Atomic Bombs days

kaz · 9 Aug 2003

Every year, living in the US, I sort of forget these dates, but I just wanted us to remember that the 5th or 6th of August was the day the US crushed Hiroshima with an A-bomb and 9th (today Japan time) was the day Americans did it on Nagasaki.

When I was living in Japan (Hiroshima), these dates were obviously important for me. But since I now live in America and I tend to miss it. At least Japanese people think that all the world is paying attention to the ceremonies held on these dates. But in fact no one really knows. Very sad.

ghettocities · 9 Aug 2003

It's pretty sad (what happened there,) but I tend not to think about it because without it ever happening the world would be different and quite honestly I love how everything is currently right now, so the past, I mean, how could I feel remorseful? ,, and what's that saying, "A thousand wil die now so a million will smile later." ? If anything I have appreciation for both sides for doing what they did but I feel at the same time it's no time to celebrate, cry over or even make a day out of it.

Josh

Arch · 9 Aug 2003

The world has experienced the atom bomb now, hiroshima and nagasaki showed to the world how destructive it is, and hope it will never happen again.

Dream Time · 9 Aug 2003

it was sad for those innocent Japanese people to be killed or hurted by the bombs

but,for me,from the point of view of a Chinese,
if the Americans did not drop two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,I do not know how many more people of my country would suffer and get killed.

Dream Time · 9 Aug 2003

war is bad,I hope people would learn from the mistakes.
some people say Chinese won the war against Japan,
but look at the price we paid.

honestly I believe there will be a World War III pretty soon,
maybe in ten years or so.
it is just a matter of time,
the world's situation is really bad now

kaz · 9 Aug 2003

Thanks for your comments

Thanks for many comments.

I am 35 and I feel I haved lived long enough to think of various interpretations. But one posting read how many Chinese have been killed if without the atomic bombs--this was new for me. Still it goes along the line of how many american soldiers would have been killed...type of interpretation, so I can see that.

Still I feel A-bombs really were qualitatively different from anything that we experienced as human beings --in terms of magnitude and nondiscriminant nature of the attacks on civilians and the two events constitute a treason against humanity.

I think what we need to do is simple. Let's just look at one photo of Hiroshima--where everything is flat. We just need to remember the times that there was a time when it was okay to kill everybody when the state acts obnoxiously.

Today it is different. We have so called smart bombs and at least technically they tried to minimize the civilian casualities.

After so many summers of thinking about the events I feel sad that the events are sort of forgotten. And I feel strongly that the dropping of A-bombs are qualitatively different from other events.

Many young American people don't know that the US and Japan fought. One girl asked me which side won. Our secretary, seeing the photo of Hiroshima, asked me who did it. But I also don't know too much about other important historical events, so I wonder if I should take this as a big deal or not.

kaz · 9 Aug 2003

Response to a saying that Josh quoted

Josh, you quoted a saying "A thousand wil die now so a million will smile later."

After reading it I got curious how many people died exactly. I am from Hiroshima but I never remembered how many exactly died. I found this quote by google-searching it.

link to hiroshima info says:

TABLE A
Estimates of Casualties Hiroshima Nagasaki
Pre-raid population 255,000 195,000
Dead 66,000 39,000
Injured 69,000 25,000
Total Casualties 135,000 64,000

My home town is outside the city. My grandpa and grandma used to say that they felt the light coming over the mountain, though. Unfortunately they died so young in their early 60s of cancer, I never go to hear more about it.

Some photos
This is today's Hiroshima A photo of Flat Hiroshima

jbm1x · 10 Aug 2003

1,000 or 200,000 still better than letting the war continue on as many more would have died...

i was at hiroshima at the bomb site last spring, and as tragic and sad as it was it did end the war, japan would never have surrendered so quickly if they didn't know what a powerful weapon we had

i've read that researchers estimated that if the bombs had not been dropped, more than a million additional japanese and americans would have died fighting

to be honest it was good that we used the bomb then also to really see its destructive power and scare the world out of using them, because there are bombs that are hundreds of times more powerful than the ones used on japan

kaz · 10 Aug 2003

Hmmm

I am not so much interested in creating good people and bad people out of talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But I hope to learn about processes that occur at the time of wars. One process that I am really interested in is the process that made people (not just Americans but Japanese also) back then to think it is okay to kill civilians.

This is a difficult topic because there are so many interpretations and facts associated with the decision of dropping the bombs. But I think people just seeing the photo of flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have some impacts on letting us think of it as a significant event of human history.

It reminds us of days when killing of civilians was considered okay not just by Americans but by Japanese.

I read John Dower's War Without Mercy very long time ago, but it was a very interesting description of how the Japanese as a whole were dehumanized in the minds of Americans, so that bombing on civilitan targets were okay. I am sure Japanese applied a similar thing on justifying their deeds in other parts of Asia.

Today's war is very different. We start by personifying the evil. We talk about Sadam Hussein as an evil person and people are usually considered good. Kim John Il is a bad person and his people are suffering.

I wonder when our mentality changed and for what reason????

kaz · 10 Aug 2003

One more note

I said that today civilian casuality is considered a taboo. However, there are still differences between the way American thinks and Japanese thinks when we interprete the death of enemy soldiers.

When Japanese or Americans think of civilian casualities today, we think in the same way. We don't want to see it as much as we can. But I think in the minds of Americans or perhaps including me we are not counting of deaths of enemy soldiers as people's deaths.

Let's face it. Iraqi soldiers dying occupies no room in our American minds. This is almost a common sense in American society. But I wonder we underestimate the degree to which Japanese or other nationalities also think of soldiers' death as people's death.

If the way we (people living in America) is unique, then how do we come to feel in the way we do??? Obvious reason is that the enermy is enermy; without killing them, our people would die. I think, though, people in other parts of the world don't know that we say a thing like this in America-->"If we start a war, we need to win it. We need to win it with full force, so a war gets ended." Japanese have not fought a war for a long time, so any war is bad, so this sort of statement does not resonate in people's mind.

Well, what I wrote here contains lots of hypotheses that can be true or correct. Am I correct in saying that we people living in America counts civilitan deaths only as deaths? For example, in my mind, the number 3000 remains in my mind as the official count of civilian deaths in Iraq war, but I really don't know how many Iraq soldiers died.

noyhauser · 10 Aug 2003

I don't feel like posting a whole response to this thread again, but if you want to see a interesting debate go to:

http://forum.japanreference.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3200&perpage=15&pagenumber=1

I think we said all that needed to be said there.

kaz · 10 Aug 2003

Interesting debate

Hiroshima and Nagasaki season is now over. Japan will soon commemorate the end of the war on shusen-kinenbi.

I live in a 1 mile distance of the place where the first nuclear power was discovered/invented (the first sustained chain reaction of nuclear power occured in a lab environment). I pass by the monument everyday. Around the time of this year I catch myself forgetting about the dates and feel bad.

Arch · 10 Aug 2003

Originally posted by jbm1x
1,000 or 200,000 still better than letting the war continue on as many more would have died...

i was at hiroshima at the bomb site last spring, and as tragic and sad as it was it did end the war, japan would never have surrendered so quickly if they didn't know what a powerful weapon we had

i've read that researchers estimated that if the bombs had not been dropped, more than a million additional japanese and americans would have died fighting

to be honest it was good that we used the bomb then also to really see its destructive power and scare the world out of using them, because there are bombs that are hundreds of times more powerful than the ones used on japan

Surely you cannot say that the A-bomb was good. The worst possible thing used on human-beings, sorry but nothing should suffer that. Nothing can condone the A-bomb, the amount of destruction is caused , nothing in the world should have to go throught it.

kaz · 10 Aug 2003

Today we just don't bomb civilians even when we think that would stop the war faster. For example, the US did not drop an A-bomb on Iraqi civilians. The US will never drop anything on North Korea or Iran. It is not really what we do. But for some reason it was okay at the time of ww II. I just don't get it.

Arch · 10 Aug 2003

Originally posted by kaz
Today we just don't bomb civilians even when we think that would stop the war faster. For example, the US did not drop an A-bomb on Iraqi civilians. The US will never drop anything on North Korea or Iran. It is not really what we do. But for some reason it was okay at the time of ww II. I just don't get it.

I think it was alot off to do with the attack on peal harbour, the japanese had hit america with a sledge hammer and left america in taters. It was such a surpirse attack. that the americans wanted the japanese to pay, i think that was the motive behind A-bomb.

noyhauser · 10 Aug 2003

Again, read the thread that I linked above. Its on this site in the History and traditions thread. We talked about all of this.

kaz · 10 Aug 2003

All of our discussion is monday morning quarterback. The decioon of dropping two nukes belonged to the US leadership back then. Sadly, all happened and we now know what happened. Knowing what happened, we talk about it.

For example, this talk about how Japanese would have fought till the last minute if without the A-bombs. We can say it because we know more or less what happened and what did not happen.

Anyways democracy is good and I am thankful for it.

Kathie Hawkins · 11 Aug 2003

Viewing the human race from the vantage point of a flying saucer & not taking sides, I wonder......I wonder how many people of Hiroshima & Nagazaki would've grown up to become great geniuses like Albert, or doctors like Jonas, or musicians like Johann. Then again, how many of the sailors at Pearl Harbor would've gone on to make great contributions to society had they lived. How would the world be changed today if W.W. 2 never happened? It sure cut down on the overpopulation crisis, but that's a rough way of doing it. As far as attitudes toward the other side goes, I once eread a book about the Japanese that was written by a American & printed in the '30s. It stated that most Japanese were buck toothed & had bad eyesight. What a stereotype. Suppose you were a cute little Japanese/American girl & read that! It was offensive. We must watch our attitudes about others. ------Slant Eyed Gurl

Kathie Hawkins · 11 Aug 2003

As far as nukes go, its nice to think that the guys with their fingers on the buttons (actually they're key switches) wouldn't really fire their weapons, but they're constantly trained to just obey orders & just operate like robots. They train so constantly that they don't really think about the results of their actions. When they receive a valid launch order, they just go through the procecdures mechanically until it gets boring. They aren't told where they're missiles're headeded in case they have grandparents or other relatives in the target country. Suppose a nuclear war broke out between us & France tomorrow, those of French descent could be counted on NOT to launch against that country. The fact is that the decision to launch rests with the political & military representatives of countries. The troops're hand picked to ensure that they will push the button if told to. I hope North Korea doesn't get the BOMB! I'm glad I know where the public fallout shelters are in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.

Zanza · 11 Aug 2003

War is bad... m'kay

kaz · 11 Aug 2003

war, variation

I tend to think that there are bad wars and the wars that were unavoidable. Also within each war there were bad decisions and the decisions that were unavoidable. And when the bad decisions are made I believe people involved with poor decisions must be held accountable.

For example, the war againt Sadam Hussein probably was or probably was not unavoidable, but regardless of the position you take, if someone in the administration intentionally mislead people by quoting a bad intelligence then he/she should be held accountable.

I think that so many of poor decisions were left unexamined even when there were very bad intentions involved.

During the first Iraq war we heard generals saying that the bombs were smart and hitting every target, which was wrong. If the generals made those comments intentionally to mislead people, they have to be held accountable--or at least questioned and should not be given chances to appear on TV to make comments as if nothing happened.

Also we hear that some minority populations in Iraq were encouraged by the US to uprise, but when they did uprise thinking the US was on the way to help they were ignored and were caught and executed by Hussein. The US's call for uprising was a poor decision, I think, and whoever made that call and abandoned the Iraqis back then must do lots of explaining.

Dream Time · 12 Aug 2003

Originally posted by kaz
TABLE A
Estimates of Casualties Hiroshima Nagasaki
Pre-raid population 255,000 195,000
Dead 66,000 39,000
Injured 69,000 25,000
Total Casualties 135,000 64,000

during Japan's invasion in China,
for the first six weeks,
more than 300,000 Chinese lives were lost.

I sure feel sad for those Japanese that were killed by the two bombs,but that would not happen if Japan did not invade other Asian countries.
China was actually the biggest loser for WW 2.

it is useless if the Japanese just thinks about how sad it was that the two bombs being dropped on Japan,
they should regret about the mistake Japan had made
they should remember it
they should learn from the mistake and make sure not to repeat it

kaz · 13 Aug 2003

Dream time,
Yes, Japanese should remember it. Also in my opinion it should pay back to the world community by helping people living in totalitarian regimes to have better life. Even after the world war II many countries in the world killed their own people and suppressed their freedom.

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