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  1. #1
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    Hiroshima Atomic Bombing Raising Questions 75 Years Later

    The dawn of the nuclear age began with a blinding, flesh-melting blast directly above the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945. It was 8:16 a.m. on a Monday, the start of another work day in a city of nearly 300,000 inhabitants. An estimated two-thirds of that population — nearly all civilians — would soon be dead.


    The dropping by American warplanes of that first atomic bomb, code-named Little Boy -- and another, code-named Fat Man, three days later in Nagasaki — led to Japan's surrender on Aug. 15, 1945, and the end of World War II.


    At the time, the morality and legality of those nuclear attacks was hardly the subject of public debate.


    "Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war," President Harry Truman, who ordered the attacks, declared in a speech to the nation hours after the bombing of Hiroshima. "If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth."

    The last surviving member of the crew that flew over Hiroshima that day died in November. Before then, he recalled what he thought while aboard a B-29 named Necessary Evil as the bomb dropped from another warplane, the Enola Gay.


    "We had to go out and kill every one of them," former Army 2nd Lt. Russell Gackenbach, who flew as a navigator on both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki missions, told the Voices of the Manhattan Project in 2016.


    In a 2018 NPR interview, Gackenbach expressed no second thoughts about the annihilation of most of Hiroshima's inhabitants.


    "I do not regret what we did that day," he said. "All war is hell. The Japanese started the war. It was our turn to finish it."

    But another witness to the 900-foot-wide fireball that heated the air above Hiroshima to 500,000 degrees Fahrenheit has made it her life's mission to eliminate nuclear weapons.


    "We atomic bomb survivors are greatly disturbed by the continued modernization of nuclear weapons by the United States and other countries, and your stated willingness to use these instruments of genocide," 88-year-old Setsuko Thurlow wrote to President Trump in a letter published Monday in The Daily Hampshire Gazette. "Nuclear weapons are not a necessary evil, they are the ultimate evil. It is unacceptable for any state to possess them."


    Thurlow was a 13-year-old a mile from ground zero in Hiroshima the day the bomb fell there.


    "Although that happened in the morning, it was already very dark, like twilight," she told NPR's Kelly McEvers in 2016. "I could see some dark moving object approaching to me. They happened to be human beings. They just didn't look like human beings. I called them ghosts."

    "They were covered with blood and burned and blackened and swollen, and the flesh was hanging from the bones," the atomic blast survivor added. "Parts of their bodies were missing, and some were carrying their own eyeballs in their hands. And as they collapsed, their stomach burst open."


    Four years ago, President Barack Obama became the first American head of state to visit Hiroshima's Peace Memorial. He offered condolences, but pointedly did not offer apologies.


    "The morning of August 6, 1945 must never fade," Obama told a crowd gathered near the shell of the sole building left standing where the bomb exploded. "That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change."


    Pope Francis took a more critical stance during a November visit to that same peace memorial in Hiroshima.


    "Using nuclear power to wage war is today, more than ever, a crime," the pontiff declared, adding it was immoral even to possess nuclear weapons.


    Some prominent experts in the law of war are also reexamining the Hiroshima attack.


    "There is no question that a dropping of a large nuclear weapon amongst the civilian population is a war crime," says Harvard Law School professor Gabriella Blum. "Under the current laws of war, if you know you are going to impact civilians, you must provide warning and you must take precautions to avoid harming civilians to the extent possible. There is no doubt none of that was considered and none of that was seriously weighed in reference to Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

    In a similar critical vein, the cover story for the current issue of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is titled, "Why the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima Would Be Illegal Today."


    "We know that one of the main objectives was to cause as much civilian harm as possible, to create a shock among the civilians," says Stanford law professor Allen Weiner, one of the cover story's three authors.


    "The bomb in Hiroshima was dropped quite far away from the edge of town where the factories and worker housing was located," Weiner notes, "and one of the great ironies is that those factories and worker housing that were [cited by U.S. officials] in selecting Hiroshima as a target survived the atomic bombing. They were not destroyed."


    But Weiner also points out that in 1945 no nations had signed a treaty barring the kind of aerial bombardment of civilians that the U.S. carried out in Hiroshima.


    "I'm prepared to really give a quite hardcore hedge and say that in 1945, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not clearly illegal," says Weiner. "Today, it would clearly be illegal."

    Hiroshima: Atomic Blast That Changed The World Turns 75 : NPR

  2. #2
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    It’s listed as the Atomic Energy Commission’s bomb test # 2 ....

  3. #3
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    Op-Ed: U.S. leaders knew we didn’t have to drop atomic bombs on Japan to win the war. We did it anyway

    AUG. 5, 20203:05 AM

    At a time when Americans are reassessing so many painful aspects of our nation’s past, it is an opportune moment to have an honest national conversation about our use of nuclear weapons on Japanese cities in August 1945. The fateful decision to inaugurate the nuclear age fundamentally changed the course of modern history, and it continues to threaten our survival. As the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock warns us, the world is now closer to nuclear annihilation than at any time since 1947.

    The accepted wisdom in the United States for the last 75 years has been that dropping the bombs on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and on Nagasaki three days later was the only way to end the World War II without an invasion that would have cost hundreds of thousands of American and perhaps millions of Japanese lives. Not only did the bombs end the war, the logic goes, they did so in the most humane way possible.

    However, the overwhelming historical evidence from American and Japanese archives indicates that Japan would have surrendered that August, even if atomic bombs had not been used — and documents prove that President Truman and his closest advisors knew it.

    The allied demand for unconditional surrender led the Japanese to fear that the emperor, who many considered a deity, would be tried as a war criminal and executed. A study by Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Command compared the emperor’s execution to “the crucifixion of Christ to us.”

    “Unconditional Surrender is the only obstacle to peace,” Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo wired Ambassador Naotake Sato, who was in Moscow on July 12, 1945, trying to enlist the Soviet Union to mediate acceptable surrender terms on Japan’s behalf.

    But the Soviet Union’s entry into the war on Aug. 8 changed everything for Japan’s leaders, who privately acknowledged the need to surrender promptly.

    Allied intelligence had been reporting for months that Soviet entry would force the Japanese to capitulate. As early as April 11, 1945, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Joint Intelligence Staff had predicted: “If at any time the USSR should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable.”

    Truman knew that the Japanese were searching for a way to end the war; he had referred to Togo’s intercepted July 12 cable as the “telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace.”

    Truman also knew that the Soviet invasion would knock Japan out of the war. At the summit in Potsdam, Germany, on July 17, following Stalin’s assurance that the Soviets were coming in on schedule, Truman wrote in his diary, “He’ll be in the Jap War on August 15. Fini Japs when that comes about.” The next day, he assured his wife, “We’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed!”

    The Soviets invaded Japanese-held Manchuria at midnight on Aug. 8 and quickly destroyed the vaunted Kwantung Army. As predicted, the attack traumatized Japan’s leaders. They could not fight a two-front war, and the threat of a communist takeover of Japanese territory was their worst nightmare.

    Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki explained on Aug. 13 that Japan had to surrender quickly because “the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, but also Hokkaido. This would destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war when we can deal with the United States.”

    While a majority of Americans may not be familiar with this history, the National Museum of the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., states unambiguously on a plaque with its atomic bomb exhibit: “The vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military. However, the Soviet invasion of Manchuria … changed their minds.” But online the wording has been modified to put the atomic bombings in a more positive light — once again showing how myths can overwhelm historical evidence.

    Seven of the United States’ eight five-star Army and Navy officers in 1945 agreed with the Navy’s vitriolic assessment. Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, and William Halsey are on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both.

    No one was more impassioned in his condemnation than Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff. He wrote in his memoir “that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender …. In being the first to use it we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

    MacArthur thought the use of atomic bombs was inexcusable. He later wrote to former President Hoover that if Truman had followed Hoover’s “wise and statesmanlike” advice to modify its surrender terms and tell the Japanese they could keep their emperor, “the Japanese would have accepted it and gladly I have no doubt.”

    Before the bombings, Eisenhower had urged at Potsdam, “the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

    The evidence shows he was right, and the advancing Doomsday Clock is a reminder that the violent inauguration of the nuclear age has yet to be confined to the past.

    Gar Alperovitz, author of “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” is a principal of the Democracy Collaborative and a former fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. Martin J. Sherwin is a professor of history at George Mason University and author of the forthcoming “Gambling With Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette From Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis.” Historians Kai Bird and Peter Kuznick contributed to this article.

    Op-Ed: U.S. didn'''t have to drop atomic bombs on Japan to win war - Los Angeles Times

  4. #4
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    After watching The World At War and other documentaries recently, one is struck by the obsession of the Japanese to die rather than surrender, and also the savagery they used against their enemies (and especially prisoners of war).

    It is little surprise that even when staring defeat in the face they refused to surrender, and the two bombs definitely forced the military's hand.

    Anyway fuck them, they started it, the world finished it.

  5. #5
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    Maybe they didn't have to but thecunts were spreading despair and mayhem all over the pacific. It sure as hell shut them the fuck up.
    It's just a pity they didn't drop one on the royal palace.

    Oh, and

    “the Japanese were ready to surrender .”
    That's utter fucking bullshit.

  6. #6
    Thailand Expat tomcat's Avatar
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    ...an excellent read describing the flight of the Enola Gay to Hiroshima:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...ge%2Fstory-ans

  7. #7
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    The Doolittle Raid is a fascinating tale. America wanted to send a message to Tokyo and it did it by bombing Tokyo on a one way trip.

    Doolittle Raid - Wikipedia

  8. #8
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    The Japanese were totally nutso.
    Start a fight with the big guy using a sucker punch - that's gunna end well now isn't it.
    They got firebombed repeatedly (over 100 000 died in one Tokyo session). Didn't surrender.
    They got nuked. Didn't surrender.
    Nuked again. Didn't surrender.
    It was only the declaration of war by the USSR that persuaded the idiots that it was time to say sorry and put their hands down.
    Even then there was an attempted coup by some even more insane army officers with the aim of fighting on.
    Good thing they didn't. Many people would have died either by invasion or a blockade and starvation.
    Never did get around to apologizing to China for their wickedness and still don't teach the truth in schools.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cujo View Post
    “the Japanese were ready to surrender .”
    That's utter fucking bullshit.
    Op-Ed: U.S. leaders knew we didn’t have to drop atomic bombs on Japan to win the war. We did it anyway
    Seven of the United States’ eight five-star Army and Navy officers in 1945 agreed with the Navy’s vitriolic assessment. Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, and William Halsey are on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both.
    No one was more impassioned in his condemnation than Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff. He wrote in his memoir “that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender …. In being the first to use it we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”
    MacArthur thought the use of atomic bombs was inexcusable. He later wrote to former President Hoover that if Truman had followed Hoover’s “wise and statesmanlike” advice to modify its surrender terms and tell the Japanese they could keep their emperor, “the Japanese would have accepted it and gladly I have no doubt.”
    documents prove that President Truman and his closest advisors knew it.
    One big lie and the millions of lies afterwards for starting all the wars afterwards...

    How many times the world heard about Weapon of Mass Destruction - WMD?

    (But we are outraged about 20,000 (?) current lies...)

  10. #10
    Thailand Expat jabir's Avatar
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    Little Boy sent the message, Fat Man ended the war, good result.

  11. #11
    I'm in Jail

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    The Japanese were about to execute most POWS. This alone was reason enough to drop the bomb. They'd already marched a few thousand sick and starving ones to death. And those that didn't die, they beheaded.

  12. #12
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Only cretins and soap-dodging lefties perpetuate this myth about the nips being ready to surrender. It's fucking nonsense.

    The only mistake the allies made was in not adding Hirohito to the Tokyo Trial.

  13. #13
    Thailand Expat tomcat's Avatar
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    ...my history teacher in high school was in Okinawa during the war training for the final assault on the home islands: he had no doubt the bombs were necessary and only regretted that they hadn't been ready and deployed earlier...much earlier...

  14. #14
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    The behaviour of the nips in the course of the battle for Okinawa offered a vivid insight into what was in store for the allies once mainland Japan was invaded - a casualty rate of 40%. On any analysis the use of the atomic bomb was both necessary and unavoidable if war was to end.

    But to my mind the bestial conduct of the yellow bastards as they ripped through China and SE Asia slaughtering and torturing hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners-of-war for no reason other than to satiate their perverted form of nationalistic bloodlust and barbarous medieval code of racist cruelty was quite sufficient to merit atomic warfare.

    The little fuckers still do not accept institutionally that their behaviour was subhuman or that they did wrong, the entire war has been airbrushed out of their educational programmes.

  15. #15
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    Not absolutely and completely. Thirty years ago I met a Japanese girl who said her father was a teacher and taught the truth of what happened. He was demoted by being transferred to a village some distance away from their home, and had to cycle there and back.

    When I asked about what he was doing currently, she said that he was 70 years old and doing a cycling tour of Canada.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    Only cretins and soap-dodging lefties perpetuate this myth about the nips being ready to surrender. It's fucking nonsense.
    "Cretins and soap-dodging lefties":
    Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, and William Halsey are on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    "Cretins and soap-dodging lefties":
    Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, and William Halsey are on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both.
    No they are not.

  18. #18
    The Fool on the Hill bowie's Avatar
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    WWII Japanese – go ahead and make it a weekend. Head on over to Kanchanaburi. Visit the bridge on the River Kwaii, the museums, the cemeteries. See the historic reminders of the atrocities committed by the Japanese in Thailand during WWII.



    Burma Railway - Wikipedia

    The Burma Railway, also known as the Death Railway, the Siam–Burma Railway, the Thai–Burma Railway and similar names, is a 415-kilometre (258 mi) railway between Ban Pong, Thailand, and Thanbyuzayat, Burma, built by the Empire of Japan from 1940–1944 to supply troops and weapons in the Burma campaign of World War II. This railway completed the rail link between Bangkok, Thailand, and Rangoon, Burma.

    Hiroshima Atomic Bombing Raising Questions 75 Years Later-600px-bridge_on_the_river_kwai_-_tourist_plaza-jpg


    Between 180,000 and 250,000 Allied prisoners of war were subjected to forced labour during its construction. About 102,000 Allied prisoners died.


    Now, let's do the math more than 100,000 POWs died. 400 kilometers = 250 dead Prisoners-of-War per kilometer of railroad.

    Hmm... Perhaps, just perhaps
    Hiroshima Atomic Bombing Raising Questions 75 Years Later-92007190_o2-jpg

  19. #19
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    ^So, why they did not bomb the Japs here to avert them doing the atrocities to others?

    (BTW, the bridge is not the real one from that time)

  20. #20
    The Fool on the Hill bowie's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    ^So, why they did not bomb the Japs here to avert them doing the atrocities to others?
    Probably afraid of hitting friendlies.

    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    (BTW, the bridge is not the real one from that time)
    You sure? Looks just like the one in the movie.

  21. #21
    I Amn't In Jail PlanK's Avatar
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    Hiroshima Atomic Bombing Raising Questions 75 Years Later-avwgr5w_460s-jpg

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    Originally Posted by Klondyke
    ^So, why they did not bomb the Japs here to avert them doing the atrocities to others?
    Quote Originally Posted by bowie View Post
    Probably afraid of hitting friendlies.
    There are ways and there are reasons...


    Originally Posted by Klondyke
    (BTW, the bridge is not the real one from that time)
    Quote Originally Posted by bowie View Post
    You sure? Looks just like the one in the movie.
    The one in the movie was another one, not the real one...

  23. #23
    I Amn't In Jail PlanK's Avatar
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  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    Only cretins and soap-dodging lefties perpetuate this myth about the nips being ready to surrender. It's fucking nonsense.

    The only mistake the allies made was in not adding Hirohito to the Tokyo Trial.
    Apparently they did consider that, then rejected because it would likely result in mass suicides and possible resumption of hostilities even without a formal military.

    I believe they call it being gracious in victory, which is often costly up to decades later, esp if you're in danger of becoming 'civilised' and expected to apologise for doing the right thing.

  25. #25
    Thailand Expat jabir's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Klondyke View Post
    "Cretins and soap-dodging lefties":
    Generals Dwight Eisenhower, Douglas MacArthur and Henry “Hap” Arnold and Admirals William Leahy, Chester Nimitz, Ernest King, and William Halsey are on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or both.
    Those bombs ended the war and saved thousands of lives that didn't ask for it to start in the first place.

    The only thing the Japs regret is not kicking it off with a sucker punch, but not winning it.

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