US History of Bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki More Fiction Than Fact

[Clara T]

Official U.S. history of atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is more fiction than fact

"The experiment has been an overwhelming success," President Harry S. Truman reportedly told his shipmates upon learning that the U.S. military had dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. When considering the bomb's immediate and generational aftereffects on human life, President Truman's statements evoke horrific images of Dr. Frankenstein standing over his own distortion of humanity. Like Frankenstein's monster, the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki demonstrate what science can do if it is in the wrong hands, but we're not supposed to think that way. We're supposed to believe that the U.S. military's use of the atomic bomb was a justified response to Pearl Harbor and the only way to end the war with Japan.

President Truman's first official announcement of the bombing of Hiroshima reflects all that we are supposed to believe about our nation's actions. Since the president was still at sea, his assistant press secretary Eben Ayers read the following statement to the Washington press corps: "Sixteen hours ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of TNT ... The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid many fold ... It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe." Yes, the atomic bomb harnessed the "basic power of the universe" and yes, the bomb was more powerful than 20,000 tons of TNT; however, was the bombing a fair repayment for Pearl Harbor?

Based on the information that the government told the American people at the time, many Americans believed that it was fair. The U.S. government wasn't stupid; government officials knew exactly what to tell (and what not to tell) the public in order to keep popular opinion high. By classifying Hiroshima as an "important Japanese Army base," President Truman isolated the bombing as a military-to-military feat, as nothing more than an act of war. Additionally, as Greg Mitchell writes in his Editor and Publisher article "The Press and Hiroshima," the president stressed the size of the bomb (which was sure to impress most Americans), rather than the horrific effects of radiation, an aftereffect of an atomic bomb that most Americans were at the time probably ignorant of. Later on, in the days following Hiroshima, the Air Force provided American newspapers with an aerial photograph of the city and stressed that they had targeted an area with major industrial targets.

When a later U.S. survey of the damage to Hiroshima discovered that the bomb had mostly destroyed residential areas, the government did not release the information to the press. Any revealed information was part of a calculated public relations campaign that the contemporary press ate up with a spoon. As the military director of the Manhattan Project, Gen. Leslie Groves, later proudly remarked, "Most newspapers published our releases in their entirety. This is one of the few times since government releases have become common that this has been done." The press's almost exclusively positive coverage of the bombing then carried over to the American public, resulting in the misinformed perspective of the atomic bomb that has prevailed in the American consciousness for the past 60 years.

http://www.counterthink.org/019176.html

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. It's been 60 years

It's time Americans learned the truth.

[Demeter]

2. If You Think Americans Can Handle the Truth, By All Means

Personally, I've seen no sign of truth handling ability for years, maybe decades. Ever since Reagan, in fact.

[enlightenment]

3. I agree -- perhaps if Americans started paying

attention in their history classes? It's been a while since the "spin" has been taught. The larger problem at this point is that there is an entire generation that is reaching college (where I teach) with little or no knowledge of this episode in history.

So maybe I'm wrong about the spin -- perhaps they're teaching it again?

[Terran1212]

4. US Bombing Survey already said it best:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, after interviewing hundreds of Japanese civilian and military leaders after Japan surrendered, reported:

"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.<26>"

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. The Hiroshima bomb was a cold-blooded scientific experiment

The city was deliberately left unbombed, unlike other cities of its size (and smaller!) which were subjected to concentrated firebombing.

The firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945, targeting the largely residential eastern half of the city, a historic area made up of wooden houses packed closely together, killed about 100,000 in a single night, more than were killed in the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bomb.

Other cities, some as small as 100,000, suffered similar fates.

Only Hiroshima was spared, and no one could understand why. But the U.S. considered it a perfect target for the first atomic bomb attack, because it was on a river delta backed by mountains. The blast would be unobstructed, and later investigators would be able to see easily what effects the bomb had had, without having to distinguish the rubble from the rubble of conventional blasts.

Nagasaki, bombed three days later, is hilly like San Francisco, and it was not the intended target. However, the intended target, Kokura, was clouded over, so the plane proceeded on to Nagasaki, the alternate target.

[OneBlueSky]

6. still one of the most horrific war crimes in history . . .

whenever anyone talks about this nation or that becoming obtaining nuclear weapons, just remember that there is only ONE nation that has ever used nuclear weapons . . . only one . . .