70 years ago ... Hiroshima

[KTJ]

Seventy years ago today, Truman set out to prove to Uncle Joe Stalin that he (Truman) had a bigger dick.

And many thousands of human beings karked it in the blink of an eye.

Just to emphasise that he had a bigger dick than Stalin, Truman repeated the exercise a few days later, and several thousand human beings yet again got wasted in the blink of an eye.

[KTJ]

Aug 6, 2015 9:40:34 GMT 10 Gort said:

Let's hope we never live to see another atomic bomb used anywhere.

I betcha we DO get to see it happen again.

And I betcha Israel ends up being the next country to commit nuclear mass-murder of vast numbers of humans in the blink of an eye.

[pim]

Aug 6, 2015 10:46:23 GMT 10 KTJ said:

Seventy years ago today, Truman set out to prove to Uncle Joe Stalin that he (Truman) had a bigger dick.

And many thousands of human beings karked it in the blink of an eye.

Just to emphasise that he had a bigger dick than Stalin, Truman repeated the exercise a few days later, and several thousand human beings yet again got wasted in the blink of an eye.

I had an uncle who spent the years 1942 -45 as a POW of the Japanese. He's not around anymore to express an opinion but I daresay his point of view contrasted sharply with yours ... and had a lot more integrity too.

[pim]

Wonderful movie. Unsurpassed brilliance. Still relevant today ...

[KTJ]

Ah, yes....Dr Strangelove....another movie I've got in my possession....I've got copies on both DVD and BluRay discs.

[pim]

Well, bully for you and your crass bragging about your possessions. Somebody else would do that too ... now who was it ... of course it was Matt!! It's one of the reasons I always get a sense of déjà vu when I see your posts.

[KTJ]

Aug 6, 2015 10:56:17 GMT 10 pim said:

I had an uncle who spent the years 1942 -45 as a POW of the Japanese. He's not around anymore to express an opinion but I daresay his point of view contrasted sharply with yours ... and had a lot more integrity too.

Was he one of the Dutch colonials brutally exploiting the natives in the Dutch East Indies prior to the Japs taking over?


FROM THE 1800s until World War II, Indonesia was a Dutch colony.

Today we may think of the Dutch as a race of benevolent liberals, many of whom sit in Amsterdam cafes smoking hash and listening to bad Eurojazz, but like all colonists, the Dutch engaged in their fair share of brutality and exploitation.

That's why Indonesian nationalist Sukarno sided with the Japanese after they invaded in 1942 and declared himself president of an independent republic after the Japanese were defeated in 1945.

This displeased the peace-loving Dutch who used military force to try and regain their former colony, against the wishes of most Indonesians...

To read more, CLICK HERE.

[caskur]

So who do we blame now for Indonesian deforestry and the endangerment of Orang-utans?

What about the filth in their surf?

[pim]

Was he one of the Dutch colonials brutally exploiting the natives in the Dutch East Indies prior to the Japs taking over?

Oh what a shabby attempt at a cheap shot that's grounded in ignorance and misses by a mile. Have you any idea what it was like to be a POW of the Japanese? Have you? As any Australian who's informed himself/herself about the topic would know, the men who survived the horrors of Changi and also of the Burma Railway, and the women who had to undergo the horrors of Japanese sexual slavery as "comfort women", and who were repatriated were in a pitiful state, having lost so much body mass through malnutrition, disease and ill-treatment that they required massive rehabilitation - which is why throughout the length and breadth of the land we have what have been known as "Repat" hospitals. The one in Adelaide is slated for closure and it is a huge issue for the State Labor Government which has ordered the closure and is haemorrhaging politically over it. As it was for the Australians and the British POWs, so also for the thousands of Dutch POWs in Japanese camps. Far from being a colonial Dutchman, my Dad's bro (my godfather as it turned out, who followed us Down Under) was a young guy barely out of his teens doing his military service which found him posted with his infantry unit to the NEI. In later life he showed me the scars on his back where the Jap guards would stub out their cigarettes while he was shovelling shit for them. In his old age we heard that he started getting nightmares about his experiences as a POW from which he'd wake up in tears. You can mock and sneer if you like (you have soooo much in common with Matt and Skippy) but you are clueless. What compounds the tragedy in my uncle's wartime story is not that it was about him but about so many Allied POWs who fell into Jap hands. I have a distant childhood memory of the migrant camp where we went to after the boat dropped us off in Sydney (Pyrmont of course - not Circular Quay). It was at Kelso which is now a suburb of Bathurst but back then was an old army camp in bushland well outside Bathurst. It's all built out now with suburban housing but - according to research - something like 250 000 European migrants passed through that camp in the 1950s and went on to make lives in Australia. So on that basis alone it deserves to have some sort of marker to show it was there. But there's an even more important reason to mark the fact that the camp was there. During WW2 it was the camp from which the 8th Division marched out to death or captivity: destination Singapore. Thousands of young guys. How dare you dishonour the memory of a whole generation of Australian/British/Dutch youth who didn't go up there to exploit any "natives" or to live in some sort of "British Raj" splendour, but who went there because they had no choice in the matter and did the best they could.


But then again what else can we expect from someone like you who, when the Sydney Siege happened, polluted the board with your "Serves Yez Right" sneers from your comfort zone on the other side of the Tasman.

You're a disgrace.

[KTJ]

Okay, so human beings can be extremely brutal with each other.

History is littered with the brutality of human beings.

Even “superior” whities aren't exempt from being extremely brutal to other human beings.

[caskur]

Aug 6, 2015 19:39:41 GMT 10 KTJ said:

Okay, so human beings can be extremely brutal with each other.

History is littered with the brutality of human beings.

Even “superior” whities aren't exempt from being extremely brutal to other human beings.

This is true because world-wide, whites are the minority so they built bigger and nastier bombs.

It was a matter of survival... or so they think.

[KTJ]

from The Washington Post....

What it was like to survive the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

By ISHAAN THAROOR | 12:01AM EDT - Wednesday, August 05, 2015


In this August 6th, 1945, file photo, survivors of the first atomic bomb ever used in warfare are seen as they await emergency medical
treatment in Hiroshima, Japan. — File photo/Associated Press.

• AN ILLUSTRATED GUIDE TO THE HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI NUCLEAR BOMBINGS

SEVEN DECADES AGO, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. It almost instantly leveled most of the city and killed as many as 140,000 people. Three days later, on August 9th, another American bomber dropped a nuclear device on the city of Nagasaki, killing 40,000 to 80,000 people.

The devastation was followed by World War II's swift conclusion. It's seared into the collective global memory — no other time in history has a nuclear weapon been used in war. The simple fact of the atomic bomb's awesome power went on to shape a half-century of Cold War geopolitics.

The justification for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings remains the source of perennial historical study and debate. As the world marks the events' 70th anniversary this week, the legacy of what was first unleashed above Hiroshima now looms over newer conversations about disarmament and the nuclear programs of emerging powers.

But what of the victims? Swaths of Hiroshima disappeared in a blistering flash, yet there were survivors. Here are some of the eyewitness testimonies of what took place on that terrible day in August 1945. (They have been gleaned from a number of oral history projects, all of which are easily accessible online.)


In this September 8th, 1945 file photo, only a handful of buildings remain standing amid the wasteland of Hiroshima, the Japanese city
reduced to rubble following the first atomic bomb to be dropped in warfare. — File photo/Associated Press.

Yasuhiko Taketa was on his way to middle school, like many of the “hibakusha”, or survivors of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki who live to this day. At a train station, according to a speech he later delivered, he saw a “dazzling flash of light, brighter than even the sun”, and then “an earsplitting roar” followed by a seismic explosion that shattered glass everywhere.

“My forehead felt hot, and I unconsciously touched it with my hand,” narrates Taketa. “When I looked at the sky over Hiroshima, I saw a tiny, glittering, white object, about the size of a grain of rice, tinged with yellow, and red, which soon grew into a monstrous fireball. It was travelling in my direction, and I felt as though it was going to envelop me.”

Akiko Takakura, a 20-year-old at the time, was near the hypocenter, or “ground zero” of the bomb. This was how she described the apocalyptic moment:

“What I felt at that moment was that Hiroshima was entirely covered with only three colors. I remember red, black and brown, but, but, nothing else. Many people on the street were killed almost instantly. The fingertips of those dead bodies caught fire and the fire gradually spread over their entire bodies from their fingers. A light gray liquid dripped down their hands, scorching their fingers.”

Those who found shelter after the explosion entered a strange, hideous world, where everyone's hair was literally fried and human shadows were etched onto stone.


A handout image made available by the US National Archives of smoke billowing 20,000 feet above Hiroshima while smoke from the burst of the
first atomic bomb had spread over 10,000 feet on the target at the base of the rising column, in Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6th, 1945.
— EPA/US National Archives.

“I felt the city of Hiroshima had disappeared all of a sudden,” said Akihiro Takahashi, a 14-year-old at the time in line for school, whose testimony was recorded by researchers in the late 1980s. “Then I looked at myself and found my clothes had turned into rags due to the heat. I was probably burned at the back of the head, on my back, on both arms and both legs. My skin was peeling and hanging like this.”

Michiko Hachiya was then the director of a hospital in Hiroshima. He recorded the dazed, stumbling confusion of those still alive in the aftermath of the explosion. It was published in English in 1955.

“There were the shadowy forms of people, some of whom looked like walking ghosts. Others moved as though in pain, like scarecrows, their arms held out from their bodies with forearms and hands dangling,” Hachiya wrote. “These people puzzled me until I suddenly realized that they had been burned and were holding their arms out to prevent the painful friction of raw surfaces rubbing together.”

So many had, in an instant, lost those dearest to them. Eiko Taoka, then 21-years-old, was carrying her 1-year-old infant son in her arms aboard a streetcar. He didn't survive the day. “I think fragments of glass had pierced his head,” she recounts. “His face was a mess because of the blood flowing from his head. But he looked at my face and smiled. His smile has remained glued in my memory.”


An undated handout image released by the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum of the Hiroshima A-bomb Dome, originally the Hiroshima
Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, photographed by US military following the atomic bomb drop on Hiroshima, Japan.
— EPA/Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

Miyo Watanabe, then a volunteer at a steel factory, endured the initial blast by lying on her stomach. When she came to, she walked through a desolation.

Watanabe remembers this chilling scene:

“...a woman lying dead at a house by the river bank, her neck stuck through with a piece of glass blown by the blast. The glass must have cut the artery. Blood was scattered around her. She had been suckling her baby. The baby was still absorbed in sucking the breast.”

And she describes the horrific sights in makeshift hospital wards, where all the living victims ached with a desperate thirst:

“They were delirious, begging for water. Those whose backs were burned lay on their stomachs, and those whose front was burned lay on their back. They could not even move to change their position. Their wounds and burns were covered with countless flies laying eggs there. Those eggs hatched into maggots, and these crawled all over their bodies causing them infernal agony.”

Burn injuries were ubiquitous, recounts Hiroshi Sawachika, then a 28-year-old army doctor.

“The smell was quite strong,” he said. “It's a sad reality that the smell human beings produce when they are burned is the same as that of the dried squid when it is grilled.”

Sawachika tended to hundreds of patients that day, with limited knowledge of what to do. The exposure to radiation suffered by countless survivors would have a range of ill effects in the decades to come.

“I learned that the nuclear weapons which gnaw the minds and bodies of human beings should never be used,” he concludes. “Even the slightest idea using nuclear arms should be completely exterminated.”

• Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.

__________________________________________________________________________

Further reading:

• After the A-bomb: What photographers encountered in Hiroshima

• What it would look like if the Hiroshima bomb hit your city

• Five myths about the atomic bomb

• Hiroshima: What 70 years of reconstruction looks like

• As their numbers dwindle, Hiroshima survivors have a plan to keep memories alive

• How the Soviet Union saved the world from Hitler

• In defense of Neville Chamberlain, hindsight's most battered punching bag

• The dark side of Winston Churchill

www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/08/05/what-it-was-like-to-survive-the-atomic-bombing-of-hiroshima

[KTJ]

The Washington Post has today published a couple of interesting “before” and “after” the bomb photographs of Nagasaki.

CLICK HERE to view them.

If you wish to see the full-sized versions of the photographs, right-click on each photograph in turn, then click on Properties and in the menu which opens, highlight the Address (URL), but make sure you get all of it (it ends with .png&w=1484), then copy & paste that url into an address window to download the full-sized photo. Note that if you wish to save a copy of the photograph, The Washington Post use an unusual image file format in an attempt to stop people from helping themselves to copies of their photographs, but just save it as-is (without changing the file-name), then use paint to open it and convert it to jpg or other format. If paint won't open it, try other image-viewing utilities on your computer (sometimes you can even use Word) which can be used to display images then change the file-type (and file name) until you find a program which works.

[Deleted]

[Gort]

75 years on and the debate continues about the bombs bringing an end to the war in the Pacific.

Did they? Was the end near anyway once Russia turned its attention to Japan?

I reckon they did hasten the end but what a terrible thing to do using those bombs. No worse than the firestorm bombing in Europe you say? I'm not sure about that.

[Occam's Spork]

[Gort]

Aug 6, 2020 11:58:59 GMT 10 Occam's Spork said:

At least 150,000 residents of Hiroshima died 75 years ago too.

[Deleted]

Would have the Japanese surrendered....nope.

[pim]

During the darkest period of the war in Europe with a post-Dunkirk Britain shattered and prostrate before the Germans, and with the Germans getting ready to unleash the Blitz on Britain as a softening up exercise for Operation Sea Lion which was the projected German invasion of Britain, Churchill made probably the most famous speech of all in which he promised that the British would "defend our island home, whatever the cost may be. We will fight them on the beaches, we will fight them on the landing grounds, we will fight them in the fields and on the streets. We will never surrender!" and rather than characterizing it as Britain's darkest hour, he called it their "finest hour". He declared that London alone would swallow up an entire German army which, three years later proved to be prophetic as the Germans lost their entire Sixth Army in the battle of Stalingrad. I think Churchill's "fight them on the beaches" speech wasn't just bravado. I think he was deadly serious and the evidence is overwhelming that it inspired a tremendous response within the British people. They were with Churchill and against Hitler. If support for Churchill meant following him through the gates of hell they would have followed him. Hitler led the German people into hell and they followed him there. They supported him to the bitter end. I agree with Ponto, with their Bushido culture of warfare, the Japanese wouldn't have surrendered.

[bender]

I do think the Japanese would have surrendered. The real question is how many troops would the Allied Nations be willing to lose to force them to do so.

The Japanese Army surrendered at numerous battles prior to the Governments surrender and the army was the most fanatical of all their armed forces. If their army would surrender, then their people would surrender, and the relative ease of the occupation of Japan showed how readily they took up that opportunity to lay down their arms.

Japan is a relatively small Island, their Navy had largely been destroyed or confined to home waters to act as air defence units. The B29 was able to bomb japan with near impunity. The Japanese people would have cracked before the planned commencement of the land invasion of the home island, particularly once the USSR declared war upon them (the Japanese had a last chance effort going to get the Soviets to broker a peace deal).

So the Japanese were also looking for an end to the war.

The use of the Bomb was as much an announcement to the world as a message to Japan. Truman could have elected to drop it in a demonstration of its power in such a way as to avoid the large scale loss of life that occurred. He didn't because he wanted the world to know that the USA would not just build such weapons, they would use them.

Look at how many times Truman and then Eisenhower threatened to use the bomb against the Soviets until the Soviets demonstrated that they had the bomb too.

[Deleted]

The Japs didn't surrender after the first bomb on Hiroshima, it took the bombing of Nagasaki to make the emperor to throw his hands in the air.

Ideally a world consensus on banning the bomb after the nuking of Japan would have been better.....then is it possible to have a world without war..??

[Occam's Spork]

Aug 6, 2020 13:38:32 GMT 10 Gort said:

Aug 6, 2020 11:58:59 GMT 10 Occam's Spork said:

At least 150,000 residents of Hiroshima died 75 years ago too.

...And yet they managed to stay dead in spite of your dark invocations, Necromancer!
Resurrect them; leave the thread be.

[Occam's Spork]

Aug 6, 2020 14:08:36 GMT 10 @pontodaheretic said:

Would have the Japanese surrendered....nope.

Yes... those 400 schoolchildren from Honkawa elementary school, killed in that blast.
They all had it coming.

Fact:
1. Americans had a new toy
2. America's ego was sore about what happened in Pearl Harbor.

Overkill fueled by vengeance is what ruled the day in Hiroshima.
One doesn't need to swat flies with sledgehammers.

[Deleted]

Interesting Occo what you can take from a one line comment on WW2 and the bombing of Hiroshima.

Ideally no war is the best path to take yet humans still make the same mistakes with war as a solution, a flawed human trait, perhaps the belief good triumph's over evil and all that..in the end one can only gauge the events of the past in history books, WW2 was a time when cities were being bombed and razed by all sides, how many kids died from Jap bombs or prisoners of war? how many women died, how many old folk, dogs, cats, horses etc etc...innocents being killed is the collateral damage of war. Solution no war is good and think of all the money that could be saved and used to fight the neoliberal war on the environment.

Hiroshima did not get a notice of surrender form the Japanese emperor (God)..it took Nagasaki to make the Japan concede defeat....such as it happened, whose to know if the nuke bombs had not of flatten two cities how long the Japs would continue to fight, and kill....we don't because that didn't happen.

Read up on the Chindits to see how fanatical the Japanese people had become and the refusal to surrender, fight to the death was the honourable thing.

[pim]

With the Japanese surrender the Americans, wisely I believe, offered surrender terms that the Japanese could accept, the main one being that they could keep the emperor. - in return for which they had to agree to adopt a secular postwar constitution that transformed the “God-Emperor” to a constitutional monarchy. This was a big deal because the history of the past couple of centuries shows that monarchies tend not to survive a military defeat: the Romanovs, the Hohenzollerns, The Hapsburgs, all fell after WW1; the House of Savoy in Italy fell after WW2... If the British had been defeated in 1940 it’s debatable whether the House of Windsor would have survived. Certainly the House of Orange, the Royal dynasty of the Netherlands which led a government in exile in London after the German invasion of the country, would have been finished. Given the hostility towards the Japanese and the outrage felt by America’s allies, notably Australia where the demand to “put the Jap Emperor on trial for war crimes” was very strident, the concession by the Americans to keep Hirohito in his palace was a big deal and it was probably the circuit breaker. There would have been other considerations such as the unappealing prospect of a postwar Japan partitioned into a Soviet “People’s Republic” in the north and an American dominated south, analogous to what was happening in Germany. I’m certain that elements of Japanese ruling circles that favoured a peace option would have taken that into account. If the Japanese had fought on and the war had dragged on into 1946 they would still have been defeated but with a major Soviet presence on Japanese soil à la Germany. As it was the Japanese lost the island of Sakhalin to the Russians. Would they have wanted Hokkaido added to the list? In my view the offer to keep the emperor was the deal maker. Without it the Japanese would certainly have fought on and during the 1950s the Russians would have been in the Pacific big time.