Hiroshima remembers atomic bomb

[lawyerlee]

Hiroshima remembers atomic bomb (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4748027.stm)
BBC News

The Japanese city of Hiroshima has marked the anniversary of the moment an atomic bomb exploded above the city 60 years ago.

Around 140,000 people were killed by the bomb and its aftermath.

Nuclear survivors, known as Hibakusha, joined dignitaries at the annual commemoration in the Peace Park, built at the epicentre of the blast.

The head of the UN has said the world has made little progress in tackling the spread of nuclear weapons.

Burning memories

"Today, we are all Hibakusha," Kofi Annan said in a statement read out on his behalf at the Hiroshima ceremony.

He called for concerted action to prevent "a cascade of nuclear proliferation".

Some 55,000 people thronged into the peace park to remember the moment the bomb exploded in the skies above the city, at 0815 on the morning of 6 August, 1945.

Nicknamed "Little Boy", it generated a wave of heat which reached 4,000C (7,200F) and expanded across a radius of 4.5km (2.8 miles), obliterating the city.

Thousands were killed instantly and many others died later from severe burns or radiation.

Many commentators believe the US attack helped bring an early end to World War II in the Pacific.

Water for the dead

During the ceremony, children dressed in black and white, the colours of mourning, laid wreathes of flowers at a simple, arch-shaped memorial.

Ladles of water were also offered for those who suffered the atomic heat.

Japan's Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, said that, after the bomb, the city had relentlessly pursued peace.

"The citizens of Hiroshima are the witnesses of global peace, we hope that Hiroshima will continue to be the symbol of global peace," he said.

Hiroshima's mayor, Tadatoshi Akiba, led the crowd in a moment of silence, 60 years on from the instant the blast struck the city.

A huge metal bell tolled in memory of the victims.

He said respect for victims of war demanded abolition of all nuclear weapons.

"We have to pay due tribute to all the souls claimed by the atomic bomb," Mr Akiba said. "We will not make the same mistake again".

[lawyerlee]

The burning and the haunting: how for some the nightmare of Hiroshima will never end (http://www.guardian.co.uk/japan/story/0,7369,1543708,00.html)

Survivors describe the horrors of August 6 1945 and the scars that remain

Gavin Rees in Hiroshima
Saturday August 6, 2005
The Guardian

At night, Akiko Takakura has the same dreams, ones in which she sees bodies floating in her local swimming pool, or hanging from trees, the images that confronted her when she regained consciousness and saw what she calls "the city of death". Nobody who survived Hiroshima 60 years ago today was closer to the explosion than Mrs Takakura, and she holds a special place in a group of "hibakusha" - the atomic people.

The nightmares that have stayed with her are understandable, but probably the mildest manifestation of the physical and mental scars that remain with many of those who survived. Some hibakusha have only started to talk publicly about their experiences in the last decade. Although they now receive special state welfare provision and much public attention, for many years after the war they were stigmatised. Women, in particular, found it hard to marry.

"They used to call women like me a 'pikadon girl' or an 'atomic girl'," said Kinuko Laskey, who was 16 when she was caught in the blast. "They would say, you don't know what sort of a baby she will give birth to. Others said that the radiation could be genetically transmitted or was even contagious."

Mrs Laskey attempted suicide several times before marrying a Canadian serviceman and emigrating to Vancouver. The explosion split open one of her eyes and drove hundreds of shards of glass into her body. For a whole year her mother covered up reflective surfaces, including pans, to prevent her daughter from seeing her disfigurement. By the time of her death last year, she had had numerous operations that had eventually made the visible damage almost indiscernible.

Flashbacks, hyper-vigilance and poor sleep have been reported among hibakusha. Many survivors become very anxious when talking about their experiences, as if they are stepping back into the horrors they are describing.

In Japan, where discussing mental illness is taboo, both doctors and survivors play down the possibility that some victims of Hiroshima might still be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, emphasising instead the desolation caused by losing loved ones and the anticipatory fear of radiation-related illness.

One former soldier described without irony how he had avoided being traumatised by drinking heavily. "Hearing people shouting 'help' is something I dreamt about for a long time. But now it has been over 60 years and I seem to dream less," he says. Others still have to cope with physical effects associated with radiation. Leukaemia clusters first began to appear in 1953, lung cancer in 1960. Teruko Fujii was a 16-year-old girl in charge of driving a tram when the bomb struck. Afterwards, she suffered from long spells of debilitating lethargy.

Then a striking young woman, she watched her skin age prematurely from the effect of a thyroid disorder. Both her children have thyroid-related poor health; and although a proud mother, she sometimes wonders whether it was selfish to have had them.

Beyond the mental and physical effects, the survivors still express macabre wonderment at the explosion itself, and incredulity that they managed to live through it. "The light was startling," says Shuntaro Hida. "Even if you had your back turned to it, you felt the shock go through, right to the centre of your brain. Such intense heat."

A military doctor at the time, he was in a village four miles from the hypocentre - the point directly below the explosion - and saw the blast washing towards him over the intervening hills "like an avalanche". Even at that distance out, he was struck with enough force to throw him back through the building.

Mrs Takakura was working in the Bank of Hiroshima, just 260 metres away from the hypocentre, and was knocked unconscious by the blast the instant she saw the flash. It is possible that the configuration of the concrete pillars in the building deflected the full monstrous effect of that initial burst of gamma and heat radiation.

Outside it vaporised bodies, etching their shadows on to metal and stone surfaces. About 40,000 people are thought to have died instantly. "People ask me how I survived. I find it strange too," she says. "People that had been walking the streets were doubled up dead over each other for as far as we could see. They had died immediately. Naked. Burnt. I just asked myself, why?" Like many survivors she believed that successfully educating the young about the horrors of war could be a way of extracting something positive from the experience. Her first attempts to teach nursery school children ended in failure, though. "I had parents coming up to me and saying, 'My child won't sleep at night. He is terrified of nuclear bombs'," she says. "And so I learned to explain it more gently."

The Hiroshima that has risen from the ashes is now a vibrant city of 1.1 million people. Far more than Nagasaki, it has kept the bomb at the centre of its identity. At some stage every Japanese schoolchild will visit the eerily effective Peace Museum, and absorb the slogan: No more Hiroshimas. In Japan as a whole, the focus on the bomb as an almost divine power descending in final judgment on the futility of war has obscured Japan's own agency in it.

The survivors were more circumspect; they knew that Japanese soldiers had committed horrific atrocities in China and the Pacific. Many in Hiroshima, even doctors, were being trained as suicide bombers to mount a last ditch defence against American invasion.

Though more people - 100,000 - died in the first mass firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 than the estimated 80,000 on the first day of the atomic attack, there will always be something distinctive about what happened in Hiroshima. It is summed up in a recurring dream that Mrs Takakura has.

"I dream that the bomb has been dropped again," she says. "And I think this time I will get away from it. I decide that I shall escape, and then I wake up. It is impossible to escape from a nuclear bomb, but I suppose that is a desire making itself apparent in my dream."

[lawyerlee]

U.S. must confront ethics of Hiroshima (http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/12316979.htm)
Miami Herald

BY LEO MALEY III and UDAY MOHAN
maley@history.umass.edu

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the atomic destruction of the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War II.

Americans reflect on this event in sharply differing ways. Some Americans recall the event with shame and express their hope that nuclear weapons never be used again. Others firmly believe that the use of atomic bombs saved American lives by ending the war prior to a bloody American invasion of Japan.

More challenging to consider is whether it was an unjustifiable act in a fully justified war.

Those who believe that the bomb's use was justified often label their opponents ''pacifists,'' ''1960s radicals,'' ''bleeding-heart liberals'' or ''revisionists.'' These epithets merely delay the day when Americans will consider the import of having used nuclear weapons.

Our failure to grapple fully with the ethical questions stemming from our use of mass violence against civilians has meant that we unwittingly endorse an act that some would consider state terror.

We rightly expect Germany and Japan to confront painful episodes from their participation in World War II. Now it's our turn.

Conservatives today are the natural candidates to take the lead in confronting our most painful episode from the war, because they were once among the most vocal critics of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Consider the following: On Aug. 8, 1945, two days after the bombing, former Republican President Herbert Hoover wrote to a friend that ``the use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.''

Days later, David Lawrence, the conservative owner and editor of U.S. News (now U.S. News & World Report), argued that Japan's surrender had been inevitable without the atomic bomb. He added that justifications of ''military necessity'' will ``never erase from our minds the simple truth that we, of all civilized nations . . . did not hesitate to employ the most destructive weapon of all times indiscriminately against men, women and children.''

Just weeks after Japan's surrender, an article published in the conservative magazine Human Events contended that America's atomic destruction of Hiroshima might be morally ''more shameful'' and ''more degrading'' than Japan's ''indefensible and infamous act of aggression'' at Pearl Harbor.

Such scathing criticism on the part of leading American conservatives continued well after 1945. A 1947 editorial in the Chicago Tribune, at the time a leading conservative voice, claimed that President Truman and his advisors were guilty of ''crimes against humanity'' for ``the utterly unnecessary killing of uncounted Japanese.''

In 1948, Henry Luce, the conservative owner of Time, Life and Fortune, stated that 'if, instead of our doctrine of `unconditional surrender,' we had all along made our conditions clear, I have little doubt that the war with Japan would have ended soon without the bomb explosion which so jarred the Christian conscience.''

A steady drumbeat of conservative criticism continued throughout the 1950s. A 1958 editorial in William F. Buckley Jr.'s National Review took former President Truman to task for his then-current explanation of why he had decided to drop an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. The editors asked the question that 'ought to haunt Harry Truman: `Was it really necessary?' ''

Could a demonstration of the bomb and an ultimatum have ended the war? The editors challenged Truman to provide a satisfactory answer. Six weeks later the magazine published an article harshly critical of Truman's atomic bomb decision.

Two years later, David Lawrence informed his magazine's readers that it was ''not too late to confess our guilt and to ask God and all the world to forgive our error'' of having used atomic weapons against civilians. As a 1959 National Review article matter-of-factly stated: ``The indefensibility of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is becoming a part of the national conservative creed.''

But times change. In recent decades most American conservatives have become uncritical of America's use of atomic weapons and dismissive of anyone who holds a contrary view. Conservative publications now routinely defend Truman's atomic bomb decision. Critics of his decision, to quote from a representative National Review editorial from 1987, are ``wrong, and profoundly offensive to all Americans and Japanese who died in that war, and to those Americans who still possess the ability to think.''

Sixty years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, we have an opportunity to grapple anew with the questions surrounding that event. American conservatives should renew their earlier, deeply held ethical criticism of the Hiroshima bombing instead of promoting the inaccurate but politically convenient view that criticism of the atomic bombing can come only from the Left. Their response will not only tell us much about contemporary American conservatism; it will also determine whether we finally can have an honest debate about Hiroshima's destruction.

Leo Maley III has taught at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and University of Maryland, College Park. Uday Mohan is director of research of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington.

[lawyerlee]

The myths of Hiroshima (http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-bird5aug05,1,3878433.story?coll=la-home-headlines&track=mostemailedlink)
LA Times

By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
KAI BIRD and MARTIN J. SHERWIN are coauthors of "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer," published earlier this year by Knopf.

August 5, 2005

SIXTY YEARS ago tomorrow, an atomic bomb was dropped without warning on the center of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. One hundred and forty thousand people were killed, more than 95% of them women and children and other noncombatants. At least half of the victims died of radiation poisoning over the next few months. Three days after Hiroshima was obliterated, the city of Nagasaki suffered a similar fate.

The magnitude of death was enormous, but on Aug. 14, 1945 — just five days after the Nagasaki bombing — Radio Tokyo announced that the Japanese emperor had accepted the U.S. terms for surrender. To many Americans at the time, and still for many today, it seemed clear that the bomb had ended the war, even "saving" a million lives that might have been lost if the U.S. had been required to invade mainland Japan.

This powerful narrative took root quickly and is now deeply embedded in our historical sense of who we are as a nation. A decade ago, on the 50th anniversary, this narrative was reinforced in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first bomb. The exhibit, which had been the subject of a bruising political battle, presented nearly 4 million Americans with an officially sanctioned view of the atomic bombings that again portrayed them as a necessary act in a just war.

But although patriotically correct, the exhibit and the narrative on which it was based were historically inaccurate. For one thing, the Smithsonian downplayed the casualties, saying only that the bombs "caused many tens of thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima was "a definite military target."

Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands." But it's not that straightforward. As Tsuyoshi Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, "Racing the Enemy" — and many other historians have long argued — it was the Soviet Union's entry into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that provided the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation.

The Enola Gay exhibit also repeated such outright lies as the assertion that "special leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities" warning civilians to evacuate. The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed.

The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated enemy." President Truman and his closest advisor, Secretary of State James Byrnes, quite plainly used it primarily to prevent the Soviets from sharing in the occupation of Japan. And they used it on Aug. 6 even though they had agreed among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace.

These unpleasant historical facts were censored from the 1995 Smithsonian exhibit, an action that should trouble every American. When a government substitutes an officially sanctioned view for publicly debated history, democracy is diminished.

Today, in the post-9/11 era, it is critically important that the U.S. face the truth about the atomic bomb. For one thing, the myths surrounding Hiroshima have made it possible for our defense establishment to argue that atomic bombs are legitimate weapons that belong in a democracy's arsenal. But if, as Oppenheimer said, "they are weapons of aggression, of surprise and of terror," how can a democracy rely on such weapons?

Oppenheimer understood very soon after Hiroshima that these weapons would ultimately threaten our very survival.

Presciently, he even warned us against what is now our worst national nightmare — and Osama bin Laden's frequently voiced dream — an atomic suitcase bomb smuggled into an American city: "Of course it could be done," Oppenheimer told a Senate committee, "and people could destroy New York."

Ironically, Hiroshima's myths are now motivating our enemies to attack us with the very weapon we invented. Bin Laden repeatedly refers to Hiroshima in his rambling speeches. It was, he believes, the atomic bombings that shocked the Japanese imperial government into an early surrender — and, he says, he is planning an atomic attack on the U.S. that will similarly shock us into retreating from the Mideast.

Finally, Hiroshima's myths have gradually given rise to an American unilateralism born of atomic arrogance.

Oppenheimer warned against this "sleazy sense of omnipotence." He observed that "if you approach the problem and say, 'We know what is right and we would like to use the atomic bomb to persuade you to agree with us,' then you are in a very weak position and you will not succeed…. You will find yourselves attempting by force of arms to prevent a disaster."

[lawyerlee]

Newsman recalls Truman interview after Hiroshima (http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050806/NEWSREC0101/508060307/1001/NEWSREC0201)
Greensboro, North Carolina News-Record

GREENSBORO -- Harry Truman was at his vintage best that day in 1962 at the Mutual Radio Network studios in New York.

"The whole thing is just nothing but a big lie,'' Truman roared, a perfect response because he was appearing on a nationally broadcast show called "The Big Lie," hosted by Philip Clarke and dedicated to ripping apart Russian propaganda.

Clarke had asked the former president to respond to the latest attack on his decision in August 1945 to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Clarke played an excerpt from a Radio Moscow broadcast.

The Russian announcer said: "There was no excuse for this atomic murder of civilians, not even the excuse of military expediency. ... Japan had ... lost the war by Aug. 1945. The object of the crime was to intimidate the Soviet Union, compel the nations struggling for liberation to drop the fight and force the whole world under America's heels. That always has been and still is the purpose of all American nuclear tests.''

"What do you say about this, Mr. Truman?'' Clarke asked in his baritone voice.

After calling it a big lie, Truman, noted for his tough words and action, followed that comment with another bit of Trumanesque.

"I wouldn't trust a Russian across the street,'' he said, "unless I could see where he was going and had a gun on his back.''

Today, on the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, debate still rages over whether Truman ordered the attack and another Aug. 9 on Nagasaki to make a political statement -- or to end the war.

Clarke was in Havana, working for the Associated Press the day the bomb destroyed Hiroshima. His long, around-the-world career included stints with AP, Mutual and Newsweek. Now 88, he and his wife moved here 23 years ago after being impressed with the city after visiting their daughter, who lives here.

During the 1962 interview, Truman made it clear to Clarke the bombing decision was strictly military and saved American lives.

"The bombs were dropped after Japan had been warned that we had discovered the greatest explosive in the history of the world, and we asked them to surrender,'' Truman said. "They did not do it. We expected to land in Japan with a million men -- 250,000 of them, it was estimated would have been killed and a half million maimed for life and that many Japanese would have been hurt. ...

"We dropped the bombs and they surrendered in a very short time.''

The interview was a scoop for Clarke. The New York Times ran a story about it the next day.

This was perhaps the most icy period of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had boasted, "We will bury you,'' referring to Americans.

"It was a very, very intense period,'' says Clarke, who was reporting from New York at the time. "The Soviet Union wanted us out of Berlin. The Cuban missile crisis was a few months away."

Life for reporters then, though, seemed less intense. They didn't have to bang through a wall of protective aides to reach powerful political figures.

Clarke heard Truman was in New York at the Carlyle Hotel. He called and the switchboard connected him to Truman's room. Former first lady Bess Truman answered and summoned her husband.

Truman agreed to meet Clarke the next day at the hotel to go downtown to Mutual's radio studio.

At the hotel, the elevator opened and out stepped Truman -- alone. He and Clarke went out on the street, where Clarke hailed a cab.

"We got caught in a traffic jam,'' Clarke recalls.

The delay allowed Clarke to ask Truman about his firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur for disobeying a presidential command during the Korean War and about President Kennedy.

"I liked old Doug,'' Clarke remembers Truman saying, "but I had to fire him because he had violated the Constitution.''

As for Kennedy, Truman said, "I like Jack, but I'm not too sure of some of the people around him.''

During the interview, the former president said he had offered to the Soviet Union, through the United Nations, America's know-how about atomic energy, to be used for peaceful purposes. The Russians refused. A year later the two nations did agree to halt nuclear bomb testing.

"And they broke that agreement,'' Truman said, "just as they broke 32 agreements that they made with me at Potsdam (a post-war meeting) and broke 16 agreements they made with President Roosevelt at Yalta. They are not to be trusted.''

No wonder Truman found Soviet leader Joseph Stalin so agreeable at Potsdam.

"He didn't expect to keep his agreements,'' Truman said.

"Arn't none of them any good,'' the Missourian said in the interview regarding Russian rulers, pointing out they never repaid $6.5 billion the U.S. loaned them to equip the Red Army to continue fighting the Germans. This enabled the Russians and American forces to link up in Berlin in 1945. The Soviets controlled East Berlin, the United States had West Berlin.

Truman told Clarke that the Russians didn't give "a hoot'' about the rest of the world. They only wanted to control it, Peaceful co-existence, he said, wasn't possible until the Russian people overthrew their communist rulers.

Clarke believes Russia's downfall came from the "relentless pressure'' of Truman and later presidents.

"We didn't give in,'' he said, pointing out that George Marshall, Truman's secretary of state from 1947-49, warned the Russians if they made a move on West Berlin, "we would hit them with nuclear weapons."

The same kind of relentlessness is needed in the war on terrorism, Clarke says.

In addition to the tape of the Truman interview, his files contain letters from him and other leaders of that era. He says interviews with them and bombing of Japan seem like yesterday. "I covered a period of history that was most interesting.''

[lawyerlee]

Doves, silence for A-bomb victims (http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/08/05/japan.hiroshima/index.html)
CNN

Hiroshima recalls day 60 years ago that changed face of war

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/08/05/japan.hiroshima/vstory.hiroshima.ap.jpg
Doves fly over the Atomic Bomb Dome during ceremony at Hiroshima Peace Park.


HIROSHIMA, Japan (CNN) -- Hundreds of doves were released in Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima Saturday as tens of thousands of people gathered 60 years after the world's first atomic bomb was dropped on the city, killing nearly half of its residents.

At 8:15 a.m. (11:15 p.m. GMT Friday) -- the moment when the bomb detonated on Aug. 6, 1945 -- the crowd was hushed for a minute of silence in tribute to the more than 140,000 people who died either instantly or not long after the attack.

Thousands more suffered severe burns and the effects of radiation sickness, and many of these people also did not survive.

The park surrounds the closest building to survive the blast.

On August 9, 1945, three days after the Hiroshima attack, another atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, who each year issues a Declaration of Peace for the anniversary, described it as "a time of inheritance, of awakening and of commitment ... to the abolishment of nuclear weapons and the realization of genuine world peace."

"No one else should ever suffer as we did," said Akiba, quoting the "hibakusha" warning from the bombing survivors. He urged nuclear powers to abandon their arsenals.

During the Hiroshima ceremonies, dignitaries placed wreaths and flowers at the base of the monument. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also paid tribute to the bombing victims, saying Japan has vowed "never to repeat the tragedies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

"We also will take the lead in the international community to promote ... nuclear disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation and do our best to abolish nuclear weapons," Koizumi added.

The anniversary comes as North Korea disarmament talks continue in Beijing.

Negotiations have reached an impasse over Washington's insistence that Pyongyang should not be allowed to have any nuclear program that might be converted to making weapons.

North Korea insists it has the right to developing nuclear power for peaceful means.

One of the Hiroshima survivors is Hiroko Yamashita, who was home alone when the bomb went off.

"I remember the figure of my little brother coming home from our neighbor's house, silhouetted in a white flash," she said.

Yamashita was 18, he was 6, and their parents had asked her to watch him.

Their house was about 800 meters (yards) from where the bomb exploded. Their three-story home collapsed, but she and her brother found each other.

"We're OK is all we could say, over and over."

She told CNN she saw survivors with burned skin hanging from bodies."I still remember the voices of the dying calling, 'help, help us,' but we could not help them."

Yamashita suffered gaping wounds that exposed her bones and went to a nearby airfield, where co-workers found her and re-united her and her brother with their parents.

She thought her brother was fine. But he collapsed, bleeding from his nose, and his hair fell out. He died at a medical facility, in the bed next to her.

Yamashita said she still suffers from recurring cancer from the bombing.

[MLA]

I was listening to NPR today, and they had a report about two Hiroshima survivors -- a husband and wife -- and their daughter. Listening to them talk about it just blew me away. I can't imagine anything so awful.

I have a good friend from Japan; he's just a few years older than me, so he obviously wasn't there when the bombs dropped, but he's been affected by it profoundly. He has recurring nightmares about nuclear war -- they're pretty terrible. He's never said that they're related to WWII, but I can't help but think that the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been somehow imprinted on the psyche of Japan.

It makes me sad. :(

[lawyerlee]

That is incredibly sad. :( And I guess it bothers me that we tend to go about our day as though it is just like any other, barely stopping to recognize the impact of the decision to drop the bombs on so many ordinary people. I think they deserve to be remembered, regardless of what you believe about the necessity of dropping the bombs.

[MLA]

I really don't think that people understand the impact that the bombs had. We, as Americans, look at WWII as a fight against evil and don't like to think at all about what evils we might have committed while fighting. That war is one of the few that most people really have a sense that we were doing the right thing, and when confronted with the horrific consequences of one of our own actions (whether it was right or not), I think people shut down.

I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't really thought about it until today -- Of course, I knew about the bombs and knew that they were awful in an intellectual way, but I made the connection between my friend's dreams and the bombings today -- it was sort of an "Aha!" moment, you know?

[lawyerlee]

I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't really thought about it until today -- Of course, I knew about the bombs and knew that they were awful in an intellectual way, but I made the connection between my friend's dreams and the bombings today -- it was sort of an "Aha!" moment, you know?
Absolutely!

My grandfather fought in the Pacific in WWII, and I grew up hearing about how horrible it was for him (and it really was), but never ever considering the flip side of things. I really built our American cause up as the hero's cause because I so much so thought of him as a hero. But now, as a more mature person, I can see that I can view him as a hero, while still acknowledging that there were many tragedies and losses on the other side of the fighting, especially among civilians.

[MLA]

Absolutely!

My grandfather fought in the Pacific in WWII, and I grew up hearing about how horrible it was for him (and it really was), but never ever considering the flip side of things. I really built our American cause up as the hero's cause because I so much so thought of him as a hero. But now, as a more mature person, I can see that I can view him as a hero, while still acknowledging that there were many tragedies and losses on the other side of the fighting, especially among civilians.


Well, your grandfather certainly was a hero -- and was fighting for something he believed in and something that was right. I still think that WWII was one of the most "black and white" wars in history, but even in a war where we were truly on the right side, there are gray areas -- and Hiroshima/Nagasaki was a huge gray area. I wish warfare wasn't in our nature. . .

Okay, I'm just rambling now. It's getting late, and I'm tired, so I'll stop. ;)

[lawyerlee]

I still think that WWII was one of the most "black and white" wars in history, but even in a war where we were truly on the right side, there are gray areas -- and Hiroshima/Nagasaki was a huge gray area. I wish warfare wasn't in our nature. . .
Yes, I certainly agree with you. Unfortunately, so many people with no choice in anything become swept up in wars.

[MLA]

Yes, I certainly agree with you. Unfortunately, so many people with no choice in anything become swept up in wars.


I agree. War is just so sad (for lack of a better word)

Okay, so I wasn't done, but now I am. ;)

[lawyerlee]

Okay (though you should know you're making perfect sense to me ;) ). :)