MAY the events of these two days ... ...
06 and 09 August y1945 ... ... never happen ever again.
blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/08/09/why-nagasaki
Why ? Why --- at all --- Nagasaki ? Too ?
Our killings could have, as well --- save for a dude named Hank Stimson, included next after Nagasaki's annihilation then ... ... another pogrom also: Kyoto !
Then - US Secretary o' Warring ( 'ith Those 'Others' Different Than Us Folk ) Stimson had 'personal' reasons for sparing the Different Folks there in Kyoto.
Yeah. Yeah: personal reasons.
Mostly those personal reasons are, aren't they, for w.h.y. --- with another individual or 'different' group --- for why ( her or his justification and 'rational'ization re ) anyone's ... ... warring ? !
For whatever else is done --- because of "your personal reasons" --- make certain over and throughout all of that: to gut the bitch in the belly.
As per some o' Those in Power w Dominion Over Her of The Contender: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1100998-contender and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208874/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 .
But, most especially, this statement near its end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlioUeIUuts&list=PLuPQ67nPIEBA-x88H6p_V-7J__0pX_kCI =
" ... ... because of half - truths, lies and innuendos "
" simple as that "
It’s not like they had a choice – they were either forced to go to war, or felt compelled to because losing the war was unthinkable – Hitler was only 21 miles away over the Channel after all. Almost all of these soldiers would have suffered horrible, painful deaths while terrified out of their wits, and their families knew this of course. By the end of the WW2 virtually the whole of society was traumatised by, and desensitized to, organised brutality. Within just my own family my grandparents suffered many bereavements – my maternal grandmother, for instance, lost her father in WW1 and three brothers in WW2 (her mother died when she was an infant).
I saw the film Dunkirk the other day, again with my kids. It’s an excellent film, but quite intense and a difficult film to watch at times. It does a fantastic job of showing the nastiness and pointlessness of war though, which I’m glad my girls picked up on. The film also conveys the terrifying existential threat that people in the UK felt at the time. After defeating France in three weeks Hitler was just a short boat ride away. Can you imagine the reality of Nazi troops stomping down your street, raping your daughter, or wife or mother? What about you and the rest of your family being dragged into the street to be shot or hung because a fellow villager shot at them? I can’t, but this is the reality the British public lived in, it was a very real threat. As we know it actually happened in much of Europe. The situation did change by 1945 but all the carnage, tragedy, fear and grief was either very recent or still going on.
06 and 09 August y1945 ... ... never happen ever again.
blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2013/08/09/why-nagasaki
Why ? Why --- at all --- Nagasaki ? Too ?
Our killings could have, as well --- save for a dude named Hank Stimson, included next after Nagasaki's annihilation then ... ... another pogrom also: Kyoto !
Then - US Secretary o' Warring ( 'ith Those 'Others' Different Than Us Folk ) Stimson had 'personal' reasons for sparing the Different Folks there in Kyoto.
Yeah. Yeah: personal reasons.
Mostly those personal reasons are, aren't they, for w.h.y. --- with another individual or 'different' group --- for why ( her or his justification and 'rational'ization re ) anyone's ... ... warring ? !
For whatever else is done --- because of "your personal reasons" --- make certain over and throughout all of that: to gut the bitch in the belly.
As per some o' Those in Power w Dominion Over Her of The Contender: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1100998-contender and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208874/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 .
But, most especially, this statement near its end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlioUeIUuts&list=PLuPQ67nPIEBA-x88H6p_V-7J__0pX_kCI =
" ... ... because of half - truths, lies and innuendos "
" simple as that "
I’d like to echo what others have said about it being impossible to know how people thought and felt at the time. I can only speak from a British perspective, and Truman was obviously not British. He wasn’t even a normal member of the public, but he no doubt shared many of the same emotions, experiences and fears. This is a bit of a long reply but it’s a matter close to my heart. I also have no answer to whether dropping the bomb was right or wrong. But here goes:
I live in a relatively small village in Yorkshire and every Remembrance Day (11/11) a ceremony is held at the village war memorial. I’m not one for ceremonies at all but I nearly always go, as do hundreds of other people, I also take my kids as I think it’s important that they understand what their great-grandparents’ generation had to endure. During the ceremony an announcer reads out the names of people from the village that died in the world wars and for such a small area the number is truly staggering. It takes about ten minutes to read them, and from the names it is obvious that many are from the same families. I’m not a very emotional person but I find it incredibly moving.
It’s not like they had a choice – they were either forced to go to war, or felt compelled to because losing the war was unthinkable – Hitler was only 21 miles away over the Channel after all. Almost all of these soldiers would have suffered horrible, painful deaths while terrified out of their wits, and their families knew this of course. By the end of the WW2 virtually the whole of society was traumatised by, and desensitized to, organised brutality. Within just my own family my grandparents suffered many bereavements – my maternal grandmother, for instance, lost her father in WW1 and three brothers in WW2 (her mother died when she was an infant).
I saw the film Dunkirk the other day, again with my kids. It’s an excellent film, but quite intense and a difficult film to watch at times. It does a fantastic job of showing the nastiness and pointlessness of war though, which I’m glad my girls picked up on. The film also conveys the terrifying existential threat that people in the UK felt at the time. After defeating France in three weeks Hitler was just a short boat ride away. Can you imagine the reality of Nazi troops stomping down your street, raping your daughter, or wife or mother? What about you and the rest of your family being dragged into the street to be shot or hung because a fellow villager shot at them? I can’t, but this is the reality the British public lived in, it was a very real threat. As we know it actually happened in much of Europe. The situation did change by 1945 but all the carnage, tragedy, fear and grief was either very recent or still going on.
Fast forward a few years to the firebombings of Germany and then Japan. We would rightly regard these as hideous atrocities if carried out today; they were truly horrific. There are countless dreadful stories from Dresden or Hamburg, or Tokyo: families cooking to death in German bomb shelters, families trying to escape a firestorm only to become stuck in melted asphalt where they would burn alive in sight if each other, hundreds of women and children jumping from bridges in Tokyo to extinguish their burning skin and flesh in the river. This sort of thing was happening to tens of thousands of innocent people in every allied fire bombing raid – the Tokyo raid of March 9-10 1945 is reckoned to have killed over 100,000 people, most through burning to death. The German and Japanese governments were fully aware of these facts. However, the regimes never showed any concern for their citizens, even when it was obvious the war was lost for them, and they never hinted at the possibility of surrender. All the while Allied soldiers were dying by the thousands every single day.
Truman had no knowledge of the bomb until days before it was dropped, and he had to make the decision in the context of worldwide slaughter and devastation. The US public had spent a fortune on the bomb, and a tremendous amount of industrial and scientific capacity was invested too – at the expense, it should be noted, of reduced resources in other areas of the war. Japan had obstinately refused to surrender, even after the firebombing horrors of Tokyo and other cities.
Thousands of your soldiers are dying horribly every day. You have to end the war. Do you continue firebombing Japanese cities, burning to death hundreds of thousands of civilians, with little chance of surrender? All while preparing an invasion which would kill scores of civilians and countless thousands of your own troops? How would you answer the families of the tens or hundreds of thousands of your troops that died in the invasion you ordered, when the families find out you had the bomb but didn’t use it?
Would you drop the bomb? I have no idea if I would or could, and this is why I would never want to hold any political or military office.
