Posted on 08/06/2005 8:53:54 AM PDT by pabianice
Sixty years ago, US President Harry Truman ordered the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It was a weapon of unprecedented power, and one that changed the face of warfare and international politics forever.
On August 6, 1945, lessons begin at the National Technical University on the outskirts of downtown Hiroshima, as always, at 8 a.m. Math is first up in the lesson-plan for the day, and Keijiro Matsushima is gazing out the window, bored. The lanky, fatherless 16 year-old is the only member of his family still in Hiroshima: His brothers are off with the Imperial Navy fighting the Americans and the British, and his mother is staying with her parents in the countryside. She is afraid of an air attack, because Hiroshima, a city built mainly of wood, is one of the few major Japanese cities that hasn't been bombed to smithereens by the American air force.
But Matsushima, who is studying mechanical engineering, must remain in the city. Like all young Japanese men, he is required to help out in the country's munitions factories when not in school. And so he's sitting in his chair by the stairwell wall, listening to the instructor discuss problems of differential calculus, when he suddenly sees the silvery-white bombers of the US Air Force appear in the clear blue summer sky.
The boy is surprised not to hear air-raid sirens. Suddenly, a gleaming light fills the classroom. A "reddish-orange flash" bright "as the sun" prompts him to dive beneath his desk. He places his hands over his eyes and his thumbs into his ears -- doing exactly what he has been told to do to protect himself in an air raid.
But nothing can protect him against what happens next.
"I had the feeling that the explosion happened right next to me," he says today of the deafening blast, an explosion so massive that it could be heard even 160 kilometers away. Hot air singes the skin on his face and the pressure from the blast presses his body against the floor.
The roof of the building collapses into the classroom, hurtling shards of glass through the room like bullets. The young man calls for help. After a while -- he can't recall how long -- he pulls himself from the wreckage and goes outside. It's as quiet as a graveyard...
Probably Groves's greatest fear was that the war would be entirely over before the Manhattan District accomplished its task.
Why do I not feel the least sympathy for the fascist monsters that raped China and the rest of Asia for 15 years before we ended their reign of terror in August of 1945. They got off easy in terms of what was coming to them.
---You are a German hater! Germany quit over 60 years ago. For 60 years people like you have spewed hatred for anything German. This hatred comes mostly from the USofA. The German population, that did not participate in the war, have come to recent your filth (their word). Where is your hatred for the Japanese? Where is your hatred for the Italians? Get the picture? Probably not. The Germans have had enough, they are not going to take it anymore. ---
Well, the Germans lost the war so they can go screw themselves.
We should have nuked Berlin and Moscow while we were at it.
You know, I appreciate your irritation, and much of it is understandable. The thing that really gets me, based on the Germans I've been in contact with, and my trips to Germany, it seems like the whole population has been neutered. Pacifists to the extreme.
Pretty much like the Japanese, from one extreme to the other. They still make some pretty good war toys though!
But you do realize that Germany and America enjoy a long-lasting friendship?
http://usa.usembassy.de/garelations.htm
http://www.usembassy.de/germany/policy/garelations.html
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3997.htm
There's an interesting section on Germany.
This book seems to deal way more with France than with Germany. Mr. Gertz goal is to make money by "scandalizing" some events. Read my links and be impressed how your federal government and also your Ambassador to my country views the relations.
NPR did their bit with a program about forgiveness being wonderful, esp. among countries/cultures who've killed hundreds of thousands of enemies. The only sour note was that the US enjoyed way too many benefits of forgiveness. We've forgiven any number of enemies, even rebuilt their societies at great cost...but we won all those wars, so it wasn't fair. The underlying thread was that Islam and homicidal Muslims everywhere need forgiveness, then everything will be hunky dory.
Forget the Rape of Nanking, forget the Asian "Comfort Women", forget the medical experments on prisoners, forget the Bataan Death March, forget Pearl Harbor, forget all the atrocities and the plan to arm all Japanese civilians and fight to the last Japanese - this is typical of the knid of liberal tripe produced by Euroweenies.
A monumnet to the Enola Gay whould be built in New York City, pointed right at the U.N.
One of my brothers-in-law was a survivor of this. I saw pictures of this very large man, in the company of other survivors, all skin and bones...just like the Nazi Death Camps!!! He was very nearly dead.
Japan and Germany were both despicable!
They already had those, in the Spring.
I was being snide. I read your page. Please believe me when I say it was tongue in cheek.
P.S. I was born in Germany (U.S. Army hospital Heidelberg)
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