<p>In 1945 200,000 people were killed in a flash of light.</p>
<p>About the only thing we can do is remember.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bpf.org/html/whats_now/2006/hiroshima.html[/url]”>http://www.bpf.org/html/whats_now/2006/hiroshima.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“http://www.veteransforpeace.org/[/url]”>http://www.veteransforpeace.org/</a></p>
<p><a href=“How Does Industrial Cleaning in Singapore Operates”>How Does Industrial Cleaning in Singapore Operates;
<p>is waging war really an effective way to bring about peace?</p>
<p>
Far, far more than 200k innocent men, women, and children died long, slow, horrible deaths as victims and prisoners of the Japanese Empire in the first half of the 20th century. Those poor people would have welcomed the mercy of dying “in a flash of light.” I have no sympathy for the Japanese of that era. The German death camps were humane, by comparison. The fact that the dead of H/N were killed by atom bombs, as opposed to the more typical (and deadly) fire-bombing/high explosive bombing upsets those susceptible to melodrama.
It works, historically. Dead enemies lose their ability to enslave and torture you.</p>
<p>The bombing prevented hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese casualties. The bombing was 100% moral.</p>
<p>Was Nagasaki moral? Seems the US had made their point with Hiroshima.</p>
<p>The sad fact is that the Imperial Japanese military refused to surrender after the first bomb. And the second, they promptly laid down their arms.</p>
<p>I believe that war is rarely moral, but at times its necessary.</p>
<p>Yes, the Japanese army and Japan’s rule in its occupied Pacific territories was fairly brutal. "The Rape of Nanking’ is notorious.</p>
<p>The deaths on August 6th were only the beginning of the deaths caused by our single use of nuclear weapons. Military veterans who went into Japan to see the damage died younger than those wo “mopped up” in Europe. Japanese who survived the initial blast died of leukemia and other radiation-caused illnesses died younger than they should have. We only dropped two nuclear bombs, but we made thousands and tested thousands, and workers at Hanford Nuclear Reservation died younger than they should have and radioactive waste is still trickling toward the Columbia River from the Hanford site. Downwinders of test sites developed some cancers at higher rates.</p>
<p>Did Truman do the right thing to drop the bomb on Hiroshima? At the time, yes, I think it was the right decision. Was it the right decision to drop the bomb on Nagasaki? I’m less sure about that. They’d planned for 2 in August, three in September, up to seven in December–they didn’t actually give the Japanese much chance to look at Hiroshima before the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. But no one really had a clue just how devastating nuclear weapons were going to be,</p>
<p>My daughter’s visit to the Hiroshima memorial is still–8 years later–one of the experiences she describes as “life-changing.”</p>
<p>I saw (with my children) the propoganda cartoon that is run 24/7 (ok, whenever they’re open) at the headquarters of the International Red Cross in Geneva. It’s a disgrace. The poor little Japanese girl helps her family around the house, goes to school, and then is turned into a cartoon skeleton. Very scary cartoon for little kids who have no historical context. I wonder how the IRC cartoon about the experiences of the prisoners of the Japanese would look. Oh, but we have “The Bridge on the River Kwai” for context. Never mind.</p>
<p>Funny you should mention “The Bridge on the River Kwai”. I saw a documentary of the actual horrors that were inflicted on those who were involved. The survivors are still furious about the movie’s historical inaccuracies and the sugar coating of the actual conditions that existed in the slave labor/death camps involved with building the railway. </p>
<p>But, then the US is not guiltless either - after-all, the barbaric torturers of Abu Ghraib forced a man to put women’s underwear on his head. Oh the humanity!</p>
<p>
What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas. I mean Abu Ghraib. I mean Hyannisport</p>
<p>Hiroshima was a major step forward in the willingness of a warring nation to incur civilian casualities as a military strategy. We may burn in hell for it, but we’ll hardly be alone. The ironic thing was that while our use of nuclear may have encouraged other countries to acquire them, it may have given those countires second thoughts about using them.</p>
<p>For me, the issue at Abu Graib isn’t about the inmates per se, but the apparent lack of military discipline. The Armed Services have rules about how prisons are run; soliders do not have discretion about which rules to follow.</p>
<p>
How so? It just showed that one bomb could do the same damage that had once required multiple bombs. Conventional bombings by large squadrons did much more damage/killed many more people than did our A-bombs.</p>
<p>Slaughterhouse 5 (Vonnegut) makes the point that the firebombing of Dresden was every bit as horrific as Hiroshima, but I think Vonnegut was wrong. Radiation sickness and radiation-caused cancers were real horrors of our use of nuclear weapons–and unanticipated, although they shouldn’t have been. </p>
<p>Frankly, while I think the use of weapons in war is inevitable (would it be war without them?), I think it’s extremely important that they be used with full knowledge of the effects. We dropped nuclear weapons on Japan without really thinking about it, as a demonstration of power in what was to become the cold war, as well as to force Hirohito to surrender.</p>
<p>My father was a war correspondent, attached to MacArthur in the South Pacific from 1943 to 1945, and a acquantaince of Truman’s (he went to high school with Margaret), and he long felt that Hiroshima was fully justified, based on what he’d seen. But later, when he was dying of the cancer caused by cigarettes (and, probably, his trip to see Hiroshima after the bombing), he found it sad and disheartening that any more nuclear weapons were ever built after we’d found out their consequences.</p>
<p>dmd, you’re a thoughtful writer. But your comments remind me of friends who have gone through chemo-therapy. Their doctors had to nearly kill them to get rid of their cancer. There are lasting effects–but the alternative was worse. I see Hiroshima/Nagasaki in the same way.</p>
<p>Another way of looking at things: Had the tables been turned…What do you think Imperial Japan would have done to us, had the tables been turned? You need only look at Korea and China for your answer. Against that kind of foe, you gouge eyes, you kick below the belt, you scratch and you claw, or else you and your children die terrible deaths. Excuse me for feeling revolted when I see some of the local college twerps strolling around in their “Che” t-shirts and holding candles in rememberance of Hiroshima. Truman did what he had to do, and the Japanese are fortunate to have survived and to now make the best cars and electronics in the world, and to be the greatest consumers of Americana. Their entire country and everyone in it could have been incinerated–and many world citizens would have supported that in 1945. The Japanese approach. Extermination.</p>
<p>Driver, read more carefully. I support what Truman did. I agree that it was the right decision to bomb Hiroshima. I think it was questionable to bomb Nagasaki–could we have waited a few more days?</p>
<p>But I also think it was terribly sad–and I agree with my father on this–that we went on from there to buid 20,000 atomic weapons.</p>
<p>Its a shame that we can’t mourn the hundreds of thousands of civilians that were killed, because in our minds “it was the right thing to do”.</p>
<p>Whether it was neccesary or not, I am not going to argue- because I am not a WWI or WWII scholar.</p>
<p>But I can remember those that died, and do my part so that perhaps one day-we can find a way to live on this planet without killing each other.</p>
<p>Hiroshima a-bombing was WWII, just in case you get on a quiz show.</p>
<p>I agree about the living in peace part. It would be nice.</p>
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LMAO! :p</p>
<p>As for the a-bombs - well, I’m happy to be alive. My grandfather was a WWII vet who was ready to deploy to Japan if they did not surrender. Estimated American causualties were one million if we had invaded. The Japanese would not have considered themselves civilian non-combatants; they would have, individually, fought us to the death. </p>
<p>I guess I find it really hard to look back and criticise too much. It is very easy to say that, now, we should not have done it - when Japan is no longer a threat to us. Yes, I do mourn the deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but no more than I mourn the deaths of everyone else who died in that war.</p>
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Actually, we came very close to having the tables turned on us. The Japanese army was very close to developing an atomic bomb - only the firebombing of Tokyo destroyed their efforts. However, there were credible reports that the Japanese navy was also in hot pursuit of a nuclear bomb and some eye witnesses claim that they actually got to the point of test firing one in Korea. Another interesting fact is that after Germany fell, the Americans took into custody a German submarine that was on it way to Japan. Its cargo was nuclear material for a bomb.</p>