8:17 am Local Time

[filkertom]

Sixty years ago, we dropped an atomic bomb on a civilian population.

The city of Hiroshima has grown back. And this listing at Wikipedia has links to a large number of pages with anything you could want to know about the city, then or now.

But the history remains.

May it never, never happen again.

Comments

[filkferengi]

Amen.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

Hiroshima was merely an atrocity.

Nagasaki was an obscenity.

[ororo.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[wwetuesday.livejournal.com]

Meh. If Japan had the bomb instead of us, they would have dropped it on us in a heartbeat. If they has 100 atomic bombs, they would bomb us 100 times in a row.

They weren't going to give up. Nothing we did was going to make them give up. The hostile takeover of China, the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor, it had to stop.

Even after we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, Japan stil refused to give up. It wasn't until we dropped the bomb on Nagasaki that Japan finaly surrendered. If we didn't, who knows what more damage Japan would have done.

You are forgeting *WHY* the bomb was dropped. It was droped to stop a nation out of control, and to tell them that we weren't goning to take it anymore.

Do you think Truman *wanted* to kill all those people? You think he *wanted* to drop those bombs? It was something he kept putting off until he had no other choice.

War is hell. And yes, casualties will be many. And yes, they will be both solider and civilian. But that is the nature of war.

Is it fair that millions of innovent lives had to be ended, no. But no one said life was fair.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I am not forgetting a thing.

Y'ever see Barefoot Gen? The From Dusk Till Dawn of anime. If not, please go find it. And maybe you'll get a bit of what I'm talking about.

I very deliberately didn't mention the history, the politics, not even the context. They weren't the point.

My point was, I thought, pretty straightforward: No more war. Ever. Especially not with that horrible, hideous weaponry.

It's precisely because it's the nature of war that we must never allow it to happen again.

[drzarron.livejournal.com]

You beat me to it, but your answer is correct.

A conventional invasion of Japan, ala D-Day, would have been a slaughter on both sides the likes of which the world can barely conceive. The Japanese people are proud and strong and devoted and would have fought tooth and nail to the last person standing. Two concentrated points of destruction saved a magnitude greater amount of destruction and brought the war to an end, rather than having it drag on and on.

We can regret that it came to that. We should certainly mourn the loss of lives. But we should never be ashamed of these actions.

And the world learned a lesson from this. We saw what it meant to use atomics and had it impressed on us what length it would take to drive us to use them.. and we've not been tempted since.

Its easy to moralize in retrospect. Find a combat vet of WWII, especially one who faced the Japanese and ask them if it was a mistake.

[wwetuesday.livejournal.com]

No more war. Nice thought, but a bit far-fetched.

War will continure to be, far after we're all gone. Past our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

As long as there's people in this world that think people "not like them" should all die, war will continue. As long as hate, prejudice, jealousy, murder, and the like continue to exist in this world, so will war.

Sure, you can teach your kid to be a good person. But there's always another that's teaching their kid to hate your kid becasue he's not "like them".

The day that war is no more, is the day the human race is no more.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

And so therefore we shouldn't try? Sorry, but that's just the most wrong attitude I can imagine.

It is precisely because there are people out there who love war so much that they will go to any lengths to wage it that the rest of us must stop them from doing so.

[hitchkitty.livejournal.com]

The unfortunate question is then how to stop someone that determined without waging war yourself.

I cannot applaud what was done to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I cannot say that anyone deserves that. There's a sick joke: American kids only have to listen to "When I was your age, I had to walk uphill to school, both ways, through five feet of snow."; Japanese kids have to listen to "When I was your age, we had two atomic bombs dropped on us".

I don't know that we had much choice. This was not a casual decision. Was it necessarily the moral thing to do? No. To attack civilians in a time of war is never the moral thing to do.

The distasteful, repulsive, pragmatic reality is that one of the few ways to prevent war is to induce in the mind of the enemy -- or potential enemy -- the fear to attack. If you can demonstrate, as we did, that you have a terrible, devestating, unstoppable and most of all reproducible weapon, you will achieve deterrence.

We held hostage the citizenry of another nation. We used the methods of terrorism. That is something we can never be proud of.

It is our responsibility, to our children's children's children, to do everything in our power to avoid falling into that situation again. Let us address the causes of war. Let us take the advice of Winston Churchill, that "it is always better to jaw-jaw than to war-war". But let us also acknowledge the unpleasant, unpalatable fact that the sword must from time to time be loosed.

[holzman.livejournal.com]

But let us also acknowledge the unpleasant, unpalatable fact that the sword must from time to time be loosed.

It's never a must, it's always a choice. It may on occasion be the best choice to make, but if we're going to acknowledge that, let us also acknowledge that the only way that state of affairs ever comes about is as a result of our failure to prevent it.

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this one since adolescence, when I would awake from nightmares about being bombed. Having been in the military, and still having friends in the military, I can't see an overt love of war, so much as a determination not to be the ones to give it up first.

Does such a distinction matter? I think if we assume that war persists because its so much fun for some people, then the tendency is to find those people and hate them. Some of the most pig-headed bigots I know, are proper 'lefty' types who say all the politically correct things and feel fine hating, as long as they hate only the bad people.

For myself, I've come to believe that we're still stuck in the pre-alchemy dark ages, when it comes to understanding the 'chemical' interactions between people/atoms. Just as they used to think phlogiston was the potential energy in something that became hot, we're still stuck in a freudian paradigm to explain why people act violently toward each other.

My own theory is still a little sketchy, but here's what I've got:

Peace and war are not symmetrical opposites any more than heat and cold are. We don't say that things are hot because they lack sufficient 'coolth'. Zero Kelvin is a reference point from which all heat phenomena can be measured.

In the same way, peace is not simply the absence of war. I think of peace as something that happens whether or not we're thinking about it. It's people productively participating in their culture. War is an interruption of peace. It also resembles fire in the way it consumes the cultural surplus created during peaceful times.

I do not seek an end to the struggle called war. Instead, I want to slow it down and make it less toxic, in the same way that rust is less dangerous than flame. Hatred of the phenomenon or the people who get caught up in it, is a severe handicap to this agenda.

Burden of proof

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

Your thesis seems to be that no matter what the tools, the need for violent stuggle isn't going to go away. Back when we used hand tools to kill each other, and it was possible to only kill other people holding hand tools, this really wan't that big a problem, and the burden of proof lay on those who wanted it to stop.

At some point, the power tools used for killing have gotten so powerful, and so indiscriminate, that I think there's been a qualitative change in the rationale: The burden of proof no longer lies with those who want to stop the killing, I think it's up to you and your supporters to prove that this kind of thing can continue indefinitely.

To my mind, it's self evident that earth can't afford another Hiroshima. You want to prove me wrong, you're going to either need a big bomb, or a very persuasive argument.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

While many civilians died, Horoshima was a very important military target.

***
Hiroshima was a city of considerable military importance. It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. To quote a Japanese report, "Probably more than a thousand times since the beginning of the war did the Hiroshima citizens see off with cries of 'Banzai' the troops leaving from the harbor."

- Avalon project, Yale Law School.
***

It was hardly a civilian target. And while the horrors of the use of such weapons can't be ignored, the facts surrounding why they were use shouldn't be swept under the rug, either.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

LISTEN TO YOURSELVES.

I put something up here to note the sixtieth anniversary of the dropping of the bomb. I did not try to gloss over the history, the context, or anything else about it.

I am getting, from people I value and find rational, a whole lot of explanation and excuse.

This is how we got to goddamn Abu Ghraib.

Yes, it was probably the best action to take. Yes, a Normandy-style invasion would've been impossible, or at least supremely difficult, and would've played to the Japanese' strengths. Yes, Hiroshima was a center for many military activities. Yes, sometimes war has been necessary. Yes, we should never be afraid to take whatever steps we must to win a war.

But I'd LIKE to think that the best possible course would be to avoid ever again getting into a situation where dropping an atomic weapon seems like a reasonable option.

Is that so VERY goddamn hard to comprehend?

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I'd rather that the best possible course would be to avoid war at all.

But that seems unattainable. To have peace, everyone must want peace. All it takes is one greedy gus to want war, and there is war.

At the moment, the only way of preventing the use of nukes is to make using them so destructive to everyone, that they'll never be used again. This is MAD (mutually assured destruction) I know. But it's prevented the so-called inevitable nuclear war for 50 years now and I admit that even in my wildest SF fantasies, I cannot find an alternative. In a strange manner, the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended one war at lesser loss of life, and also prevented the following war by scaring the poop out of powermongers everywhere in a way that nothing else has.

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

Tom, you said it right. Ignore the people mentioning the politics.

Yeah, the use of those bombs probably saved lives. Yeah, the right decision got made.

Still, the necessity of it sucked, and we should all hope it should never happen again, regardless of the reasoning behind why it happened in the first place.

People who feel the need to bring it up every time are more likely insecure about this piece of our history.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Thanks. It just tees me off that this kind of conversation always gets otherwise reasonable people to start going "Well, y'know..." and launching into their particular philosophy on When It's Right To Do It.

It's not. It never is. Just because some people are determined to make war does not mean the rest of us sigh, sit back, and let them have at it.

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

Well I do see their point a *little*.

To wit- I'd say that at the point the bomb was dropped, it probably had to be done. The cost of an invasion in lives was going to be much more than the cost in lives of dropping those two bombs.

The necessity is what sucked. And since it was the Japanese who started the war with us, it's not like we could have avoided the situation in the first place. So yeah, when someone goes off on Hiroshima and Nagaski as examples of "American War Crimes". I argue with them. Vociferously. That is *not* what you did though. And if anyone accuses you of it, I'll argue with them just as vociferously.

What you did there is not a blessed thing wrong with. All you did was point out the events of 60 years ago and essentially said, "That is a fucking shame. It shouldn't have happened. It shouldn't have been necessary. It should never happen again, and I hope we've all, as a species, learned our damned lesson".

And what you did was the right thing to do.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Hey, I see their point, more than a little. Again, given the context, the history, the actions in the recent past of the Japanese military and the Japanese people, etc., etc., etc.

What got me steamed was that saying, in so many words, "Jeezus, we dropped an atomic bomb on a city, let's never do that again" brought out a selection of "Harumph! They were the enemy, and sometimes...."

These are friends of mine saying this stuff, too.

You want to talk about the necessity of it? The "rightness" of it? How war is terrible, and it's part of human nature, blah blah blah? You go right ahead. I'll happily join in that discussion.

But FIRST I am going to lament the dead, and the way they died, and the thought process that led them to being killed.

On one thing, though, I will not back down: The tired stuff about not being able to stop other people from hating, from waging war. That is precisely the sort of thing that society is supposed to be able to do. Between teaching people not to hate (and, yes, in the grand let's-fuck-with-the-psychohistorian-and-throw-in-extenuating-circumstances tradition, I can't stop every bigot from finding some kid and breathing hate into their veins) and preventing criminals from committing acts of violence, from two governments talking through their differences to two peoples refusing to fight their governments' wars, we can be good enough to not go to war ever again.

Whether we will is the question. But don't tell me it's inevitable, just because some shmucks always want it.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

When It's Right To Do It.

It's not. It never is.

Correct. It may be less wrong, and therefore necessary. But that does not make it right, nor desirable, nor any less desirable to work at eliminating the root cause of the necessity.

Dammit, that's complicated. Let's try again.

War sucks. Sometimes you have to fight. It still sucks, even if you have bigger sticks and win. Sometimes that even sucks more.

Playing nice is the simple way to non-suckage.

Which, Tom, is what you're saying. May we see the day.

I agree with you

[jkb.livejournal.com]

The bombing of Hiroshima was necessary at the time but it was a tremendous tragedy. Even those of us who believe Truman made that right decision can pause to mourn and hope we never face that decision again.

Re: I agree with you

[jkb.livejournal.com]

the right decision*

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

My friend Tom's mother was just a little girl at the time... she said she and her family were lucky to survive.

And, just for a bit of context....

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

I agree perfectly with this interview with historian Richard Rhodes (http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/08/06/rhodes/index.html) in Salon (free day-pass required, just click through the ads), which goes along with what several of you have said, and yet I believe also makes my point as well. Cool?

[yinepuhotep.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, as long as governments are allowed to decide, it will happen again, despite its obvious evil.

War is nothing more than institutionalized murder, and Hiroshima is, like Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Abu Ghraib, an example of just how much evil can be done by people who tell themselves they are "the good guys", when they have the power of government behind them.

Current mood: thoughtful

Counterexample

[anansi133.livejournal.com]

It's discussions like these that make me want to think about the times humanity actually did get it right. I was reminded of one of these times recently when I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey for the umpteenth time the other night.

When the distant human ancestor throws the bone into the air, bridging several million years in one jump cut, it's not obvious what the bone has morphed into. The movie just shows some gracefully orbiting space hardware.

In the book, though, it's made clear that these are orbiting nuclear weapons, ready to drop on a moment's notice.

This time around, I actually got to thinking about what it would take to maintain nukes in orbit, from the point of view of a superpower in 1960. Besides the expense of building the damn thing and lofting it up there, you need to keep spending fuel to keep it in orbit. Once that station-keeping propellant is used up, it's going to either need replenishment, or the whole massively expensive platform is going to come down.

I think this subtlety was not lost on Kennedy and Khrushchev back in that time. When the stationkeeping fuel was about to be used up, the temptation to go ahead and de-orbit the bomb and use it to 'solve' some kind of crisis instead of dropping it in the ocean, might well become overwhelming.

So, in light of that, the choice to re-frame the question in terms of a race to the moon was sheer genius. Two societies with the will and the power to wipe each other off the map, and one invites the other to a footrace, and the challenge is accepted. How cool is that?!?

I know a lot of people who seem reluctant to acknowledge the cold-war rationale for the moon shots. The war-like motivations behind such an effort are embarrassing to some, we'd rather think of it as something done for the sheer art of it. To my mind, the astronauts of that time were no different than the boomer crews and bomber pilots of today, and they deserve equal respect regardless of their tools.