This date marks the 78th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb over Hiroshima.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

The invention of Physicist J Robert Oppenheimer made history the world had never seen. On August 6, 1945, the first of 2 Atomic bombs were dropped over Japan that brought WWII to an end.

On Friday, I went to see the encompassing and compelling film, 'Oppenheimer', that told the story of the Atomic bomb and its inventor. What struck me the most was the morality of such a weapon, the devastation it would create, and the dilemma afterwards the world would face in the years following. The Nuclear Age of warfare had begun in a sense in 1945.

Today, the world faces the threat of Nuclear War more than ever. In addition to the United States having Nuclear weapons, there is Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, and Iran developing capabilities to launch and use Nuclear weapons. Oppenheimer knew that eventually this would happen.

August 9th will commemorate the 78th Anniversary of the Atomic bomb over Nagasaki.

[lamp_shade]

1. I saw Oppenheimer yesterday on an IMAX screen.

Shindler's List had been my all-time favorite. That ended yesterday.
All the reviews I read were spot-on.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

3. I saw it on IMAX as well.

This was a film that needed to be made at a time when Russia and North Korea are threatening to blow up the world because Putin and KJU are just the type to use them, not realizing the hell they would unleash.

For Oppenheimer knew from his calculations that enriched Uranium and Plutonium reactions would be deadly. The initial deaths from the two bombs were gut wrenching. The hundreds of thousands that would die over the years from nuclear radiation exposure would be even worse.

[Tickle]

2. I remember hiding under

our desk drills. I guess every generation has it's fears.

[ProudMNDemocrat]

5. Me too.

Back in the 1950's and 60's, we as a country did not know as much as we know now. Bomb shelters on people's properties were being built in backyards as well.

One of my late Father's inventions, while at Lockheed, was for the US Navy that was a device that measured the levels of Plutonium in warheads that were loaded onto some of the first of a fleet on Nuclear Spy submarines in the early 1960's. He invented many things for the Dept. of Defense. Oppenheimer was one of his heroes. he read everything he could on the man.

[Tickle]

7. WOW that's so cool about your dad!

As for today I wonder when my grandchildren grow up will they think our fears today was lack of knowledge or worse an overreaction. I'll never know as I will be dead and gone

[Bluethroughu]

14. We Duck and covering in the 70's and early eighties still.

I think that stopped about 85 or 86.

[ProfessorGAC]

39. Where Were You?

I don't recall ever doing duck & cover drills here in Illinois and '73 was my last year of high school. If we ever did them, I had to be really young.
I realize different states had different approaches but we must have been very different than where you were.

[Xavier Breath]

41. Same in Ohio.

I spent the '70s in grade school and the '80s in high school and was never subjected to a duck-and-cover drill. Matter of fact, if memory serves, I believe our principal once joked about the whole thing and how lucky we were not to have to endure such drills.

[Bluethroughu]

44. I was in northern Illinois near Chain o Lakes.

It was traumatizing, because everyone knew a desk was useless against the fireball mushroom cloud we'd been shown.

There was a different ring for tornado or bomb. It was scary.

[ProfessorGAC]

49. Wow, That's Weird!

I'm probably only around 90 miles from there and we didn't have what you describe.
Perhaps your Superintendent was more disturbed by the risk than any around here.

[Bluethroughu]

62. I'm not sure but the alarm rang differently for tornado or bomb.

There was different action to be taken. Bomb; get under desk. Torando; get into interior hall with hands over your head bent over and crisscross legs.

It was like that until we moved in I believe 84 or 85?

So who knows it they continued, even after that?

[ProfessorGAC]

63. Surprising

I sub 60 to 70 times a year.
I've been involved in 2 fire drills, and one lockdown drill.
That's now, of course.
But, I don't remember anything but a yearly fire drill when I was a kid.
Very different where you were!

[Bluethroughu]

64. That's suprizing so few times with having to deal with drills,

where I live it was at least twice a year for just for the tornado, not including fire. I do live in rural corn country though.

[orleans]

50. i remember tornado drills in the hallway when i was in

elementary school. and that's it. no duck and cover business.

elementary school was mid 60s.
jr high was the early 70s

i was in chicago's western suburbs.

[ProfessorGAC]

55. I'm Just A Little Older

HS was early 70s for me.
And I grew up only about 30 miles from the Loop. Not very different than you! I guess we shouldn't be surprised we recall the same school activities.

[Bluethroughu]

15. I could remember sitting under the desk during the sirens, and thinking...

What is this gonna do for me. We should be huddled together in a corner, because if it's for real it's over.

[stuck in the middle]

4. IN THE KING OF PRUSSIA: THE TRIAL OF THE PLOWSHARES 8

IN THE KING OF PRUSSIA: THE TRIAL OF THE PLOWSHARES 8 takes us back to 1982 with Emile de Antonio's portrayal of the Plowshares 8 civic disobedience at General Electric's nuclear weapons plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. The group included Molly Rush, co-founder of the Merton Center. Posting of this cliip celebrates the April 13 visit of Martin Sheen, who plays the judge in the movie, to Pittsburgh, Pa and the Thomas Merton Center. YOU CAN'T HUG A CHILD WITH NUCLEAR ARMS!!!

The Hammer Has to Fall - Charlie King

[betsuni]

6. The community loudspeaker alarm in my Japanese neighborhood went off this morning to

commemorate the bomb victims. A nice summer day, then Hell and destruction.

My Japanese father-in-law wouldn't meet me until about five years after I married his son because WWII was my fault. Oops, my bad! U.S. embargoes caused the war, not Japan's fault at all.

They would have sacrificed civilians, mostly women and children, before giving up as they did in Okinawa, like they left Japanese soldiers to die alone in S.E. Asia from disease and starvation. And after the war women and children without husbands and fathers who never came back from the war were on their own.

[303squadron]

9. Neither bomb was necessary

After the war the WWII U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey concluded the following:

"Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."

[jimfields33]

13. Yeah but what about Pearl Harbor?

That’d still happen? I can’t imagine any country just saying, “ok. You surrender. All cool.” I just don’t think the American population would be ok with that. Maybe I’m missing something. I wasn’t born at that time.

[303squadron]

16. Not an EQUAL comparison

At Pearl Harbor, 3000 Americans died.

At Hiroshima the best estimates are 140,000 dead.

Is that a proportional response?


Americans like to think it's all about them. We know what happened on August 6th and 9th, 1945. But damn few Americans can tell me without looking it up what happened on August 8th, 1945. The Soviet Union attacked across a broad front in Manchuria and threw the Japanese army back with their strength and technological superiority. The Japanese had sent out peace feelers in June of 1945 through the only allied power that had not declared war on them - the Soviets. The feelers were rebuffed because the Allies had agreed to unconditional surrender and the Japanese had a condition they had to have.....their Emperor, who was not just a man, but GOD on earth. (Later MacArthur would let them have their emperor. Hirohito was never tried as a war criminal and remained emperor of Japan until his death in 1989.)

From a tactical and strategic point of view, from August 8th 1945 the Japanese were trapped. Consider:

The Soviets had one of the best battlefield tanks in the world, the T-34/85. No Japanese tank in Manchuria could stand up against it.
The Soviets had the best anti-tank destroyer in the Ilyushin Il-2, considered by many to be the finest ground attack airplane in WWII.
The Americans had at least three fighter planes that were technologically superior to anything the Japanese had.
The Americans with The B29 were firebombing Japanese cities at will.
The American Navy by August of 1945 totally controlled the seas and the Japanese Navy had ceased to be an effective fighting force.
Fighter sweeps over Japan by carrier based airplanes in June of 1945 were finding few to no targets worthy of attacking.

But, more importantly, and mostly unknown now to the American public, is the fact that the Japanese never beat the American submarine force. The Allies had fought a seasaw battle with the Germans in the early years of the war called the Battle of the Atlantic. The Allies won that battle by defeating the German submarines. Japan, an island nation with few natural resources, needed their sea commerce to survive. The American submarine fleet was strangling the island nation.

Beginning in 1944, US submarines began to target Japanese tankers. By the summer of 1945 no fuel oil from Java or Sumatra was getting through to the Japanese homeland. Their population would have froze to death in the winter of 1945-46.

By August 1945 the Americans had fire bombed 67 Japanese cities. To the Japanese, two more cities gone was not the impact that Americans like to think it was.

The winners get to re-write history to soothe any troubled conscience.

[paleotn]

23. Once again, you're imposing western logic on Japanese thinking at the time.

It doesn't work. From western eyes, unconditional surrender was obvious. From Japanese eyes that wasn't necessarily the case. While your talking about casualties, exactly how many Chinese died during the war?

[303squadron]

37. Japanese thinking

The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey interviewed surviving Japanese leaders.....so they covered Japanese thinking. Yeah, an invasion could have been like Okinawa all over again, except that even the Japanese were saying they would have surrendered without an invasion.

Who was killed at Pearl Harbor? Mostly military personnel.

Who was killed in Hiroshima? Well, most of the men were in the Army which left the preponderance of civilians being women and children. The main military base in Hiroshima was the navy base. Why wasn't that ground zero? Because American military planners wanted to see what the bomb could do in totally destroying a city and it's population.

The bomb killed a lot of women - the same folks who were not allowed to vote and have a say in their leadership. A totally defenseless civilian population wiped out.

Meanwhile, going back to my submarine comment. The American submarine fleet was strangling Japan of the one resource she desperately needed but had none of - oil. Recall your WW II history. When the Americans invaded Okinawa the Japanese sent the last of its fleet in response. This included the greatest battleship ever built the Yamato. The Yamato sailed on a one way suicide mission.....because the Japanese only had enough fuel oil left for a one way trip.

By August 1945 Japan was already defeated. No navy. No oil. Lost almost every battle with The Americans after Midway. Their much vaulted Army getting its ass kicked all across Manchuria. The Americans could have firebombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Japanese would have still surrendered when they did.

[paleotn]

47. The ones that survived were part of the peace party.

Many were framing a rather embarrassing and difficult situation. Doing what in their culture was the unthinkable. In many cases they told the USSBS what they wanted them to hear. Most of the hard liners committed ritual suicide, but we have their writings to backup their point of view and reams of research since has shown your view to be rather simplistic and simply wrong. You just don't understand Japanese militarism and Japanese culture. Maybe you should study it more.

You never answered my question about why the Allies went to the trouble of modifying the Potsdam Declaration to keep the Showa Emperor if the Japanese where so eager to surrender on any terms? It originally demanded UNCONDITIONAL surrender. Hmm?

As for Pearl, how many civilian Filipinos where murdered in Manila as US troops advanced in the Luzon invasion? How many Malays and other nationalities throughout Japan's smash and grab empire were murdered? Oh, but I'm sure that's all the fault of the US as well. Smacks of the excuse domestic abusers routinely use...she made me do it. Just saying.

And don't "school" me on WW2 history. That's condescending to the point of reporting your post as an attack. When your as old and well read as I am, then you can "school" me. Have you stood at the rail at parade rest and rendered honors to the USS Arizona while transiting Pearl. I have. Have you?

[MarineCombatEngineer]

48. This right here.

[VGNonly]

43. How many Chinese died?

Just for retaliation resulting from the Doolittle Raid; 250,000, mostly civilians.

[paleotn]

45. Oh, so we forced the Japanese to commit war crimes. Is that it?

[VGNonly]

46. Battle of Manila

Okinawa, Iwo Jima...each battle increased by scope and death. The Japanese were not going to surrender.

[paleotn]

51. No, they weren't. I took two imperial rescripts from Hirohito to end it.

And even then it was touch and go. It was like dealing with MAGAs and could have gone sideways at any time. Luckily cooler heads prevailed in the Japanese military hierarchy. Emperor worship worked in our favor for a change. Halsey continued to order combat sorties until told to stand down because he didn't trust the bastards. Admirals Spruance and Mitscher didn't attend the USS Missouri surrender and remained at Pearl Harbor just in case Japan pulled something or rogue kamikazes weren't with the program so to speak and tried to decapitate the Allied command structure.

[VGNonly]

53. The Kyujo Incident.

Hard-line Japanese military attempted a coup against the emperor on August 14-15, in order to not surrender to the US.

My father was at the surrender proceedings on VJ Day. Dad was an ensign, later Lt (jg). His ship was about a mile away, listening on shipboard radio. Had the war continued without the atomic blasts, he would have been in the planned invasion.

[Happy Hoosier]

42. With all due respect, it was a total war.

“Proportional” response doesn’t come in to it. You hit your enemy as hard as you can.

Now… the “strategic “ bombing of population centers was horrific. But it did not start with Hiroshima. Some 25,000 people dies in Dresden. 50,000 died in Berlin. Some 80 kilotons of bombs were dropped on Berlin alone.

My mother lived in Berlin as a child in WWII. An unexploded bomb fell in her apartment, while she was there.

If you wanna decry the bombing of civilians in WWII, that worth discussing. But I do get a little miffed by the tendency to portray the Japanese as the victims here…. They started the war. And didn’t even surrender until after Nagasaki. Why?

[paleotn]

21. Really?

So we modified the Potsdam Agreement to allow Japan to retain the Showa Emperor just from the kindness of our hearts? When many in DC and London, plus a huge swath of the American people wanted him charged as a war criminal? The thinking among the Allies was Hirohito might be the only one who could turn off the Pacific war, and as events played out, even that was iffy.

Most of the Japanese military command structure did not back surrender...ever. The Japanese government couldn't come to consensus even AFTER Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Russian invasion of Manchuria. The plan to destroy the Japanese people in one last monumental fit of kamikaze like violence was still in place. Hirohito finally stepped in by imperial rescript twice demanding the government surrender under the modified Potsdam terms. Both times illegally by the then Japanese constitution and standing law.

But even then, the hot heads in the Japanese army attempted several coups to stop the surrender, including taking over the imperial palace complex. Their thinking being the man-god emperor was being misled and needed their hot headed guidance. We err massively when we impose western thinking on a people and culture who aren't western. Their motivations and thinking process was not like ours and we still can't fully comprehend some facets of their culture that drove much of their government's and military's actions.

Today, most Japanese still don't look at the war like we do. They gloss over and ignore their own country's monumental butchery. In surrender, they went along to get along, but still don't recognize their national war crimes as Germany does.

For a better understanding, I recommend Ian Toll's Pacific war trilogy. Particularly the final volume "Twilight of the Gods" when it comes to what was going on in Japan towards the end. It's extremely well researched.

[Demsrule86]

29. I don't agree...it would have been Okinawa all over again. They would not surrender and would

have sued for peace IMHO. My uncle who landed in Europe on D-Day and fought his way through Europe was on a boat on his way to Japan, he told me he and quite a few more planned to jump off the ship committing suicide rather than fight across Japan. It undoubtedly saved thousands if not millions of American soldiers' lives. Consider that Japan did not surrender after the first bomb which is why another was used...such was their determination.

[sarisataka]

52. When such information such as that found

In the Strategic Bombing Survey becomes available it should immediately be placed in the US' TTD* and sent to those making the decision so they have access to after the fact data.

*TTD- Trans Temporal Device

[Walleye]

10. The most influential event on the boomer generation happened before we were born

We don’t think about it much but the sword of Damocles of atomic war hung over our generation as we were growing up. I think what I took from it was that it was kind of pointless to make plans for the future. Yet here I am 74 years old

[Alexander Of Assyria]

11. The two greatest acts of racism were dropped on Japanese innocents...war crimes, unprosecuted.

[lastlib]

12. The appropos day for this:

"All the powers that be,
and the course of history
Would be changed forevermore."

[Dr. Strange]

58. RIP Professor

[WestMichRad]

17. Hiroshima

&pp=ygUQdXRvcGlhIGhpcm9zaGltYQ%3D%3D

[ProfessorGAC]

40. They Did This Song On...

...their Live in Tokyo DVD. And, the audience loved it. Pretty bold, I thought.

[Botany]

18. That bomb saved millions of lives both Japanese and the Allies too

The 2nd one never should have been dropped. Back in the 1980s one of my neighbors had been a fighter
pilot in WW II and he had a friend who I met a couple of times and he had been in a POW camp in Japan.
He told me about a Japanese Sargent who beat him daily but on the day after the 1st bomb was dropped
the Sargent told the POW that he really didn't mean it when he was beating him because of the war and
all that stuff. All of the allied POWs would have been killed if Japan had been invaded and the bomb
stopped that from happening and put an end to the war.


BTW Oppenheimer was a really good movie and the Republicans who went after him after the war were
like they are now complete assholes.

[NNadir]

22. Over my life time, I've wavered on this issue, but at the end of my life, I agree with you.

Mostly this view comes from reading the internal struggle in the highest echelons of the Japanese government. Even after the bombings it was a struggle to agree on surrender, devolving to an unprecedented decision from the Emperor himself, who normally functioned only in a ceremonial role.

[Botany]

24. BTW the American POW told the Japanese Sargent no hard feelings and forgave him but ....

.... as soon as he got out he told some people about his torturer and the Sgt. got hung. Before they
dropped the bomb the Japanese were training their civilians to attack any invaders with make
shift weapons in human waves. If we had invaded the #s of Japanese that would have been killed
would have in the millions along with 100s of thousands of allies too. Just look @ the casualty
rates from the battle of Okinawa. My dad was too young for WW II but if we had invaded Japan
then he would have been of age for that fight.

[Archae]

26. One of my uncles was supposed to be in the invasion force.

He was already a veteran of Iwo Jima, and he knew that if he had actually invaded the home islands, he would be target #1, simply because he was an American.

Even little kids were being taught to kill Americans.

[Botany]

28. My long gone Grandfather had gone into the military during WW I and since he was good @

what we now call logistics he was sent to Puerto Rico where we shipping a lot of supplies from
and since he had graduated from college they told him he would be made an officer if he went
to the N. Atlantic / Europe but if stayed in P.R. he would never be an officer. He told them he
was fine at not being an officer and P.R. was fine by him.

[TomWilm]

30. The bombs DID NOT save millions of lives ...

The Japanese were not concerned about atomic bombings. They were concerned about the Soviet Union. The war ended, not because of those big bombs, but when Soviet broke the treaty with Japan, and entered the war against Japan:

... Attributing the end of the war to the atomic bomb served Japan’s interests in multiple ways.

- First, it helped to preserve the legitimacy of the emperor. If the war was lost not because of mistakes but because of the enemy’s unexpected miracle weapon, then the institution of the emperor might continue to find support within Japan.

- Second, it appealed to international sympathy. Being able to recast Japan as a victimized nation — one that had been unfairly bombed with a cruel and horrifying instrument of war — would help to offset some of the morally repugnant things Japan’s military had done.

- Finally, saying that the Bomb won the war would please Japan’s American victors. If the Bomb won the war, then the perception of U.S. military power would be enhanced, U.S. diplomatic influence in Asia and around the world would increase, and U.S. security would be strengthened. The $2 billion spent to build it would not have been wasted.

- If, on the other hand, the Soviet entry into the war was what caused Japan to surrender, then the Soviets could claim that they were able to do in four days what the United States was unable to do in four years, and the perception of Soviet military power and Soviet diplomatic influence would be enhanced.

Japanese historian Asada Sadao has said that in many of the postwar interviews. If the Americans wanted to believe that the Bomb won the war, why disappoint them?

But what are we to make of all those conclusions if the traditional story of Hiroshima is called into doubt? Hiroshima is the center, the point from which all other claims and assertions radiate out. Yet the story we have been telling ourselves seems pretty far removed from the facts. What are we to think about nuclear weapons if this enormous first accomplishment — the miracle of Japan’s sudden surrender — turns out to be a myth?

The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did – Foreign Policy

[Botany]

38. What a load of dung

"If, on the other hand, the Soviet entry into the war was what caused Japan to surrender, then the Soviets could claim that they were able to do in four days what the United States was unable to do in four years, and the perception of Soviet military power and Soviet diplomatic influence would be enhanced."

Gee I guess those Marines on Guadalcanal were just doing nothing.

[ProfessorGAC]

54. The Notion That Japan Was Motivated By...

...fear of Soviet involvement is Soviet propaganda.
Stalin had what he wanted by having nearly all of Eastern & Central Europe under his control & occupied.
Although they did attack in Manchuria, they were fighting troops whose supply sides were severely compromised months prior.
The Soviets could not have mobilized men & materiel to fight 5,000 miles away against an entrenched enemy. Not without compromising their position in Europe. And, Stalin was never risking what he already claimed.
It's seems plain silly to suggest that they were more worried about the distant Soviets more than additional nukes & an invasion by the military of a country they directly attacked.
The very premise seems like nonsense.

[TomWilm]

60. Japan maybe was motivated by Soviet propaganda, but ...

...Japan’s Imperial headquarters issued an emergency announcement reporting that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan and had begun entering Manchurian territory, but added absurdly, “The scale of these attacks is not large.”
In reality, the first elements of a 1.5-million-man Soviet host, backed by small cavalry units of its ally, Outer Mongolia, were already in motion. Infantry, tank, horse cavalry, and mounted infantry, supported by river flotillas, air fleets, and 4,300 Soviet planes, would commence the invasion by striking Japanese convoys and cities in Manchuria and North Korea.
The Soviet Pacific Fleet stood ready to carry the invasion to the islands north of Japan ...
Soviet Invasion of Manchuria: Catching Japan Unawares.

... It would not be possible to fight off two great powers attacking from two different directions. The Soviet invasion invalidated the military’s decisive battle strategy, just as it invalidated the diplomatic strategy. At a single stroke, all of Japan’s options evaporated. The Soviet invasion was strategically decisive — it foreclosed both of Japan’s options — while the bombing of Hiroshima (which foreclosed neither) was not.
The Soviet declaration of war also changed the calculation of how much time was left for maneuver. Japanese intelligence was predicting that U.S. forces might not invade for months. Soviet forces, on the other hand, could be in Japan proper in as little as 10 days. The Soviet invasion made a decision on ending the war extremely time sensitive.
Japan’s leaders had reached this conclusion some months earlier. In a meeting of the Supreme Council in June 1945, they said that Soviet entry into the war “would determine the fate of the Empire.” Army Deputy Chief of Staff Kawabe said, in that same meeting, “The absolute maintenance of peace in our relations with the Soviet Union is imperative for the continuation of the war.”
The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did – Foreign Policy.

[TomWilm]

61. Those Marines on Guadalcanal might have been fighting a lot ...

... but their effort could still be meaningless in the big picture. Decisions are seldom based on just one factor.

[Marthe48]

19. We can't undo it

but if we absolutely had to use those weapons, I wish we would have dropped those bombs on an uninhabited area.

[spike jones]

20. Some people who survived the Hiroshima atomic blast went to Nagasaki for safety. Six people were

known to survive both blasts.

Peacenik Sir Joseph Rotblat was the only scientist to leave the Manhattan Project when it became clear that Germany would not succeed in making the atomic bomb, and Japan was on the verge of being defeated without it being needed there.

[AllaN01Bear]

25. this

my late dad was in the strike team that delivered the weapon by sea. he was also in the radiation field the day after . he blamed us kids birth defects on the radaition. his ship was attacked by kitans and suicide planes and sunk on the way home . good thing a us seaplane spotted him in the water . he was originaly a navigator / radio operator for a pby plane.

[usonian]

27. As an aspiring scientist/physicist/engineer growing up in the 50's and 60's,

this haunted me, and I vowed never to harm another person with my work. I served in the Coast Guard and in aerospace only on defensive projects. I practice Buddhism inspired by leaders who defied the emperor and were imprisoned for doing so.

The emperor and his nihilistic kamikaze nutcases should have fielded this fly ball. Why people punish victims is universes beyond my comprehension.

Victims are killed this day at the border and elsewhere for political "gain". When people see that vicarious murder is a reflection of their own spiritual emptiness, they might seek a richer and happier life, one of equality, respect for, and fairness to all others.

Life is a mirror.



In my life, I turned this "poison" into "medicine".

[XanaDUer2]

31. Off topic

Is that actor Peter Falk, if anyone knows?

[XanaDUer2]

33. It is nt

[ProudMNDemocrat]

35. Yes.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734663/characters/nm0000393

Peter Falk portrayed a Fidel Castro-like Central American dictator.

[MineralMan]

32. I was born 10 days before the Hiroshima bomb was dropped.

That event has followed me all through my life. I'm an A-bomb baby, I guess.

[roamer65]

34. ...

🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿

[stuck in the middle]

36. Plowshares Movement History

A history of the Plowshares movement from 1980 to 2009, compiled from the records of many friends by Ardeth Platte OP and Susan Crane.

[Iggo]

56. Hide thread.

It’s for the best.

[hunter]

57. If we hadn't had this last-call opportunity to drop the bombs on Japan...

... we probably would have dropped them on some Soviet city soon after.

Too many sociopaths wanted to see what these bombs would do to a living city. They found out.

People forget the Manhattan project was built big.

120 "Fat Man" bombs of the type that destroyed Nagasaki were built between 1947 and 1949. By 1950 these bombs were being replaced with "better" bombs.

There's an "alternate history" science fiction novel we could write where the U.S.A. dominates the world as a singular atomic superpower. It ain't pretty. Ask any American nation south of Texas.

I'm in no way implying the Cold War was a positive thing.

[ShazzieB]

59. I have learned a ton from reading this thread.

I would be the first to admit that I am not well versed on the topic of what caused the Japanese to finally surrender in 1945 or to what extent it was or wasn't due to the atomic bomb, and after reading this thread I now realize that I know even less than I thought I did. However, it seems like a vast oversimplification to me to say the bomb had nothing to do with it.

I'm not a Hiroshima/Nagasaki apologist, and I have no idea if dropping those bombs was "necessary" or "justified." But I know a lot of people thought it was necessary at the time, including President Truman, who made the decision to do it. Truman felt strongly enough about it to call Oppenheimer a "crybaby scientist" for expressing his own feeling of having "blood on his hands." (Not to Oppenheimer's face, as implied in the movie; but the fact that Truman made that comment after meeting with Oppenheimer is well-documented.)

Truman made the decision he did based on the information that was available to him at the time as well as the enormous pressure he must have felt to end a war that had been dragging on for years. I can't imagine what that was like, and I'm not comfortable second guessing him.

I hate nukes. I hate that the U.S. used them, and I hate the horror those bombs unleashed. I hate that Truman felt compelled to use them (as I believe he did). But I also hate a lot of the things the Japanese military did that led up to it, from the invasion of Manchuria and the Nanjing Massacre up through all the other atrocities and war crimes they committed, before and after Pearl Harbor.

It's possible to feel all of those things at the same time, while also hoping that not another nuke ever gets dropped on anyone, anywhere, for any reason.