PHOTOS: (graphic) Nagasaki 9 August 1945

[Bluebear]

[redqueen]

1. I'll put this here...

rather than in that other thread.

http://www.originalchildbomb.com/ocb.php

[Bluebear]

2. peace

:hug:

[redqueen]

4. Yes, it's long past time for it, don't you think?

:pals:

Seen the movie in my sig, btw? Some of the stuff in it is pretty out there... but the stuff about war is spot frickin on.

[greyl]

3. Helen Caldicott's Nuclear Policy Research Institute:

www.nuclearpolicy.org

[bperci108]

5. If I'm not mistaken...

Another 160,000+ died from the effects of radiation shortly thereafter.

...and the bastards in the Pentagon want to develop still more of these weapons. :grr:


Sometimes I wonder if we have outlived our time on this little blue planet and it's past time for the ascendancy of another species.

:evilfrown:

[kestrel91316]

7. Sometimes humans disgust me so much, I think cockroaches would

be a superior race.......

[greyl]

17. Please don't mistake one culture for humanity at large.

You'd be losing out, and thinking the problems we have are insurmountable, thus hopeless.
We don't need to change humanity, we only need to change the vision of one culture.

[indepat]

11. Mother nature might be working on such a plan right before our very eyes

[bperci108]

16. Ever hear George Carlin's "Save The Planet" rant?

His pondering whether the AIDS virus might be just precisely that elicited only a few nervous chuckles in the crowd.

It was kind of like several thousand people in that audience had a mass "Oh, shit....!" moment.


Nature is a self-correcting system, we aren't the kings-of-the-hill or anywhere near the top of the food chain.

Every so often we need reminding of that; that we aren't over and above all, merely a part of a greater whole.

Okay...rant mode off. :P LOL.

:rant:

[greyl]

18. I don't take that seriously. He identifies that rant as a "poetic note",

and then says "I can dream, can't I?" He's just exploding the envelope of cynicism, I think. ;)

[greyl]

21. Definitely not. Nature doesn't have plans.

Nature no more creates disasters and viruses to eliminate humans than it created humans to eliminate polar bears (or any of the other 200 species that our globalized culture is forcing into extinction every day).

[indepat]

28. Nature just does its thing: man has been around for a very short time during the earth's

4.5 billion years and will likely have been around a very short time during the earth's life when man's day is done.

[Alexander]

6. Anyone who condones the Nagasaki nuking is just plain SICK.

I can't believe I see DUers endorsing these atrocities.

[lvx35]

9. Richard Dawkins made a really good point about it once.

He asked why we didn't just drop a nuke on some place where the damage could be observed, but with few casualties. It probably would have achieved the same surrender.

[Alexander]

12. Exactly. Why not drop the A-bomb off the coast of Tokyo, in the ocean?

It would have been a decent enough warning - along the lines of "if you don't surrender, this is what will happen to you".

Instead, they wanted to test the damned thing on people, and the unfortunate residents of Hiroshima - and especially Nagasaki - were the guinea pigs.

Even Dwight Eisenhower said using the A-bomb was "unnecessary" and "awful".

[AntiFascist]

23. I'm sure that the Japanese were viewed as being sub-human...

which is why it was so acceptable to round up Japanese-Americans into detention camps. This is precisely how many in the far right view Muslims today. That's why 1 million can die in the war on Iraq and it barely gets mentioned in the media. Democratic leaders like Will Marshall even talk about "draining the swamp" of the Middle East, so this type of thinking is not just isolated in the Republican Party.

[Captain Hilts]

24. FDR wanted to round up Germans and they did round up Italians.

So, it was based on logistics, not race. Broadway star Enzio Pinza was actually rounded up and held.

FDR actually really liked the Japanese. On his honeymoon, he and Eleanor chatted with a whole bunch of Japanese naval officers that were on the ocean liner with them heading to Europe.

Japan, being an island, was a FAR better target than Germany.

So, no, it wasn't based on racism.

The Japanese, however, DID consider Koreans and Chinese 'sub human'.

[AntiFascist]

34. However FDR felt about the Japanese was beside the point....

It most certainly was based on race, logistics aside. The vast majority of Japanese-Americans rounded up were no threat whatsoever, but it was the American attitude at the time which allowed it to happen. Racial profiling of Muslims could also be argued from a logistical point of view, but there is also a pervasive attitude that allows the killing and torture of Muslims to occur much more easily than it should if we viewed all of humankind on a equal basis.

[Captain Hilts]

35. Japanese Americans were living in concentrated areas while German Americans were dispersed....

and socialized within society to a greater degree because they were dispersed. We'd just been attacked by the Japanese on the West Coast and feared more attacks on that coast - and that Japanese might not be sure which side they were on. 20/20 hindsight to say it was clear they were not a threat.

Italians, less so. That's why they were rounded up. And Germany didn't attack us.

And many were recent immigrants, and that's why they weren't trusted. The same thing happened to Italians and FDR was talked out of trying to round up Germans by Francis Biddle.

I don't condone what happened one bit, but I understand that people were scared.

[Captain Hilts]

25. The day FDR died, Leon Slizard had an appt. w/EleanorR to discuss a 'demonstration' of The Bomb.

She never made the meeting, needless to say.

Truman called her to the White House in June of '45 to discuss the bomb.

[CrispyQ]

27. I love Dawkins.

I believe the current administration is itching to test their bunker busters on a live population.

[LostinVA]

29. That actually si a very good point

And, although I wouldn't have approved of that, either, it still would have saved so many lives.

[lvx35]

8. So sad. Never again. nt

[Disturbed]

10. The second Nuke was to prove that the 1st was not a fluke.

This was as about revenge & it was to show the Soviet Union what America was willing to do to maintain the power.

[lvx35]

14. Yeah, exactly. Then the Soviet Union showed what it was willing to do.

Arms race, people in Gulags, etc. And the winners? The Arms dealers in the Soviet Union and US. The KGB and CIA. The losers? Us the people, on both sides.

[LostinVA]

30. Yup

[Bonobo]

13. Pics from Japanese sites:

[Madspirit]

15. k&r..n/t

[nofurylike]

19. *

[nofurylike]

20. k r

[nofurylike]

22. weep. thank you posting. n/t

[cobalt1999]

26. War is hellish regardless of the weapon used...

How is the atomic bombing worse than the fire-bombing of Tokyo (which killed more people 100,000) or Dresden? Until Japan surrendered the plan was to fire bomb all the Japanese cities to total destruction. The US Army Air Force predicted by September 1945 they would not have any targets left (with or without the atomic bomb).

Reading from the Japanese involved in the government at the time, the atomic bomb was a way of saving face in surrender. It was cited in the pre-meetings and the emperors address. Being able to blame a horrific new weapon was the "out" the moderates in the government needed, even if militarily they had already lost. In the end, the use may have saved many other cities in Japan from facing the fate of Tokyo and Dresden.

[OldTymeDem]

31. Tokyo Firebombing killed many more

and that A-Bomb put an end to the war and the Japanese military cult. Probably saved my Father from being sent there..

BTW War is Hell for a reason.

[Alexander]

32. Dropping the A-bomb on a city was totally unnecessary.

Regardless of what may have happened to your father, dropping the bomb in the Sea of Japan off the coast of Tokyo would have worked just as well, and it wouldn't have wasted hundreds of thousands of innocent civilian lives.

[Disturbed]

33. I feel that is impossible to be in the mind set of the people

that collectively made the decision to drop both Nukes during that time frame.

What were they thinking?

Somewhere there are documents that explain some of the thinking of the decision makers to go forward with this horrific decision. Dropping those Nukes in areas where there was no population may not have had the same effect could be a concept. I imagine that many factors were discussed that brought the final decision into action. Every time this topic appears on DU it has had many responses & has been a controversial and still brings out an emotional aspects.

[OldTymeDem]

37. I dont see the difference..

between the nuking of a city with a bomb of that size and firebombing, other than nuking was
a zillion times easier and efficient for the US, which scared the Japanese to their senses. Sorry I dont have much sympathy for the Japanese and German adults. They reaped what they sowed.

[BushOut06]

36. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Dresden = war crimes

In each instance, hundreds of thousands of civilian lives were lost because of indiscriminate bombing. Today, we would label such bombings as "terrorism". In an unbiased world, there would have been war crime trials for those incidents as well.

[cureautismnow]

38. Mother Nature spared Kokura.

"By the time they reached Kokura a half hour later, a 7/10 cloud cover had obscured the city, prohibiting the visual attack required by orders. After three runs over the city, and with fuel running low because a transfer pump on a reserve tank had failed before take-off, they headed for their secondary target, Nagasaki.Fuel consumption calculations made en route indicated that Bockscar had insufficient fuel to reach Iwo Jima and they would be forced to divert to Okinawa. After initially deciding that if Nagasaki were obscured on their arrival they would carry the bomb to Okinawa and dispose of it in the ocean if necessary, the weaponeer Navy Commander Frederick Ashworth decided that a radar approach would be used if the target was obscured."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

Interesting, but so sad... I wish we really could put the evil genie back in the bottle forevermore. :cry: