NEWS: Sixty Years On

POLITICS: Sixty Years On

Today marks the sixtieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

I’m not going to open a discussion about whether the atomic strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were appropriate, moral, just or justified. Instead, I’d like to bring to your attention an exhibition hosted on the Exploratorium: The Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata. A word of warning – it’s not pretty. Those of you with weak stomachs might want to sit this one out.

If you can look at this and feel nothing, then I have nothing else to say to you.

I'm surprised we haven't taken more flak for that, I understood the political and militiristic thinking behind it, but we raped and murderred thousands of innocent souls in a heartbeat, two in fact. I could understand blasting the shit out of critical targets, I understand that sometimes collateral damage happens but this was just to broad a weapon to be described as a military action. We wiped out a city to save our own troops, we washed away thousands of years of history and replaced it with hurt, anguiush and death to persuade a leader, we went too far. I honestly feel that there was no excuse for using something that indiscriminate, with that callous a regard for civilian life.
"The death and destruction not merely of people and cities but of the human conscience is clearly involved."

Such terrible power....I only hope such destructive force is never used again.

60 years since the two greatest acts of terrorism in the history of human Civilisation.

Dropping Nuclear weapons on Hiroshema and Nagasaki was unnecessary and a crime against humanity.
Japan was already defeated. Using those bombs was intended as a show of force against Russia and as a start of the cold war.

And now we are witnessing the last throes of the Non proliferation treaty as Bush strives to develop a new generation of 'tactical nuclear weapons' to bring a new era of terror and imminent threat to the world.

This is our cry, this is our prayer, peace in the world.

War is hell. What more can I say on the subject? Sino-Japanese relations are still strained over the subject of Japan celebrating the military career of someone universally considered a war criminal outside of Japan.

The US considered dropping the first bomb on a sparsely populated forested area of Japan, but they didn't want the Japanese propaganda machine to spin that fact the wrong way. Oh, the Americans dropped this great bomb, and couldn't hit their target, etc. The truth of the matter is that this bomb ended the war in the Pacific, saving tens of thousands of American lives, thus allowing the US to focus its might on the campaign in Europe. Anyone who doesn't think that every combatant in WWII fought with a blatant disregard for civilian casualties needs to read up on their military history.

[Edited on Aug 06, 2005 11:39AM]

Japan still attempts to take no resposibility for their part in WW2. Their young people seem to think we just bombed them for the fuck of it. That's what happens when you take advantage of a sleeping giant.....isn't it called selective amnesia.
The British dropped fire bombs on Dreseden, Germany in WW2. Maybe... just maybe it was payback for the London bombings and rocket attacks it suffered from Germany.

war sucks!......soooooo don't start one!

Er, the war in Europe was already over by the time the A-bombs were dropped. Who should read up on their history?

USS Arizona after the attack on Pearl Harbor Dec 7, 1941
Ohhh.and i'm just showcasing a pic, not to discuss who was right or wrong.


forgive your enemies!.. but never forget their names!

It's really not that simple, and you do yourself a disservice by pretending that it was.

The Japanese atrocities like the Rape of Nanking, the Bataan Death March, the brutal slaughter in the Phillipines, etc as well as having a "fight to the last man, to the death" military culture, as well as the Kamikaze pilots, suicide-bombing US ships. All these factors contributed in the choice to use the atomic bomb.

So, again, it really wasn't as simple or one-sided as you say. Hindsight is 20/20.

they seem to have forgotten that! again selective amnesia ...they knew they were defeated yet continued to fight to the death to waste lives..theirs and ours!

Good words Stiles.

That last statement is all too true where the Japanese in the 1940s are concerned. Many people simply don't take the time to make themselves aware of the culture and mentality that was entrenched in the Japan of the '40s, and how drastically different it is from the nation we know today.

[Edited on Aug 06, 2005 by Phoebus]

Truman:
We have used the bomb against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten American prisoners of war. ..We have used it in order to shorten the agony of the war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.



Pananarama states "We wiped out a city to save our own troops, we washed away thousands of years of history and replaced ............"


Duhh....the one with the most people and toys after the war wins!

"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Mandate For Change

Lost opportunities:

1. The Supreme War Leadership Council could’ve sued for peace as early as February when Konoe and Shigemitsu warned that the neutrality pact would not protect Japan from Russia joining in against them.
2. Early June when Battle of Okinawa was lost, when their own studies showed them the war could not continue.
3. July 27-28 when Potsdam Declaration arrived. But pinning their hopes on Konoe’s not yet arranged mission to Moscow, then waiting for a response that would never come, the Emperor and Kido wasted valuable time.

I presume this is meant to be a subtle dig at me.

You seem to have equated my quiet disgust at such preposterous arguments as If Nuked, Nuke Mecca, and my quiet attempt to remind those who read my wire of what you all speak of so clinically with either a condemnation of the Nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or approbation of a hysterical totalitarian regieme bent on overtaking the world.

Your assertion that I say anything, when in fact I have specifically sequestered myself, is pathetic and infantile; as is the constant bickering over who was right and who was wrong. If you have any dignty, still your tongues and have a little respect for the dead you disgrace, on both sides.

Here is my only argument: This is war, and it is vile.

Do not presume to place your words in my mouth, child.



[Edited on Aug 07, 2005 1:45AM]

[Edited on Aug 07, 2005 1:52AM]

Nope, wrong. The use of the bombs was in large part bluff, since we only had two ready to go, and were months away from having enough fissile material for a third. The commission that studied the issue considered that, but concluded that if we dropped the first as a demonstration, the Japanese high command would call our bluff. This was not a particularly unreasonable conclusion -- the Japanese had their own bomb program, and as a result, understood how hard it was to produce weapons grade fissile material. Therefore, if we'd dropped only one on a forest, they would have (correctly) concluded that we had only one or two and they could continue to hold out.

However, the dropping of the bombs was still likely unnecessary to end the war in mid-August 1945. Recent scholarship indicates that Imperial Japan surrendered to the US as a result of the Soviet entry into the Pacific war on August 7, two days after Hiroshima, one day before Nagasaki, and ten days before the surrender.

Well, so much for quiet reflection...

amazing!

Indeed.

Mitsuo Fuchida, the Japanese Naval Aviator that led the attack on Pearl Harbor told Gen Paul Tibbets (the Pilot of the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima) years later that " You did the right thing to drop the bombs. Japan would have reisited an invasion using every man, woman, and child, using sticks and stones if necessary".

The bombs actually saved from 600,000 to over a Million lives on both sides.

Well, thank you. I've been told I'm at my best when I level my bile tongue.

My grandfather (a seabee on Okinawa) said 50 years later that the only nightmare he still had (in the 90's) was of the Okinawan children walking up to American soldiers and detonating hand grenades and satchels of explosives, and of old men and women charging machine gun nests with sharpened bamboo poles. He saw it all, and firmly believed that the bombs saved more lives than they took.

A lot of people fail to note that the Japanese idea of a "face saving" peace revolved around inflicting so many American casualties, that rather than demanding a complete surrender, America and our allies would sue for a negotiated peace, allowing Japan to hold on to the territories occupied before Dec. 7 1941 (Manchuria, Korea, etc..). People that call the use of the bombs racist either don't know, or don't care that the bombs were originally developed for use against Germany.

Still, though, the notion that the Japanese were so fanatical that an invasion of the main island would have been a bloodbath doesn't work for me for this reason: if they were so fanatical, why surrender even after the bombs were dropped?

The only thing that was really holding up a Japanese surrender was the insistence on the part of the Allies that the Emperor be deposed. That was the last sticking point. The grand irony of this is that MacArthur would later decide, as head of the occupation forces, that it would be best to keep the royal family around.

Another fact to keep in mind: the Soviet Union had agreed to enter the war against Japan a certain number of days after the surrender of the Germans. The day that this came up just happened to be the day after Hiroshima. Leslie Groves was quoted often as saying the atomic bomb was as much a weapon against Russia as Japan, possibly more so. There was concern, too, that if the Soviets entered the Asian war in a big way, you'd have the same problem in Asia that we ended up with in Europe: they'd take, and hold, large portions of Asia (particularly China, and, of course, the Japanese mainland) and "forget" to give them back. It was already clear at the time that Russia would not be allowing the land they held in Europe to be free of their domination, and I don't think Truman wanted to repeat that mistake.

My father was a WWII veteran too, and he, too, got angry at the suggestion that the atomic bomb was not necessary. But I think the more you look at the situation, you see that if the objective was simply to win the war with Japan, it was not. But there was far more at play here.