powell@decwrl.UUCP (02/10/84)
From: akov68::boyajian Sophie: I won't be the last to say that the US has done some pretty awful things in its time. Neither will I say, "My country right or wrong!" But I also can't agree with your "flame on America". First: "I suspect that that [Nagasaki] bomb was dropped both as a desire to show the world who was the most powerful, and also out of scientific curiosity to see what it would do. When you consider the eagerness of American scientists to go over to Japan to study the effects of the bombs right after the war, this hypothesis makes sense." Why? The bombs *were* dropped, and scientists had an excellent opportunity to study the after-effects. I don't see how you can make the leap to the assumption that the bombs were dropped *so that* scientists could make the observations. Besides, if that *was* the reason, Hiroshima would have provided enough studies, and Nagasaki wouldn't have been necessary. Second: "What I was flaming about in my original article is the fact that there has not been any movement in America to go to the root of the ques- tion of why that second bomb was dropped." Could it be because no one thinks that the dropping of the second bomb was any more significant than the first. Quite frankly, I'm surprised that you [or anyone for that matter] would be so concerned about the fact that a *second* bomb was dropped, rather than that *any* bombs were dropped. Third: "...I don't believe each person should feel guilt over some- thing they are not responsible for, but they should feel guilt that as a nation, they were capable of doing such a thing, or if not guilt, then maybe wonder what it is about the collective spirit of their nation that lead its leaders to commit such a crime as Nagasaki." Here we get to the crux of the matter. OK, sure, America, as a nation, is not blameless for that action. I think that many, if not most, Americans do know deep down that whatever we may think of the Godless commies or the Ayatollah or whomever, the United States is the only nation so far that has used nuclear weapons in warfare. Still, we can't share all the responsibility. How about the Japanese govern- ment? You could easily ask of them "what is it about the collective spirit of their nation that lead its leaders to commit such a crime as to gamble the lives of 80,000 people on the fact that the US couldn't possibly have a second nuclear bomb, especially when they knew that they couldn't possibly win the war anyway?" And I can't agree with you that three days wasn't enough for them to realize the significance of Hiroshima's destruction. It certainly didn't take them three days to surrender after Nagasaki. Fact: The Japanese weren't just an enemy in a war, as Nazi Germany was; they actually attacked us -- attacked a nation that up to that point had no grievance with them, a nation that would most likely have stayed neutral throughout the whole war if they hadn't attacked us first. The nuking of the two cities may not have been moral, but it was certainly justifiable. Fact: There was a plan drawn up for a full scale invasion of the Home Islands. The military estimates for lives lost (on both sides) if that plan was implemented was greater than the estimates for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Clearly, the US government made the sensible (if not "right") decision. Fact: Dresden was a lot worse! Now *that* was a moral outrage! Done for no other reason (as I understand it) than to test the effects of a firestorm; here's your satisfaction of scientific curiosity. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC Maynard) UUCP: (decvax!decwrl!rhea!akov68!boyajian) ARPA: (decwrl!rhea!akov68!boyajian@Shasta)
andree@uokvax.UUCP (03/01/84)
#R:decwrl:-559100:uokvax:5000081:000:1782 uokvax!andree Feb 27 19:04:00 1984 [To correct some misinformation that has lately appeared on the net, I post the following comments. As usual, I'm to lazy to give the references, but will gladly mail them to anybody who asks.] Fact: The Japanese weren't just an enemy in a war, as Nazi Germany was; they actually attacked us -- attacked a nation that up to that point had no grievance with them, a nation that would most likely have stayed neutral throughout the whole war if they hadn't attacked us first. The nuking of the two cities may not have been moral, but it was certainly justifiable. [No, there WAS cause for the Japanese to attack America - we had been rather nasty about most things towards them, most notably cutting off supplies of vital war materials. There is evidence to indicate that Roosevelt both expected and wanted an excuse to get into WWII. For a first aproximation, just note that after JAPAN attacked us, we proceeded to dump massive resources into defeating GERMANY (~98% of the materials produced before germany surrendered went to Europe.)] Fact: There was a plan drawn up for a full scale invasion of the Home Islands. The military estimates for lives lost (on both sides) if that plan was implemented was greater than the estimates for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Clearly, the US government made the sensible (if not "right") decision. [Minor corrections - the estimate for the lives lost on the AMERICAN side was 1/2 million. This is larger than any total I've ever seen for Nagasaki and Hiroshima (most of them stop at about 400,000). I've never seen estimates for the Japanese side, except notes that they would be much larger. This is estimate is for capturing 1/2 of the southernmost of the Japanese islands, for use as a base for capturing the rest of the islands.] <mike