Wikileaks: Obama attempted to APOLOGIZE for US nuking of Japan during WWII

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I'm going to retell a story that I've told on the forum before, but I think, given the topic of this thread, is appropriate.

My dad was a WWII veteran.  He joined the army in September of '41, and fought in North Africa, Italy, France and the Philippines and was on an aircraft carrier bound for mainland Japan when the bombs were dropped.  He was a very strict Catholic and remained one all his life.  He had spent two years in the seminary when he was young, and was so well-versed in the liturgy that, when chaplains were absent or ill in his unit, he would say a good part of the mass in their place for other Catholic soldiers (in Latin, of course).  At the army reunions he took me to when I was a kid, his unit friends didn't call him by his first name; they called him "little padre" ("little," I think, because he was short).  He showered stories on all of his children about the war, and since I was the youngest in the family, I think I heard all of them more often than anyone else.  He was first scrub nurse for surgery in a medical unit for most of the war, and told stories about everything from patching up allied and enemy soldiers, to getting winning poker hands while crossing the equator on a boat, to being deafened for several weeks by hand grenades on the battlefield, to having to kill a Japanese soldier who was trying, with a comrade, to raid his camp while on night guard duty in the Philippines.  He saw the worst of everything for the entirety of the war.

Because I listened to all of his stories, when I was about eleven, I started reading histories of the war, and watching lots of documentaries about famous generals,  I was especially fascinated with Patton because my dad's unit was attached to the 3rd Army for a little bit while they were rolling through France, and my dad remembered standing within feet of Patton during morning duty.  I began, after a time, reading about the War in the Pacific, and realized that, had it not been for the bombs, my dad would have had to fight, and may very easily have died, in mainland Japan after having survived four years on the western fronts.  

So, one day, when I was 12, I mustered up the courage to ask my dad about that.  He had a sometimes unpredictably quick temper (which I inherited), so I was kind of careful about which questions to ask him.  But, one day, I finessed my way into it with the remark: "you must have been really relieved when the bombs were dropped on Japan, ending the war, since it meant you wouldn't have to fight on the mainland."  "Of course," he replied: "we were all relieved."  "So, you think dropping the bombs to end the war was the right thing for the U.S. to do."  He turned to me, and answered, in a slow cadence, in a quiet but somber tone I will never forget: "no.  Absolutely not.  Dropping those bombs was a mortal sin."  "But," I mildly protested, "everyone thinks that many more people may have died if we had conducted an invasion, and it's almost certain many thousands of more soldiers, including you, would have died too."  My dad answered: "that's not the point.  Dropping those bombs meant we killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians.  That's what we were supposed to be fighting against Germany for.  That's why we considered Japan to be in the wrong; they were the ones invading countries and killing civilians, and that's why we had to stop them.  And besides, the Bible, and our Lord, tells us that we must not murder.  We were soldiers; dying on the battlefield was our job, our duty.  It was not our duty to kill innocent civilians.  It was a mortal sin."

Obviously, my father's view may very easily represent an incredibly small minority among soldiers; I've sure heard for more voices from that generation than his justify the dropping of the bombs than criticize it.  But that conversation with my dad always deeply moved me, and moves me to this day, even though I am no longer religious in any way.  My dad's faith transcended nationalism, even in the throes of the deadliest of wars.  It transcended numbers and hypothetical calculations.  It transcended the political ends that wars are meant to achieve.  His sense of duty, morality, obedience to God meant more to him than all that, meant more to him than his own life on this earth.  And that sense of duty told him that killing innocent civilians is wrong...period, end of story, no addendum, no excuses, no self-interested exceptions.  

You may agree or disagree with my dad's view, and either way, I entirely respect your right to believe what you do.  After all, a society where people respect one another's right to believe what they do, even though they may vehemently disagree with one another, was precisely the kind of society our soldiers, then and now, fight to defend and preserve.  But, in my own experience, I can't say I've ever heard an expression of faith, and what it categorically demands from human beings, that impressed me more then my dad's answer to my question.    

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Just wanted to quickly thank those of you who had compliments for my father.  He was indeed an amazing man.  It's hard to believe he died more than twenty one years ago now, but I was really lucky to have him as my dad.  Like I said above, his view about the end of the War in the Pacific was a decidedly minority one among veterans as far as I've ever been able to tell.  But the strength and courage of his moral convictions, agree or disagree with the substance of his beliefs, were always parts of his character I greatly admired.  Telling that story helps me remember him, so thanks again to those of you who read it for indulging me.