Hiroshima Memorial Day
It was at 8:15am, 63 years ago yesterday, that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
It should rank as one of the worst atrocities ever committed. Hiroshima was predominantly civilian with industry and a few military bases nearby. What is now called colateral damage seems to have been deliberately sought and the attack was designed to have maximum psychological impact, to induce terror in the people of Japan. In other words it was an act of terrorism.
RadGeek has made a good, well informed, post commemorating the day on which an estimated 140,000 people were killed on the orders of a US President to achieve unconditional surrender rather than simple peace (its also worth reading through the archives of his posts on Hiroshima and the discussions in the comments).
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August 7th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
One of my councillors is an American and his father and uncle fought their way through Europe from 1944 to 1945, uncovering countless small atrocities along the way, some of which he has told me about.
He discussed the atomic bombings with his father and the view of a serviceman who landed on the beaches of Normandy under fire, who fought, suffered and lost many friends was that, given the prospect of yet more years of war in the Pacific, including the likely deaths of countless thousands of people on both sides the bombings were a reasonable response during wartime.
They were and remain a hideous weapon but the Japanese regime was also hideous – just ask the Chinese in Nanking – and the war fought in that region was even nastier than the one in Europe.
You can’t judge the past based on modern values and be taken seriously and you can’t look at part of the picture.
War is appalling and appalling things happen in war. The answer is to stop war.
August 7th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
Thank you for the reminder. All politicians, especially those who support retention of the UK’s nuclear deterrent, should be reminded frequently of this – and also of the fact that the present generation of nuclear weapons are much, much more powerful than the ones used in 1945. Are they really willing to give the order to use these things? Ignorance is bliss.
August 7th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I have however always wondered what the cold war would have been like had the full horror of “Little Boy” not been unleashed. Personally, I reckon we probably wouldn’t be here now. It doesn’t make it any better, but somehow it helps to think of the victims as, literally, dying for our futures.
“And I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” Oppenheimer knew it; would power hungry politicians have known it without seeing it? The Trinity test was clinical, many people suffered, but often much later. Nobody ever saw the shadow of a vapourized child in the sands of New Mexico.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki must never be forgotten like Herculaneum and Pompeii. I wonder if they commemorate today in Tehran though?