The Hiroshima Cover-up

[shance]

A story that the U.S. government hoped would never see the light of day finally has been published, 60 years after it was spiked by military censors. The discovery of reporter George Weller's firsthand account of conditions in post-nuclear Nagasaki sheds light on one of the great journalistic betrayals of the last century: the cover-up of the effects of the atomic bombing on Japan.

On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; three days later, Nagasaki was hit. Gen. Douglas MacArthur promptly declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the news media. More than 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of the cities, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. Instead, the world's media obediently crowded onto the battleship USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the Japanese surrender.

A month after the bombings, two reporters defied General MacArthur and struck out on their own. Mr. Weller, of the Chicago Daily News, took row boats and trains to reach devastated Nagasaki. Independent journalist Wilfred Burchett rode a train for 30 hours and walked into the charred remains of Hiroshima.

Both men encountered nightmare worlds. Mr. Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: "In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly - people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague."

He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: "Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world."

Mr. Burchett's article, headlined "The Atomic Plague," was published Sept. 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation and was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. The official U.S. narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed as "Japanese propaganda" reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation.

So when Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Weller's 25,000-word story on the horror that he encountered in Nagasaki was submitted to military censors, General MacArthur ordered the story killed, and the manuscript was never returned. As Mr. Weller later summarized his experience with General MacArthur's censors, "They won."

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0805-20.htm

[FourScore]

1. Proud to give the first rec.

[Minimus]

2. The documentary White Light/Black Rain showing on HBO is a must see

I saw it last night and the footage shown was hard to watch. The survivors/victims interviewed told their stories and the descriptions of what they saw was horrible.

It made me cry.

[seemslikeadream]

3. FILM HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI WHITE LIGHT BLACK RAIN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MgwLcJNXks

[speakclearly]

71. This is pretty "old" news

It has been known for many years that there were significant aftereffects from the nuclear attack. And the censorship of the news story has been known since shortly after it was censored. In fact, the reports in government of these aftereffects, and eyewitness accounts by other reporters and officials are a principle reason that no such attacks have subsequently occurred.

When those weapons were used, we knew very little about the aftereffects of nuclear weapons. We know a lot more now. Hence the world-wide nuclear treaties to reduce the availability of nuclear technology and reductions in warheads by leading nations (all of the nuclear powers have reduced the stockpiles of weapons except China, India, and Pakistan).

Censorship is largely ineffective. We have to resist it, but it never completely stops the fow of ideas and information. Not in the US. Not in Russia, and not even in China. This is especially true today with the Internet and multiple other sources of information. Could that same censorship happen in the world today with cell phones that contain cameras? Hardly. Even China with its closed society and vast array of censor deployed to keep its populace "in the dark", information leaks through and becomes common knowledge both of what goes on in the world, and what goes on within China. Even with Yahoo and Google cooperating with China in complying with its censorship rules, the Chinese people can still learn about events in the outside world. And activists within China can still get word out about protests and dissidents. I was the same in Communist Soviet Union (which was teh real reason Communism failed....information).

Will governments try to "censor"? Sure! They don't want "unpopular" ideas to get out their to everyday people. We must be "on guard". But, the governments are hopelessly ineffective in keeping secrets, secret. Could tehy keep Abu Graib secret? Nope! And nothing else, either. That's why I am confident that the "Truthers" have got it wrong. There would be too many people and too many clues to keep such a plan secret. Adn despite so-called "clues" and "inconsistencies", there is no evidence and no person that confirms that "Yep. I was part of the planning for that. We blew up our own buildings!"

Secreats are never secret for long. Censorship is a threat, but not a serious threat to the "people's right to know." Heck, the Bush Admin couldn't even keep secret the wiretapping stuff, and they wanted to keep that secret in the worst way!

[Ezlivin]

97. "There would be too many people and too many clues to keep such a plan secret."

Manhattan Project

U-2/SR-71 spy plane

Stealth bomber

Operation Northwoods

It is quite possible to keep something secret even with many people involved. It's done through something called "compartmentalization."

I had a secret clearance and served in the submarine service; my wife had an above top secret clearance and worked at CINCPACFLT. Guess what? Neither of us saw the "whole" picture. I might know where my boat was going and she might go into work and see it on the board, but neither of us knew the overarching purpose.

[speakclearly]

101. all of those programs

were known (with the exception of the Manhattan Project) by the public before they were revealed. They even had pictures of the Stealth and the SR-71 in Aviation Weekly before they we seen by the MSM. The "wiretapping" was "compartmentalized" but its existence still got out to the MSM and was published in the NYT.

[Ezlivin]

103. Operation Northwoods was NOT known

That information was released in 1997 35 years after it came into existence.

The SR-71 first flew on December 22, 1964. When did those pictures show up in Aviation Weekly?

And the programs I listed were all absolutely secret for a long, long time. Eventually some information leaked out (such as the existence of an exotic looking aircraft) but nothing else was known; it was all pure speculation.

Have you heard about Aurora? Photos, mysterious engine exhaust patterns and lots and lots of speculation. Is it still secret? What do any of us actually know about it? A photo of a mystery aircraft does amount to much.

[scarletwoman]

4. Proud to give the 2nd rec. What really rattles me is how many DUers will defend the dropping of

these bombs.

I've been on DU for 6 years, and I've read and participated in countless threads about the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima & Nagasaki over that time. And I can tell you that there are MANY DUers who totally support those atrocities, and who will argue to their last breath that these bombings were right and just.

I simply cannot wrap my mind around such attitudes. It's one of the several reasons I cut way back on my DU postings. If even so-called "liberals" are willing to justify U.S. sponsored atrocities, then what hope is there?

You are either a defender of the human race as a whole, or you are not. There are NO moral justifications for visiting mass death upon your fellow human beings. None. Period.

sw

[JitterbugPerfume]

6. I can only say

that I agree with you , and such atrocities are unspeakable . \

Right now as we speak our Government is doing everything it can to blur the line between conventional warfare and nuclear warfare.


All war is an obscenity



heaven help us

[scarletwoman]

8. Thanks, your agreement truly means a lot.

Evil deeds are evil deeds -- no matter WHO commits them.

[Mandate My Ass]

10. Thank you

That thread smugly defending the depraved decision to visit horror on millions of people sickened me to the point of being unable to dispute. You said what needed to be said and damned well too.

I was equally appalled last year by the cheering bloodlust towards the immoral destruction of Lebanon and its people. Sickening.

[scarletwoman]

25. Even among those who we might think of as "our own", the pervasive myth of American exceptionalism

poisons and distorts rational thinking. What that old thread demonstrated was how many purported "liberals" have bought into that myth, without the least conscious awareness that they were doing so.

I will always refuse to submit to the myth. What's wrong and unjust is wrong and unjust no matter WHO is doing it.

As a radical anti-imperialist, I refuse to be a dupe of "moral relativism". Attempting to rationalize and justify the horrors visited on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is moral relativism in its most depraved and virulent manifestation.

sw

[liberaldemocrat7]

12. The Americans should have targeted two large Japanese military installations with the nuclear bombs.

For that war and time America should have targeted two large military installations full of Japanese soldiers and bombed them with the nuclear weapons.

WWII in my view appeared a just war. We should not have targeted civilians. Perhaps we should have taken out the emperor as well.

However, I was not born yet and could not make such actions and decisions.

I will say though we should not have bombed Nagasaki and Hiroshima, unless the Japanese deliberately hid large military installations there.

[TheWraith]

15. We did. Catch is, military installations are inherently close to civilian populations.

Hiroshima was HQ for the entire defense command of southern Japan, and Nagasaki was one of the biggest naval yards for the Japanese fleet. However, military targets are rarely sequestered from civilian populations, which they rely on for support.

A more useful demonstration would be to find a semi-deserted spot that would be well within view of the Japanese capital, and deploy a warhead there.

[scarletwoman]

19. "A more useful demonstration..." Demonstration of WHAT? Our willingness to use WMD?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "demonstrations", all right. They were "demonstrations" aimed at the U.S.S.R. The USG wanted to send a message to Stalin that we had the most awesome/awful weapon EVER. Too bad about all the human beings killed and horribly maimed for life...

I make absolutely no apology for declaring that the mass murder of our fellow human beings is always and forever an IMMORAL choice. Period. I will absolutely NOT respect any argument to the contrary. Period.

sw

[whopis01]

35. mass murder is mass murder no matter what means are used.

Whether it was through the use of atomic weapons or through the use of conventional weapons, the US was going to commit mass murder in Japan.

[TheWraith]

44. A demonstration of military capability.

Specifically, the capacity to effectively obliterate a targeted city in a single attack. Japanese military ethos placed a very high value on noble struggle to the death--the only way to effectively convince them to surrender would be to demonstrate that a prolonged engagement would be one-sided in the extreme. For that matter, there was a viewpoint among the US military during the latter days of WW2 that ANY use of atomic weapons prior to the invasion itself was wasted, and that the only practical tactic was to use our full capabilities, all seven possible bombs, during the invasion itself to take out as many combatants as possible.

Last but not least, most people don't know that there was an attempted military coup in Japan after the second bombing, where hard-core military officers attempted to prevent the Emperor's official order of surrender from being broadcast, so that they could force an invasion.

For that matter, there's another viewpoint that the deployment of nuclear weapons in combat created a disincentive for their further use that wouldn't have existed otherwise. If no one had had an up close appreciation of the scope of their destructive capability, how likely would it have been that they would eventually have been used elsewhere, and possibly to much greater effect?

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were certainly not just demonstrations for the USSR, and to say that, or that the use of the bombs was worse than the alternative, is to ignore the realities of history. Killing is bad, but the world isn't always black and white.

[TheWraith]

14. Ask yourself how many people would have died in an invasion of mainland Japan.

The US casualties alone for Operation Downfall, the slated invasion of mainland Japan, were expected to be 500,000 for the first 90 days, including 109,000 dead. The second phase would mean 1.2 million casualties, including 267,000 dead. That's just American military, totalling 376,000 KIA, compared to 220,000 people killed by the combined nuclear bombings. Not counting the estimates that an invasion would kill between five and ten million Japanese soldiers and civilians, most of the latter press-ganged into service for human wave attacks.

Math has no compassion.

[scarletwoman]

16. How about just not invading Japan? The Continental U.S. was in no danger.

And even if Japanese forces were to try to mount an invasion, there's no question that we could have turned them back.

Please explain precisely why an invasion of Japan would have been necessary if you're going to tout the atomic bombing of civilians as a preferable alternative.

sw

[SayWhatYo]

17. Same reasons why the Russians went in Berlin.

aye?

[scarletwoman]

22. So what is your argument? Power will always seek to accrue more power.

The drive of the powerful to dominate is the root of all war. It's no less evil when OUR country does it than when any other country does it.

[SayWhatYo]

29. True..

I didn't say it was less evil when the US does it. However, it's also no more evil when the US does it...

My point was that in war the victor has to make sure his enemy cannot strike back. If the US was to say "ok, we're going home now", then the Japanese would have been able to rebuild and continue the war. Same thing with the Russians having to push into Germany. If they simply stopped at the German border, then the Germans would have been able to strike back. Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but it sounds as if you're saying that we were in the wrong to pursue Japan during WW2.

[scarletwoman]

32. You present a false alternative: "ok, we're going home now". The fact is, the Japanese were already

in the process of negotiating a surrender. The only sticking point was that the U.S. was demanding that they despose their Emperor. As it happened, Japan was allowed to keep their Emperor after surrender, anyway.

The use of atomic bombs was in no way strategically necessary in terms of defeating Japan. They were already well aware that they were losing.

The dropping of those bombs was a calculated and cold-blooded demonstration of U.S. martial power aimed at the Soviet Union. We didn't want Stalin to get any ideas that he could run all over Europe just because he was helping to defeat Nazi Germany. So what if we killed a bunch of yellow people in the process of sending our message -- they were subhumans anyway...

[TankLV]

39. BULLSHIT.

The only thing the Japanese fascists were doing was preparing to fight every man to the death if we invaded. Surrender was NOT on their list of things to do...

Not only did they not surrender after the FIRST bomb was dropped and we begged them to, they argued for DAYS after the SECOND BOMB!

I have revisionists...

[TheWraith]

54. To be technical

The Japanese government had extended feelers to inquire whether we would accept an armistice deal that included:

Removal of Japanese forces ONLY from occupied European colonies, not from formerly independent countries or from occupied China.

No alterations of military command structure.

No political changes.

And the Japanese military command and government would be solely responsible for discovering and prosecuting any war crimes.

When we responded with the Potsdam Declaration, which required full demilitarization, replacement of the government, and war crimes trials, their response was a flat refusal to even discuss it.

If you want to call that "surrender," go ahead.

[LearnedHand]

62. The Japanese were working feverishly to negotiate a surrender

through the Russians to the US. They wanted only to maintain their emperor. The Russians weren't willing to carry the message to the US because they were about to enter the war. On top of all of this, those Japanese who wished to wrest the war away from the military by negotiating a surrender had to find a way to get messages to the Russians without being found out by the Japanese military. Death awaited those who were found trying to surrender. And finally, the Japanese culturally were not in-your-face people like we Americans. They communicated through suggestions, innuendo, opposites, etc. There was simply no way some yahoo could stand up and say, "Let's just cut the shit and surrender."

[TheWraith]

73. No, they weren't.

Their offer was basically a truce with no significant restrictions on themselves or their war machine. See post #54. And as for the military, they were sworn to serve the one guy who actually had the authority to issue a surrender, that being the Emperor.

[LostinVA]

96. Excellent post!

Especially the negotiating point of the Emperor, and the very, very real possibility that the bombs were a "See what we got, Uncle Joe!" display of power to the Soviets.

[TankLV]

38. Oh for fucking god damn: The Japanese and Germans were ALSO working feverishly on a bomb that was

only months or weeks away from success...

God damn - THEY WOULD HAVE USED IT IN A NANOSECOND IF THEY COULD HAVE.

THAT'S A FACT!

I, along with MOST, are glad WE used it FIRST...

WE saved a lot more lives by using it...

GET A FUCKING CLUE!

[Lionel Mandrake]

42. Neither Germany nor Japan had a viable project

to develop nuclear weapons. Allied intelligence knew this by late 1944.

Werner Heisenberg, who headed up the German project, had miscalculated the critical mass of uranium and believed that it would be impossible to build a bomb that any airplane could carry. This is clear from conversations among German scientists who were detained by the British at Farm Hill.

[LearnedHand]

50. Wrong, and wrong, on both accounts

The Germans were working on the bomb, but they never even came close to succeeding. Japan also had one group consisting of three men who studied the technology. Their economy was so wrecked they never even separated any uranium-235 to experiment with it, and they had NO SOURCE of uranium-238 in their country at all.

[TheWraith]

55. You're mistaken. They did have a source of uranium--the Germans.

And the Japanese atomic bomb program was a hell of a lot bigger than three men. Nobody knows how much nuclear material they actually got shipped by the Nazis, but one shipment that was intercepted in April of 1945, due to the German surrender, totalled 560 kilogrammes--over half a ton--of unprocessed uranium oxide.

[LearnedHand]

60. The entire sentence in my post said "in their country"

They obviously had sources from outside. But their economy was totally wrecked, it was virtually impossible to procure the ore they needed, and they had NO TECHNOLOGY to process the raw uranium ore and separate the isotopes. Notice that the shipment you mentioned was intercepted in April of 1945 -- three months before the US tested the bomb at Trinity.

The Japanese, on the other hand, at that same time, had only bench-scale experiments and hadn't even developed a design for a weapon. They were still trying to prove the concept, not design and engineer a weapon. And their research was run by three guys who had one room and a few techs to assist part-time. It's laughable to call that an atomic bomb program. Their military wasn't even thinking about it, spending money on it, or pressing their research. They had more immediate military interests involving scientific researchers. That's why only three men were running the program in the first place.

[TheWraith]

75. Their bomb program had been active since 1941.

They also had uranium sources from Korea and Burma, more even than the Nazis offered. And there's no knowledge of how much uranium had been shipped from Germany before they surrendered--the Japanese first requested additional uranium from them in 1943. They were also importing Nazi nuclear scientists, and they had a hell of a lot more than three of their guys working on it.

The Japanese are damn good engineers. Do you really think that if we had just sat tight and ignored the mainland they wouldn't have developed the bomb, whether it took them another year or not?

[dbackjon]

81. YUP

Sometimes we can be so blind to the obvious.

[TheWraith]

46. Have you read about Imperial Japan?

Start with Unit 731, slave labor, torture, medical experiments on living human subjects, aggressive warfare, rape, mutilations, mass executions, gassing, bio-warfare, vivsection, live-dissection of children, use of prisoners to test flamethrowers and fragmentation grenades, and dozens more similar experiments. Which is not to mention actual bio-warfare attacks which killed about 400,000 Chinese civilians.

The Japanese government was littered with war criminals who were arguably every bit as bad as the Nazis. They had to go.

More to the point, you don't just leave an enemy sitting there just because California is marginally safe. (Though the people who had to dodge those balloon-bombs that the Japanese launched from their subs might argue the point.) Kindly remember that there's an entire ocean full of islands, some of which are part of America too, in between here and there, and the Japanese were working on their own atomic bomb.

[piedmont]

49. Wow, just friggin' wow. When were you born?

yesterday?

[mudesi]

33. Ask yourself where you got the crystal ball, first (nm)

[TheWraith]

48. You think that the official Army staff reports were forged before the fact?

The projections--delivered long before it was even known that the use of atomic weapons was an option--are a matter of public record.

[alarimer]

34. They fail to take into account the number who died later

from radiation sickness and cancer, which may have taken years to develop (the cancer I mean). So the actual numbers are far higher than those low-ball estimates.

And how can we be sure that the military was not lying about our potential casualties just to justify this war crime (and it was a war crime, targeting primarily civilains)?

[TheWraith]

56. Those reports were prepared long before the fact.

And as for later deaths, you're free to ask them--there's about 266,000 survivors still living in Japan. Or you can ask the Japanese Radiation Effects Research Foundation, which estimates a total of 856 deaths attributable to radiation exposure from the bombs from 1950 to 1990.

http://www.rerf.or.jp/general/qa_e/qa2.html

[LearnedHand]

47. Those are TOTALLY cooked numbers

Please read the relevant chapters about this vaporous number in "History Wars" and "Hiroshima in America." The initial military estimate was 20,000, but various warmongers in our government kept inflating the figures until they were scary enough to justify in America's collective mind the use of the bombs against Japan.

[TheWraith]

51. Bullshit. If you believe that, you need to reread history.

For starters, those estimates were produced before it was known that use of atomic bombs was even going to be an option. Second, you'd have to be a fool to think that we'd only take 20,000 casualties going up against a force of a million Japanese solders and probably 20 million more civilians pressed into service, on their own turf. The spin in the figures is after the fact, trying to make it seem like there was no case to be made.

[LearnedHand]

58. I've read 35 or 40 histories of the Manhattan Project and the decision to drop the bomb

I'm pretty sure that qualifies as -- how did you put it? -- rereading history. Maybe you need to verify that you aren't just swallowing some of these things whole.

Oh, and on this whole notion of revising history (which you disguised as "spin in the figures ... after the fact") -- people who throw this accusation around are obviously ignorant of history anyway. Our understanding of history is ALWAYS being expanded and revised as new information is disclosed or discovered. And the history of ANYTHING is not a monolithic thing that is grabbed out of the air by some completely detached single entity. There are always many entities with just as many different histories of the same event. THERE IS NO ONE "RIGHT" HISTORY.

The US dropped the Little Man bomb on Hiroshima, Japan on August 6, 1945. That's history. The US saved up to 1.2 million lives by dropping the bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945? That's CONJECTURE. And it's a conjecture offered by ONE of the US histories on the subject. History is NOT MONOLITHIC -- the officially published military figure does NOT make it inviolably CORRECT.

In the case of the atomic bomb, most of the relevant official documentation remained classified into the 80s and 90s. It's only AFTER the DoD and AEC (DOE, actually, by that time) declassified the docs that historians began to encounter, for example, many different "official estimates" of how many casualties we could expect from the invasion of Japan, and to notice that the original number grew and grew and grew.

And furthermore, the entire war -- as well as the development of an entirely new weapon that actually COULD destroy the entire earth -- as an extremely complex, publicly traumatic event for the entire world. It simply does NOT exist in some historical vacuum in which the first public understanding of any part of it is the only allowable understanding ever. Since the dropping of the bomb was an event that divided history in two, there will be newly revised understanding of the events surrounding it for far, far longer than either you or I will be alive, and no amount of clinging to the official story on the parts of people like you will stop that. They are NOT WRONG for trying to gain a wider understanding of this history-altering event -- a wider understanding based on DISTANCE from the event, HONEST INTROSPECTION from more sides than solely ours, and STUDY OF NEWLY DISCOVERED INFORMATION.

If you truly believe we shouldn't revisit our first understanding of a huge event when new, official information is declassified and released to the public, then by that logic, we also shouldn't set free persons accused of crimes when new information is discovered that exonerates them. And we definitely shouldn't revise scientific principles based on new experimental discoveries. Why, we should immediately revert to our Dark Ages understanding of the universe.

(edited typo in subject line)

[Zynx]

85. You must have skipped the casualty tables from Iwo and Okinawa. n/t

[rinsd]

78. "The initial military estimate was 20,000" US had 72,000 casualties at Okinawa with 12.5K MIA/KIA.

Your 20K figure is a complete joke.

[Zynx]

83. The US Marines on Iwo Jima would beg to differ with your load of crap.

27,909 casualties from fighting 21,000 dug-in Japanese.

Okinawa ran to 51,429 combat casualties from fighting ~100,000 Japanese, both regular and milita.

The idea that casualties in an Home Island invasion would have been acceptable for either the US or the Japanese is absurd revisionism.

[Buck Rabbit]

93. The 20,000 fatalities, 100,000 casualties were MacArthur's figures

The Navy had a higher estimate but was opposing the invasion all together.

Both the Navy and MacArthur's estimates were for a November 1, invasion, without consideration of Japan having to defend a two front attack, making both estimates useless.

The Red Army was on track to have a massive force on Japan's relatively lightly defended Northern Islands by the end of August. Operation Downfall would have had to have been scraped or by the time it had been executed as planned the American forces rolling into Tokyo would have been greated by children on recess from their Russian language classes.

[Zynx]

98. MacArthur has a rather long running and well documented problem with facts he didn't like

Not only does his estimate bear no resemblence to reality - not even twice Okinawa for much larger operations - it differs dramatically from most other estimates, which were all at least double his, and those were the ones with the caveat that fighting would only last 90 days - when Okinawa lasted 82 days.

[Buck Rabbit]

99. I agree, MacArthur was soft-selling casualty estimates

because the Navy thought Operation Downfall was a mistake and unneccesary.

But both the Navy and MacArthur's estimates were made on assumptions that no longer existed once the Russians lived up to their agreement with Truman and entered the war. Operation Downfall was useless as originally planned as were the casualty estimates.

Japan had not the plan in place or the resources remaining to defend against a Red Army invasion from the North.

[Kool Kitty]

53. I agree with you.

These aren't just weapons, they are crimes against humanity. I often wonder why the United States is the only country that is supposed to have these weapons. Our government is so against other countries having them (Iran being the latest one to dare to even think of acquiring nukes), yet they don't see the hypocracy. No one should have these weapons. NO ONE.

[dbackjon]

79. Dropping the bombs was absolutely the right thing to do

It saved tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of American and Japanese lives, and showed the world the dangers of the bomb. A bomb, or multiple bombs would have been used by someone, somewhere if we had not done so.

And this stance does not make me a bad person, or a bad Democrat. To say otherwise is insulting.

[LostinVA]

90. All it took was for the Emperor to say it was over, and that's what happened

If the Emperor hadn't have given the word, even after the bombs, the Japaneses would have fought to the death defending their country... just like we would have.

[LostinVA]

88. Agreed

[madrchsod]

5. there is a book about the bombing

that has eye witness accounts of what happened and what they went through...i have it but of course i forget the name and it`s buried in a box somewhere. i remember reading this book in the 60`s...

[Crabby Appleton]

24. probably Hiroshima by John Hersey

The 60's era cover looked something like this. It was a common high school reading requirement.

[wildcat78]

7. No wonder they hate us

This is the first time I read this article. I found part of Burchett's "The Atomic Plague" online. I just placed a hold on his book, "Shadows of Hiroshima" at the library.

This was done to the American Indian. It was done to the Japanese. Grant/Sherman did it to the South. We are now doing it in Iraq and Afghanistan. What is it with us? It appears that we are ill. That some disease has taken over us. Or, are some of us just that evil?

I fear it is the latter.

[SayWhatYo]

18. You speak as if barbarity is limited to smelly Americans.

The fact is that the entire world is made of violent cavemen with hi-tech toys.




Ohhh, I'm deep... :crazy:

[Wiley50]

37. I've Googled but can't find the original article, only essays about it

I'd really like to read it

[theboss]

82. The Japenese were innocent, of course

Just minding their own business ...and whammo...we bomb them.

For shame.

[LostinVA]

91. What is this monolithic "The Japanese" of whom you speak?

[Zynx]

87. Japanese absolutely deserved to be on the wrong end of a war, sorry.

Look up what they did to China. The US finishing the war they started with us after that brutality hardly comporable to the US slaughter of the American Indians.

Sure, the Japanese civilians who had no idea what was going on didn't deserve to die, but neither did the millions of Chinese the Japanese military exterminated.

[Lionel Mandrake]

9. Many more civilians were killed by conventional bombs

than were killed by atomic bombs in World War Two. The technique of mass killing was perfected by the Allies, who found that a mixture of high-explosive and incendiary bombs concentrated in a limited built-up area near the center of a city was the most effective way to kill large numbers of civilians. Ideally, this would ignite a fire-storm, as happened in Hamburg and Dresden, for example. By the end of the war, most of the large cities in Germany and Japan had suffered terrible damage and terrible loss of life.

Hitler would have loved to do the same but lacked the heavy bombers that were necessary to do it properly.

As for the US atomic bombs - their use against Japan in 1945 was very popular. US propaganda had demonized the Japanese and played up the atrocities they committed. Hatred of Japan and of everything Japanese was at its peak. There was also fear of large numbers of US casualties in case of an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Furthermore, we wanted very much to end the war quickly to keep the Soviets from occupying Japan. (We wanted it all to ourselves.) And of course, the troops wanted to come home as soon as possible. It would have taken a better man than Truman to resist all these pressures.

[alarimer]

36. That's true

Except for the leukemia and cancer cases that came after the atomic bombs, the firebombing was equally horrific and destroyed what had been a lovely city for no military purpose whatever, except for causing fear among the populace.

[Lionel Mandrake]

41. Actually, the attack on Dresden did have a military purpose.

According to the book Dresden by Frederick Taylor, Dresden was "not just a city of culture but one actively involved in the production of armaments, military equipment and communications, and important rail center close to the Eastern Front." Therefore it was considered a legitimate military target and given approximately the same treatment as many other German cities.

What was unusual about Dresden was good weather during the RAF raids, lack of air defense, and poor planning by German civilian authorities. Effective air raid shelters were available only to high ranking officials. Ordinary people were given the worst possible advice, which was to stay in their basements. Most of those in the old part of the city who followed this advice did not survive.

[Buck Rabbit]

57. A good post, you tocuh on two often neglected issues.

The choice of Hiroshima and Nagaski were in fact far from ideal as they were isolated enough that they made a lousy demonstration. No one in power in Tokyo saw the mushroom cloud and the initial casualties were in line with just another firebombing raid.

Frankly, the Japenese leadership in Tokyo had to somewhat just take our word for it as to how horrible our new bombs were in the first days after they were dropped. A demonstration, such as a drop on the Tokyo facing side of Mt Fuji or in Tokyo Bay would have been a much more visceral experience.

But largely ignored here in America is that during the same time frame of the atomic bombings, the Russians were absolutely routing Japan's largest offshore army in Manchuria. A million man army crushed in days offering not the slightest resistance to the Russians race to the Korean Peninsula and on to the Northern Home Islands.

So what was the biggest factor in deciding to surrender? The loss of a couple hundred thousand civilians to yet another but new form or firebombing or losing a million man army in a week to a new enemy the invincible Red Army just fresh off their rape and pillage of Berlin? Well taking it from the horses mouth, below is Hirohito's surrender rescript:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
TO THE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE IMPERIAL FORCES:

Three years and eight months have elapsed since we declared war on the United States and Britain. During this time our beloved men of the army and navy, sacrificing their lives, have fought valiantly on disease-stricken and barren lands and on tempestuous waters in the blazing sun, and of this we are deeply grateful.

Now that the Soviet Union has entered the war against us, to continue the war under the present internal and external conditions would be only to increase needlessly the ravages of war finally to the point of endangering the very foundation of the Empire's existence.

With that in mind and although the fighting spirit of the Imperial Army and Navy is as high as ever, with a view to maintaining and protecting our noble national policy we are about to make peace with the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union and Chungking.

To a large number of loyal and brave officers and men of the Imperial forces who have died in battle and from sicknesses goes our deepest grief. At the same time we believe the loyalty and achievements of you officers and men of the Imperial forces will for all time be the quintessence of our nation.

We trust that you officers and men of the Imperial forces will comply with our intention and will maintain a solid unity and strict discipline in your movements and that you will bear the hardest of all difficulties, bear the unbearable and leave an everlasting foundation of the nation.

[Lionel Mandrake]

77. What made Hirohito decide to surrender?

Both the atomic bombing and the Soviet attack were important. IMHO the combination was convinced the emperor to surrender.

It's ironic that we had asked the Soviets to attack Japan but now wanted to end the war before they could invade the Japanese mainland.

[theboss]

86. The relationship with the Soviets was compromised by the time they attacked Japan

The US and Brits had been begging the Soviets to get into the Pacific War for years. Stalin refused time and time again because of his non-agresssion treaty with Japan. The Soviets did not attack Japan until after the surrender of Germany.

At that point, Stalin had already pissed all over his promises at Yalta and had essentially turned Poland and Hungary into colonies. The Brits and Americans were worried that he was going to enter the fray, invade Japan and demand a Soviet Zone there as well.

[Lionel Mandrake]

92. That is correct.

The Soviets attacked Japan exactly three months after VE day, which is what they had agreed to do. Hiroshima had just been bombed, and Nagasaki was about to be bombed when the Soviets attacked.

[Buck Rabbit]

89. Agreed the irony is rich.

And yet the Russians took both the Japanese and Americans by surprise. The Japanese that they attacked at all, and the Americans at the ferocity and effectiveness of the attack we encouraged.

My opinion is this: I agree that the combination was decisive but that the Japanese would have surrendered in August to avoid the Russian onslaught whether we dropped the bombs or not. But they wouldn't have surrendered after just the two bombs if the Russians weren't racing to their virtually undefended Northern Shores.

The Japanese had committed fully to fortify for the US invasion coming from the South. When an even bigger badder unexpected force coming out of the North appeared out of nowhere avoiding Russian occupation of Tokyo through surrender to the Americans was their best hope.

[Lionel Mandrake]

94. You may be right.

At this point I will plead learned ignorance. I just don't know enough to either agree or disagree with you.

[NotGivingUp]

11. The things the U.S. has done throughout history for corporate empire makes me ill. n/t

[SayWhatYo]

20. yeah, because WW2 was for the corporations in the US.

After all, everything in the world about the US. The US is the center of the universe, right?

Jeez, we're such a self-absorbed country.

[Rage for Order]

43. SayWhatYo, you're almost right...

WW2 was for the Korporations in the US! Same old Amerika, oppressing "brown people" for no reason other than the profit of korporations! :sarcasm: :rofl:

[Bigmack]

13. Be careful...

... what you post on this thread.

On another Hiroshima thread I used the word "atrocity" and said that some of the posts sounded like Freepers.....
125,000 dead civilians didn't seem to bother some here.

I got deleted.

First time, I think.

When I taught US History in the 20th Century, I played a short film "Hiroshima/Nagasaki, August 1945", which was all film taken by US and Japanese cameramen immediately after the bomb. I also played a short film "Decision to Drop the Bomb". The kids got readings from all sides of the issue.

Then they had debates about dropping the bomb.

Defenders of the use of the bomb lost every time. Without the emotional and irrational arguments... or the cold blooded revenge arguments... the Bombers just didn't have the weight of evidence on their side.

The Japanese slaughter of the Chinese doesn't make our killing of Japanese civilians any more humane.

[Pavulon]

21. It increased my grandfathers

chances of not being killed in an invasion of Japan. Works for me.

I have plenty of non revisionist reasons too, but they are pretty much ignored in these threads.

[RedCappedBandit]

23. Oh, well as long as it works for you.

Who cares about all of those who did die?

[scarletwoman]

26. Please explain why we would have "needed" to invade Japan. (nt)

[dbackjon]

84. If you can't figure that out yourself

Then nothing anyone posts will influence your completely blinded view of WWII.

[Zomby Woof]

30. It ended the war

It makes me think you were not an unbiased referee of said proceedings.

It ended the war. There's your weight of evidence.

[Bigmack]

40. I wasn't the referee....

... the debate coach was. I took his classes while he judged the debate.

Ending the war with the bombs was not the only - or best - choice.

[angrycarpenter]

27. on the other hand

Had we bombed Berlin or some other European city the perception would be different. I think that in the American eye about 100 Asians = 1 white. Had we incinerated that many Austrians the world would have turned their backs on us(or bombed us back).

[Zomby Woof]

28. Dresden

The Allied bombing of Dresden was devastating - roughly 25,000 to 35,000 killed and 200,000+ injured. But because it was through conventional means, it gets overlooked by all but history buffs and/or Vonnegut readers. Not quite up there with Japan, but for a conventional weapons bombing, unprecedented.

[Hippo_Tron]

65. Was about to say the same thing

[angrycarpenter]

95. thank you

I had that thought about an hour after posting and it was bugging me all day.

[ruiner4u]

45. For the love of christ...

Yeah it was horrible that the US was the first nation to use atomic weapons, yeah it was horrible so many civilians died, and yes war in general is hell... But very few of us, if any of us, where there..Its easy to look back on history with rose colored glasses and second guess what we should have done..

[neverforget]

76. You are correct. With time and not having been there or gone through that time,

it's really easy to criticize the decisions that were made.

My dad, God rest his soul, was a replacement in the 27th Infantry Division in Okinawa. He never saw any combat thank God but he told a story about one of the combat vets in his platoon that operated a mortar. His buddies had all been killed but he had to operate the mortar for the infantry. So when the ammunition ran out, he would walk back to an ammo depot and carry as many mortar as he could and fire them and then repeat the process. By the time he was done telling the story, the man was a crying wreck because of what he had seen and done.

Instead of being in the Invasion of Japan, he was one of the first into Japan with the 105th Infantry Regiment/27th Infantry Division. As far as I'm concerned, I'm here because of that decision to drop the bombs. Is it right to kill civilians in a war? No. Whether they died from a nuclear blast or a firebombing campaign, they are dead. The days when a battlefield was confined to the countryside are long gone. The only way to avoid civilian casualties is not to have a war.

[unkachuck]

31. 'The Atomic Plague'....

....brought to you by, Tom Brokaws' 'Greatest Generation', who reminded me every day of the week when I was growing up, just how great they were....

....I can also remember being 10 or 11 and looking at an old map of Europe hanging over the black board in an old run-down Chicago school room....next to it was a more current map of Europe....

....I sat noticing how all the countries and borders were different and if we wait 50 years and the Russians didn't blow us up with nuclear bombs, those countries and borders would probably all change again....

....I mentioned it to my teacher and she just laughed, but it taught me about patience and dangerous long-term solutions for short-term problems....

[Jim Sagle]

52. "Independent journalist Wilfred Burchett" was neither. He was a red. Fuck'm.

[LearnedHand]

59. Link, please

source of your info about Burchett?

[ConsAreLiars]

61. Don't expect any facts. Name callers are just that. They just

scream epithets, whatever works for them: dirty commie, nigger-lover, anti-American, Jew or holocaust denier - it doesn't matter, they have nothing to offer beyond curse words.

[LearnedHand]

63. {{{ Whispers behind hand }}}

I knew that. I was just calling a bluff. :evilgrin:

[ConsAreLiars]

64. Shush - dont tell anyone, but

but I thought poking an apologist dittohead with a stick would just be fun. Just another form of :thumbsup: for your posts on this subject.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

66. K & R. It's just incredible that there are still people who...

...try to rationalize detonating nuclear bombs over densely populated major cities not once, but twice -- absolute insanity.

------------------------------------------

Testimony of Akira Onogi

Mr. Akira Onogi was 16 years old when the bomb was dropped. He was at home 1.2 km away from center of explosion. The house was under the shade of the warehouse, which protected him from the first blast. All five members of the Onogi family miraculously survived the immediate fire at their house.

MR. ONOGI: I was in the second year of junior high school and was mobilized work with my classmates at the Eba Plant, Mitsubishi shipbuilding. On the day when A-bomb was dropped, I happened to be taking the day off and I was staying at home. I was reading lying on the floor with a friend of mine. Under the eaves I saw blue flash of light just like a spark made by a train or some short circuit. Next, a steamlike blast came.

INTERVIEWER: From which direction?

ANSWER: Well, I'm not sure, anyway, when the blast came, my friend and I were blown into another room. I was unconscious for a while, and when I came to, I found myself in the dark. Thinking my house was directly hit by a bomb, I removed red soil and roof tiles covering me by hand and for the first time I saw the sky. I managed to go out to open space and I looked around wondering what my family were doing. I found that all the houses around there had collapsed for as far as I could see.

INTERVIEWER: All the houses?

ANSWER: Yes, well, I couldn't see anyone around me but I heard somebody shouting ``Help! Help!'' from somewhere. The cries were actually from underground as I was walking on. Since no choose were available, I'd just dug out red soil and roof tiles by hand to help my family; my mother, my three sisters and a child of one of my sisters. Then, I looked next door and I saw the father of neighboring family standing almost naked. His skin was peeling off all over his body and was hanging from finger tips. I talked to him but he was too exhausted to give me a reply. He was looking for his family desperately. The person in this picture was a neighbor of us. I think the family's name was the Matsumotos. When we were escaping from the edge of the bridge, we found this small girl crying and she asked us to help her mother. Just beside the girl, her mother was trapped by a fallen beam on top of the lower half of her body. Together with neighbors, we tried hard to remove the beam, but it was impossible without any tools. Finally a fire broke out endangering us. So we had no choice but to leave her. She was conscious and we deeply bowed to her with clasped hands to apologize to her and then we left. About one hour later, it started raining heavily. There were large drops of black rain. I was wearing a short sleeve shirt and shorts and it was freezing. Everybody was shivering. We warmed ourselves up around the burning fire in the middle of the summer.

INTERVIEWER: You mean the fire did not extinguish by the rain?

ANSWER: That's right. The fire didn't subside it at all. What impressed my very strongly was a 5 or 6 year-old-boy with his right leg cut at the thigh. He was hopping on his left foot to cross over the bridge. I can still record this scene very clearly. The water of the river we looking at now is very clean and clear, but on the day of bombing, all the houses along this river were blown by the blast with their pillars, beams and pieces of furniture blown into the river or hanging off the bridges. The river was also filled with dead people blown by the blast and with survivors who came here to seek water. Anyway I could not see the surface of the water at all. Many injured people with peeled skin were crying out for help. Obviously they were looking at us and we could hardly turn our eyes toward the river.

INTERVIEWER: Wasn't it possible to help them?

ANSWER: No, there were too many people. We took care of the people around us by using the clothes of dead people as bandages, especially for those who were terribly wounded. By that time we somehow became insensible all those awful things. After a while, the fire reached the river bank and we decided to leave the river. We crossed over this railway bridge and escaped in the direction along the railway. The houses on both sides of the railroad were burning and railway was the hollow in the fire. I thought I was going to die here. It was such an awful experience. You know for about 10 years after bombing I always felt paralyzed we never saw the sparks made by trains or lightning. Also even at home, I could not sit beside the windows because I had seen so many people badly wounded by pieces of glass. So I always sat with the wall behind me for about 10 years. It was some sort of instinct to self-preservation.

Source: http://www.inicom.com/hibakusha/akira.html

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

67. Sundance Film Festival '07 - Hiroshima Survivor Shigeko

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGGmTs6oJJI&mode=related&search=

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

68. KINUKO LASKEY, HIROSHIMA SURVIVOR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYQrfwqx7zI&mode=related&search=

[The Witch]

69. My obligatory post regarding the "We shoulda/we shouldn'ta" debate

Same post, different thread... original's here

The Hiroshima Memorial Museum is not called the Atomic Bomb Memorial Museum. It is called the Peace Memorial Museum.

In that Museum, there is not one single message of blame. I did not feel guilty being an American to be there. The only messages arguing the past were those of the Americans who felt threatened by the fact that the museum dared to present the facts of what happened. they were protesting against an injustice that had not occurred - the facts seemed to them to be an accusation, and so they defended themselves against a persecution that was only in their mind.

Not one word of the exhibits in that museum is wasted on "The US should not have done this" or even on "This should never have happened."

Its ONLY message is "This should never happen again."

If the people of Hiroshima are able to look forward instead of backward, can't we do the same?

Just saying.

[Javaman]

70. I go back and forth on the atomic bomb issue...

However, after having read this my mind is firmly in the no nukes side.

I believe dropping the bomb has done more long term damage, not just to the people of Japan but just to the overall mentality of it's use.

because this story was suppressed, we now have morons* that are actually talking about using nuclear bombs against Iran in a "limited" fashion.

I weep for our future with "leaders*" such as ours.

[LanternWaste]

72. As for me, I understand that it's always a losing game...

As for me, I understand that it's always a losing game to play, "What if I had to make the decision?", because the answer is usually not what we would have done, but rather what we like to think we would have done-- two completely different answers more often than not)

I can comfortably sit back seventy years after the fact and second-guess almost any strategic decision made during that conflict, pick them apart and offer viable alternatives. Having said that, I'd hate to have been in Truman's position (and before the sub-literate, Jr. G-Men, pseudo-historians jump on me-- Yes, I've done my homework on this for over twenty-five years-- books, actually, not merely a handful of websites and editorials).

Anyone who states with absolute knowledge that they would have done A or B (or even C, thrown in for good measure) in that situation is a little too full of their own sense of intellectual ego to have a full and valid conversation re: the pro's and the con's of that particular strategic decision.

Even after having read his post war letters about his decision to approve the double-bombing, I still can't even imagine the devils he wrestled with as he debated his bosom in what he already knew would be one of the world's most momentous choices. With the weight of millions of lives worldwide, hundreds of thousands of lives of the people you lead, and a handful of advisers whispering this and that in his ear, I truly believe he made the choice he thought was the right one.

[AuntPatsy]

74. Simple proof that "life" is not as valued and hasn't been since the dawn of man as some pretend it

to be. With all this technology available in the twenty first century we are no smarter than the first human that walked this earth, survival of the fitess and most powerful prevails unabated.

[shance]

80. I think Hiroshima (and Nagasaki) are painful examples of how we are all vulnerable to mass weaponry

and how nothing positive comes from such usage.

People have said, and I certainly learned in my history classes as a student that the dropping of those bombs stopped the war.

But apparently there is evidence to the contrary. Namely that Japan had already chosen to surrender, and that the bombs were dropped anyway.

I don't have references to back up that point at my immediate disposal, so if someone has references, please post.

[mhatrw]

100. If we hadn't dropped the bombs on actual people, the Russians would have

gotten credit for VJ day. From an imperial capitalistic perspective, that wouldn't have been prudent.

[Feron]

102. A lot of people are completely missing the point

You can refight the war until you are blue in the face, but it won't change history.

The Japanese atomic bomb survivors aren't speaking out because they blame America or to wallow in pity, they speak out to prevent the same horror from happening to anyone else. If we keep refighting the war, then their message gets lost in the noise.

Yes it is dispicable that the true horror of atomic warfare was hidden from Americans for so long, but it is also a typical governmental behavior. Thank God for the internet making information easily accessible and bypassing the mainstream news organizations entirely. If anything this reinforces the fact that you can't depend on the mainstream news to tell the truth.

That doesn't mean, however, we should give up on the media entirely as there are a few bright spots. Fighting for the truth is always a struggle ,but always worth the effort.

And we should never forget the horrors of war as there are no good wars. War is sadly necessary at times, but is only acceptable as an absolute last resort.