Posted on 08/05/2025 3:37:00 AM PDT by RandFan
At 08:15 on August 6, 1945, as a nuclear bomb was falling like a stone through the skies over Hiroshima, Lee Jung-soon was on her way to elementary school.
The now-88-year-old waves her hands as if trying to push the memory away.
"My father was about to leave for work, but he suddenly came running back and told us to evacuate immediately," she recalls. "They say the streets were filled with the dead – but I was so shocked all I remember is crying. I just cried and cried."
Victims' bodies "melted away so only their eyes were visible", Ms Lee says, as a blast equivalent to 15,000 tons of TNT enveloped a city of 420,000 people. What remained in the aftermath were corpses too mangled to be identified.
"The atomic bomb… it's such a terrifying weapon."
It's been 80 years since the United States detonated 'Little Boy', humanity's first-ever atomic bomb, over the centre of Hiroshima, instantly killing some 70,000 people. Tens of thousands more would die in the coming months from radiation sickness, burns and dehydration.
The devastation wrought by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – which brought a decisive end to both World War Two and Japanese imperial rule across large swaths of Asia – has been well-documented over the past eight decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Baton Death march, 10’s of thousands of Chinses innocents raped and murdered viciously, Japanese imperialism that treated all others as chattel to be abused.
Stop with the pity, they literally got what they deserved for countless state sponsored atrocities that the common Japanese person at the time did not lift a finger to protest, in fact culturally they supported it.
I have sympathy for those who suffered under any attack, nothing though for those who use such suffering as a way to undermine an action used to end a war that was not of our making.
No credit for having our sons die over there to keep southern Korea out of the clutches of Communist China and their northern Korean puppets?
Amen Brady LS, well said. And Thank You for your bio.
They got what they deserved at the time.
A terrifying weapon to end a terrifying, militaristic, fascist, genocidal empire. A terrifying weapon that actually saved the lives of countless Americans AND Japanese from the horrors of having to conquer the whole of the home islands by conventional means.
Perhaps they should have more deeply considered the consequences of their actions before waking the “Sleeping Giant.”
Unit 731.
When I read the headline I thought they suffered from effects that drifted over to Korea - duh, double duh. I am sure there were lots of folks from other countries living in those two cities who were harmed. They were living there. I give them no extra sympathy.
The bomb. Made in America. Tested in Japan.
Damn right we never apologized - nor will we. Ever. WWII was a brutal, nasty total war. Throughout the Asia/Pacific region an estimated 10,000 people were dying every single day that war continued - most of them were civilians in Allied countries. In addition to that, the next 6 months promised to be far far worse with either Operation Downfall involved the invasion of Japan or the continued Naval Blockade of Japan combined with the worst harvest Japan had had in 50 years. An estimated 4-6 million people were going to starve to death in Japan in the next 6 months.
Those nuclear bombs - as horrific as they were - saved many many lives.
Our ancestors that fought the Nips and Krauts would laugh at this sympathy.
Trialed at Dresden?
I’ve wondered if the firebombing of Dresden was done in part so that the Allies could see how the world would react to a mass casualty event involving civilians.
Would we have dropped The Bomb on Europe..?
As for the Japanese, they refused to surrender after Hiroshima.
There was no reasoning with the people who made that decision.
You’re speaking from a position of ignorance. The common Japanese person knew almost nothing about war atrocities. News was incredibly tightly controlled by the Japanese government during WW2. There was almost no alternative press, there was no pirate radio in Japan, etc.
That’s an interesting historical context you don’t hear often in these articles.
What about the Korean “comfort women” enslaved by the Japs?
Never forget …….. Pearl Harbor ………
You are overthinking it.
Japan wanted war, they got war. Tough noogies.
No, I’m not.
Anymore than I am when I wonder if we would have dropped The Bomb on Europe.
Or when I wonder if the Japanese knew or suspected we didn’t have a third nuke available, if that was indeed the case, and surrendered to avoid a civil war, not out of fear of another bombing.
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