Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Our World- 64 Years Too Late and Not a Moment Too Soon

[Orwellian_Ghost]

For the Sixty-Fourth Time: No More Nuclear War
Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Our World
By Frida Berrigan

I can't help myself. I still think it's worth bringing up, even for the 64th time. I'm talking, of course, about the atomic obliteration, at the end of a terrible, world-rending war, of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6 and 9, 1945, whose anniversaries -- if that's even the appropriate word for it -- are once again upon us.

In this, at least, I know I'm not a typical American: Hiroshima and Nagasaki still seem all too real to me. As the child of anti-nuclear activists, I was raised to pay attention to two significant dates in American history -- the day when the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress bomber named after the pilot's mother, dropped Little Boy, a five-ton uranium explosion bomb, on Hiroshima; and the moment, three days later, when another plane, jokingly named Bock's Car (after the plane's original pilot), dropped Fat Man (a moniker supposedly given it in honor of former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill), a more complex plutonium implosion bomb, on Nagasaki.

<snip>

The Death Count

In Hiroshima, Little Boy's huge fireball and explosion killed 70,000 to 80,000 people instantly. Another 70,000 were seriously injured. As Joseph Siracusa, author of Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction, writes: "In one terrible moment, 60% of Hiroshima… was destroyed. The blast temperature was estimated to reach over a million degrees Celsius, which ignited the surrounding air, forming a fireball some 840 feet in diameter."

Three days later, Fat Man exploded 1,840 feet above Nagasaki, with the force of 22,000 tons of TNT. According to "Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered," a web resource on the bombings developed for young people and educators, 286,000 people lived in Nagasaki before the bomb was dropped; 74,000 of them were killed instantly and another 75,000 were seriously injured.

In addition to those who died immediately, or soon after the bombings, tens of thousands more would succumb to radiation sickness and other radiation-induced maladies in the months, and then years, that followed.


<snip>

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175102/frida_berrigan_64_years_too_late_and_not_a_moment_too_soon

[Bonobo]

1. Everyone always has some kind of excuse. But we're still the only ones that ever did it.

Keep that finger pointed in the right direction everyone.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. How could anyone have immediately UNREC'ed this

The bottom of the barrel disgusting.

Not even a minute posted and completely impossible the UNREC person(s) could've read even half the piece by long time anti-nuclear activist Frida Berrigan.

Speak up whoever you are. Defend your abominable position.

[TankLV]

7. I just did...

bullshit historical revisionism at best...

War is HELL - and don't ever think for a moment the Japanese with the help of the Germans, were racing to DO THE SAME TO US!!!

THANK GOD WE DID IT FIRST!!!

[ColbertWatcher]

3. k+r, n/t

[Chemisse]

4. In school, these events were treated as an appropriate reponse

to the attack at Pearl Harbor. Barely mentioned, there was never elaboration about how many innocent lives were lost, never any consideration that the retribution was way out of proportion to the attack we suffered.

It was only in recent years, when pondering the horror of 9/11 and thinking back through recent history, that it occurred to me that we were the biggest, baddest terrorists of all.

[uppityperson]

5. k&r for Hiroshima and Nagasaki Days, never again

[Agony]

6. collective punishment = savage barbarism n/t

[ddeclue]

8. The Japanese killed millions in Asia and the Pacific in the name of empire...

just ask the Koreans or the Vietnamese or the Chinese...

If we had to invade the home islands anywhere between 250,000 and 1 million us soldiers and probably 6 times as many Japanese would have died in the fighting. The bomb was the only way to put an end to it - it saved more lives than it took.

[T Wolf]

9. In spite of the mental masturbation argument about whether using those weapons was

a "good" decision or "the right thing to do" - the goal

HAS TO BE

Never, never, never, never, never, ever, ever, ever, ever allow them to be used again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Faryn Balyncd]

10. K & R

[Orwellian_Ghost]

11. Bump

[Romulox]

12. What day do the Japanese remember the Rape of Nanking each year?

:shrug:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

13. Unfortunately, Japan has many apologists for that sort of thing.

They remind me of you, now that I think about it.

[Romulox]

15. LOL. Sorry for introducing context to your revisionism.

:shrug:

[ShamelessHussy]

14. K&R

Thank you for sharing :toast:

[kgnu_fan]

16. Remember, remember, remember, so there will be no war nt