Japan marks Hiroshima anniversary

Source: Reuters UK

TOKYO (Reuters) - Tens of thousands bowed their heads at a ceremony in the Japanese city of Hiroshima on Wednesday, the 63rd anniversary of the world's first atomic attack, as the city's mayor hit out at countries that refuse to abandon their bombs.

A bell tolled at 8:15 a.m. to mark the exact moment when the bomb dubbed "Little Boy" was dropped on the city, killing tens of thousands immediately and many more later from radiation sickness.

Fukuda echoed some of Akiba's sentiments, saying he wanted to take a lead in the campaign against nuclear weapons and try to help as many as possible of those dealing with poor health after being exposed to radiation.

"We must not repeat such a sad event," one mother attending the ceremony told broadcaster NHK. "We need to pass that message on to our children's generation."



Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKT27129520080806

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You will not hear anger and condemnation of the US for the Atomic Bombing even if you ask 100 Japanese. Similarly, I ask you to have the good grace to offer no excuses for it either in this thread. This is meant as a commemoration.

so that it will never be repeated.

Why not the firebombing of Tokyo that killed more people than the atomic bombs?

Why not Dresden?

Why not Nanking?

Why should people dying from an atomic bomb never be forgotten, but even more people dying from attacks using conventional weapons shrugged off?

Are you assuming that I do not care for everyone who died during this war and others? The OP was about the attack on Hiroshima. I answered in reference to that. Allow me to clarify. I believe this was a tragic event that should not be repeated or forgotten. The other attacks you mention are also terrible moments in history. They should not be forgotten or repeated either. Unfortunately, they have been and will be again.

Why are attacks by conventional weapons shrugged off? I cannot say for certain. Perhaps the long history of such attacks has set a precedent which makes it harder for people to argue against them. There is less precedence for using atomic weapons due to their "newness" in relation to human history. This may make nuclear attacks seem more shocking and makes it easier to argue against their use.

As to "why?", I can only answer that if we forget the horror of past wars, then we are more likely to repeat them. That is why we should not forget.

The survivors and children of the survivors of Tokyo, Dresden and Nanking are not considered second-class citizens by their own countrymen. The survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are considered polluted and are discriminated against. The hibakusha ("explosion affected people") suffered not only burns, but radiation sickness and genetic damage. As horrible as conventional weapons attacks are, they don't take the same toll on the survivors. In Japan, to be identified as a hibakusha means that not only that person, but his or her entire family will be discriminated against-- in employment, marriage, etc. Many hibakusha who suffer from bomb-related disorders are afraid to apply for the small stipend they are eligible for because of the blight it will bring to their family.

Sorry, it's just not the same.

look at the pictures of the aftermath and still offer excuses is beyond me.

Museum ticket


Bomb dome on an overcast day


Ringing the peace bell


Little one near the eternal flame for the victims

Was it very emotional for you?

Our trip started in Hawaii, were we visited the Arizona memorial, so visiting Hiroshima was a fitting way to end; seeing the horror and futility of war from both sides

and thank you for sharing.

Professor of modern philosphy at Tokyo's Catholic University

... I am bleeding from cuts about the hands and head. I attempt to get out of the door. It has been forced outwards by the air pressure and has become jammed. I force an opening in the door by means of repeated blows with my hands and feet and come to a broad hallway from which open the various rooms. Everything is in a state of confusion. All windows are broken and all the doors are forced inwards. The bookshelves in the hallway have tumbled down. I do not note a second explosion and the fliers seem to have gone on. Most of my colleagues have been injured by fragments of glass. A few are bleeding but none has been seriously injured. All of us have been fortunate since it is now apparent that the wall of my room opposite the window has been lacerated by long fragments of glass ...

Perhaps a half-hour after the explosion, a procession of people begins to stream up the valley from the city. The crowd thickens continuously. A few come up the road to our house. We give them first aid and bring them into the chapel, which we have in the meantime cleaned and cleared of wreckage, and put them to rest on the straw mats which constitute the floor of Japanese houses. A few display horrible wounds of the extremities and back. The small quantity of fat which we possessed during this time of war was soon used up in the care of the burns. Father Rektor who, before taking holy orders, had studied medicine, ministers to the injured, but our bandages and drugs are soon gone. We must be content with cleansing the wounds ...

Toward noon, our large chapel and library are filled with the seriously injured. The procession of refugees from the city continues. Finally, about one o'clock, Father Kopp returns, together with the Sisters. Their house and the entire district where they live has burned to the ground. Father Kopp is bleeding about the head and neck, and he has a large burn on the right palm. He was standing in front of the nunnery ready to go home. All of a sudden, he became aware of the light, felt the wave of heat and a large blister formed on his hand. The windows were torn out by the blast. He thought that the bomb had fallen in his immediate vicinity. The nunnery, also a wooden structure made by our Brother Gropper, still remained but soon it is noted that the house is as good as lost because the fire, which had begun at many points in the neighborhood, sweeps closer and closer, and water is not available. There is still time to rescue certain things from the house and to bury them in an open spot. Then the house is swept by flame, and they fight their way back to us along the shore of the river and through the burning streets ...

Hurriedly, we get together two stretchers and seven of us rush toward the city. Father Rektor comes along with food and medicine. The closer we get to the city, the greater is the evidence of destruction and the more difficult it is to make our way. The houses at the edge of the city are all severely damaged. Many have collapsed or burned down. Further in, almost all of the dwellings have been damaged by fire. Where the city stood, there is a gigantic burned-out scar. We make our way along the street on the river bank among the burning and smoking ruins. Twice we are forced into the river itself by the heat and smoke at the level of the street ...

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp25.htm

"The magnitude of the disaster that befell Hiroshima on August 6th was only slowly pieced together in my mind. I lived through the catastrophe and saw it only in flashes, which only gradually were merged to give me a total picture. What actually happened simultaneously in the city as a whole is as follows: As a result of the explosion of the bomb at 8:15, almost the entire city was destroyed at a single blow. Only small outlying districts in the southern and eastern parts of the town escaped complete destruction. The bomb exploded over the center of the city. As a result of the blast, the small Japanese houses in a diameter of five kilometers, which compressed 99% of the city, collapsed or were blown up. Those who were in the houses were buried in the ruins. Those who were in the open sustained burns resulting from contact with the substance or rays emitted by the bomb. Where the substance struck in quantity, fires sprang up. These spread rapidly.

The heat which rose from the center created a whirlwind which was effective in spreading fire throughout the whole city. Those who had been caught beneath the ruins and who could not be freed rapidly, and those who had been caught by the flames, became casualties. As much as six kilometers from the center of the explosion, all houses were damaged and many collapsed and caught fire. Even fifteen kilometers away, windows were broken. It was rumored that the enemy fliers had spread an explosive and incendiary material over the city and then had created the explosion and ignition. A few maintained that they saw the planes drop a parachute which had carried something that exploded at a height of 1,000 meters. The newspapers called the bomb an "atomic bomb" and noted that the force of the blast had resulted from the explosion of uranium atoms, and that gamma rays had been sent out as a result of this, but no one knew anything for certain concerning the nature of the bomb.

How many people were a sacrifice to this bomb? Those who had lived through the catastrophe placed the number of dead at at least 100,000. Hiroshima had a population of 400,000. Official statistics place the number who had died at 70,000 up to September 1st, not counting the missing ... and 130,000 wounded, among them 43,500 severely wounded."

Wouldn't millions of Americans and millions of Japanese have died if the U.S. was forced into invading the Japanese homeland?? Wouldn't the war have raged on for years beyond 1945?

But I will state simply that it is a ridiculous idea. Ridiculous, disgusting and prima facie absurd. And that is just the start.

Something this controversial always sparks a fire fight.

2003:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x196175
Hiroshima Russian Invasion of Manchuria

2005:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4275977
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4240509
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5404625

2006:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x846226

2007
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x878961
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2000012
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x170071

January 2008:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3143724

If you want to comment on the bombing read the above and post in one of them, thus moving it to the top of the page. We probably should do one in the History forum of DU, just to keep the number of such thread manageable.

Don't make statements that beg for debate.

Only in response to another's transgression.

You didn't similarly scold a poster who said How anyone could look at the pictures of the aftermath and still offer excuses is beyond me. because you happen to agree with that sentiment.

I don't want to start a flame-war either, but don't pretend this thread is merely for memorial if you chide a poster making a fairly benign statement and respond that the idea of the bombs being a necessary evil is absurd on its face, which, you must admit, is inviting argument.

Eisenhower was against our government nuking Japan. In "Mandate for Change," he wrote: "I was one of those who felt there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ... The Secretary , upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression, and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief Japan was already defeated and dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.'

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=43146


Edit to include link to complete text of Mandate for Change: http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=16309287

From a military-logic standpoint, he was right. Japan's military was all but defeated. But the reasoning didn't stop there.

What Ike did not appear to understand was that even though military logic said Japan was defeated, that did not translate into Japanese willingness to surrender. The Japanese militarists were trying to get the USSR to negotiate an end to the war on the basis of status quo, i.e. the fighting to stop, but things in Japan remain the same, with the militarists still in charge and the emperor's status unchanged. The Foreign Ministry's plan was to get that done then make an alliance with the USSR against America, then resume the war against America 15 or 20 years later. This was unacceptable to America.

That the Japanese were looking for a way to peace, that does not and did not at the time mean the same thing as surrender.

Moreover, and not to put too fine a point on it, Ike detested Truman. It is not inconceivable that Ike's views toward what was ultimately a Truman triumph, to wit, obtaining unconditional surrender, which had been our policy from day one, were somewhat skewed.

Ah well.

Casualty predictions ran as high as millions for Allied casualties, and tens of millions for Japanese casualties. Japan was also starving to death. A delay in surrender could have killed millions more.

Then there is the matter that at the time of the bombing Japan still occupied all or parts of what is today Cambodia, China, Laos, North and South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand and many pacific islands. The local populations had been subjected to rape, torture and murder for years. A delay in Japan's surrender would have resulted in even more crimes being committed.

I wish that the US had demonstrated the bomb on Mount Fuji first but there were only a few bombs available and they were afraid to waste them.

There was talk of dropping one on the invasion beaches just before our troops landed. Thank God that didn't happen.

I have had reason to consider your comment for many years. My father had just returned from fighting in Europe, at D-Day and The Bulge, and was preparing to deploy for preparations to invade Japan. On a personal level, I might have lost my father in that event. And I agree that had the fighting continued, many more troops and civilians would have lost their lives -- perhaps many more than died at Hiroshima.

Looking at the big picture, we truly opened Pandora's Box when we invented the bomb. I have always been bothered that we did not wait longer before then bombing Nagasaki. The rationale is that "they didn't surrender."

It is easy to recoil in horror at the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We should. But I think it is important to take a look at what it was that inspired the making of the bomb in the first place, and that is the history of the Japanese, and their brutality at Nanking, their fanaticism, their treatment of prisoners of war. Then, we were the conquering heroes, we felt. Now, I shudder to think how much our country has turned in the direction of those same practices. And we are the giant with the bomb many times over.

This is a day when ceremonies are held here in Santa Fe and at Los Alamos in memory of that terrible event at Hiroshima. It is a time to consider that humans aren't for number crunching with regard to which horror would have been the worst. Now we need to consider how we may act out that well-used meme: "Never again." This is a splended day to look to the path we are taking as a nation, and wonder if at some future point, we will be looked upon as the Japanese were, as a people, after WWII. In truth, we don't need to wait for the future. *Japan* is, this day, urging *America* to grow up and behave as a leader of nations.

On this day, every year, this soldier's daughter mourns the loss of life on both sides of the conflict with Japan. We, and they, are much more than the weapons we create, the wars we engage in. Much more, we are all people who want to live and love life, and honor differences rather than trying to obliterate them.

The questions will go on. What is moral in war? How do we avoid war? What should we be teaching young people to further peace, so that the unthinkable will not ever be thought of again?

Peace.

dropped and the end was in sight----I remember it.

Is this a good thing? No,of course not,but the atomic bomb saved many lives.

War is hell.Period.

:sarcasm: Arguments that project into the future what truth may or may not have been and then return with certainty to profess a very convenient and self-righteous "truth."

War is hell, you are right.

I've been to the Nagasaki site and I've seen the way our destructive force was inflicted on the civilian populations. Whether or not it saved lives is entirely irrelevant to that suffering. You can justify mass murder all you want to prop up your own guilty conscience... I'm sure the 9/11 attackers do the same.

Based on well-documented evidence that Japan had made multiple attempts, at least as early as July 1945, to surrender to the Allies. Every offer was ignored - no response ever sent. So if "millions of Americans and millions of Japanese" had ended up dying in Operation CORONET (the invasion of Japan) it would have only been because the Allies (mainly the US as lead nation in the Pacific) had refused to accept a surrender.

My sincere apologies to the OP for descending into debate when that is not the intention of this post.

documentation of these well documented attempts. Being somewhat versed in Japanese culture, I find it almost impossible to believe they would ever attempt to surrender. Not in their genome.

But you'll have to come over here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3744464

...and join the party!

but all I see is one article by John Pilger where there are a lot of quotes that have no context. I would love to see the source material he is working from. The Japanese consider their race the penultimate creatures to ever walk the Earth. An easy surrender seems impossible. These are the same people that created the practice of disemboweling yourself to save face.

Did you not see all the comments to that post? There's a massive debate going on over there. I don't want to get into it here out of respect for the OP's wishes. It's the "Japan marks Hiroshima anniversay" post. There is quite a bit of evidence, much of it from the Magic Diplomatic Summaries from July 1945, stored in the National Archives.

Depends what book we use as reference. Still, it makes for a nice discussion.

My father (and his brother...a Seabee) was US Navy at the time and would have been fully involved in the invasion of the Japanese home islands had there been no Hiroshima. He lived...and I live as well because of Hiroshima. it was a very sad situation for the people who were killed and maimed horribly....but without it, the killing and maiming wuold have been horrifically worse. Just one man's opinion...

I believe the use of atomic weapons was a least horrible option amongst a set of unbelievably horrible choices. Thank goodness that they brought an end to the war, and thank goodness nothing like it has ever happened again.

that the people still afflicted by their injuries, and cancers from the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki can rest in peace. They have been tortured by their experience for all of these years. It is clear that you have found peace even if they haven't :sarcasm:

still living with the aftermath of injuries both physical and spiritual. I read a story of Navy doctors who were captured early in the war and kept in Japanese prison camps. One man died about 2 months before the end of the war, and his widow was still alive two years ago! Imagine that woman's pain all these years!


I consider the people that came up with the estimates of death and destruction if we didn't drop the bomb the spiritual ancestors of the people who prepared the intelligence showing that Saddam had WMD. There is enough controversy over events to suggest that negotiations could indeed have ended the war before an invasion. There are also suggestions that we dropped the bomb more out of concerns with Soviet Russia than with the Japanese.

about as much as I value the latest gift my neighbors dog left on my lawn. It's easy to sit in front of a computer 60 years later and talk about how wrong they were but lets look at facts:

We invaded the island of Iwo Jima 6 months before we dropped the bomb. The Japanese had about 20,000 killed. The US had 6,821 killed and 19,189 wounded. That is a total of about 45,000 casualties.

We invaded Okinawa 5 months before we dropped the bomb. Estimates are between 94,000 to 131,000 Japanese soldiers and 42,000 - 150,000 Japanese civilians were killed. They didn't count Japanese wounded. The US had 12,513 killed and 38,916 wounded. Splitting the estimates, that is about 209,000 Japanese and 51,000 US casualties. That is a total of about 260,000 casualties (not counting the wounded civilians.

Between those two battles we are up to 300,000 casualties and we haven't even touched the mainland yet.

The area, population and military presence on Iwo Jima and Okinawa was minuscule compared to that of Japan.

Did you bother to look at these numbers before you made your grandiose pronouncement about how evil or stupid the guys that came up with these estimates were?

There were other issues at stake. The US was bringing troops back to the US, granting them leave home for the first time in years and then shipping the same soldiers to the pacific to invade Japan. Estimates that a minimum of 10% and as many as 30% would desert. There were real fears of a mutiny.

The war was expensive and ending it as soon as possible was considered important to the US and the US was the most important consideration to the US government.

The Soviets were also a concern. The US didn't want Soviet troops on the Japanese mainland. Considering how things turned out in Eastern Europe that was probably a good thing.

Talk of a negotiated settlement was just that and do you really think that would have been a good thing? Would you have accepted a negotiated settlement with Nazi Germany? The Japanese were no better.

within 3 days, just to prove that we could do it over and over again without remorse?

When you kill 90,000-140,000 in one fell swoop (diseasing another few hundred thousand), perhaps you just aren't satisfied and feel the need to kill another 40,000 people while diseasing some 200,000 more...

we could have ended the war immediately with no loss of life on either side. They second guess generals and intelligence agents who spent years studying the problem, who had more knowledge and more expertise in this field than anyone here (who here specialized in winning a war against 1940s era japan?) and who were not blessed with ample free time during an era of peace (with japan at least) to sit around and choose the absolute best that would have made everyone happy.

It's tragic that their civilians suffered as a result of their governments choice to launch a war of aggression against us. But short of praying for miracles there's not much else we could have done. There is nothing humane about prolonging a devastating war. The ideal thing is to never start in the first place, but once it's begun you should try to end it as quickly and cheaply (especially to your side) as possible. And that's what we did.

I wonder how many memorials they have to the victims of Japanese atrocities suffered by the civilians in their "greater east asian co-prosperity sphere"? Victims who died long after their respective countries had surrendered.

I wonder how many of the "historians" criticizing the bombing know that Japan attacked the US over oil?