All of these arguments have been posted before, if I remember correctly, in a thread on the mini-series "Band of Brothers." Rapaire said it best: the two planes are historical artifacts, the only difference is that they are related to the direct cause of the end of the war.

And, to correct a post earlier, the two bombs may have been the only readily available bombs, but there were other castings, or shells, that the devices were placed inside so they could be dropped from the planes. Had Japan not surrendered after the second bomb it would not have taken that much longer to produce other bomb cores.

Being born and raised in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I was given the opportunity almost every year to visit the museum in Los Alamos where the replicas of Fat Man and Little Boy were on display. We were taught the role that Los Alamos had in WWII from a HISTORICAL perspective, not a moral one. It was always deathly quiet as we entered the museum, and even more quiet as we watched the films and listened to the curators. It had a profound impact on my life and still does. By the way, due to the pacifists and their constant moralizing, the museum display that we could see as children no longer exists. The version you see today is so sanitized and diluted that it is basically worthless in comparison to the lessons that I learned as a schoolchild. It is a real shame, too. I would think that if the real goal of pacifism is to prevent all future wars, they would want the whole truth of past wars to be exposed. Not so, according to the anti-nuke zealots. Apparently all they want to say is that the United States was solely responsible for the beginning and the middle and the end of WWII.

Who says that Japan was just a few days, weeks months, etc from surrender? Were you alive back then? Were you on a troop ship, or were you in boot camp or in Europe training for the invasion of the Japanese mainland? Does the example of Iwo Jima mean nothing to you? So, SRS, you may attempt to demean my argument by saying that I am "parroting the dogma...etc." but the use of the atomic weapons ended the war that Japan started with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. It saved thousands of allied soldiers' lives. No one can say with definitive proof (i.e. a signed document) that Japan was ready to surrender. It is all speculation and hearsay and, as Kendall put it, "revisionist history."

Go visit the USS Arizona and explain your revisionist history to the sailors that are entombed there.

Freightdawg