Alive - thanks to the A-bomb

RAF man Michael McInerney believes he's alive today thanks to the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. McInerney didn't have much hope of surviving the expected long war to subdue the Japanese.

I have never had any moral compunctions in my life about the launching of the nuclear age. I attribute my own presence here today to the atomic bomb.

Whenever the topic of those bombs is raised in any discussion here, there's rarely any dissent from the "using those bombs was immoral" perspective. McInerney's story is not atypical of allied servicemen in the Pacific in the summer of '45. Thousands, perhaps millions of their lives and those of Japanese soldiers and civilians were probably saved by the decision to use the atomic bomb.