August 6, 1945, August 9, 1945
The day the World changed. It was on this day that the Atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later, once again one was dropped on Nagasaki. It was a day of shame for humanity. We ought to always remember these dreadful events.
All my life I have had to live under the threat of nuclear war. Sadly, we still do. It has been 66 years and we still have not rid the World of these weapons. Efforts at doing so are painfully slow.
The first protest group I ever joined was the "Ban the Bomb" movement. I believing then what my mother accepted as the truth, that the bombing of these two cities was necessary to end the war. It has taking my own curiosity to do a little research on this to realize that this is a propaganda myth. The bombs were dropped probably more as an experiment than as a necessity. The Japanese were on the verge of surrender with the Russians trying to mediate. The Americans wanted to cut short any influence in the East by the Soviets.
There was lots of advice not to use these weapons, include some from the very top ranks of the military in the United States. The argument that "we now have these weapons and therefore should use them" seemed to have won the day. I invite everyone to google some sites that discuss this historical event. Unfortunately, historical research seldom changes the public historical myths, first put forward.
At a time when we hear of "banks too big to fail" surely we should consider 'weapons too dreadful to use".
The bombs in existence to day are many times more powerful that the "small " ones used on Japan. Such images as this should strike fear in our hearts.
Such war on civilians can only be justified when we dehumanize our brother, "the enemy". In this case the heinously cruel Japs. Now the Japanese are our much admired friends and allies.
We live with such historical contradictions repeatedly.
There is no justification for this. It could be a photo from the liberation of the Nazi death camps?
How ironic.
How ironic.
Sadly, we have recently been reminded efforts to still indoctrinate military personel into believing there is some justification in the use of these weapons. The Air Force Academy is now changing an ethics course they have used for decades which tried to convince those who might be in a position to set off a nuclear war that it would be moral and a "Christian" thing to do. As a human being and one who believe religion is an admirable human experience, I am profoundly offended that Christianity, or any religion would be used to justified unspeakable horrors as the use of weapons too horrible to use. If they are, as most seem to agree chemical weapons are, they should be destroyed forthwith.
It is this time of year that I think of the Cuban missle crisis and how one Soviet submarine officer, Vasili Arkhapov, prevented a nuclear war. He was one of three officers on the submarine who had to agree to fire in order to launch a nuclear weapon. He refused and managed to convince a second person to refuse. As a result no weapon was fired. If is had been launched, one can be sure the American's would have retaliated. This officer should be better know and revered. According to William McNamara we lived through this crisis without really knowing how close we had come to a nuclear war.
It is past time to make nuclear weapons obsolete.
posted by Tossing Pebbles in the Stream @ 8:24 a.m.
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4 Comments:
Applause. Very powerful piece.
Ah, yes... more lies are being uncovered. I think it was last year that I included the story of the Japanese surrender and subsequent bombing in my Sunday Musings. It really upset a number of people who, like me, had been brainwashed with the lies of the necessity to drop, not just one bomb, not just one city, but 2.
My cousin was the navigator on one of those planes... several planes flew out that day, no one knew which plane had the Bomb and which planes were loaded with dummies. It haunted Jim till the day he died that he might have been part of that destruction.
It is sad what man is capable of doing... and does.
I have always felt shame for our nation and all the hypocrisy that followed this event.
I have no doubt that the few surviors from the "Rape of Nanking" shed tears over these two bombs.
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