New Photos Reveal Horror Of Hiroshima

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/03/unearthed-photos-reveal-h_n_99970.html

Sean Malloy, a professor at the University of California Merced, "recently unearthed 10 previously-unpublished photographs illustrating the aftermath on the Hiroshima bombing."

These photographs, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, were found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces. Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb.
Below, you'll find one of the photos from this collection. Warning: some of the images are graphic and will be difficult for some readers to view.

http://faculty.ucmerced.edu/smalloy/atomic_tragedy/photos.html

Should be put in a room where these photos, and others just like it, cover every square centimeter of the walls, floor and ceiling, and locked in for 48 hours.

And keep in mind: the United States remains the one and ONLY country to ever have used the most horrific weapon of mass destruction ever created by our species. Not just once, but twice.

Carnage on a massive scale means nothing to them, as long as it preserves their delusion of mighty righteousness.

Should be locked up in an institution for the criminally insane

occasions since, like 1954 NBP, Vietnam, 1958 China, and during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, not to mention Hillary's seeming salivation over the prospects of obliterating a nation. :(

only it left few bodies. Firestorms burned many people to ash.

The problem is bombing civilian targets, not what type of bomb is being used.

I don't know when stopped being armies meeting on a battlefield and started being all about incinerating populations, but that's what it is.

Soldiers who come back know this. It's why so many of them are so badly damaged.

Though it is true that photos hit a nerve- just as words like "nukes" do... which is why this administration and the corporate media keep the results of the current war hidden at all costs.

...because it's primary motivation was an act of vengeance against an already broken foe.

Hiroshima, on the other hand, was almost certainly instrumental in causing a foe, who would have otherwise futilely spent itself (and a good deal of the rest of the world) fighting on long past the point of reason, to capitulate.

Whether or not the follow up act of Nagasaki was required or justified is highly debatable, but Hiroshima itself in all probability saved more lives than it took, because whilst Japan was arguably defeated, it was not broken.


The horror of Hiroshima revealed in these photos is not that so many were killed, but that beyond the radius of total destruction, it stripped away the individuality of the victims whilst leaving their humanity abundantly clear because wet soggy flesh combusts very poorly. In many ways, I suspect that Nagasaki was far less dehumanising, because, in a wooden city, the fires of the aftermath would have made the bodies of the vitims far less recognisably human.

I always find kind of absurd those claims that we would never have used nukes against Germany because they were white people. Kind of ignores the fact that 1.6 million German civilians were killed in the war, including by carpet-bombings that would have rivaled a nuclear detonation for destructive force.

To answer your question about when bombing civilian populations came into things, it's all about what's known as a "total war" footing. As long as the civilian population is engaged in manufacturing arms and munitions, if you want to stop that you have to bomb the facilities. Without precision-guided munitions, that means flattening a good portion of a city. Further, there's the consideration of destroying roads, particularly crossroads, which often intersect with cities. So while the civilians weren't exactly the primary targets, in a total war footing they are still considered to be enemies.

And McCain is no better.

You don't have to vote for the other guy, but remember just what you're pulling the lever for.

(Wow! Way to be partisan, Jack.)

(compassion is non-partisan)

dp

Indeed....

Amazing how few of his fans know what his policies and proposals are, especially where nuclear issues are concerned.

Interesting, that.

--p!

Nukes on the table are better than nukes up your arse. And "on the table" could just as easily be a political sop (and a bad one) to "prove" he's tough on terror.

I don't approve of his stance, but it's better than "we will annihilate them."

Nuclear War is fun! :sarcasm:

Cheney wants those photos sent to Iran.

That was just the beginning. Then the aftermath from the fallout which went on for decades. Now of course the half life of what we have could lasts for centuries.

india

pakistan

north korea

israel

south africa

and how many ME countries are now contemplating joining the "nuclear renaissance"????

saudi arabia

iran

uae

bahrain

dubai

libya

The biggest commonality is that they both rely on enriching uranium.

Civilian power plants are the best foundation for any country wishing to start a nuclear weapons program, especially if that country wants to build weapons clandestinely. It's easier to produce weapons grade fuel in a power plant than any other way. In fact, civilian power plants were the foundation of India's and North Korea's nuclear weapons programs.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0427-02.htm

Published on Sunday, April 27, 2003 by the Cleveland Plain Dealer
'Peaceful' Nuclear Power Fuels Spread of Weapons
by Stephen Koff

...

The world is teetering on the brink of a new nuclear arms race. Countries are seeking to get the deadliest of weapons as it becomes clear their neighbors and regional rivals are already doing so, CIA Director George Tenet recently told Congress.

The "domino theory of the 21st century may well be nuclear," Tenet said.

A major way such a dangerous arms race has become possible is the ready availability of a source of weapons material - ordinary nuclear power reactors.

Insecure nations are taking the nuclear technology provided for peaceful civilian purposes by the United States and other countries and using it to make military bombs.

The spread of nuclear weapons in unstable regions has become big news.

...

By extracting plutonium through reprocessing, a nation with only a single, moderate-sized reactor could make 3 or 4 dozen bombs a year, says Richard Garwin, former chairman of the State Department's Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board. Garwin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, has concerns about nations stockpiling plutonium.

Civilian power is used as a smokescreen for weapons-grade production. And the production of a uranium-based bomb in eminently easier than the process of extracting plutonium for use in a warhead. That's why Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, India, et al all have their weapons based on highly-enriched uranium rather than reactor-produced plutonium.

The original point stands: you don't need a reactor to produce nuclear weapons, and the easiest ways don't call for one either.

* uranium enrichment

* PUREX for plutonium production from spent reactor fuel

* and PWRs were derived entirely from naval propulsion reactors.

North Korea's Yongbyon Pu production reactor was a nuclear *power* reactor (5 MWe).

India's and Pakistan's nuclear weapons programs were gleaned and purloined from western "civilian" nuclear technologies.

Iran's "civilian" uranium enrichment program was purchased from Pakistan's nuclear weaponeers.

Israel's plutonium production reactor is a French civilian "research" reactor.

South Africa secretly built its 6 uranium gun bombs under the guise of "peaceful nuclear energy" development.

TVA "civilian" nuclear power reactors produce tritium for the US nuclear weapons program (they put the "H" in H-bomb).

The same US uranium enrichment plants that produced the Little Boy A-bomb enriched uranium for US nuclear power plants.

Do you see a pattern here?????

So any country seeking civilian nuclear power could just buy it from Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU



Countries using alternative reactor technologies thus draw a little extra suspicion.

Interesting that China, which already has The Bomb, bought CANDU reactors.

...but the only country fucking insane enough to actually use nuclear weapons - on civilians, no less - didn't open a commercial reactor until over a decade afterwards.

Remind me, someone, which country that was?

:nuke: