To me no act of terror can come close to the terror unleashed by the

[KlatooBNikto]

atomic weapons unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.Since that Rubicon was crossed, every act any where pales into insignificance.

The very fact that we refuse to call it by its proper name and still refuse to call the Wars on Vietnam and Iraq Wars of Agression tells me that we are the biggest predators roaming the earth and occupy the highest seats on the pantheon of terror.

[acmejack]

1. It's a bummer isn't it?

Everything we were taught is wrong, the truth is quite appalling. We are the bad guys...

[mikehiggins]

2. I was going to disagree

but in at least one sense you are right.

The War might be justification for using the weapons Truman used but it was still an act of terrorism, aimed at forcing the Japanese to give up. Had we somehow managed to lose that War everyone involved in the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings would have been tried as war criminals. We didn't lose, of course, and the history books I grew up with described the atom bombings as brilliant examples of US superiority.

I do not fault Truman, however. He was faced with horrendous losses among any invasion force, and the American people wanted this war over and done with so their husbands and fathers and brothers and sons could come home in one piece.

Still, facts are facts and the use of atomic weapons, even in what was most likely ignorance of their significance, was a watershed moment in world history.

We had finally found the means by which we could eradicate ourselves from the face of the earth. That has to mean something.

[Burma Jones]

3. It was war - here's a paragraph from an Atlantic Monthly piece

The Firebombing of Tokyo was worse than Nagasaki. There were going to be many more of these sort of raids - but they weren't nuclear. If you're going to beat your breast and wail how awful we are because our Great Grandfathers tried a new weapon at the end of a long protracted war that saw tens of millions killed and all manner of atrocities committed, then you have no sense of context. If we are going to constantly curse this country we will never be trusted to govern it.




http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200207/rauch

In 1990, when I was traveling in Japan, my friend Masayuki introduced me to his mother, Mrs. Tadokoro. One night, as the three of us sat together after dinner in her apartment in Osaka, she told me of the firebombing of Tokyo. She was nineteen when the American bombers came, just after midnight on March 10, 1945. Hearing the air-raid sirens, she ran to Kinshi Park. As she ran, she saw an electrical pole glow hot in the flames and then crash down. In the park many people, most with suitcases, waited through the night as sixteen square miles of the city burned. Nothing remained of her house the next morning but some stones. Still, she was lucky. The dead from that one night's bombing numbered 80,000 to 100,000—more than later died in Nagasaki (70,000 to 80,000), and more than half the number who died in Hiroshima (120,000 to 150,000).

[KlatooBNikto]

4. Why wasn't the bomb tried in Europe where the casualties were vastly

greater?

On Edit: I have on my many visits to Japan over the years, have come to know people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who have lost entire families and lost all hope of normal lives for any survivors in their families.With the usual reticence characteristic of the Japanese people they hesitate to say anything to an American but one can see in their eyes the question" Why did you have to use this weapon when our Emperor had already declared his intent to surrender?".

I will never buy the idea it was war as usual. That single act has trivialized human life forever on this planet and everything else including our current condition flows from it.

[Burma Jones]

6. Because the war in Europe was over

by the time the bomb was ready

[bpilgrim]

8. the war was over in the pacific too... the japanese were suing for peace

before the bomb was ready

peace

[Burma Jones]

10. It was not over

There's a big difference between suing for peace and surrendering.

[bpilgrim]

16. none of the military leaders in theater at that time saw it that way

* In his memoirs Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff--and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff--minced few words:

(T)he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . .

(I)n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. (THE DECISION, p. 3.)

much more...
http://www.doug-long.com/ga1.htm

psst... pass the word

peace

[patcox2]

29. Well, you have proven that one person who wasn't in theater thought so.

But how that proves that "none" of the commanders in the field thought so is beyond me.

[bpilgrim]

35. click the link... many quotes from military at the TOP, who were in charge

at the time...

* In his memoirs Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff--and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff--minced few words:

(T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . .

(I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. (THE DECISION, p. 3.]

more...
http://www.doug-long.com/ga1.htm

peace

[bpilgrim]

7. the idea the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were..." EXCEPTIONAL!

for a number of reasons...

sure if you wanna try to reduce it to the crude body count of the day of the event but even that FAILS, as ONE of the EXCEPTIONAL horrors about the weapon used on civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the DEADLY RADIATION it gives off, reaching even up into the womb and across the generations to keep on killing and maiming long after - in fact to this very day - the initial 'EXCEPTION'.

the total for JUST Hiroshima alone is now close to a quarter of a MILLION.

that we obliterated a whole city from a single bomb is the 2nd exceptional thing about this horrific event.

but perhaps the most exceptional horror of these events is that we did it to a defeated and suing for peace nation

against ALL the advice of our military leaders in theater at the time.

:cry:

peace

[bpilgrim]

5. we NUKED a DEFEATED try'n to surrender nation's CITIES CIVILIAN POPULATION

TWICE, against all the advice of our military leaders in theater at that time.

They had suggested we accept their offer to surrender in order to SAVE LIVES.

Imagine no IWO or OKINAWA...

* In his memoirs Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff--and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff--minced few words:

(T)he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . .

(I)n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. (THE DECISION, p. 3.)

more...
http://www.doug-long.com/ga1.htm

psst... pass the word :cry:

peace

[Burma Jones]

9. No, No, the Democrats nuked a Defeated Foe, right????

It was Truman and his Democratic Administration wanting to show this weapon off to the Soviets, right?

If any of the folks responsible are still alive, we should prosecute them as War Criminals, right?

It doesn't matter that we could have killed many more with incendiaries, right?

Who says we Democrats aren't capable of conducting a good old fashioned vicious war.

[KlatooBNikto]

11. Equating an incendiary weapon to a nuclear weapon on the strength

of an immediate body count is a mistake. The teratogenic effects of an atomic weapon and its radiation on survivors at the scene and hundreds of miles away for many generations makes that weapon vastly different.

Blaming it on Democrats is a red herring.It was an American war.The people in Hiroshima could not distinguish between Republicans and Democrats.Nor can the people in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia or now Iraq.
And the prospect is for people in Iran and Syria to become students of our Two (for one) party system.

[Burma Jones]

13. Then what do you suggest we do about it?

[KlatooBNikto]

14. I have the following suggestions.

1.Let us be the first ones to start dismantling our own nuclear, bilogical, chemical weapons ( the WMD's) and bring everyone along to emulate us by a system of inducements, threats what have you.
2. Let us renounce the use of force as a first choice in our polcy making apparatus as the DSM has clearly shown.
3.Let us become the peacemakers in the Middle East with even handedness as our policy instead of catering to the warmongers like Sharon.
4. Let us cut our war budget by half and deploy the money in improving the lives of our own devastated people and the ones who suffer across the globe.

That will do for a start.

[mopinko]

22. let us dismantle the military industrial complex

take the money out of war and it will starve in no time.

[Burma Jones]

23. Good Luck with that

I am with you on Number two.

We have been dismantling our Biological and Chemical Weapons - I've worked on jobs with the EPA on where to dispose of the remnants. As far as the nukes are concerned, you can dismantle them, but what you do with the nuke materials is a problem. In some ways, it's better that they remain as weapons, they'll be far better guarded that way.

If we are going to be involved in the Middle East, I would stay involved to ensure the free flow of oil. I could care less about Israel or Palestine. If people are going to insist on killing each other, who am I to make them stop? However, we have substantially tilted the balance to the Isrealis, oh well, let the Saudis finance the Palestinains. Of course, Israel is where nearly our entire Christian Mythology was developed, so we have to foolishly insist on protecting it.

If we cut the Defense Budget in half, I want to see the money go to research and lower Federal taxes.

[mopinko]

15. i don't think we knew

that much about the long term effects at the time. maybe we didn't know because we didn't care. but i remember reading one of richard feynman's book, and he talks about how naive they were. they had a blob of plutonium that they used for a door stop at los alamos.

[bpilgrim]

17. the scientist knew EXACTLY what they were working with...

and they made the leaders aware as well

peace

[mopinko]

21. link?

not to be testy, i would like to know.

[bpilgrim]

24. the scientist working with the RADIATION took SAFEGUARDS to PROTECT

themselves because they KNEW it's deadly effects and if they didn't they wouldn't have ever completed the bombs...

here are some of the accidents...
http://www.stationinformation.com/encyclopedia/l/li/list_of_nuclear_accidents.html

i'm sure others were covered up but the scientist knew about the dangers and many even protested in order to STOP the bomb from being used.

peace

[mopinko]

25. don't see anything there about long term effects

which was the point. the louis slotin story certainly illustrates a lack of safeguards. i don't know that the scientists who later turned against the bomb were considering the long term effects, so much as the power of the technology and it's potential to escalate war to the point of complete destruction of the planet.

[bpilgrim]

26. they KNEW radiation was poisonous AND that they were WMDs

released on a civilian population, that is the point.

peace

[mopinko]

32. the original statement was

"teratogenic effects of an atomic weapon and its radiation on survivors"
i said that i didn't think that we knew about this at the time. knowing that you are going to blow people up and knowing that you are going to poison generations to come are not the same thing. so, do you have a link that speaks to the long term effects, or not?

[bpilgrim]

34. the point is that it was TERRORISM on a MASSIVE scale.

The use of poisonous weapons (due to the effects of the radiation) were defined as war crimes by international law of the time.

source...
http://www.answers.com/topic/atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki

though you can argue ignorance to LONG TERM consequences it STILL doesn't negate the fact that it was TERRORISM and that we knew it was POISON some of the worst KNOWN to man.

peace

[mopinko]

36. what is your definition of terrorism?

and where were war crimes defined? what weapons were banned? by what treaties?

[KlatooBNikto]

18. We obviously do now and yet Bush wants to produce nuclear theater

weapons ( the so called bunker busters).What do you make of it? I say that Hiroshima paved the way for Bush's initiative.

[mopinko]

20. that is another story

i dislike discussions where modern day morality is applied to actions of the past. i don't think there is anything that exceptional about nagasaki in the long history of war. we are a warring creature. our ability to get together, identify, and seek out an enemy, and wipe it out, as opposed to killing food, is what lead to our evolution, imho. the next great leap in human evolution will be when we put that aside. this kind of discussion will not lead us there.

[bpilgrim]

27. good thing we have the quotes of the men who were there...

* In his memoirs Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff--and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff--minced few words:

(T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . .

(I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. (THE DECISION, p. 3.]

more...
http://www.doug-long.com/ga1.htm

"i don't think there is anything that exceptional about Nagasaki"

the SHOCK-n-AWE of the ATOMIC AGE began with the destruction of two cities and most of the innocent civilians living there in the blink of an eye and even reaching up into the womb and across the generations killing and maiming usually shows up in most of our history books as 'EXCEPTIONAL' to say the least'

"Hiroshima is the 2nd most HORRID word in the American lexicon, succeeded only by NAGASAKI" Kurt Vonnegut

peace

[patcox2]

30. No, thats one man who wasn't there.

A desk jockey in washington, not a "commander in the field."

[bpilgrim]

33. click the link... who is one of many, at the TOP who were in charge

as well as commanders in the field.

* In his memoirs Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's Chief of Staff--and the top official who presided over meetings of both the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined U.S.-U.K. Chiefs of Staff--minced few words:

(T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . .

(I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children. (THE DECISION, p. 3.]

more...
http://www.doug-long.com/ga1.htm

click the link...

peace

[bpilgrim]

37. hello...

i hope you clicked on the link :hi:

peace

[Double T]

12. It Is Unfortunate What The United States Has Become.....

..the perception of Americans is far different than the reality

[Roland99]

19. Moral relativism.

[patcox2]

28. All war is terror.

You simply must be kidding.

The japanese, notorious racists who believe all other people in the world are literally barbarians (gaijin), were engaged in a war of conquest which they started, completely without any provocation from us. They had started their conquests long before Pearl Harbor, invading and viciously enslaving parts of Korea, China, Southeast Asia, and finally as far as the Phillipines. They were doing it purely for wealth and power, because they believed other people were inferior and that they were thus entitled to kill or enslave them and take over their lands.

Fuck them. The atom bombs got it over with quickly and relatively painlessly, for the japanese. Look at what happened at Okinawa, for a picture of what an invasion of the home islands would have been like.

[patcox2]

31. Letter from an australian soldier, fighting the japanese in July, 1945.

That Bomb Means Your Son Will Have a Father
15 Sqn RAAF – Pacific 1945 WO Pilot A. Holcombe


I was a Beaufort bomber pilot operating in Dutch New Guinea (now West Irian) with No. 15 Squadron of the RAAF and stationed at Middelburg for the last three months of the war.

Middelburg was an island about 1200 to 1500 metres in diameter, 20 kilometres from the equator and just large enough to have an airstrip, which was extended each end into the sea.

We were about 2 kilometres from the coast and daily we could see the Japanese on the beach. Our nearest Allied bases were Biak (about 600 km to the south-east) and Morotai (about 600 km to the north-west).

With us on our "tropical paradise’ was an American army unit. All told there were about 700 of us on the island: 350 Aussies and 350 Americans.

Our job was to contain the Japanese units within several hundred kilometres of us and counter their activities. While we had no air-to-air opposition I can assure you that they were not short of anti-aircraft guns and ammunition of all calibres and used them very effectively as witnessed by the aircraft they were shooting out of the air during raids in which we were helped by Dutch Kittyhawks from Biak.

Indeed I was one of those responsible for flying ‘shot-gun’ over a downed pilot over a period of 24 hours while Air-Sea Rescue organised a Flying Fortress to drop a lifeboat before the Japanese nearby got to him first.

Most of these raids were carried out on and around Manokwari and Sorong, about 100km from us with an occasional sortie as far afield as Ceram, 400 or 500km south of us.

My wife and 2½ month-old son, our first, (whom I had not yet seen) were staying with my in-laws when the first atom bomb was dropped.

My wife said to her father (a World War 1 veteran) "Daddy, what does this mean?" His reply was "That means your son will have a father." Little did he know how literally true that was!

When an Intelligence Unit went into Manokwari after the surrender of the Japanese they found plans indicating that the Japanese were going to invade our paradise and we were going to be the floor show at a quiet throat-cutting party on the night of August 25. The Japanese surrender pre-empted that by just ten days.

Why was the atom bomb dropped? The German army fought right to Hitler’s bunker in Berlin. Hitler and the German Army were Mickey Mouse compared to the fanaticism of the Japanese, so there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Japanese would fight to the last man with conventional weapons.

I do not have to do any research on this. I and many thousands like me who have seen those tracer bullets coming up at them and seen those innocent-looking black clouds appearing around them from the anti-aircraft guns, have it burned into their brain what the conditions were like in those days.

Indeed as we get older it appears ever more frequently in our thoughts. Believe me the Japanese were not acting like a defeated nation.

I have reason to know about the psyche of the Japanese.

After being spared by the atom bomb my wife and I went on to have three more sons. Our third son, at present a resident of Japan is a simultaneous interpreter in English-Japanese and has his own communications company in Tokyo.

He is married to a Japanese girl and they have presented us with two half-Japanese grandchildren. We have been visiting Japan for over twenty years and consider many Japanese among our best friends. How futile war is!

Lastly, sir, despite the opinions of the bleeding hearts brigade there is no gentle way to kill or maim in war. If the war was justified then so was the bomb!

Thank God and Truman for the dropping of it. What a wonderful way to end a war, but what a terrible way to start one.