U.S. has used the ultimate weapon of terror - A-bombs on Japan

Robert Scheer
Thursday, August 9, 2007



DURING A week of mayhem in Iraq, in which terrorists have rightly been condemned for targeting schoolchildren, it is sobering to recall that this week is also the 62nd anniversary of U.S. attacks that deliberately took the lives of thousands of children on their way to school in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As noted in the Strategic Bombing Survey conducted at President Harry Truman's request, when the bomb hit Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, "nearly all the schoolchildren were at work in the open," to be exploded, irradiated or incinerated in the perfect firestorm that the planners back at the University of California-run Los Alamos lab had envisioned for the bomb's maximum psychological impact.
The terror plot worked all too well, as Hiroshima's Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba recalled this week: "That fateful summer, 8:15 a.m. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast silence - hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails. Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their bodies. Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead." Like most of the others killed by the two American bombs, neither the children nor the adults had any role in Japan's decision to go to war, but they were picked as the target instead of an isolated but fortified military base whose anti-aircraft fire posed a higher risk. The target preferred by U.S. atomic scientists - a patch in the ocean or unpopulated terrain - was rejected, because the effect of hundreds of thousands of civilians dying would be all the more dramatic.


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You got to be honest with yourself dropping two A-Bombs on Japan was the ultimate act of terrorism, 9/11 doesn't even come close. I know Japan attacked us first but they hit Pearl Harbor which was a military target and we deliberately targeted their civilian population just to make a statement because it was known to our leaders at the time that Japan was on the verge of surrender. If you would like to read the entire article click on the link below.




http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/09/ED3PRF37F.DTL&hw=scheer&sn=001&sc=1000

My reply must be that after studying the subject and situation, yes. Those bombs stopped the war and probably saved lives on both sides in comparison to what it would have taken to occupy Japan. I grieve for the victims, but the Japanese were a valiant and competent foe and the battle to occupy the island would have caused even greater loss of life.

I say this again, a valiant and competent foe, equal to our weapons save one. Not like Iran.

The Russians still hold Japanese islands.

for one , no one really could grasp the concept of what these bombs could do. When Truman was told of it's power ( even thought he had seen the detonation) I'm sure he had little concept as to it's power, nor did even the people on the Manhattan project.....it was virgin territory. Second , it was a different time and the Japanese war machine had used enough terrorism of it's own over the past 10 or so years . I have read theory that the Japanese would have surrendered anyway, and I doubt that, the Shinto code would have fought till the last woman and child had died. And lastly we recognized the Pandora's box we had opened and no sane individual would go though with it again. Life is not perfect, and if anything is to be taken from this, it is "Never Again".........Flame away!

hasn't "nuking 'em" been proposed a number of times by hard-liners itching to teach 'em a lesson?

Before the first bomb and after the first bomb they wouldn't I had a very dear friend who said he and quite a few battalions of marines were waiting to invade Japan. They didn't like the Atomic bomb being dropped BUT THEY DIDN'T WANT to invade Japan and be killed either.