RIP Howard Zinn

[Kalidurga]

8. I owe him a debt...

In ninth grade, history we studied the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I said the second bombing was completely unnecessary. I think I might have also called it mass murder or something. It was a horrific act in any case. My teacher and I argued more than once about it. In my case it became a shouting match. To her credit she didn't send me to the principles office or lower my grade or anything petty like that. But, she was trenchant in her arguments and impervious to reason.

It was a decade later and I was in college I found Zinn's book A People's History of the United States. I read the whole thing with horror, because of how much abuse that has been heaped on so many people. And gratitude, because much of what I suspected was being acknowledged with footnotes and everything. But, when I came to the chapter on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I cried. I knew it was mass murder and here it was spelled out the whys, the hows, and it was unmistakable truth. I was vindicated, but I didn't celebrate that for even a second.