A trip to Saipan

Terri and I had to travel to Saipan for a couple of days, as Terri was receiving medical instruction at the Saipan hospital. We flew to Saipan on Weds. and she attended classes Thurs. and Friday. We flew home on Friday afternoon.

It was very windy on both our flights, making it funner than usual to travel in the small planes! There is just something exciting about taking off and suddenly moving 6' sideways as a wind gust catches the plane... Our pilot was very good, and warned us it would be a bumpy flight. I told him we loved carnival rides, so it would be no problem!

While Terri was in class I did some shopping and also returned to the war memorial to go through the exhibits again, and see the movie again. Saipan and Tinian were actually quite an important location in winning the war against Japan. By taking these islands, the US had a base of operations close enough to mainland Japan to attack it by plane. Once Japan lost these islands (and even though there was still a lot of fighting left to do), the war was essentially lost for Japan. Perhaps that is why they fought so hard, and lost so many people in an attempt to keep these islands.

For anyone who studies the war in the Pacific, it becomes very clear why the decision was made to drop the atom bomb on Japan. Whenever I talk to people who condemn the US for this action, I usually discover that they know nothing about the circumstances surrounding the decision. They know nothing about the thousands of deaths, on both sides, that were being lost on each and every little island, as the US neared Japan. They know little or nothing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese against both civilians and prisoners of war. If they did, they would not condemn the decision to drop the atom bomb!

If one knows about the Rape of Nanking, about the Bataan Death March, the loss of life at Guadalcanal, Saipan, Tarawa, Iwo Jima and the other small islands south of Japan, and the lengths to which the Japanese were going to win-- never surrendering but always fighting to the death-- then it becomes common sense that when a way was opened up to end the war early (as devastating as that way was), most rational people would have made the same decision. And the results of dropping the atom bomb on Japan was exactly what it was designed to do: they surrendered and made a quick end to the war. I personally believe that this action ended up saving thousands of lives--many more than were taken by the dropping of the bombs.

To this day I shudder to think what would have happened if Hitler had obtained the bomb first! England would have been destroyed for certain, and probably Russia next. It is just hard to imagine what the consequences would have been for the world!

Anyway, it was a fun trip, as usual. Just another week and Terri and I are off to Utah to see our family!