Posted on 08/06/2022 6:45:11 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Reiko Yamada was 11 years old on August 6, 1945, when the US dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Now 88, she is among the few survivors of the horrific attack, which killed around 140,000 people, and is determined to pass on the lessons of history. But Yamada and other survivors fear their voices are not being heard. On the 77th anniversary of the bombing, FRANCE 24 reports on the survivors of the attack.
Bells tolled in Hiroshima on Saturday as the city marked the 77th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing.
Reiko Yamada was 11 years old on August 6, 1945. Her school was just 2.6 kilometres from the epicentre of the attack.
The young girl saw a plane and a flash, then nothing. A tree fell on her, but she survived and found her family. Today, she is determined to keep the painful memories of that fateful day alive.
(Excerpt) Read more at france24.com ...
FTA: survivors share history’s lessons
Do not start a war with America.
At least Japan told Hitler “no thanks” when he asked Japan to invade Russia.
So if the proximity fuse had never worked in all of those tests, I’m guessing they must have had a backup fuse? Like when it hit the ground it would have gone boom?
“...If the estimated casualty count of an invasion is too high, then don’t invade at all...” [Alberta’s Child, post 21]
“The better approach (in this case) is to ask the same question 15-20 years later. The public support drops dramatically. And it’s not because of some “revisionist history” nonsense, either. ...” [Alberta’s Child, post 126]
“I was just explaining why the Japanese have never been taken to task for their atrocities in the decades leading up to World War II.” [Alberta’s Child, post 190]
The Nuremberg trials were not a serious activity, just a sop to the Soviet Union. The Soviets hadn’t suffered so much in the Far East, so there wasn’t as big a push from the “community of nations” to step on the remnants of the Imperial Japanese power structure. Political realities intruded too.
“Revisionism” isn’t some recent development. In December 1945, Harper’s magazine published the results of a postwar poll of Americans. A significant majority approved of the employment of atomic bombs in combat against the Japanese. Some 25 to 30 percent expressed disappointment that the Japanese had surrendered so quickly, depriving the nation of the opportunity to use more such weapons.
America’s moralizers and other members of the chattering class reacted in dismay, and immediately set about jawboning the unwashed masses, arguing with undisguised eloquence about how we all needed to recall moral & religious instruction from childhood and learn to become kinder.
In this, they were substantially aided by a number of the scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project - learned experts who suddenly got cold feet when they saw the results of what they’d theorized about. Out of this movement came The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a widely read, widely respected publication that is now reliably anti-military and anti-American.
Ironically, one of the movers and shakers behind this sudden reversal of sentiment was Leo Szilard - the same Hungarian expatriate physicist who argued Albert Einstein into signing that famous letter to FDR.
The sort of ex-post-facto moral nitpicking appearing in the posts I quoted is annoying. Especially when it’s indulged in by someone who has presumably lived a lotus-eating life of ease, in one of the nations which got liberated by the Allies, or defended by them - an existence made possible by the sweat & sacrifice of people a few generations ago, who weren’t so exalted as you are.
Anyone who purports to deplore loss of life in Axis countries in the same way they deplore loss of life by Allied nations is not practicing superior morality; it’s more like moral exhibitionism.
My dad was in boot camp when Japan surrendered. They were training for invasion.I didn’t know this until right after his funeral. My brother introduced me to a man who had grown up with my dad, went to boot camp with him, and was shipped to postwar Germany with him. This man told me that they knew they were training for invasion. My dad never talked about it. He once told my brother that he thanked God for the bomb; he didn’t think he would have survived.
I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with those of us who believe that we owe our existence to the bomb, to express this.
The last episode of Band of Brothers covered the “points” system to determine who would get sent to Japan.
“So if the proximity fuse had never worked in all of those tests, I’m guessing they must have had a backup fuse? Like when it hit the ground it would have gone boom?” [21twelve, post 203]
Not to my knowledge.
Barometric fuzing was not considered as reliable as VT fuzing, which had already proven extremely effective in AAA shells, and is now considered to be one of the top technological accomplishments of World War 2.
And contact fuzing (hit ground - go boom) - the type of fuze used in the majority of air-dropped munitions during the war - presented uncertainties in the employment of the weapons that weren’t present in earlier munitions.
Unlike a conventional bomb which was merely a steel case packed with high explosive, the atomic weapons depended for a nuclear yield on sending ignition signals to special fuzing devices planted in several different chunks of carefully contoured HE, at just the right instant to jam the pieces of fissile material together with sufficient force at sufficient velocity to trigger the chain reaction. Timing had to be accurate within a microsecond; too early or too late, and the HE would detonate, but scatter the fissile material all over the immediate area. Violent and nasty, but nothing remotely like a nuclear yield.
VT fuzing was the only method capable of the necessary timing.
Contact fuzes could not react speedily enough, and so weren’t feasible as backup devices. By the time a contact fuze sensed the deceleration caused by a weapon impacing the ground, the weapon case and the carefully-shaped pieces of HE would already be squished out of shape, as would the fissile material. Those early atomic bombs were fragile, compared to bombs already in use.
I first learned of the fuzing problems in _Enola Gay_ by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts.
We would have had a Civil War in Japan that would have made Korea look like a walk in the park. It may very well have triggered WWIII.
My Grandfather.
Where do you come up with such nonsense?
Just watch Band of Brothers...very few were anxious to head to the Far East. They paid their dues.
Koreans and Poles have similar histories.
The second part is because he is a repeated suck up to Imperial Japan. Who were a bunch of sick freaks who made a game of how fast they could chop off the heads of conquered civilians.
When you shock Nazis you ain't misunderstood sweeties.
I lived in Germany from 77-81, in a small town along the Mosel River. That territory was fought over hundreds of years.
A few years ago, I read a chapter of the exploits of John Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough. He commanded the allied forces during the campaign known as the Battle of Blenheim in the early 1700s. They kicked the French out of Hungary back to France. It wouldn't be until Napoleon arrived on the scene that the French would be a force to be reckoned.
One of Churchill's final victories came in the town of Traben-Trarbach, the town I lived in. There was never a statue or monument signifying the victory that I could recall. Then again, why should they? Churchill was a Brit...lol.
He stopped to see me while I was in the ADA Officers Basic Course at Fort Bliss. The first night in town, I took him to dinner at the Officers' Club. He didn't seem to be his usual self at the time. Later, I realized he was taking in the moment, a sailor in WWII having dinner with his son, an officer, surrounded by field grade officers.
He never said it, but I'm certain it was one of his best moments as a father. LOL, I don't think I gave him that many.
Just because we don’t agree doesn’t mean my opinions are liberal.
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