Hiroshima

[Gladys]

Did anyone watch the docu about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki tonight? dreadful stuff: how people drank black radioactive rain to quench their thirst , drowned each other in pools for the same reason, then afterwards came the radiation sickness where, basically, the body has no ability to defend itself so hair falls out and they simply start to rot from the inside out etc. etc.

 

I am not defending what the Japanese forces did during WW2, but now the Japanese have an anti-war policy (possibly misdescribed by me) and are very sure that the use of these bombs was partly experimental as no one knew the effct post-explosion. Its chilling!!

[StuartT]

If those bombs had not been dropped, a lot more people on both sides would have died. The other option of invasion of Japan would have been ten times as horrific, and contrary to the myth, the Japanese had no intention of surrendering, and every intention of fighting to the last person.

[=^..^=]

I suspect if the effects of atomic weapons on a civilian population hadn't been demonstrated then it would have been maybe 10-15 years later when a lot more countries had nuclear weapons.

If that had happened the world would be a very different place now.

 

But of course would other countries have developed them if they hadn't seen what they could do ? Remember the German army didn't develop them because they assumed the allies already had them.

 

There is an interesting article here

 

http://www.theenolagay.com/event.html

[the-rhymes]

I think that the USA was also under tremendous pressure to end the war in the Pacific before the USSR got involved. Can you imagine a Stalinist Japan?

 

Many absolutely ghastly things happened in WW2 and no side doesn't have blood on it's hands, but I thank god the Allies won and ended the war when they did.

 

A democratic Germany and Japan now exist and they have benefited the world so much in the last 50 years.

[MasterChief]

What I find scariest of all is that before the first test of the Atom bomb in New Mexico the scientists were so unsure of the power that they feared it would ignite the atmosphere and destroy the entire planet.

 

It is a sad testament to our species that despite the potentially catastrophic danger they felt they had to test this weapon (and eventually use it). Even sadder still that so many much more powerful weapons exist and still threaten everyone and everything on this Earth.

 

Sometimes I wonder if there is any hope for us at all.

[RC-Drift.com]

It's far too easy to sit back in a nice comfy chair and watch what happened 60 years ago then criticise, we weren't there, we can't possibly know what it was like to have to make those decisions. I've never had to go to war putting my life on the line in the hope that future generations would be grateful for my sacrifice, unfortunately an untold number of innocent people die in any war, war that is usually the consequence of greedy power crazed individuals that think they know better for the minions.

 

That programme last night really brought it home to me when that woman had to leave her trapped child to burn to death, I've no doubt that was a situation that happened many times in other parts of the world and made me feel embarrassed and sickened to be human.

 

When are we going to learn, aren't history lessons sorely learned over the last 100 years enough or are we just too bloody stupid a species to survive on this planet any real length of time.

[Rog]

This is a c & p from another place.

 

On December 13, 1937, the Imperial Japanese Army stormed the Chinese city of Nanking. During the following six weeks, they murdered and tortured countless civilians whose only crime was being Chinese. Over 300,000 people were killed and over 20,000 women were brutally raped. However, over the decades, the Japanese began to deny that this massacre ever occurred. Few Americans are aware of the Nanking atrocities, so numerous efforts are now being made to teach the world what happened in China during the massacre.

 

Hospitals marked with a red cross on the roof were targeted, as well as refugee camps, power plants, water works, and radio stations.

 

On November 25, Japanese forces attacked Nanking from three different directions. The Chinese General Tang Sheng Zhi commanded an army of over a hundred thousand men. However, the Chinese city soon fell to the Japanese Imperial Army. As the Japanese entered the city, a massacre began that would continue for six weeks.

 

During the six weeks of the Nanking Massacre, the Chinese were not simply murdered. They were tortured, humiliated, and raped. The Japanese used a wide variety of methods of murder.

 

They chased the Chinese into the Yangtze River with machine guns, drowning them. They poured gasoline on people, and shot them, so the victims flickered up like candles. They cut the eyeballs out of men, and then burned the people while they were still living. They tied Chinese civilians up on posts, and threw grenades to watch their flesh fly.

 

A Japanese general poured acid on a man until he died of corrosion. Some Chinese were attacked with awls. Others were castrated. Some Chinese even had their hearts cut out.

 

Some women were beaten at the vagina with fists and other objects until they died.

 

Even babies were victims; they were skewered and tossed into boiling water.

 

Hakudo Nagatomi, a Japanese war veteran, described, "I remember smiling proudly as I took his [another general's] sword and began killing people...The head was cut clean off and tumbled away on the ground as the body slumped forward, blood spurting in two great gushing fountains from the neck."

 

Japanese soldiers laughingly made games out of these atrocities. The Japanese generals organized contests to see how many Chinese one soldier could murder in a given time. Whoever killed the most won. News reporters and visitors came to observe the competitions and raise praise for the victor back in Japan.

 

Sometimes the number of bodies reached as high as five-hundred in a single contest. In one such contest, two officers were racing to one hundred. However, they lost count, so they continued to one hundred and fifty. A short while later, the Nichi-nichi, a Tokyo newspaper, printed the story with pride.

 

Highly respected Japanese doctors and scientists went to China to do scientific research on unwilling Chinese victims. In many cases, the subjects were American and Russian prisoners.

 

Tests were done without anesthesia or pain killers. The Japanese placed people in pressure chambers to see how long it would take until their eyes popped out of the sockets.

 

Lethal bacteria and other biological weapons were tested on people tied to stakes.

 

Fetuses were cut from pregnant women and preserved in jars.

 

The Japanese government also sponsored bombings of bubonic plague on villages to test germ warfare for later use on the United States.

 

Read more at http://www.gotrain.com/dan/nanking2.htm

[MasterChief]

The British were guilty of similar, and in many cases worse, atrocities during the last hundred years or so. That doesn't mean we should drop atomic bombs on Newcastle or Manchester killing innocent women and children who had no part in the actions of their military. Every society has dark secrets hidden in it's past and it's a sad fact that as a species we have so far been unable to break away from our most basic instincts.

 

At the end of the day the rights and wrongs of the dropping of the bomb is irrelevant as it is all now history, all we can do is learn from it in an effort never to repeat those mistakes.