Hiroshima Plus 63 [Happy Hiroshima Day]

The Moderate Voice ^ | August 6, 2008 | PATRICK EDABURN

[PurpleMan]

This week marks the 63rd anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and the beginning of the end of World War 2. As is usually the case every year we have the stories of those who attack the incident as a ‘war crime’. These historical revisionists miss (or ignore) the fact that they are looking back with hindsight and applying modern attitudes to historical times.

[Old Mountain man]

Amen.

[valkyry1]

What a story.

The Japanese would have forced the US into obliterating their nation with the invasion.

[DuncanWaring]

Where and what is that pic?

Perhaps you'll recognize it from this perspective:

[fredhead]

That picture is of the USS Arizona, blown up and sunk at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, with the Arizona Memorial built over the sunken ship. Over 1,100 lives were lost on that ship alone that day, including the highest ranking officer killed, Rear Admiral Isaac Kidd.

[PjhCPA]

Happy Hiroshima Day

That is crass.

[MaxMax]

Before

After

[Rummenigge]

Maybe dropping an A-Bomb on Hiroshima wasn’t necessary - there’s no way to find out and it doesn’t matter to me.

What matters to me is, that I thank god that Hitler didn’t have it first.

the physics behind the Bomb are tough to understand and even tougher to apply - but sooner or later someone has to come up with that.

It turned out that germany in it’s madness had driven away a lot of the guys that really understood physics in europe and in germany: Age and Nils Bor, Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein, Teller, Bethe, Bloch all the guys that gave names to natural constants ...

Oppenheimer (son of a german emigrant) himself recieved his Ph.D. in Göttingen in the Institute of Max Born where he met guys like Heisenberg, Teller and Dirac.

[Fiji Hill]

ATOMIC COCKTAIL
(Slim Gaillard)

It’s the drink that you don’t pour.
Now when you take one sip you won’t need anymore.
You’re small as a beetle or big as a whale-BOOM-Atomic Cocktail.

Splashes ice all around the place.
When you see it coming, grab your suitcase.
It’ll send you through the sky like airmail-BOOM-Atomic Cocktail.

You push a button, turn a dial.
Your work is done for miles and miles.
When it hits-it’s bound to shake ‘cause it feels just like an earthquake.

That’s the drink that you don’t pour.
When you take one sip you won’t need anymore.
You’re small as a beetle or big as a whale-BOOM-Atomic Cocktail.

Recorded by the Slim Gaillard Quartet
Atomic #215
1946

[PurpleMan]

Wellllllllllll,

Bing that Japan was 80% reliant on US oil, there are those who would argue that actually, FRD’s oil embargo on Japan was the first act of war.

[Oldsailor]

August 6, 1945 I was in the South Pacific involved with the rescue of the survivors of the Indianapolis, which was the ship that delivered the A bomb to Tinian island from where it was delivered to Hiroshima.

Later in September our ship was with the 3rd fleet awaiting the surrender.

Whatever the "Revisionists" say negative about the A bomb is pure bunk. Harry Truman was very courageous to make that call for the bomb to be used......It did end the war that the Japs started.

[never4get]

There is nothing happy about 90,000 people being killed because of a Japanese government who refused to surrender. It was a necessary thing to do to save many, many, other lives, but forgive me if I find no happiness in understanding the horror of war and the pain it brings upon people...even if those people are your enemy.

[Tennessee_Bob]

And thank you all the scientists, engineers, and supporting workers at all levels, both military and civilian, who made the Manhattan Project the success that it was, and who gave us the bomb before our enemies got it.

I'll let them know on Sunday. I'm fortunate to attend church here in Oak Ridge with quite a few of the original Manhattan Project workers.

[BerkeleyRefugee]

My mom is from Nagasaki and she witnessed the bombing of her native city as well as the human devastation that followed. Thankfully the family moved to Sasebo (a neighboring town) long before the bomb fell, but they did know of some people who died. I would encourage everyone to watch the film, “White Light/Black Rain”, the HBO documentary about the bombings told from the viewpoint of some of the remaining survivors. Also recommend the animated film, “Gen of Hiroshima,’ created by a survivor who was a child at the time of the bombing. Japan was already on the verge of surrender. The bombs did not save lives and were a crime against humanity, as the Catholic Church asserts.

[mass55th]

"War is hell...too bad the Japanese started one with us."

And sometimes you have to take the war to the people in order to break their will to fight. I know a lot of people dislike William T. Sherman, but he was right in the fact that once you take the war to the people, you destroy their will to continue fighting. It sounds cruel and inhumane, but it works, and in the end, it saves lives.

[DuncanWaring]

...there are those who would argue that actually, FRD’s oil embargo on Japan was the first act of war.

Only if you ignore the previous five years of the Imperial Japanese Army running amok through China, establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

Perhaps the Rape of Nanking rings a bell.

[Tennessee_Bob]

There is nothing happy about 90,000 people being killed because of a Japanese government who refused to surrender.

I think that would depend on your point of view. If you were in one of the fourteen divisions assigned to land on Kyushu in Operation Olympic, I don't think you'd find yourslef wallowing in sorrow.

It's not a day for cake and ice cream. But it's also not a day to walk around in mourning. Japan awoke a sleeping giant.

[never4get]

I have empathy for those who were forced to suffer because of the Japanese refusal to suffer...but to say... The bombs did not save lives and were a crime against humanity, as the Catholic Church asserts....I disagree with. As many will attest here, as many as who died in the blast would have died in the invasion, fathers and brothers, mothers, children from both sides. Unlike many on this thread who are jovial, I am not. It was a horrific decision to make in a horrific war. I hate war, the pain and death it brings. In this instance I do believe that noting what WOULD have happened absent use of the weapon, there was very little choice....What a terrible decision to have to make if you were the President, but I trust his decision was the right decision. Please try and separate those on this thread who take joy out of the pain and death the bomb caused from those who while they believe it was ultimately the right thing to do also understand the horror of what the weapons of war thrust on people.

[shooter223]

http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/images/TibbetsEnolaGayLarge.jpg

[DuncanWaring]

Japan was already on the verge of surrender.

Considering the fact that the Japanese fought, for all intents and purposes, to the last man all the way up through the Pacific Island Campaign, the idea that they would just roll over and surrender the Homeland is preposterous.

Here's a more likely scenario.

Little Boy and Fat Man saved tens of millions of lives.

The Catholic Church is wrong on this one.

[never4get]

Sorry Tennessee, we should be glad we won a war...but there is no need to celebrate the death of 90,000 people with an A-Bomb. It was an ugly decision thrust upon this country, a decision no doubt the President did not take lightly...The jovial mood of some disgust me. A realist knows we are doomed to fight wars, wars we know we have to win...I just wish we did not have too fight them.