Reply #93: Atomic bombs are Racist at their core [View All]

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The other sides were practicing the same type of behavior but tit for tat only turns one into the lizard-animal one could claim they are not.

It amazes me how one rationalizes their paranoia into a good reason to kill other populations wholesale. Mostly it seems this is a "hands off" mental illness that many societies fail to deal with or understand.

:nuke: :nuke:

http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/students/gaskill2/bomb.html
When the Earth Caught Fire

At the end of WWII American citizens expressed the contradictory emotions of excitement and dread: excitment for the end of the war, and dread for having had to open up the nuclear age to do so. Recent scholarship also shows this mix of emotion in the scientists and politicians who made the decision. My research in the popular press of Time and Newsweek brings to light the fact that these same feelings appear in the American public. Simplistic views of joy and celebration existed, but closer examination of the popular press of the time reveals that authors, often in the same articles, also expressed impending anxiety and fear. The two emotions--joy and fear--coexisted. A one-sided interpretation and understanding of the American response to the dropping of the atomic bomb is therefore both inacurate and unfounded. Yes, Americans were happy for the end of the war, but they were also afraid that next time they would suffer the consequences of the birth of atomic weaponry. It is my contention therefore that the very basis for the American national sense of victory and excitment gave birth to the fear that next time they would mourn devestated cities left reeling from the very nuclear power Americans themselves created.

On 7 December 1941, Japanese bombers attacked Pearl Harbor. The next day America declared war on Japan and entered WWII--tying the world together in what Franklin Delano Roosevelt termed "a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our public, our religion, and our civilization and to set free a suffering humanity."(1) A noble cause, but a cause which culminated in two distinct controversial actions four years later. WWII changed the way the world viewed war--especially with regard to noncombatants. Historian Barton J. Bernstein portrays the emerging internal struggle among the White House military advisors and cabinet members, pitting the old dying pre-WWII ethic of warfare which targeted only the soldiers against a new ethic where race, nationality, and treaty preference made people in general the enemy--uniformed or not.(2) The moral implications of such a paradigmatic shift troubled American political and military dedcision makers. They struggled, finally acted, and used atomic weapons to speed the end of the war. Ironically, however, the same action that granted the people of the United States what they coveted most--the end of the war and the soldiers coming home--created a paradoxically structured world where peace and potential annihilation tenuously existed hand in hand.

War by 1945 was no longer a Napoleonic chess match where strategy and movement of troops won. Instead it proved a Darwinian battle of technological evolution. In early October of 1939, the process which would culminate in the organization of the famed Manhattan Project began. Through a set of meetings, various interviews, and established committees sanctioned by Roosevelt, physicists found themselves searching for the answers to as of yet unknown atomic questions. The United States already believed itself years behind the Germans in an attempt to create atomic weapons through uranium, and later plutonium, fission. Thus, argues Stanley Goldberg, researchers such as Vannevar Bush, K. T. Compton, and Lyman Briggs deliberately pulled the U.S. government into the atomic age utilizing the fear of the very weaponry they would, in fact, create.(3) Whether this is true or not remains suspect. Nevertheless, it must be understood that this group of researchers played an important role in the evolution of atomic thought. It is in this light that we must look at their contribution --irrespective of the motives behind it. Goldberg, citing notes and letters sent and recieved by those researchers involved, establishes the evolutionary track of the inventive process. Thoughts of a bomb of "unprecedented power might be produced" (emphasis added) surfaced as early as May 1941. Merely six months later, projections implied that "a fission bomb of superlatively destructive power will result" with prototypes possibly ready as early as 1944.(4) It took a little longer, the first test held in the summer of 1945 putting all speculation about plausibility to rest in the ashes of a 200 foot tower.

The ethics and morals of using the atomic bomb, however, remained controversial. Proposals for a display of power for a Japanese audience and/or limited tactical/military use remained the two most viable options next to dropping it on a populated city. Because it is always impossible to know exactly what anyone was thinking, the facts are somewhat sketchy. But, as Bernstein discusses, the scientists in the research group initially pushed for a technical display of power to play on Japanese fear until Oppenheimer and others informed higher-ups that a technical demonstration alone would not necessarily be sufficient to bring an end to the war.(5) Thoughts evolved. Using weapons in the scheduled 1 November 1945 invasion of mainland Japan became the new push, but not necessarily out of the ethical concern for civilian life. Admiral Richard Connoly, who was stationed in the Phillippines (and whose responsibility it was to provide naval support for this scheduled) "wanted to put one on either side of each landing, before the troops landed." The researchers assumed the target to be purely tactical: military sites, industrial areas, troop placements--not cities.(6)


George C Marshall and Henry L. Stimson, Army Chief of Staff and Secretary of War respectively, likewise pushed for a use limited merely to military "objectives such as a large naval installation." The thought of using such a weapon on civilian areas was contrary to the long established war ethic founded in "Christian doctrine and in international law." In short, it made them uncomfortable. Stimson, therefore, in a conversation with Truman in late May of 1945, assured the President that the weapons would be used so as to spare civilian lives in the name of "fair play and humanitarianism." The true depth of this sentiment was short lived. The daily fire bombing of Japanese cities to the point where the new weapon may not have "a fair background to show its strength" testifies to this. What is more, two days after their discussion Stimson "stipulated that noncombatants would be acceptable targets." Aiming at a "vital war plant. . . closely surrounded by workers' houses" was not merely justifiable but desirable. This idea would proceed unchallenged until implementation less than two months later.(7)
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