Posted on 07/21/2005 8:05:16 PM PDT by ChildOfThe60s
The US decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was meant to kick-start the Cold War rather than end the Second World War, according to two nuclear historians who say they have new evidence backing the controversial theory.
Causing a fission reaction in several kilograms of uranium and plutonium and killing over 200,000 people 60 years ago was done more to impress the Soviet Union than to cow Japan, they say. And the US President who took the decision, Harry Truman, was culpable, they add.
"He knew he was beginning the process of annihilation of the species," says Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington DC, US. "It was not just a war crime; it was a crime against humanity."
According to the official US version of history, an A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, and another on Nagasaki three days later, to force Japan to surrender. The destruction was necessary to bring a rapid end to the war without the need for a costly US invasion.
But this is disputed by Kuznick and Mark Selden, a historian from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US. They are presenting their evidence at a meeting in London on Thursday organised by Greenpeace and others to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the bombings. Looking for peace
New studies of the US, Japanese and Soviet diplomatic archives suggest that Truman's main motive was to limit Soviet expansion in Asia, Kuznick claims. Japan surrendered because the Soviet Union began an invasion a few days after the Hiroshima bombing, not because of the atomic bombs themselves, he says.
According to an account by Walter Brown, assistant to then-US secretary of state James Byrnes, Truman agreed at a meeting three days before the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that Japan was "looking for peace". Truman was told by his army generals, Douglas Macarthur and Dwight Eisenhower, and his naval chief of staff, William Leahy, that there was no military need to use the bomb.
"Impressing Russia was more important than ending the war in Japan," says Selden. Truman was also worried that he would be accused of wasting money on the Manhattan Project to build the first nuclear bombs, if the bomb was not used, he adds.
Kuznick and Selden's arguments, however, were dismissed as "discredited" by Lawrence Freedman, a war expert from King's College London, UK. He says that Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima was "understandable in the circumstances".
Truman's main aim had been to end the war with Japan, Freedman says, but adds that, with the wisdom of hindsight, the bombing may not have been militarily justified. Some people assumed that the US always had "a malicious and nasty motive", he says, "but it ain't necessarily so."
B) These "scientists" are the same yo-yos that go apopletic when it is even suggested that FDR could have prevented Pearl Harbor.
I stopped right here..
But I thought we nuked them to create Godzilla????
Baffling...
Tells me everything I need to know about the "meeting" and its participants.
Where's the French navy when you need them?
Then that "hidden agenda" got seriously incinerated....
What a doofus.
But I thought only Republican presidents could commit atrocities! It must be true, the MSM told me so! :)
That's funny! I did the SAME thing! ;-)
But then, for some people it's more important to besmirch anything that the US has done. The US has always been the focus of evil in the world, according to these morons.
Mark
Liberals think that FDR had no intention of ever using the bomb he ordered developed. It was merely some sort of jobs program for the world's most brilliant scientists.
I am so sick of traitors. Growing more disgusted every day with them.
Japan * ping * (kono risuto ni hairitai ka detai wo shirasete kudasai : let me know if you want on or off this list):
It began the process of annihilating the species? How come we're still here?
I thought the Soviets entered the Pacific war right at the end (I think we wanted them to at least declare war on Japan long before, but they held out for concessions from us) because they knew it was going to end quickly and they wanted to get in on the reparations from Japan.
Did one of Truman's advisers suggest that using the atomic bombs might make the Soviets more "manageable" in Europe? Yes. Did this influence Truman? Not likely as it was only one person suggesting it and not as a deciding factor in whether or not to use the bomb. It was simply said that Stalin respects strength the A-bomb might impress him and keep him under control.
The single thing that most influenced Truman was after seeing the projected casualty estimates, a comment made to him by another adviser. "Mr. President, what will you tell the American people at your impeachment trial in 1946 when they learn you had a way to end the war early..." (May not be an exact quote but as close as I can remember it.)
I wonder if it hurts to think when you are this stupid?
I'm sick of liars. The MSM is twisting anti-bomb stuff into anti-Bush stuff. Just like someone I know who blamed Bush for not entering WWII faster
I have often heard the theory that ONE of the reasons for using the atomic bomb was to discourage Stalin from moving into Europe.
The primary reason was to end the war with Japan. But Truman would have been negligent of his duties if he did not also consider the dangers of Russian aggression after the defeat of Germany and Japan.
Only a Stalin-lover, however, would think that it was wrong to send a cautionary message to the Soviet Union to watch its step. Perhaps they would rather we had just handed over the rest of Europe to the Red Army. Certainly it never occurred to me, way back then, that such a secondary purpose was "culpable."
"presenting their evidence at a meeting in London on Thursday organised by Greenpeace"
When I saw the word Greenpeace my bull**** -o- meter went off the scale
Uh, Pete? What species was that, exactly? Ours, or yours?
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