi-
cate with today's peaceniks.
The peaceniks believe that
all that was needed to avert
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
was a nice polite letter from
Harry Truman to the

Emperor explaining that
someone was ening to get a
headache if there was no
immediate surender. We
know that that was not so.
Without the bomb, Japan
would have been defended

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the way Iwo Jima was. To
the Last man,

1 never sat on a pier
sharpening a hayonet in
preparation for a landing on
the Japanese home islands,
but I was given) a short

course on what to expect if

we were ever sent. And (with
apologies to a fine Japa-
nese-Canadian lady | know)
this was what was inscribed
in foot-nhigh letters over the
gate to the training ground:
“KILL THE LITTLE
YELLOW BASTARDS!"
Today’s human righters
would faint at such a sight,
but that was the tempo of
the times. It was “them or

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us’. No use trying to explain
to the Mike Harcourts and
other weepers who gathered
in Hiroshima to shed a quiet
fear, however. What do they
of peace know who only
peace know?

They werent: worked and
starved to death on the
Burma Railway. They didn’t
build the bridge on the River
Kwai. They weren't on the
Bataan death march. Thev
weren't prisoners who
weighed all of 60 pounds
when that beautiful bomb
was dropped, and they never
heard the Emperor’s boys
shout **Banzai!"*

And that is why we saw

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ie

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that orgy of hand-wringing
and breast-beating on TV,
with manicured ‘‘per-
sonalities” wearing pansy
haircuts and implying that
Harry Truman was a war
criminal,

What the war generation
knew was that the war was
over. And they loved that
bomb.

Who started the war in
Asia, anyway?

eee

In my brilliant column on
homos and Australia and
real men, | wrote that Lar-
wood the great cricketer was
an Aussie. Alas! He was a
Brit. Now I remember! The

For a family wagon,
or a work horse

error was pointed out by
Ernie Sarsfield of North Van
in Pree Verse:

“tT have to say that Lar-
wood did for England play
and, bowling bodyline, did
cause a great to-do between
the wars. But he was not the
fastest human, Nor were
Statham, Voce, or Trueman.
For the swiftest bowler of
them all, Was that Great
Austrailian Ray Lindwall.
Who, with his bowling part-
ner Miller, made English
batsmens’ spines grow
chiller. And taking wicket
after wicket, ‘e mad a ‘ash
of England’s Cricket.”

Thank you, Mr. Sarsfield.

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