from Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy:
All right. What else?
What else. He was one of a group of scientists who went into Hiroshima after the war to report on the damage. I think he was sobered by what he saw. I cant really speak for him. Whoever made the bomb was going to blow something up with it and I’m sure he thought better us than them. Whoever them might turn out to be. The arguments about Truman’s decision generally center around the loss of life in a land invasion. My father had another take on it. He thought that if Japan had been defeated in a land invasion there would have been no miracle of reconstruction after the war. That Japan would have been humiliated as a nation and would have entered into a long decline. But as it was, they were not defeated in battle. They were defeated by witchcraft.
That doesnt seem a bit self-serving?
If you like. It might also be true.
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