A Marginal Group

I am writing in response to a letter May 12 accusing the Valley News of pedaling pro-LGTB propaganda. The writer of that letter cites The American College of Pediatricians in an effort to prove that you have committed a so-called disservice to our children with your Valley Parents article the previous week.

I am writing to clarify for your readers that The American College of Pediatricians, although very important sounding in name, is little more than a front for a small group of social conservatives who spend their time fighting LGBT equality.

They have been described as a “marginal group” by The American Association of Social Workers; they have been accused of misleading children and parents by the National Institutes of Health; and The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated them a “hate group.”

If your readers wish to become informed on LGBT issues, they should consult the American Academy of Pediatrics, which has more than 60,000 members (compared with the ACP’s 60-200 members). 

Bernard Dauphinais

Groton, N.H.

Facts About War Against Japan

In his May 15 column, Steve Nelson said regarding the decision to drop nuclear weapons on Japan: “Apologists for the decision claim that any other military ‘solution’ would have taken 10,000 or more American soldiers’ lives and hundreds of thousands of innocent Japanese citizens’ lives.”

You owe it to those with an opposing belief to at least get the facts right and not diminish the merits of their case with errors. The projected casualties of an invasion of Japan were off by an order of magnitude.

Rather than 10,000, the commonly used number in the time period before the bombs were dropped was 500,000. There were many in the administration that believed that it would exceed 1 million. The Japanese strategy in Okinawa and Iwo Jima was to create as many American casualties as possible to discourage an invasion of their homeland. Earlier in the Pacific war, there was one American casualty for five Japanese casualties. That ratio was 2:1 on Okinawa and 1.25:1 on Iwo Jima.

In anticipation of the 5 million men required for the invasion of Japan, the Selective Service had doubled its induction rate in January 1945 to provide 100,000 men per month. There had also been a surge in casualties from June 1944 with D-Day in Normandy and operations in the Mariana Islands averaging a total of 65,000 per month. Imagine that — the total losses from the Vietnam war every month for the year of June 1944 to June 1945! More than 2,580,000 were lost overseas in World War II, and almost half of them in the final year of the war.

A good source is Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan 1945-1947 by D. M. Giangreco, published by the Naval Institute Press at Annapolis. The author was awarded the Society for Military History’s 1998 Moncado Prize for his article “Casualty Projections for U.S. Invasions of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications.”

The reality facing Truman and other decision-makers was that any invasion of Japan would incur horrendous casualties on both sides of the conflict. That was one of the many factors in that decision. Next time do your homework and get the facts right.

Joe Barry

Randolph