Hiroshima Anniversary

[Dr Dave]

59 years ago, on Friday, Aug 6, the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima, making it the first city in the history of the world to be destroyed by an atomic weapon. The following is from the Asahi Shimbun weekend edition:

HIROSHIMA-Hiroshima's mayor on Friday admonished the United States for trying to develop smaller nuclear weapons as the city marked the 59th anniversary of its atomic bombing.

Issuing his ``Peace Declaration'' at the packed memorial service here, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba vowed that the 12 months leading up to next year's anniversary would be ``a year of remembrance and action'' toward achieving a nuclear-free world.

The service at the Peace Memorial Park drew about 45,000 people, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

The Peace Bell tolled at 8:15 a.m., the moment the bomb was dropped on Aug. 6, 1945, by the United States on this now-bustling city of 1.14 million. The somber audience stood for one minute in silence in tribute to A-bomb victims, whose numbers continue to rise with each passing year.

Akiba talked first about the remains of 85 wartime residents discovered earlier this year at Ninoshima island off Hiroshima Port. It was where more than 10,000 people with terrible injuries were taken soon after the bomb nicknamed ``Little Boy'' was dropped.

``The remains remind us of the continuing agonies from that day, the inhumanity of atomic bombs and the ugliness of war,'' Akiba said.

On the lack of progress in nuclear disarmament, Akiba had strong words for the United States.

``The egocentric view of the United States has reached the extreme,'' the mayor said. He also expressed concern about terrorists acquiring weapons of mass destruction and countries like North Korea with nuclear development programs.

``The atomic bombings were an unprecedented experience for humans,'' Akiba said. ``The world should return to square one.''

Hiroshima is seeking worldwide abolition of nuclear weapons by 2020. To realize that ambitious goal, Akiba has the Review Conference of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in his sights. The conference is to be held at the United Nations headquarters in New York in May 2005. Along with citizens and cities from around the world, Hiroshima plans to request participants in the conference to work toward a nuclear-free world, Akiba said.

He also called on the central government to lead the world in calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons and protecting this nation's pacifist Constitution.

In his speech, Koizumi promised that Japan, as the only country to have experienced atomic bombings, will continue to abide by the pacifist Constitution and adhere to the ``three non-nuclear principles'' of not producing, possessing, or allowing nuclear weapons on its soil.

As of the end of March, the number of hibakusha in Japan stood at 273,918. Their average age is 72.46. Over the past year, 5,142 people who suffered from the bombing in Hiroshima have died, bringing the toll to 237,062.

Hiroshima had an estimated population of 350,000 in 1945.(IHT/Asahi: August 7,2004) (08/07)

-30-

How ironic, to this very day, that the United States of America, the only nation to declare itself the world's moral leader, committed this incredibly destructive act of war. Cheap shot? You decide?

[Gentle Giant]

Truman faced one of the toughest decisions any POTUS has ever had to address. Impossible to say whether he was right or wrong, but unquestionably it's echo still resonates today. In a sense, it's important that the world have a concrete view of what an atomic bomb of very modest impact (considering what's in our arsenal today) can do. If it was only abstract, there would be much less compunction about using one.

It's also important to recgonize that the US is the only nation to use an atomic bomb on another country, and is the world's leading developer of weapons of mass destruction.

[Monte Smith]

Last week I stood under the Enola Gay at the new Dulles Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. Maybe some can, but I couldn't stand under the Enola Gay without a supreme consciousness of history. There is little editorial commentary at the new museum. You do see a glass case filled up with the medals earned by Paul Tibbets.

The dropping of the atomic bomb was, IMHO, a no-brainer. It saved in two days the lives of Americans and of Japanese who would have continued a conventional meat-grinder of a war that would have gone on for weeks, months, years.

But whatever. You fuck with the USA, expect a rare and insidious barbecue. That should be the lesson.

[Monte Smith]

Pic from Dulles.

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

But whatever. You fuck with the USA, expect a rare and insidious barbecue. That should be the lesson.

On such sentiments are great civilizations built.

[john williams]

The "BBQ" started with firebombing anyway-

The Firebombing Of Japan: An Apology
Errol Morris Presents Robert S. McNamara
By Larry Calloway
The American firebombing of Japanese cities in 1945 is the defining imagery in the new documentary film by Errol Morris, "The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons of Robert S. McNamara," to be released in December by (Catch the irony) Sony Pictures Classics.

This artfully illustrated interview of a man who is a first source on the murderous 20th Century was a must-see at the Telluride Film Festival where, like Morris' "Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control" a couple of years ago, it received its North American premier. McNamara, now 87, braved the high altitude of the Colorado mountain town and assumed star status, sitting for interviews and Q and A sessions in which he was not always supportive of Morris or his unconventional work.

McNamara was U.S. secretary of defense from January 1961 to March 1968 under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Vietnam was called "McNamara's War" by Sen. Wayne Morse, D-Ore., one of the few Congressional opponents of the shamefully coerced Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in August 1964, and the label stuck. "In Retrospect," published in 1995, was McNamara's apology for Vietnam.

And now, it seems, he's apologizing for the destruction of Japan's wooden cities in World War II.

"Fog of War" is the movie based on McNamara's best seller because he repeats so much of what he wrote there about Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis ("We came that close to nuclear war.") But the part of the movie about the firebombing of Japan is new. Morris said it astounded him when it came out in the interviews.

In one dramatic sequence, Morris links each of 67 burned Japanese cities to one of similar population in the United States, superimposing the names and staggering death numbers over black-and-white aerial footage from bomber cameras, as the soundtrack with its eerie Phillip Glass score evokes a million distant thumps. The suggestion of terror on the ground is more effective than seeing it close up.

Firebombing, as was discovered earlier in the war at Dresden, Germany, had a number of unpredicted effects, including the depletion of oxygen, destrictive high winds and "conflagration" in which walls of flame perpetuate themselves. Dresden was the setting of a famous novel by Kurt Vonnegut, but except for descriptions scattered in the works of Yukio Mishima not much has been published in the West about the firebombing of Japanese cities — most likely because it was eclipsed by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki later in the year, in August 1945.

Richard Rhodes, historian of the atomic bomb, dwelled on the March 9-10 firebombing of Tokyo in order to give some proportionality to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. About 100,000 men, women and children were killed outright that night in Tokyo, and another 1 million sustained burns or injuries as 334 bombers dropped 2,000 tons of incendiaries.

The firebombing campaign was designed by Gen. Curtis LeMay, who came up with the idea of using the new high-altitude B-29 bombers to drop clusters of incendiary bombs at low altitude (5,000 feet) where anti-aircraft guns were ineffective. McNamara was a 29-year-old lieutenant colonel, one of a group of brilliant statistical planners recruited from Harvard, serving under LeMay.

In the film, McNamara tells how his group improved the efficiency of bombing of Germany by statistical analysis proving that the 17 per cent rate of aborted missions was due to fear, not to the stated reasons, such as mechanical failure or sickness. He also claims a part in statistical analysis showing that hitting Japanese cities with India-based bombers refueled in China was not feasible.

McNamara's intellectual contribution to the subsequent firebombing of Japan from Pacific island bases is not spelled out in his comments to Morris, but he does say that when LeMay served under him in the Kennedy administration, the old general commented that if Japan had won the war they both would have been charged for acting like war criminals.

This startling self-indictment, discussed in at least one Telluride apperance by Morris, probably will get more attention once the movie sinks in, but it's not as sensational as it sounds because the context was that war crimes are defined by whoever wins the war.

McNamara is harsh on LeMay, as he was in the Vietnam book where he portrays the then Air Force chief of staff as recklessly advocating bombing Cuba during the missile crisis and bombing North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the early stages of Vietnam. McNamara stood in the way, but he eventually approved "Operation Rolling Thunder," the carpet-bombing of the Vietnam countryside, and it looks an awful lot like the firebombing of Japan, as Morris presents it.

Now, McNamara says in the film that as an undergraduate at Berkeley he loved economics, mathematics and, particularly, philosophy, especially ethics, which he said proscribes "duty to society," meaning your own people. It was a principle that served him well as he rose to power. As a product of Berkeley and Harvard (MBA 1939), he has praised the 1930's leaders of the University of California for keeping the liberal campus safe from the then overwhelmingly conservative rural-dominated legislature. Coincidentally, another man of great scientific intellect who was nourished in the same atmosphere at the same time was J. Robert Oppenheimer, also a Harvard product, although they apparently didn't know each other.

McNamara is a classically ethical man. His confessions regarding Vietnam tell of misinformation, mistakes in judgement and wrong facts, not moral failings in the light of international law. Few audiences could be expected to remember all 11 points of Morris' title, but the first "lesson" is memorable: in war, you must understand the motives of the enemy. That was the fault in Vietnam. The domino theory (illustrated by Morris' image of rows of dominoes clicking down across a map of Southeast Asia) was wrong because its propagandists failed to see that the Vietnamese were fighting a war of independence. They were resisting their old enemy China as well as America and, indirectly, the Soviet Union. They were not puppets intent upon spreading Communism. On the other hand, they failed to understand that America did not wish to succeed France as a colonial ruler.

In the movie McNamara, the classical ethicist, often justifies his actions as consistent with American values and tradition. He is not one to seek a higher morality. And so he is not actually doing mea culpas, as some have described his late-in-life apologies. He does not follow the postmodern argument, so clear and persuasive in Samantha Power's Pulitzer-prize winning "A Problem From Hell," that genocide is an absolute crime and that America throughout its history has failed even to recognize it.

McNamara in his Vietnam book takes note of U.S. ratification of the international genocide convention but asks how, in cases like the former Yougoslavia, we can do anything about it when intervention infringes on national sovereignty. On the other hand, Power in her book condemns the early inaction of the empathetic but militarily incompetent Clinton administration in the face of Serbian genocide in Bosnia and Clinton's total inaction in the face of genocide in Rwanda and, yes, Iraq.

McNamara made mistakes, but he was not incompetent. He was not mystified or intimidated by military power. In his government service he was a man of action, and like most mainstream American political figures, including Colin Powell, he had an allergy to humanitarian wars. Which is to say, these guys really hate war except for the cold, hard, unemotional defense of national interests — even if the facts are wrong and the interests entirely abstract, as in Vietnam.

And now, due to McNamara's testimony via Morris, it must be asked if the facts were wrong in Japan. Another Pulitzer prize winner, Herbert Bix, in his biography of Hirohito, says the firebombings of Japanese noncombatants "qualify as atrocities." Bix, however, is the first to make the case that not only was the emperor very much in authority over the generals, but he also was not facing reality. Bix returns to a version of the postwar thesis, discarded by revisionist historians who say Hiroshima was the first shot of the Cold War, that it took the combined shock of the new secret weapon plus Soviet intervention to make Japan, in the person of the emperor, admit defeat and surrender before everybody was killed (and the imperial palace destroyed).

In defense of LeMay, and by implication of himself, McNamara tells how a pilot in a debriefing complained that by misusing B-29's at low altitude the general was responsible for the death of his copilot from small arms fire. The bullish cigar-smoking general, who McNamara recalls seldom spoke in anything but monosyllables, responded angrily that the pilot lost a buddy but the firebombing was saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers preparing to invade Japan.

The belief that the dug-in people would fight to the last man, woman and child has always been the position of those who say President Harry Truman saved a half million American lives by dropping the atomic bombs, and it was Truman's defense too. The firebombing had already set a moral precedent that mass destruction of cities was OK because all houses were worker houses and all workers were involved in the war effort. So the difference in August was only quantitative.

The quantity was a quantum leap. One bomb killed 140,000 outright at Hiroshima, and kept on killing. Which leads to another of McNamara's "lessons." Namely, that rationality cannot save us from nuclear war because as long as there are nuclear weapons, even in a rational world, they eventually will be used.

http://www.larrycalloway.com/column.html?_recordnum=45

[crawjo]

There were more deadly bombing campaigns in both Japan and Europe than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Of course, the latter required only two bombs to cause unspeakable destruction.

I don't agree with Monte that it was a no-brainer. Eisenhower thought it was the wrong decision, and if Eisenhower thought that, then it definitely was not a no-brainer. I know that Eisenhower wasn't in charge of the Pacific Theater, but still, we have no way of knowing how the war would have progressed without the bombs being dropped. Also interesting to think how the nuclear age would have been different, had the bombs not been used. The technology was already being developed, so I have no doubt that the Soviet Union, Great Britian, France and the U.S. would have built up their stockpiles, though perhaps not to the extent that they did build them up during the Cold War.

[Jon Abbey]

JBW, that was exactly what I thought of when I saw this thread...

"In one dramatic sequence, Morris links each of 67 burned Japanese cities to one of similar population in the United States, superimposing the names and staggering death numbers over black-and-white aerial footage from bomber cameras"

this was the most shocking part of The Fog of War, I'd never heard of this previously.

[john williams]

Jon: I watched The Fog of War for the first time the other night and was also stunned by the revelations re: Japan. I was pretty overwhelmed and sickened by that segment - I'm still having trouble comprehending "About 100,000 men, women and children were killed outright that night in Tokyo". I'd heard about firebombings in WWII but the way Morris constructed that scene was breathtaking but also deeply disturbing.

[Ron Thorne]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

But whatever. You fuck with the USA, expect a rare and insidious barbecue. That should be the lesson.

I self-edited my initial response, thankfully.

I'll just let this sit here for others to reflect upon.

[lazarus]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

But whatever. You fuck with the USA, expect a rare and insidious barbecue. That should be the lesson.

I think that Monte Smith is a creep and that the quote above is one his all-time lows.

[SinginSumo]

Let me guess that Monte Smith made it his business to see the Enola Gay but never stood at Ground Zero in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I further guess that Monte Smith has never heard first-hand accounts of Japanese residents' recollections of watching their cities firebombed.

Take an attitude like Monte Smith's and watch the Twin Towers while expecting (or not expecting) some insidious "barbeque." Take Monte Smith's agenda and quickly learn why most of the world hates the USA and finds Americans arrogant, insular and very ugly.

********************************************************
http://www.betterworldlinks.org/book80.htm

http://www.geocities.com/SiliconVall...hiroshima.html

http://www.nukefix.org/weapon.html

http://www.hiroshima-cdas.or.jp/HICARE/abe.html

http://hps.org/publicinformation/ate/q340.html

http://dceg2.cancer.gov/pdfs/land1607072003.pdf

[Al in NYC]

I agree with all of above responses to Monte's thoroughly repulsive remarks, and I feel it's important that decent Americans stand up and openly challenge these kinds of statements made in our names.

Now one can reasonably argue about the merits of the decision that was made to use the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or about the morality and strategic usefulness of the firebombings of cities during WWII, and one can even argue that immoral acts are sometimes necessary in the interest of winning a war, and may be seen in the light of a larger morality. There really are a lot of grey areas there and few simple answers, and it is often only through looking at history detached from the emotions, fears, and exegencies of the time that we can begin to agree on what those events really meant or should mean to us. But to talk about an "insidious barbecue" of people as one of the "lessons" of war is really beyond the pale.

I usually just let Monte's idiot remarks go, since he's often just trying to provoke a reaction and show off his smarmy white-boy prep-school elitism. But when he comes out with disgusting outright racist crap like this, and dresses his load of stinking feces up in the same flag and patriotism I believe in, I really have to call him on it.

I wish I had Ron Thorne's restraint.

[Ron Thorne]

I'm trying my damndest to continue to exercise some restraint, though I'm certainly no Saint or above reproach, Al. I've blown it many times in the past. I'm simply attempting to rise above the stench in this instance.

Monte's response to this thread is, pehaps, the most repulsive, mindless, ignorant one I've witnessed among many from him over the years.

[Richardo Caerleoni]

Ron - et al. Many thanks for your response to Monte.

I just was about to launch/rip into something equally tasteless/braindead about 9/11 (in response to him) - which I would have then immediately regreted.

It's attitudes like Monte's (at least on this and its implications) that generate so much anti US resentment in Europe and beyond. Monte may not give a damn - his right, but it's good to know you guys are around, care, and active.

Thanks again. Appreciated.



The Reality...Not the Rhetoric.

[Cem]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Monte Smith
But whatever. You fuck with the USA, expect a rare and insidious barbecue. That should be the lesson.

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

On such sentiments are great civilizations built.

"I wonder what it would be like to live during the rise of a civilization"
--sticker I once had on my fridge--

[AntManBee]

I rarely read the political threads, and when I do I refuse to get involved. However, Monte's barbeque remark demands I speak up against it. It is the most appaling thing I've heard or read since I don't know when; a tasteless-beyond-belief exercise in stupidity that I am relieved to see met with such an outrage from other JC'ers. That anyone can nourish such a view of human beings as to say they deserve becoming a barbecue is... I don't know what, I just can't believe it's true. I'm disgusted, truly disgusted.

[Phil_Meloy]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Monte Smith
But whatever. You fuck with the USA, expect a rare and insidious barbecue. That should be the lesson.

Originally Posted by Dr Dave

On such sentiments are great civilizations built.

While others are obliterated.

[rockefeller center]

Originally Posted by Gentle Giant

In a sense, it's important that the world have a concrete view of what an atomic bomb of very modest impact (considering what's in our arsenal today) can do. If it was only abstract, there would be much less compunction about using one.

"that the world have a concrete view"? You mean that guys like you and me won't be tempted to drop nukes left and right? Not sure what you're talking about, but those people who are building or deciding whether to drop or not to drop an atomic bomb, know about the impact.

http://gawain.membrane.com/hew/Usa/Tests/Trinity.html

edit: grammar

[SinginSumo]

Phil - Given that pixels on a computer screen often cannot convey nuance, I think Dr Dave was being facetious and/or sarcastic.

*******************************************************

How long will this board put up with Monte Smith's insularity and prejudice? It was "towelheads."

Then it was how he wanted or offered to to blow up the entire Middle East...that is, until the war started of course. Then he wouldn't enlist and declined to tell us why he had such an abrupt change of heart, citing "personal reasons."

Let's not forget to add his inappropriate "shalom" comments.

I'm very tired of his racist, elitist and condescending tone on this, primarily a JAZZ site rather than some political site.

You are no more than pose and poorly thought out conclusions, Monte. Please take your insularity and white bread attitudes elsewhere. Pronto. Forever.

[john williams]

"The Nuclear Testing Tally from ACA (Arms Control Association)


* CMR list has two explosions dropped in Japan in 1945
* CMR list has an Unknown event as a test
* ACA list has 12 more tests than CMR's for France

In May, 1998, India conducted its first nuclear tests in
24 years, followed by Pakistan conducting its first
tests ever. The tests-the first since the signing of
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in
September 1996-present the most significant
challenge to the nuclear non-proliferation regime in
decades. In a May 11 press statement, India said it
would be prepared 'to consider being an adherent to
some of the undertakings' of the CTBT provided
certain conditions were met. Pakistan has maintained
it would be prepared to sign the CTBT if India does.

United States (1,030)
First tested: Jul. 16, 1945.
Last tested: Sept. 23, 1992.
Signed CTBT: Sept. 24, 1996.

USSR/Russia (715 tests)
First tested: Aug. 29, 1949.
Last tested: Oct. 24, 1990.
Signed CTBT: Sept. 24, 1996.

Great Britain (45 tests)
First tested: Oct. 3, 1952.
Last tested: Nov. 26, 1991.
Signed CTBT: Sept. 24, 1996.
Deposited CTBT Ratification: Apr. 6, 1998.

France (210 tests)
First tested: Feb. 13, 1960.
Last tested: Jan. 27, 1996.
Signed CTBT: Sept. 24, 1996.
Deposited CTBT Ratification: Apr. 6, 1998.

China (45 tests)
First tested: Oct. 16, 1964.
Last tested: Jul. 29, 1996.
Signed CTBT: Sept. 24, 1996.

India (3 tests1)
First tested: May 18, 1974.
Subsequent tests May 11, 1998 and May 13, 1998.
Not a CTBT signatory.

Pakistan (2 tests1)
First tested: May 28, 1998.
Subsequent test May 30, 1998.
Not a CTBT signatory.

NOTE
1. In accordance with the definition of a nuclear test contained in
the Threshold Test Ban Treaty and to allow accurate comparison
with other countries' figures, India's three simultaneous nuclear
explosions on May 11 are counted as only one nuclear test, as are
the two explosions on May 13. Likewise, Pakistan's five
simultaneous explosions on May 28 are counted as a single test."

http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/pi/..._ex/test_tally

[SinginSumo]

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum site:

http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/top_e.html

[Phil_Meloy]

I don't know if is still possible to find any of his accounts but the first Western correspondent to go to Hiroshima after the bomb was dropped was an Australian called Wilfred Burchett - it was about two weeks afterwards and there was still vapour coming out of the ground when he arrived. While in the Pacific with US forces he had picked up some news about a certain secret weapon that had been dropped on Hiroshima which had brought the war to an abrupt end. He then went to Japan as part of a contingent of 250 correspondents to report the signing of the Japanese surrender on the battleship in Tokyo Bay but instead jumped ship, went to the railway station in Tokyo, bought a ticket and caught a train to Hiroshima and became the the first Western journalist to witness the devastation of nuclear war. Burchett alone realized the real story was in that doomed city - officially off limits to outsiders. The article he filed in August 1945 began "I write this as a warning to the world." Burchett said "What I'd seen was the end of World War II. But it would be the fate of cities all over the world in the first hours of a World War III."

[Jazzzoline]

Originally Posted by Monte Smith

But whatever. You fuck with the USA, expect a rare and insidious barbecue. That should be the lesson.

You forgot those who don't fuck with the USA but have interesting ressources, like oil.

[crawjo]

I think people are overreacting to Monte's post. The fact of the matter is that Japan displayed a frightening rise in militarism throughout the 1930s. Just ask the hundreds of thousands of Chinese that they killed. Pearl Harbor was more than an attack on the United States, it was an attempt to wipe out the U.S.'s capability to stop Japanese aggression in the Pacific theater. Monte's point was simply that their own actions led to their humiliating defeat. Which is inarguably the case. So his language was more colorful than is appropriate. Find a more constructive target for venting your anger.

Though it might not be pc to say it in the way that he did, the Japanese and German peoples were both the authors of their own destruction, by subscribing to a form of fascistic, imperialistic militarism that could only be contained with deadly force. It is not the case that the people of these two countries had nothing to do with it; that it was only their out of control governments. In both cases, the populaces aided, abetted, and fueled the militarism that led to the deaths of MILLIONS of people.

The only reason I am not certain if Truman made the right decision is because it might have been worthwhile to expend a bomb or two in a very public "test" near Japan, so that the Japanese could see for themselves the sort of weapon that we possessed. I tend to doubt that this would have led to a Japanese surrender, but considering the stakes, it might have been worth a try. It also might have been better to strike at a more specifically-military target, rather than a civilian one, but I also doubt this would have led to surrender, since Japan by then had become used to seeing its sons killed for the glory of the Emperor. It might be helpful to remember that when the Emperor did surrender, many Japanese could not believe it; even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they still wanted to continue fighting.

Now I patiently await for somebody to pipe up and make some vague, bullshit comparison between Japanese and German "fascism" and American "fascism", and some inarticulate, historically-illiterate connection between Hitler and Bush. Go for it.

[crawjo]

Originally Posted by Jazzzoline

You forgot those who don't fuck with the USA but have interesting ressources, like oil.

Yes, our invasion of oil-rich Kuwait in 1990 was most unwelcome. Oh, wait...

[Phil_Meloy]

Originally Posted by crawjo

Though it might not be pc to say it in the way that he did.

This must be a contender for Understatement of the Year.

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by Phil_Meloy

Quote:
Originally Posted by Monte Smith
But whatever. You fuck with the USA, expect a rare and insidious barbecue. That should be the lesson.

While others are obliterated.

Irony is lost around here.

[stonemonkts]

Originally Posted by crawjo

The only reason I am not certain if Truman made the right decision is because it might have been worthwhile to expend a bomb or two in a very public "test" near Japan, so that the Japanese could see for themselves the sort of weapon that we possessed. I tend to doubt that this would have led to a Japanese surrender, but considering the stakes, it might have been worth a try.

We'll never know for sure, will we?

This is where I fault Truman. I strongly believe it was worth a try.

[Monte Smith]

My sister-in-law who is a genius and something of a liberal once made an atrocious error of judgement in regard to the explosion of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. This was at Massachussetts General Hospital, where she was instructing some medical students from abroad. One student was a Japanese girl who spoke little English and this with a very pronounced accent which was difficult for my sister-in-law to understand. She asked the student "Where in Japan are you from?" and received a reply that she just couldn't decipher. "I'm sorry. Where?" Again, a response she could not take in. Finally it dawned on her what name the student was saying: Hiroshima. Unfortunately in her enthusiasm to let it be known that she got it, she repeated the name "Hiroshima" while gesturing with her hands and arms the expansion of an imaginary mushroom cloud. She very quickly detected that this was the wrong etiquette, clever girl.

But hey--I agree with crawjo that some of you are taking my above post rather too sensitively. I think the atomic bomb saved lives and while a human catastrophe, it also represents an object lesson to those who would wage war on the USA. And to prove I am no monster, let me just express that I would thoroughly and resolvedly oppose--conditions remaining what they are--the dropping of a third atomic weapon on Japan.

The Japanese are a great people.