The Bombs of August: Remembering Hiroshima and GW Bush

Yes, there is a very real connection....segment reprinted with permission:

THE BOMBS OF AUGUST

In Remembrance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
TvNewsLIES.org

When the bombs were dropped I was very happy. The war would be over now, they said, and I was very happy. The boys would be coming home very soon they said, and I was very happy. We showed ‘em, they said, and I was very happy. They told us that the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed, and I was very happy. But in August of 1945 I was only ten years old, and I was very, very happy.

The crew of the B-29 was so young and heroic, and in the photo they also looked very happy. For some reason, I clearly remember the name of the pilot, Paul Tibbets. Of course I remember the name of the plane, the Enola Gay. And oh yes, I remember the name of the bomb. It was called Little Boy. That made me smile.

I was so proud to be an American that day because we had done something so remarkable. They said we were the first. We were Americans. We were powerful. But they didn’t say that Little Boy had killed 66,000 people with its huge fireball that fateful day in August. They didn’t say that Hiroshima was not a military target, but a city filled with men and women and children and animals who had no idea they were about to die so horribly. When you’re ten, they don’t always tell you everything....

Full article and the connection: http://tvnewslies.org/html/bombs_of_august.html

It's important to remember what was done at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and appalling that it is still controversial to criticise it. That sense of righteousness is very fragile when confronted with the suffering actually caused. The arguments which not only excused but justified what happened in 1945 are still fundamental to the national narrative, and still used to excuse and justify what is happening now. We really need to take a good, hard look at what "western civilisation" actually means - not to the few who benefit but to all those fellow human beings paying the price in poverty, disease, hunger and blood.

By Gregg K. Kakesako / gkakesako@starbulletin.com

HIROSHIMA ~snip~

That same day, Sunao Tsuboi, at the time a 20-year-old engineering student at Hiroshima University, was studying when at 8:15 a.m. the city of Hiroshima became the victim of the world's first atomic bombing. ~snip~

Tsuboi, co-chairman of the Japan Confederation of A-and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations, said he was a half-mile from the hypocenter of the atomic explosion.

The scars on his face and body are as vivid as his memory of that day in August. ~snip~

In one of the rare photographs taken minutes after the blast, Tsuboi and other survivors can be seen looking back at the city. He said he scratched "Tsuboi died here" on a wall to tell his friends where his badly burnt body could be found. ~snip~

http://starbulletin.com/2007/08/05/news/story03.html