All that is of course speculative, and nuclear weapons may yet become the scourge of humanity by fatally contaminating the planet, if not demolishing large parts of it. But until then, if and when that happens, Okinawa's caves, killing grounds, and anguish should be remembered, together with the total of deaths there, which was greater than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. The ambivalent human record suggests that the first atomic bombs probably prevented the homicidal equivalent of scores more of the same: the five to ten million Japanese deaths if invasion had been necessary, in addition
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