No, Smackx, while their fates were tragic, those Japanese civilians were not equal in importance to my father and my second cousin who were on Okinawa fighting the Japanese.

My father died one year ago and both he and my cousin said on several occasions that they and their colleagues celebrated but also wept with joy at the news of the bombings because it meant they actually had a chance to get home alive.

Luckiest Japanese in 1945? The residents of Kokura, the town that was socked in by clouds so Nagasaki was hit instead. Oh, and the millions not killed in an invasion of the home islands.