Originally Posted by strelnik

I spoke to my late father about this. He died in 2005 at the age of 91.
He was an MP and in military intelligence during the war.

He was also around when 9/11 happened and he said that it was NO comparison to the shock and anger that was felt following the attack on Pearl Harbor and even worse when the details of the Bataan Death March came to light.

There were people in this country that wanted to exterminate every living person in Japan, and senators who wanted to nuke the entire island. I really have the feeling that Truman was a reluctant user of the A-bomb, but if they wouldn't surrender unconditionally, then he would do what he had to do.

I asked my father about the Japanese internment camps, which were so controversial; and he countered that they probably saved a lot of lives. There were movements in some cities to lynch Japanese!

Fortunately, people were able to tell Japanese from Chinese and great sympathy for the Chinese existed, because they had been established in California, and the 1930s newspapers talked about the Japanese atrocities in China.

The fact that news was sparse and slow in coming made it worse. People chewed on things longer.

Maybe that's better than the flood of news we get, maybe not. Don't know.