Hmmmm....these stupid apologists always seem to forget or ignore some hard facts about the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s:
Posted on 03/17/2008 5:00:40 PM PDT by Coleus
It was a clear, hot summer day on Aug. 6, 1945, when 10-year-old Kenji Kitagawa kissed his mother and brother goodbye before leaving for school. The fifth-grader didn't know that would be the last time he would see them alive. Life was forever altered for Kitagawa and the rest of the world 62 years ago, as an American B-29 bomber, flying 26,000 feet above his hometown of Hiroshima, Japan, dropped an atomic bomb.
Now 73, Kitagawa travels the world as part of an effort to educate people on the destructive power of nuclear weapons. Sponsored by the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, Kitagawa has been publicly reliving his experiences from Hiroshima for the past three years. With foundation Chairman Steven Leeper serving as translator, Kitagawa shared his experience with an audience of about 60 people at Christ Church in Summit last Sunday.
"After retiring, I had this feeling that I was not going to live much longer, and I thought, 'What is the most important thing for me to do?' and my mind was brought back to this place," he said, referring to Hiroshima. Kitagawa and his classmates were awaiting an assembly program at their school when the bomb hit at 8:16 a.m. A flash of blue and white light came like lightning through the windows, charring all who were directly exposed, Kitagawa said. Confusion and panic followed, as a ferocious blast of wind came crashing into the school.
"There was an amazing roaring sound and the entire school started to collapse," said Kitagawa. "I remember falling and feeling like a hammer was hitting me over the head." When he came to, the classroom was in total darkness. He would learn later that the sun became obliterated by the mushroom cloud from the bomb.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
Hmmmm....these stupid apologists always seem to forget or ignore some hard facts about the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s:
Assume for a moment that Japan had given up on August 5th. Yeah, yeah, I know... No way. But bear with me.
So assume that nu-cu-lar weapons were not used in order to end WWII and the effects of the first bombs were not on display for the world to see and be rightfully horrified by.
It seems (seeeemmmsss...) to me that it would now be much more likely that a more advanced weapon with a larger yield would eventually have been used elsewhere by someone else or another.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the use of early atom bombs provided a graphic enough example of the effects that made the further use of said weapons less acceptable and therefore less likely.
Just my $0.02.
I think it was also forever altered for any children of those who died at Pearl Harbor.
Most unfortunate.
I wonder if he mentions Pearl Harbor in his travels.
Children were taught that, because it works!
As a soldier in Germany during the 1970’s, this is exactly what were were taught to do and were expected to attack the enemy after the initial blast.
After all I've seen and gotten used to over the years, their savagery and inhumane behavior still makes me shake my head.
Ya, sucked to get nuked, Shouldn't have started the war. They got off REAL EASY for what they did.
I would agree, and to a large degree, it was intended as a stark warning to the USSR which was about to invade Japan.
Flashback
I remember practicing this back in ’53 or ’54 when I was in first grade. LOL!
;-)
It ended a war that we didn’t start.
Growing up in California, we would do that every week in grade school.
Well, we snuffed his family in it's entirety and taught that 10 y.o. fifth-grader a lesson, I suppose...
How come when Obama's pastor talks this shit he gets criticized and damned, but meanwhile here on FR, when folks seem to revel in death and destruction and hate talk towards the enemy 60 years later, people jump on the bandwagon and glorify in it.
It's truly unseemly, I think.
One feel empathy for a single person. One can even feel revulsion because of the thought of 200,000+ casualties dying because of this horrific weapon.
However, it was less than 20% of the projected casualties (on both sides) if this measure wasn’t taken.
Nobody likes the thought of radical surgery if their life is on the line. The alternative...is death.
Nearly every person alive (99.999% of the G.I.s) during that era knew that it was the right thing to do. In fact, it was the merciful option.
Debate on the point is nothing more than revisionist subverion and those who hold to any other option are imbeciles living in a utopian fantasy - to join them is to invite death.
It was a very merciful way to end the war. The carnage would have been much worse otherwise. And for the most part, those killed by the bomb died very quickly and painlessly. That’s not bad, that’s good.
He was an Australian .....
Please explain, because you seem on rather thin ice at the moment...
WWII was a "total war" between civilizations. There were no "civilians" in a total war, but only a choice between living and dying.
Why would anyone flame you for that?
Another “never again”: the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
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