60 Years Since Hiroshima 806
cryptoz writes "Today is the 6th of August, 2005, exactly 60 years after the first nuclear device was used in a war. Japan remembers what happened, as do those around the world. Elswhere, we remember where the bomb hit, as well as how it worked." From the article about Japan's observation of the anniversary: "The anniversary comes as regional powers meet in Beijing to urge North Korea to give up its nuclear programme, seen by Tokyo as a threat and one of the reasons behind rising calls in Japan to strengthen its defence and seek closer military ties with the United States. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was among those attending the ceremony in Hiroshima, 690 km (430 miles) southwest of Tokyo." We've previously reported on the anniversary of the first nuclear explosion.
Importance of rememberance (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Importance of rememberance (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, I don't know what world you live in, but the lessons of the past have not been learned, and your "world the way it is today" is on the brink of war. And no, I'm not talking about the "war on terrorism", I'm talking about a constant, low-level, diffuse state of warfare as predicted by Georges Orwell, and as desired by neocons in order to maintain themselves in a position of power.
As for the future, when energy resources start to dwindle (and some expert say they already are right now), you can bet your money on a full-scale war over control of what's left. If you think Hiroshima taught anything to today's world leaders, you're sadly mistaken.
Re:Importance of rememberance (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Importance of rememberance (Score:5, Insightful)
My biggest fear on this front is that the neocons in the Bush administration either learned to well or not well enough what nuclear weapons mean in tactical and strategic situations.
The biggest problem with nukes are they are a weapon no one in their right mind will ever use so vast sums have been squandered on them and they are really useless. Sure they prevented a direct confrontation between the superpowers but there have been so many proxy wars between them that they really haven't stopped much in the way of wars.
The neocons are actively working to solve this problem by developing new low yield tactical nukes that they apparently fully intend to use for cave and bunker busting, unless someone like Congress stops them. If they get their way they are going to build them and then they are going to test them at which point the nuclear test ban treaty is out the window and every country outside the U.S. will start abandoning non proliferation because the U.S. will at that point be returning to a proliferation track.
The worst danger of these tactical nukes is they are being built to use, not to sit on the shelf as deterrents. They are low yield and the claim at least is they will only be used on cave complexes and deep underground bunkers. But once they let that genie out of the bottle, and step on the slippery slope we could easily see what was planned for nukes in the 50's, tactical use on the battlefield. Then its anyones guess if this will lead to escalations either small or massive. First the U.S. uses one on a cave complex in Afghanistan then maybe Russia uses one in Chechnya and we are back to a very dangerous world.
"A generation now are being raised where full scale war between first world countries is a thing of the past"
Not sure I would go that far. The people at the time thought World War I would be the war to end all wars and they were wrong.
Nuclear weapons are proliferating at such a high rate its nearly inevitable they are going to end up in the hands of someone who will be willing to use them due to desperation or psychosis.
After the psychotic neocons and their new tactical nukes, Pakistan is the country most likely in my book to use them. That country is extraordinarily unstable and you mix in nukes it is extraordinarily dangerous. There is a military dictator attempting to enforce stability, but he has been targeted by several assassination attempts. He has next to no control over his own secret service, the ISI, and they were instrumental in installing and keeping the Taliban in power in Afghanistan and may well be harboring the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Pakistan. And there is a huge fundamentalist Islamic movement that may well gain power someday. Pakistan was also shopping nukes to the highest bidder until very recently. The ring was supposedly broken up but the ringleader A.Q. Khan went unpunished by Pakistan.
We have not yet a seen a case where a country with nukes has undergone a violent coup. The Soviet Union and Russia came close once but the people controlling the nukes mostly kept their cool during that one.
Re:Importance of rememberance (Score:2)
And more importantly, their factories and heavy industry. There was not much point in dropping a bomb on Tokyo - it had been pretty much devastated by conventional bombs. Horishima and Nagasaki were legitimate military targets. The fact that so many civilians died is, sadly, "co-lateral damage". It stopped the war real quick tho. Unconditional surrender, too. Japan really suffered under the tyrannical post war occup
Re:So should you. (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that the Japanese army and its militaristic leadership committed atrocities doesn't damn to hell every citizen of Japan. Most of them didn't really have anything to say about it, they didn't even get to vote on it. Even the people who did support everything the Japanese military did were for the most part propagandized and brain washed to the point they couldn't differentiate t
Re:So? (Score:3, Insightful)
"The whole point of developing smart bombs is to try to minimize civilian casualties"
Smart bombs were developed because they allow you to take out targets like bridges and bunkers with fewer aircraft placed at risk and a higher probability of success. Bombing bridges with dumb bombs was nearly impossible. Reduction in civilian causalties was at best a pleasant side effect but had nothing
CBC timeline (Score:4, Informative)
It's a sad day in the history of humanity. The cruelty that we visit upon each other should never be forgotten.
Re:CBC timeline (Score:5, Informative)
We must realize that war always has a large cost on everyone involved, and only resort to physical confrontation as an absolute last resort.
Re:CBC timeline (Score:3, Insightful)
A sad day? (Score:2, Interesting)
The way we finished the war saved a lot more lives then would have been lost if we all kept fighting.
Re:A sad day? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:CBC timeline (Score:2)
Lots of people are going to reply to this statement by saying that it was justified that japan was bombed and so forth. What these people don't quite comprehend is that these two final large acts of massive distruction where the penultimate destructive act of WW2. The final massively destructive orgy of the war and the first deployment of a weapon that would dominate world affairs afterwards.
If y
Re:CBC timeline (Score:2, Insightful)
You've obviously never reviewed the body counds from Japan's Rape of Nanking [tribo.org].
Re:CBC timeline (Score:2)
And frankly, if there had been a bit less face saving on the part of the Japanese Government the war would have ended before it came to dropping the Bomb.
Re:CBC timeline (Score:2)
My ancestor was almost killed by your ancestor, hopefully our grandchildren will still be fighting. Ugh. War is hell, you know? People die. On both sides. That is, basically, THE WHOLE POINT. That's why war should be avoided, if it can be.
Whining about old w
What ordinary men can do (Score:5, Interesting)
Three men involved in the attack on Hiroshima shared with the BBC their memories of a day that has stayed with them for 60 years.
Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk, 84
The day before the mission we sat through briefings on Tinian island where they told us who was assigned to which plane, and we ran through what we were going to do.
About 2pm we were told to get some sleep. But I don't know how they expected to tell us were we dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan and then expect us to sleep.
I didn't get a wink. Nor did most of the others. But at 10pm we had to get up again because we were flying at 2.45am.
They briefed us that the weather was good, but they were sending weather observation planes up so we would have the best information on targeting Hiroshima.
We had a final breakfast and then went down to the plane shortly after midnight.
There was a lot of picture-taking and interviewing going on - by the military - and it was a relief to get in the Enola Gay about an hour before we took off.
We flew in low over Iwo Jima while the bomb crew checked and armed Little Boy (the uranium bomb) and once we cleared the island we began climbing to our bombing altitude of just over 30,000 feet.
It was perfectly clear and I was just doing all the things I'd always done as a navigator - plotting our course, getting fixes to make sure we were on course and reading the drifts so we knew the wind speed.
As we flew over an inland sea I could make out the city of Hiroshima from miles away - my first thought was 'That's the target, now let's bomb the damn thing'.
But it was quiet in the sky. I'd flown 58 missions over Europe and Africa - and I said to one of the boys that if we'd sat in the sky for so long over there we'd have been blown out of the air.
Once we verified the target, I went in the back and just sat down. The next thing I felt was 94,000lbs of bomb leaving the aircraft - there was a huge surge and we immediately banked into a right hand turn and lost about 2,000 feet.
We'd been told that if we were eight miles away when the thing went off, we'd probably be ok - so we wanted to put as much distance as possible between us and the blast.
All of us - except the pilot - were wearing dark goggles, but we still saw a flash - a bit like a camera bulb going off in the plane.
There was a great jolt on the aircraft and we were thrown off the floor. Someone called out 'flak' but of course it was the shockwave from the bomb.
The tail-gunner later said he saw it coming towards us - a bit like the haze you see over a car park on a hot day, but moving forwards a great speed.
We turned to look back at Hiroshima and already there was a huge white cloud reaching up more than 42,000 feet. At the base you could see nothing but thick black dust and debris - it looked like a pot of hot oil down there.
We were pleased that the bomb had exploded as planned and later we got to talking about what it meant for the war.
We concluded that it would be over - that not even the most obstinate, uncaring leaders could refuse to surrender after this.
In the weeks afterwards, I actually flew back to Japan with some US scientists and some Japanese from their atomic programme.
We flew low over Hiroshima but could not land anywhere and eventually landed at Nagasaki.
We didn't hide the fact that we were American and many people turned their faces away from us. But where we stayed we were made very welcome and I think people were glad that the war had ended.
Morris "Dick" Jepson, 83
I was a young second lieutenant in the US Air Force and was designated as the weapons test officer on the Enola Gay.
Enola Gay returns after Hiroshima mission (photo: Smithsonian Institution)
For Dick Jepson, the Enola Gay flight was his first combat mission
Re:What ordinary men can do (Score:2)
Please read this before commenting (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a wonderful article from the Weekly Standard concerning Truman's choice.
The most salient fact? About 10,000 people per day were dying per day in the Pacific theatre, mostly civilians in Japanese-occupied countries. Any alternative to the bombs that would have caused a one month delay would have wound up with more dead than the bombs themselves.
Remember this before you rattle off about some alternative scheme to end the war.
My alternative scheme to end the war... (Score:4, Funny)
We could have avoided the whole nuclear arms race if we'd only sent it Godzilla. Or giant robots. Ok, the robots wouldn't have worked without a nuclear power source, but still think of it -- Godzilla or giant robots!
Only problem is finding enough butterscotch pudding to control Gozilla. It's his favorite, by the way.
Re:My alternative scheme to end the war... (Score:2)
Alas, no. Godzilla was still sleeping in his undersea cavern in 1945, and wouldn't waken until disturbed by H-bomb tests in the early '50s. Nice thought, though.
Re:Please read this before commenting (Score:5, Insightful)
In hindsight, it's easy to say the bombs shouldn't have been dropped. But at the time, things were very, very different.
Re:Please read this before commenting (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe true. There probably as many versions as there are history schoolbooks - in the end, noone knows, history does not repeat and this is clearly an unique event!
But I think this is not, in any way, the point of this slashdot story. It is not about whoever was 'right' in this conflict some 60 years ago.
It is there to show the atrocities of weapons, certain bombs - weapons of mass destruction - against civilian targets.
These anniversaries are there to reflect on whether it is wise to point 1000s of these with a much higher capacity against each other, in 'alert' mode.
The US's top mil leaders disagreed (Score:4, Insightful)
The Japs knew they well 'n truelly beat by Saipan (just read any of the Japanese War ministry papers that were released about 10 years ago), gez by then their war production wasn't even replacing loses by 15% or something, let alone matching war loses, or matching the allies. Even us Aussies alone were almost matching the Japanese in many aspects of war production by then (of course that excludes such things as capital ships 'n subs. Mind you by the last year of the war Japanese aircraft production was abysmal, while such aircraft as Beaufighters, Mustangs & Mosquitoes were being made in Oz). The Japanese only kept fighting because unconditional surrender was unacceptable (which is why unconditional surrender's so rare) as they saw it as a risk to their monarchy.
Actually, the Japs knew they were beat by Midway - they knew the realities of US industrial production (the fact that only 17% of America's war effort was directed at Japan, yet the Americans were more than matching them. These figures become even more spectacular when one realises that Germany was directing arguably 80+% of it's war effort against the Russians) meant they had to force the US to meet it's terms with 6 months of Pearl Harbour or the war was lost. A such Japan had no intention of ever invading Australia, India or the US - their plan was to run amoke, quickly inflicting a number of knockout blows, there-by forcing the allies to accept their terms for peace - recognise the Japanese conquests in China & accept Japanese puppet regimes in the Philipines, Indochina, Malaya & the East Indies. (Going by a doco I saw) by Midway they had given up on the allies accepting terms on the puppet states & just wanted the China conquests recognised, which was still quite rightly unacceptable to the allies. By Saipan their hoped for terms were that the allies would be willing to accept some sort of Japanese hegamony/sphere in Formosa, Manchuria & Korea. By the fall of Germany the Japanese only had 2 conditions left - the monarchy must remain & on paper the surrender must be referred to as a 'negotiated ceasefire' (the Japanese obsession with 'face' is obvious here).
From what I understand the whole 'unconditional surrender' thing started as a policy of faith by Roosevelt & Churchill to Stalin. It became policy in regards to the Nazi regime as an attempt to relieve Stalin's concern/worries/paranoia about the West unilaterally negotiating terms with Hitler. The unconditional surrender policy was only extended to include the Japanese to satisfy American voters, who would otherwise ask 'why are the Germans expected to surrender unconditionally & not the Japs when it was the Japs that attacked us'.
Now lets see what some of America's great war-time leaders thought:-
GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
Good but not quite (Score:2)
Saving the lives of civilians was a poor third at best. The war was alre
Be careful about that (Score:2)
What you refer to as "the US" or "US forces" was a group of people, and it was not entirely homogeneous. Some had good motives, some had bad motives, and most (I think) had mixed motives.
Trying to put the priorities of an inhomogeneous group of people in some kind of order isn't necessarily helpful, even if it is accurate at some level of abstraction.
Re:Please read this before commenting (Score:4, Interesting)
On a side note, perhaps the worst implication of the a-bomb dropping was what's called the "genocidal mentality." The idea is that now that the idea of an ultimate weapon to wipe out so many people at once has entered our consciousness, humans have developed an inherent mental threshold that is much lower than that of leaders in previous centuries, termed "psychic numbing." A good article on the subject is here [himalmag.com]. Here's a choice quote: "Nuclearism does not remain confined to the nuclear establishment or the nuclear community. It introduces other psychopathologies in a society. For instance, as it seeps into public consciousness, it creates a new awareness of the transience of life. It forces people to live with the constant fear that, one day, a sudden war or accident might kill not only them, but also their children and grandchildren, and everybody they love. This awareness gradually creates a sense of the hollowness of life. For many, life is denuded of substantive meaning. The psychological numbing I have mentioned completes the picture. While the ordinary citizen leads an apparently normal life, he or she is constantly aware of the transience of such life and the risk of mega-death for the entire society. Often this finds expression in unnecessary or inexplicable violence in social life or in a more general, high state of anxiety and a variety of psychosomatic ailments. In other words, nuclearism begins to brutalise ordinary people and vitiates everyday life."
So whether or not the bomb was good at ending the war, it may have had more deadly consequences decades later. It's something worth thinking about that isn't typically brought up in pragmatic discussions about war-termination scenarios for the pacific theater in WWII.
Re:Please read this before commenting (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, the only large-scale genocides took place before the advent of nuclear weapons. In fact, since nuclear weapons were developed and used, and their terrible destructiveness has seeped into every rational and halfway rational mind on the planet, we have become more and not less sensitized to the ugly destruction of total national warfare, and, arguably, this is exactly why there have
Re:Please read this before commenting (Score:2)
MacArthur made similar arguments at the time.
Re:As I asked, please read the article (Score:2)
"...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.
Re:Please read this before commenting (Score:2)
The First Priority (Score:2)
The Japanese soldiers were fanatical beyond belief. The banzai (basically suicidal) charges, the Kamikaze pilots, and so on, gave the Americans a healthy respect for the Japanese commitment to avoid defeat at all costs.
When Truman made the Decision, he put the lives of Allied troops as his first priority. He was right to do so.
Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:4, Informative)
The Japanese also engaged in mass killings; millions of Asian civilians and Allied POWs were killed by its military and/or used as forced labour. The most notorious atrocities occurred in China, including the slaughter of almost half a million Chinese during the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731's experiments with biological warfare in Manchuria, with a view to killing a large part of the Chinese population. Japanese war crimes also included rape, pillage, murder, cannibalism and forcing female civilians to become sex slaves, known as "comfort women" .
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:3, Insightful)
I get to spot people with disgusting attitudes like this and mark them 'foe'!
Thanks for standing out in the crowd!
Most of the people who died as a result of being nuked by 'The Americans' were not 'The Japanese' who commited the atrocities.
Grow up.
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:2)
Yes, but those people, you and I, also bear the responsability for one simple reason: we choose to identify ourselves with our country (patriotism) and take pride in whatever great the country has done in the past, so we can't disassociate ourselves with the wrongs it did too.
Young Germans should feel ashamed about what Nazis did, as much as they feel pride about their culture, young Americans s
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:2)
The dropping of the bombs ended war as the World had known it until then. It's been 60 years, and the world has not been thrown into conflict.
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:3, Informative)
Which I'm sure has the 80-odd dictatorships across the world shaking in their boots. Tyranny, it seems, is alive and well.
Max
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:2)
Nukes are NOT usable even in modern warfare, PERIOD. It is just useful for someone who sees everything like chess board (not alive people) like military in every country. They don't see people.
I know, i know...emotional rant and a
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:2)
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:2)
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:2)
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:2)
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:2)
It wasn't necessary. Neither was a hypothetical invasion. We had them surrounded from all sides, their Navy was destroyed, Air Force crushed, foreign supplies entire blockaded. We could have laid seige and they would have eventually surrendered. Their infrastru
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:2)
Japanese war crimes also included rape, pillage, murder, cannibalism and forcing female civilians to become sex slaves, known as "comfort women".
If you think that these acts are specific to the Japanese under Hirohito, then you're hopelessly naive about the nature of war.
The expression "War is Hell" didn't come out of nowhere, and it sure as anything is not the name of an upcoming X-Box game.
Re:Before some say 'Poor Japan' (Score:2)
You can make a good case that we could have handled it better. Perhaps we could have made the first bomb a demonstrative drop, off Tokyo Bay or something like that, preceded by leaflets saying "Look at what we can do." But we had only the two bombs we dropped (3 including the first test shot) and very little capacity to manufacture more. I think by 1949 we only had about 15 bombs. We
important to note (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Japan had, at that point, lost control of air and sea (over and around) their nation;
3) Japan was starving it's people and urging them to prepare for "millions of honorable deaths";
4) The Emperor wanted to surrender, but the Japanese military leadership refused to allow it;
5) Japan was warned repeatedly by the USA that refusing to surrender would exact a terrible toll;
6) Japan was seriously dragging their heels, taking weeks to decide, preparing for a defensive land war.
Finally, the US ended the stalemate, without a gruesome land war.
No one in the USA wanted to fight an "Iwo Jima" style battle, one in which hundreds of lives were lost just gaining or losing a couple of yards.
Fought on their home islands, the Japanese would have fought terribly, to the last man woman or child, with hundreds of thousands of lives lost on each side to starvation or this hellish land war.
The bomb, in many ways, was a gift for both sides.
I don't see how this is relevant. (Score:2)
These are valid points, but they're largely irrelevant. Nuclear weapons have not been used since, so when we reflect on their actual u
Re:I don't see how this is relevant. (Score:2)
Re:I don't see how this is relevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd say you've got that backwards.
The first time, with the two explosions in Japan, was the easiest. It was only afterwards that using them became an unforgivable crime in the eyes of the world.
Re:important to note (Score:5, Interesting)
My grandpa actually survived the Tokyo firebombing, but I don't have time to go into details...
Some people seem to be wondering why there is so much attention given to the bombs, and not to other bombings or battles, in Japan.
I think there is a similarity between the effects of the nuclear bomb and the attacks on 9-11. Before someone flames me for comparing the two attack's victims, let me explain. The reason the Japanese still talk about those particular attacks more than the Tokyo firebombings is largly psychological. Before the a-bomb, Japan had thought of itself as largly protected from invasion, much as America thought itself far removed from the mideast's politics. The a-bomb is what finally shattered that illusion, and it is because of this shock that it is still remembered. The Tokyo bombings were probobly more significant militarily and casualty-wise, but the a-bombs had a cultural significance far beyond firebombs. It's somewhat like how 9-11 is symbolized by the twin towers being hit, but the Pentagon attack is overlooked because there is no footage of it for the media to display.
The point of the bombs was to show American might and that it would be impossible to resist them; Japan had thought of itself as a 'holy nation' that could withstand any storm, but the Americans unleashed god-like powers with the a-bomb and showed that Japan's nationalist superstitions were no match for American science.
It's for that and other cultural reasons having to do with the surrender that the A-bombs are remembered, though of course the regular bombings are too.
You are completely correct (Score:4, Insightful)
The hope, thus, was to convince Japan that they had a new irresistable superweapon. Every effort was made to give the impression that the US possessed a vast aresenal of these bombs, and that they'd just keep dropping them on cities until Japan surrendered unconditonally.
It was such an unprecidented amount of force that it was just totally shocking. Sure, cities were leveled all the time, but it took thousands of bombers with many bombs each to do it, and that's somethign fighter planes could mount a defence against. But here ONE plane with ONE bomb effectively leveled a city. No one had ever seen any power like it, and had the US been telling the truth (in reality those two bombs were all they had at the time), there could be no defence.
Then, of course, there were the after effects which were unknown before that. People who had survived the bomb unscathed, so it seemed, began dying from mysterious problems, later revealed to be from the radiation that was released. So the bomb didn't just kill when it was dropped, it kept on killing even afterwards.
I personally think it is an event to be remembered because it's a demonstration of just how dangerous nuclear weapons are. Those bombs are tame compared to what we have today, and the destruction they unleashed is amazing.
The world remembered... (Score:2)
yet slashdot missed this immensely important anniversary in a day.
Film (Score:4, Informative)
A Tale of Two Cities" (1946) [archive.org]
There is be more [archive.org]
Re:Film (Score:2)
The problem with the debate... (Score:5, Insightful)
I already know that there's going to be people arguing back and forth that a) Hiroshima was a tragedy that never should have happened, or b) Hiroshima was necessary because it ended the war/punished the Japanese/etc.
Well, you know what? I don't care about either of those perspectives. Maybe it was necessary, maybe it wasn't, it's history now, and let's treat it as such. But there's one thing about the bomb that nobody in the US seems to realize:
Any country, *any* country, that uses nuclear weapons against another country had better let it weigh on their soul for as long as that country exists. The discussion should be constant, and permanent, and without end. The empathy of the pain that the Japanese people went through should be part and parcel of every conversation about World War II. People should go to sleep every night knowing exactly how serious of a decision that was.
And that's the problem: For every other country whose government's have committed mass murder, whether justifiable or not, there is a sense of history, of ownership of the bad as well as the good, there is a conceivability that they are as much responsible for the past as they are for the present and future.
In the US, we don't have that sense. It's all abstract and textbook, it's all justifications and wartime terminoligy. It's all disconnected and abstracted to the point of science fiction.
So argue all you want about whether it was right, or wrong, or good, or bad, or justifiable, or unjustifiable. To me, I can understand both sides of that debate.
What I can't understand is how most Americans seem to care much about what it means that we sent two Japenese cities into a nuclear hell. Using the bomb was a horrible act, whether or not it was justifiable, and the real tragedy is that the Japanese people were forced to understand that, while we read the headlines, added some notes to the next year's schoolbooks, and then continued on with our lives.
Sympathy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ask the survivors of the Bataan Death March [wikipedia.org] how many tears they shed for Japan.
Ask the Philipinos that survived the Manila Massacre [wikipedia.org] how many tears they shed for Japan.
I bet all of the people that carried up pieces of human remains from Pearl Harbor don't give a shit. I bet the veterans of the Pacific island hopping campaign don't give a shit. Nor the prisoners of war all over Asia.
Don't forget Nagasaki (Score:3, Interesting)
So let me remedy that with a link to the San Francisco Exploratorium's exhibition of restored photos taken shortly after the attack, Remembering Nagasaki. [exploratorium.edu]
bomb likely was unnecessary (Score:2, Informative)
Yet no word on the point of view (that I assume was never taught in US schools) that the bombing was unnecessary, as Japan was about to surrender, the wheels were in motion but accidental/intentional communication problems prevented that from happening before the bombs were dropped.
I also cannot discount the point of view that US had used this opportunity t
Thank God for the Atom Bomb (Score:2, Interesting)
Americans feel guilty about crap they shouldnt... (Score:4, Insightful)
If truman had the atomic bomb and reasonably believed using this weapon would end the war and would save a million lives he had a DUTY to use it even if the civilian cost was terrible.
If the critics can play monday morning quarterback then so can I. The use of the atomic bomb in the real world as opposed to just tests allowed the world to see how horrible it was and so far has ensured only two have been used in the last 60 years.
If Americans want to feel guilty over something, feel guilty about your SUV's helping to fund terrorism through oil money. we should feel guilty that we have allowed our constitution to be gutted in the name of safety. We should feel guilty that we sent american soldiers over to die in iraq without demanding verifiable proof from their commander in chief for the reasons for going. Theres plenty of things we can feel guilty about without accepting undesserved blame
Re:Americans feel guilty about crap they shouldnt. (Score:2)
Also feel guilty that although being in an SUV is slightly safer for you, you are SIX TIMES more likely to kill the occupants of the car you crash into than if you were driving an automobile.
Re:Americans feel guilty about crap they shouldnt. (Score:3, Funny)
u-s-a! u-s-a! u-s-a!
It is just me (Score:2)
No, we haven't learned (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm basically convinced that we wanted to study the effects on real targets, and also implicitly threaten Stalin, and those factors were used to justify the targeting. We hated the Japanese enough to consider their use as human Guinnea pigs to be a trivial aspect.
Not sure how to file this aspect, though it's surely not amusing, but we might well have killed more Japanese and learned more about nuclear war by "humanely" hitting Mount Fuji first. A low-level blast planned to create the maximum visual scarring of Mount Fuji would have also kicked up an enormous amount of fallout, and the long-term fatalities would probably have been very high, though the immediate deaths would have been reduced. Of course, part of our ignorance at that time included ignorance of radiation sickness and fallout.
However, looking at the state of the world today, it doesn't seem like we learned much by it. At least nothing important.
By the way, I've lived in Japan for many years. On a clear day, I can see Mount Fuji from my train station.
Re:No, we haven't learned (Score:3, Insightful)
I could hardly imagine a worse idea. For two reasons: first, it would risks the demonstrative effects of the bomb, and second, it would be the ugliest, most barbaric act comitted by mankind against the planet.
Suppose the bomb had blown the top off the mountain. Impressive in terms of explosive power, but it would not have had the horrible effects of human destruction - burning skin, instant vaporization - that served to shock the nation into surrender. For a "non-destructive" demonstration, Tokyo Bay, a
Re:No, we haven't learned (Score:3, Insightful)
The entire world understood what had happened - Truman announced it in a public address 16 hours afterwards. The Japanese got a first-hand report when they sent an official by plane to see why the telegraph signals from Hiroshima had stopped. Combine that with the radar reports which showed just 1-3 plane
on mokusatsu and weapons that make peace (sort of) (Score:5, Interesting)
20/20 hindsight notwithstanding, I have always wondered what would have occurred had we never dropped the bombs. It would be hard for me to believe that the Japanese would ever have surrendered otherwise. At the time, it was seen as a fate worse than death (the "unendurable"), and they were teaching women and children in just about every prefecture to fight with bamboo spears. This seems like determination that could only be broken by a weapon so powerful, awe-inspiring, and magical as an atomic bomb would seem in 1945.
Move beyond the war with Japan's rather explosive resolution and you have more to speculate about that leads back to it. Without our demonstration of the power of atomic weapons in Asia, would the U.S. and Soviets really not have blown the shit out of each other during the cold war? It seems to me that deterrence only works when there has been a demonstration of the consequences of unchecked aggression. This may be reductio ad absurdum, but I did not start caring about my parking tickets until I got a boot [clamp] on my car. The atomic bomb's use brought the power of nuclear weapons out of the abstract, and I for one am very thankful for the success of nuclear weapons today. They have put an end to war between developed nations, leaving our leaders to their inane intrigues and bullying (at least it's not World War III).
This fact leads me to a paradox that I find interesting. Targeting non combatants with nuclear weapons was definitely the wrong thing to do. It is terrorism. But in this case, considering all that could have been, I feel that it was right to do the wrong thing, even if for the wrong reasons.
Some things to keep in mind (Score:4, Insightful)
There is nothing wrong with feeling empathy for those whose lives were harmed by this, regardless if they were on the "good" or "bad" side. They were still human.
There are always many pointless deaths of good people on either side of a war.
The decision was reasonable (Score:4, Insightful)
Recall that Germany was furiously working on the nuke - if things had been differently, London and Moscow would have been targeted.
Recall that millions of civillians and millitary personel were killed as part of the axis war plans .
I would have been angry if the allied powers had a means to immediately end the war, even at great civillian loss, and chose not to use it for fear of later slashdot-weenies whinning about being "nice" during a war.
I've been to the countries occupied by Japan during the 30s and 40s, and the people to this day go out of their way to say "thanks" for the US millitary efforts sixty years ago. Phillipines, China, Indonesia, Australia...
Re:The decision was reasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
Japan initiated war against Korea and China. After certain atrocities became apparent in American media, the American government decided to stop selling to the Japanese items that were critical to their war effort and occupation, including, I believe, oil and scrap metal. Although this was certainly the right thing to do morally, it was an act of economic war. As a highly predictable consequence,
Necessary (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly, I think both sides are full of shit.
First, NOTHING was necessary. Even if Japan was never going to surrender, we did not have to invade Japan--by that point in the war, they certainly weren't going to invade us anytime soon. We could have precision-bombed (or whatever passed for precision bombing in 1945) their major factories, blockaded their harbors, and they wouldn't have been a threat to anyone anymore.
On the other hand, in a major conflict that will decide the fate of the world, "terrorism" in any conventional sense of the word is not inherently evil. If you cannot stand against the planes that bomb your cities and ships, targeting the civilians that are making the planes that bomb your cities and ships is perfectly reasonable. Additionally, causing "terror" in your enemy and thus compelling them to surrender is a valid and can SAVES LIVES ON BOTH SIDES.
In a nutshell, no we weren't saints when we vaporized and poisoned hundreds of thousands of civilians (and then invaded them and destroyed much of their culture.) But you don't win wars by being saint-like. In a more one-sided war (like Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan), it is the moral duty of the much superior force to be humane, but in the middle of WWII the victor was anything but assured.
Concepts like "rules of war" and "terrorism" are shams. There is no line in the sand you can draw, no action that is absolutely unjustified if we're talking about the fate of millions or billions of lives. That doesn't mean we're no better than the terrorists, or that there is no right or wrong. Far from it, it means that we simply need to hate and fight them for what they are--closed minded religious bigots whom cannot peacefully co-exist with other ideologies. That is all.
On September 11, they attacked our financial infrastructure and our military headquarters. Considering that they are by far the underdogs, this is (and I urge mods to wait and read and think before doing anything rash) a perfectly acceptable guerrilla tactic for a group so hopelessly out-gunned.
The TACTIC is valid; their REASONS are utter bullshit and that is why we should wipe them off the face of the Earth.
(To even come close to justifying that level of extreme violence, we'd need to do something insanely evil, not just stick up for Israel in the UN and maintain a military base in Saudi Arabia.)
I worry desperately when people say that killing civilians or causing terror is wrong 100% of the time, except for when we vaporize a few hundred thousand civilians but that's ok because of reasons XYZ. It's ok to admit that anything goes in war. Doing so does not legitimize your opponent in the least, because at the end of the day you are fighting for the rights and ideologies and ways of life that will live long after the dead are put in ground. You must always seek to justify your actions (or rather, you must always seek to act justly) , but no single action is inherently unjustifiable.
Just so you know, I happen to think that Hiroshima was justified, Nagasaki wasn't, Afghanistan was justified, and Iraq wasn't, but the point is the criteria you use, not the judgment itself. If you're not consistent in your criteria, don't be surprised when no one takes your own personal "axis of evil" seriously.
Anyway, sorry for the interruption, you may now resume dredging up every questionable action from the United States' and Japan's history.
Re:Rogue Fundementalist Nations (Score:2)
OK so let me get this straight, Canada should develop nukes to defend itself from the US, is that what you're saying?
Another point, umm, people or nations arming themselves is supposed to REDUCE tension?
Yeah, whatever. Have a nice day.
Actually, I live in Japan (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not to flame you americans (Score:2)
Re:Not to flame you americans (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not to flame you americans (Score:2, Insightful)
Not bad at all - remember:
The Japanese started the war with us via strike they hoped would prevent the US from challenging them in the Pacific - unfortunately for them they were wrong.
They had ample opportunity to surrender before that - and after the first bomb, but chose not to. It should have been clear to their leadership that there was no way they would win the war.
While the damage was horrific
Re:Not to flame you americans (Score:2)
Actually, I always felt proud and honored to live in the first country to create them. The story of the Manhattan Project is quite fascinating merely from a technical standpoint. It was a huge engineering feat, one which no other world power at the time was in a position to make, and since we were the first to make them, we had a good excuse for using them (not knowing better) that the second and t
Re:Not to flame you americans (Score:3, Insightful)
But how does it feel -after all pride and duty- to be part of the nation that fired up such a "baby" at first?
It feels a whole hell of a lot better than if Japan or Germany developed it first.
Re:Victim's story (Score:2)
That is my point. To criticize someone who posts the story of a victim of Hiroshima as 'anti-American' is just as bat-shit crazy as to criticize an account of the holocaust as 'anti-German'.
Re:Victim's story (Score:3)
The detention of Japanese in the internment camps was inexcusable, but was not on the scale of wha
Re:What God will say to them (Score:3, Insightful)
Take a look at the scholarly work on the subject. Japan was ready to surrender, they had offered conditional surrender before the bombs were dropped. Of course that was rejected, and no doubt should have been for strategic reasons.
US military officials agreed that Japan was close to surrender, and it's military capability was almost entirely destroyed in the fire-bombings that took place before Hiroshima/Nagasaki. The military dictatorship
Re:What God will say to them (Score:4, Insightful)
From the minutes of the Target Committee Meeting of May 10-11, 1945:
Hiroshima was selected because of the depot, because of the industrial area (which included military manufacturing), and to see how the hills would reflect the explosion.
Truman specifically avoided targeting purely civilian locations, including an order that Tokyo and Kyoto not be on the list. He accepted that civilian losses would be there; his speech stated as much when he said, "The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians."
Nagasaki was the second target of its day, and was a significant military port.
There is no debate that Japan was not in fighting shape anymore. The Potsdam Declaration (which demanded the disarming of Japan, the dismantling of war industries, the occupation of the islands, renouncement of territorial claims outside of the home islands, institution of a new government, handing over war criminals, and the occupation of Japan until such time as the above conditions were met, under pain of "total destruction", and there would be no negotiations) admitted as much. But the first reaction to the Declaration by the Japanese was to not comment (specifically, "mokusatsu" which may have been misinterpreted as intentionally refusing comment).
Had Japan been considering a conditional surrender? If they had, I've not been able to find anything solid on it. The only terms that I've found commonly suggested centered around keeping the emperor, having no foreign occupiers, and trying their own war criminals. These weren't going to go over well with the exception of keeping the emperor, because there was a severe lack of trust of the Japanese to follow through on their own and not rearm. The emperor had seen enough by this point, and was re-asserting himself to demand the end of the war, but this wasn't coming around fast enough because he still didn't have enough power. After the first bombing, no surrender announcement was made, and even after Nagasaki was hit, it still took four days of internal bickering before the emperor could come out and announce the surrender.
As for the losses, an invasion force of some 650,000 was being prepared. Okinawa had involved some 300,000 Allied troops and took nearly 50,000 casualties, one of four of which were deaths. More than 110,000 Japanese were dead, making for about a 9:1 kill ratio. Had similar rations occurred in a mainland invasion, it would have involve more than 100,000 casualties with 27,000 dead on the US side alone, and a quarter-million dead Japanese. However, the closer to the home islands the fighting got, the more extreme the Japanese became in their defensive efforts, and it's likely that the fighting would have been even more fierce, with losses even higher, because cities would be bombed prior to troop arrival, and it wasn't hard to kill tens of thousands with one raid.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:4, Insightful)
"Truman specifically avoided targeting purely civilian locations, including an order that Tokyo and Kyoto not be on the list."
Tokyo was pretty much decimated because of the fire-bombings. If it had not been for that it too would not have been "purely civilian". I don't know how much more of a pure civilian target you can get than dropping a nuclear warhead in the center of a large populated city consisting mostly of civilians.
Let's take a look at more of the radio adress by Truman.
"The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians. But that attack is only a warning of things to come. If Japan does not surrender, bombs will have to be dropped on her war industries and, unfortunately, thousands of civilian lives will be lost."
This seems almost to suggest that the attack on Hiroshima was almost purely against a military target, and "thousands" of lives hadn't already been lost. Certainly seems to downplay the attack in my view.
"Nagasaki was the second target of its day, and was a significant military port."
Why not just attack the military targets in these two cities? Nuclear bombing was for the purpose of destroying the military targets? It most certainly was not military targets that the bombs were needed for. It was an attack on civilian populations, (and if the officially stated reasons are the only ones), an attack to frighten and terrorize the Japanese into submission through it's sheer devestation to entire cities, not as an attack on valid military targets to stop the military.
"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare."
So those who do not follow the rules of war, need to have nuclear weapons dropped on their civilians? That is part of the justification? Surely "intentional" killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, for any reason, is against what anyone would consider the rules of war. But it is justified because the other side did bad things? If we care so much about the rules of war, and treating soldiers, as well as civilians decently, we would not have to stoop to such tactics.
"Had Japan been considering a conditional surrender?"
Secretary Togo was talking to the USSR, the only major nation they were still at peace with, in order to act as an intermediary with the USA. The US, having cracked the Japanese codes, was aware of this and learned of it prior to Potsdam. Efforts were being made by the new civilian government of Japan, (Tojo and the power structure had resigned in shame), to end the war and negotiate a settlement with the USA, and to ensure the survival of the Emperor, which was the paramount concern. Negotiations were certainly being considered throughout the entire war. The plan of Japan's attack on the USA was to destroy the Pacific fleet in order to entirely eliminate the US presence in the region, thereby allowing the Japanese to take the Dutch East Indies, and the oil and rubber resources in the region, which they were in need of for their aggression in the rest of the Pacific Theater. After eliminating the US pacific fleet, they would then sue for peace with the US in order to avoid having to go to war with them on a massive scale, which they knew they could not win. This is very well established as being their strategy, and not just among cracy hippie professors.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:3, Interesting)
The primary planning was to make further fighting so bloody that American politicians would want to negotiate a more generous ending.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:3, Informative)
Would you not prefer that a nuke had been dropped, and only 210k killed?
Re:What God will say to them (Score:5, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_War
The people of China and Korea (both of them) will never forgive the Japanese for what they did in World War II during their totally unjustified quest to create the "East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere" i.e. the Japanese Empire.
It is quite interesting how the war is treated differently in regards to the treatment of Japan and Germany. When one talks about Germany during World War II, all he/she usually talks about is the Holocaust and other acts of Nazi brutality. Rarely is the plight of the German people mentioned. This in my opinion is totally justified. However, when one talks about the Japanese, a quite significant number will choose to talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how terrible it was for the Japanese civilians. The story that the first poster put up may be touching, but if you listen to the stories of the many millions of Chinese and Koreans who were brutalized, this story seems trite and insignificant in comparison. In my opinion much more focus should be put on Japan's war atrocities, just like Germany's war atrocities are commonly focused upon.
As a Chinese native living in the USA, I am surprised daily as to how many people feel sympathy for the Japanese b/c they were nukes, because I can never bring myself to feel such sympathy. To sympathize with them, is to denigrate the millions of my countrymen who were brutally slaughtered.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:3, Interesting)
First off, Chiang's reference to Japan as "complicit in the holocau
Re:What God will say to them (Score:5, Insightful)
Your analogy might be apt if all of asia were has been engaged in guerilla war with the US, but in fact, the Japanese were busy slaughtering their neighboring asian nations at the same time they were fighting us.
Also, this ignores the factors of Israel and its dependence upon US assistance to defend itself, as well as the fact that Saddam invited the second most recent major war between the US and iraq by invading, his rich but relatively defenseless neighbor.
Re:What God will say to them (Score:3, Interesting)
The tally of people killed isn't the entire story. Americans would much prefer that Japanese died than fellow Americans. And that is a good justification; after all, we were at war with a country that attacked us.
It really makes no sense to say that an American should value the life of a WWII-time Japanese person as much as the life of a WWII-time American.
Re:a question (Score:2)
In the end,
Re:a question (Score:2)
> offshore of Japan in the Pacific instead?
People would've said: Ooooh, look at the pretty light! Hey, it's gettin' kinda windy, let's go inside.
Re:a question (Score:3, Insightful)
A detonation at 60 miles miles, or ten times that range, would have accomplished nothing. It would also have depleted a very small supply of
Re:typical of us government (Score:2)
Maybe comparable to 12/07/41?
Re:Japan's history (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan not mentioning the medical experimentation it conducted on Chinese civilians as well as the number of Korean/Chinese women forced into sexual slavery is sort of like Germany forgetting the "incident" (official Japanese textbook phrasing) where 6 million Jews died.
Would we tolerate the latter? Of course not. Why do we tolerate the former then?
Btw, I've taken US History/US History AP in American high schools., and it has extensive coverage of the oppression that Native Americans suffered, from the time Columbus landed all the way to the Trail of Tears. Do you know how Japanese textbooks characterize the Rape of Nanking?
The Rape of Nanking is described as an "incident" where the Japanese Army met fierce resisitance in taking Nanking (this seems to gloss over the fact that all Chinese troops had withdrawn from the city, and many citizens were displaying Japanese flags from their windows to get in the good graces of the conquerers). This is NOT from the highly disputed minority textbook which doesn't mention it at ALL, but rather from the one which about 40% of Japanese High School students read. In a recent radio broadcst (~2 weeks ago) I heard on NPR, a visiting Japanese psychology professor recalled incidents where college freshmen asked him whether America won the war, or if Japan did.
Imagine the international condemnation of the Holocaust was referred to as an incident, and not covered beyond two sentences in the entire history book. The German people have dealt with their atrocities in WWII; Willi Brandt, a former German Chancellor, KNELT in front of the Jewish Holocaust memorial. When has the Emporer of Japan done the same for the Chinese and Korean people? Don't give me the crap about apologies already being made; what use is there for apologies when the mindset of an entire nation, as reflected through its' educational system, fails to appreciate the extreme pain and anguish it has caused just 50 years before?
Just to be clear, I'm not justifying the use of the atomic bomb on Japanese cities with what I said earlier. It is no less horrific, regardless of Japan's wartime activities. I just wish ensure that certain parts of Japan's wartime past don't get overshadowed.
Re:Serious Question - Number of Nukes in 1945? (Score:4, Interesting)
The big uranium and plutonium extraction plants were up and running by the end of WWII. Those plants were way overdesigned; over several decades, they produced the materials for about 20,000 bombs. Neither Groves nor Marshall expected to win the war with just two bombs. The plan was to use about thirteen just to "soften up" the landing zones for the invasion of Japan.
After the war, there was a short period during which the US didn't have any working A-bombs in inventory. The original ones were really prototypes, with no shelf life, no safeguards, and a need for an expert to tend and arm them. It took a while to develop a ruggedized, safe to handle "GI-proof" A-bomb.
Los Angeles Times: The myths of Hiroshima (Score:3, Informative)
KAI BIRD and MARTIN J. SHERWIN are coauthors of "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer," published earlier this year by Knopf.
August 5, 2005
SIXTY YEARS ago tomorrow, an atomic bomb was dropped without warning on the center of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. One hundred and forty thousand people were killed, more than 95% of them women and children and other noncombatants. At least half of the victims died of radiation poisoning over th
Re:Interesting read (Score:3, Informative)
Second, this is again, limited hindsight. Japan was asked to surrender after the first bomb and they refused under the belief that it was very unlikely the Americans had a second bomb. If Japan had surrendered after the first one, there would not have been a Nagasaki. By drop
Re:Interesting read (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow, that's a nice fairy tale. They were ready to surrender before the bomb, they just wanted to negotiate.
"It is easy to condemn the bomb drop without all the facts at hand. "
Apparently it's also easy to approve of it without all the facts too.