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The indefensible Hiroshima revisionism that haunts America to this day (BARF)
Salon ^ | 08/05/2015 | christian appy

Posted on 08/05/2015 1:34:09 PM PDT by DFG

Here we are, 70 years after the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and I’m wondering if we’ve come even one step closer to a moral reckoning with our status as the world’s only country to use atomic weapons to slaughter human beings. Will an American president ever offer a formal apology? Will our country ever regret the dropping of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man,” those two bombs that burned hotter than the sun? Will it absorb the way they instantly vaporized thousands of victims, incinerated tens of thousands more, and created unimaginably powerful shockwaves and firestorms that ravaged everything for miles beyond ground zero? Will it finally come to grips with the “black rain” that spread radiation and killed even more people — slowly and painfully — leading in the end to a death toll for the two cities conservatively estimated at more than 250,000?

(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: hiroshima; salon
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To: Dilbert San Diego

Nonsense. The Japs didn’t surrender after the first nuke, which would have been a primo demonstration. Luckily, they didn’t know what after dropping the second nuclear weapon, we didn’t have any more and wouldn’t for months.


21 posted on 08/05/2015 1:46:57 PM PDT by sparklite2 (Voting is acting white.)
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To: DFG

It would have been much better, after 5 years of war, to invade the Japanese home islands, killing 500 thousand of our troops, and millions of Japanese.


22 posted on 08/05/2015 1:47:04 PM PDT by thesharkboy (posting without reading the article since 1998)
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To: DFG

Why should we apologize for doing what was necessary to destroy one of the most evil and racist empires in the history of the world?

Why should we express regret for saving tens of thousands of American lives?


23 posted on 08/05/2015 1:47:27 PM PDT by WayneS (Yeah, it's probably sarcasm...)
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To: DFG

I have traveled to Japan for business. One executive told me he had a deep respect for America because we did not bomb Kyoto or the old temples.
When it came to atrocities the Japanese were horrific.


24 posted on 08/05/2015 1:47:59 PM PDT by IC Ken
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To: bert

When we were little kids, we used to say, “Bombs over Tokyo!” long before any of us were old enough to really knew what any of it meant. That’s quite a photo.


25 posted on 08/05/2015 1:49:49 PM PDT by Tau Food (Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.)
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To: DFG

The opinions of the many veterans still alive today matter far more to me than some pathetic, wet-nursed liberal pantywaist at Salon.

We don’t have to take joy in using nuclear weapons. We use them with grim determination to do so because we could not root out every single Japanese citizen with a sharpened stick...and there was no reason to.

In retrospect, more Japanese were likely saved from conventional bombing missions yet to occur and a wholesale invasion that would have occurred.

This liberal jackwad can go pound sand with his pathetic hand-wringing.


26 posted on 08/05/2015 1:50:37 PM PDT by rlmorel ("National success by the Democratic Party equals irretrievable ruin." Ulysses S. Grant.Buy into it,)
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To: DFG

Whining libtards today would say the US over reacted to Pearl Harbor ....


27 posted on 08/05/2015 1:50:43 PM PDT by SkyDancer ("Nobody Said I Was Perfect But Yet Here I Am")
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To: DFG

Google Unit 731.


28 posted on 08/05/2015 1:51:14 PM PDT by mrmeyer (You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. – Robert Heinlein)
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To: DFG
Why did we drop two bombs?

Answer: The Japanese did not surrender after the first one.

29 posted on 08/05/2015 1:52:20 PM PDT by Michael.SF. (This tagline lists all of Hilary's accomplishments............................)
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To: DFG

We tend to ignore the fact that the USSR declared war on Japan at the same time. With out this facing them, there were those who felt that it was just larger bombs that could be overcome. The USSR pursued this thought 20 years later. We will always be stuck with these people. Attack their stupidly.


30 posted on 08/05/2015 1:54:18 PM PDT by Domangart
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To: DFG

The real question yet to be answered is how many innocent lions were killed.


31 posted on 08/05/2015 1:56:40 PM PDT by edhawk
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To: DFG

Informative discussions of the Japanese leadership’s verification and reaction to the Hiroshima bombing in some of the later replies on Homer’s daily WWII thread: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3320826/posts


32 posted on 08/05/2015 1:58:14 PM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: DFG

My conclusion and response is: If we had not dropped the two atomic bombs: 1) there would have been US and Japanese casualties that would have made the losses from Hiroshima and Nagasaki look miniscule. And 2) The actual seeing what an A-bomb could do, has probably spared the world a nuclear war for the last 60+ years.

3) now that that Iraq is getting the A-bomb, we have a group that sees only good in death and does not have the revulsion that the west and the Communist Bloc had to restrain them.


33 posted on 08/05/2015 1:59:07 PM PDT by GreyFriar (Spearhead - 3rd Armored Division 75-78 & 83-87)
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To: DFG

Send the libtard an email to his school address:

appy@history.umass.edu

I did though I’m not dumb enough to believe U Mass would condone such stupidity. They might throw him a parade instead.


34 posted on 08/05/2015 2:01:14 PM PDT by NohSpinZone (First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers)
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To: Michael.SF.; chajin

A few days back on the WWII daily thread Freeper chajin speculated that the Japanese leadership realized bomb #3 was probably going to target them in Tokyo.


35 posted on 08/05/2015 2:02:07 PM PDT by Rebelbase
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To: DFG

Salon.

I think Salon (as well as Slate) must be in hot pursuit daily of being the most insipid and moronic bunch of twats that ever sat around a monitor and twerked off to liberal mind (bleeps) like this author.


36 posted on 08/05/2015 2:02:54 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd (With Great Freedom comes Great Responsibility)
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To: IC Ken

At age 11 I read a comprehensive book about the Bataan Death march when I lived in the Philippines. My Boy Scout troop hiked the route annually (I was never able to hike it, but went on the support train) and we all saw those white markers that line the road.

At 11, I read that, and also read “I Cannot Forgive” about the Holocaust...and while I wasn’t a sheltered kid, I recall feeling appalled at fully realizing what evil men could do to one another. I had lived in Japan for several years before that, and while I understood about the war, the Japanese didn’t talk about it, they were as nice as pie.

But after learning about the Bataan Death March (and everything else that followed in the Pacific War) I was forever struck by the contrast between those Japanese I had known, beautiful, polite, lovely people who had such appreciation of small things in nature and culture, and the brutal, insect-like military that had no mercy on its foes.

The contrast still amazes me stays with me until this day. I remembered reading a story about how the USS Astoria took the ashes of the Japanese Ambassador (Hiroshi Saito) back to Japan in 1939, and after some of the formal ceremonies that took place, one US naval officer was heard to remark (and I have to paraphrase) “For a country that has such beautiful, polite and cultured women, their men are real nasty bastards.”

So it wasn’t just me...


37 posted on 08/05/2015 2:04:31 PM PDT by rlmorel ("National success by the Democratic Party equals irretrievable ruin." Ulysses S. Grant.Buy into it,)
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To: Dilbert San Diego

We only had 2 nuclear bombs in hand—the untested uranium bomb and a plutonium bomb. Had we conducted a demonstration and it failed, the war would have been prolonged—with more Japanese dying from our conventional bombing raids.

Of course the Japanese didn’t know we only had two bombs—they had seen their sky filled with B-29s. Part of the point of using single planes to drop the atomic bombs was to stimulate their imaginations of hundreds of atomic bombs falling on them. As it was, the military wasn’t ready to give even after Nagasaki—the emperor overruled them.

And, of course people forget that the Soviets declared war after the first atomic attack. Strictly speaking they were honoring an agreement to join the Pacific war 90 days after Germany’s surrender. But you know they would have wanted to divide Japan just like Germany and Korea—and we know how well that worked out.


38 posted on 08/05/2015 2:05:42 PM PDT by hanamizu
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To: DFG
70 years after the nuclear obliteration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki... Will an American president ever offer a formal apology?

Have the Japanese ever issued an apology for the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor which resulted in a declaration of war by the US? What followed was a result of their actions.

We would do well to remember that both Germany and Japan had nuclear weapons programs. Is there any doubt that had they finished a weapon before US they would have used it in an attack on the major cities of either coast?

I believe that Italy was also working on nuclear weapons. However they were not making much progress (Too much Vino, pretty girls, &c).

Regards,
GtG

39 posted on 08/05/2015 2:12:52 PM PDT by Gandalf_The_Gray
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To: DFG
Will our country ever regret the dropping of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man,” those two bombs that burned hotter than the sun? Will it absorb the way they instantly vaporized thousands of victims, incinerated tens of thousands more, and created unimaginably powerful shockwaves and firestorms that ravaged everything for miles beyond ground zero? Will it finally come to grips with the “black rain” that spread radiation and killed even more people — slowly and painfully — leading in the end to a death toll for the two cities conservatively estimated at more than 250,000?

No.
Yes - don't care.
See previous answer.
Then look up "war" in dictionary.

40 posted on 08/05/2015 2:13:02 PM PDT by IronJack
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