saquigley@watdaisy.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (01/16/84)
Another fact showing how self-centered americans are is the furor and controver- sy that surrounded this whole TDA story. At the same time as TDA was being released BBC had acquired rights to a more horrifying documentary of the effects of nuclear war: footings on Hiroshima. It seems like the American stations has the correct insight to show TDA rather than the other. They assumed rightly that the american public would be more horrified at seeing a fictionalised version of what would happen to them rather than the actual footings of what had REALLY happened to other people, even if the latter was actually more horrible. Another thing which I find interesting is that there hasn't really been a sense of guilt in America about either the bombings of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, like there has been in West Germany about the holocaust. I find this very frighte- ning, because I think that it shows that this could happen again without the american public getting too concerned about it. (As long as no americans died in the process). Now Hiroshima can be defended intellectually by jugling numbers judiciously, but there is no way that Nagasaki can. Yet, nobody really cares or worries about it. I think this reflects that there is definitely something very wrong with the collective american psyche. Sophie Quigley
emjej@uokvax.UUCP (01/23/84)
#R:watdaisy:-642000:uokvax:5000059:000:514 uokvax!emjej Jan 21 17:46:00 1984 "Now Hiroshima can be defended intellectually by juggling numbers judiciously..." I have difficulty seeing how this belief can be consistently held concurrently with that of yet another flame, namely that lives are of equal value regardless of national origin. Re TDA--that was a media event. Obsession with nuclear war is a popular pastime, which the media are quite eager to feed. I don't know whether one can make any deductions about the sentiments of any particular person based on that. James Jones
andree@uokvax.UUCP (01/24/84)
#R:watdaisy:-642000:uokvax:5000063:000:2103 uokvax!andree Jan 22 05:14:00 1984 You want justification for Nagasaki? I'll give it to you. In case you don't remember/haven't discovered, the japanese near the end of WWII (more properly, the Second Thirty Years War, Phase II) had sworn not to surrender until they were all dead. This was considered an unlikely occurence. We dropped one bomb on the japanese (after warning them that something awful would happen if they didn't surrender). This just told them we were ahead of the rest of the world in building a-bombs. They weren't going to surrender yet, as nobody could have the raw nuclear material to build more than one. We then drop a second a-bomb on them. All bets are off. Since we shouldn't have been able to produce that one, it's no longer clear how many we have. We *MAY* actually be able to kill all the japanese with minimal effort on our part. NOW, they surrender. Of course, we had to use two different flavors of bomb, and couldn't have turned out another one for a while, but they didn't know that. America has just saved several million lifes, both american and japanese, by nuking two cities. Not optimal, but even if we did ask for the war, we didn't ask the japanese to be fanatical about it. As for feeling guilty about it, I don't. Nor do I see any reason to. At the time, bombing cities was accepted behavior (I think the germans started it). Most such bombings were actually against militarily important targets (the nukes hit a troop staging area and a naval dry dock, if I remember correctly). Nukes are big enough that they tend to splatter badly, and conventional weapons (at the time) had such lousy delivery systems that you could miss by most of a mile. So civilians got hit. There are things america did during the this period that I am ashamed of. Firestorming german and japanese cities, mostly. This was stategically useless, and provided a painfull death to far to many people - larger than the any death toll even you would consider reasonable for hiroshima and nagasaki. This I'm ashamed of. Hiroshima or Nagasaki? No, I'm not ashamed of that. "With wobbly to fill in the chinks." <mike
saquigley@watdaisy.UUCP (Sophie Quigley) (01/29/84)
Nagasaki was bombed THREE days after Hiroshima. Even though the Japanese bragged that they didn't believe the US had any more bombs, this seems to me to be a bit expedient (to say the least). I cannot believe that three days was long enough to give them at least time to think, realise the extent of the damage, or convince them by other means that the US did have more bombs. I know that the US was at war with Japan, but what did they have to loose by waiting a bit longer to give Japan a chance to recover its wits? As far as feeling guilt is concerned, I don't believe each person should feel guilt over something 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 was about the collective spirit of their nation that lead its leaders to commit such a crime as Nagasaki. Such soul-searching has been going on in Germany since WW2 with the result that post WW2 german children were brought up in a less disciplined environment. This has had the (good-bad?) results that west german youths as a whole are more rebellious, and much more suspicious of authority than many youngsters in other countries. What happened in the American case was somewhat different. A bomb was dropped on Nagasaki killing some 80,000 people (originally). The motives behind this slaughter have not really been analysed. I suspect that that 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 some sense. 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 question of why that second bomb was dropped. Would it uncover some dark area of the collective American psyche? I suspect so, I suspect also that the only thing that would be uncovered is how widespread the belief of american superiority not only as a nation, but as a race is, something which is very ugly, but is also very common elsewhere in the world. As was pointed out by someone else, the problem is that the US is a much more powerful nation, so what they do there affects the rest of the world much more. What I find very scarry is that instead of guilt, or whatever, americans are collectively (again I am talking about the mood of the country, not about individuals) very righteous about having dropped this bomb and do find the idea of dropping others acceptable (e.g "nuke the ayatolah" sentiment). Maybe people separately do realise the enormity of such sentiments, but their mere expression makes them more acceptable and induce a sort of collective numbing about the whole issue, a terrain ripe for lunatics to play on. Does this clarify my opinions? Sophie Quigley ..!watmath!watdaisy!saquigley
rjb@akgua.UUCP (R.J. Brown [Bob]) (02/02/84)
The military implications of WWII without Hiroshima and
Nagasaki have been discussed on the net before by others.
In round numbers approximately 1 million casualties would
have resulted from the necessary invasion of the main islands
of Japan. In case you don't remember, the Japanese soldiers
were dedicated, fierce men of war who would fight to the last
man defending the OUTLYING parts of their island empire ( i.e.
Okinawa etc. ). Can you imagine their ferocity in defending
the home islands? I think comparisons made between the
Holocaust and the use of Atomic Weapons in WWII fails by logic
alone. The Allies ( The U.S. and a bunch more including the
country where you probably live ) and the Axis Powers were
at WAR with one another. To my way of thinking, this puts the
people of all those countries at risk. However, the Jewish people
were not at war with Germany - but the Jews, as well as many
Christians, mentally retarded, physically handicapped, and
other ethnic minorities were systematically incarcerated and
later murdered - over 11 million total.
Although war is abominable, the destruction and death wreaked
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought a merciful close to the war.
Easily 10 times the destruction of life and property was avoided.
Bob Brown {...pur-ee!inuxc!ihnp4!clyde!akgua!rjb}
AT&T Technologies, Inc.............. Norcross, Ga
(404) 447-3784 ... Cornet 583-3784twiss@stolaf.UUCP (Thomas S. Twiss) (02/03/84)
..!akgua!rjb : (paraphrased)
> The use of the bomb brought about a merciful close to WWII
____________________
Merciful?!?!? All those people killed?? Many suffering still from
radiation sickness?? Those that didn't die immediately suffered
*horribly* from radiation sickness. I don't know if I can resolve the
question because, morally, it's very complex. But how can we possibly
refer to the destruction caused by the nuclear bombs "merciful"?!?!?!?!
Lookout, 1984... here we come!
Tom Twiss
...!ihnp4!stolaf!twisskfk@ccieng2.UUCP (02/09/84)
----------
From stolaf!twiss Thu Feb 2 18:49:35 1984
Subject: Re: addendum to my flame
> The use of the bomb brought about a merciful close to WWII
____________________
Merciful?!?!? All those people killed?? Many suffering still from
radiation sickness?? Those that didn't die immediately suffered
*horribly* from radiation sickness. I don't know if I can resolve the
question because, morally, it's very complex. But how can we possibly
refer to the destruction caused by the nuclear bombs "merciful"?!?!?!?!
----------
Yes, merciful. If you're going to have massive death counts, would you rather
count deaths in tens and hundreds of thousands, or do you prefer the big leap
straight to the millions? I, for one, am much in favor of the lower numbers
for such things.
Yes, there was horrible radiation sickness. Just what do you expect? The
fact remains that, although MANY were killed and MANY suffered from radiation
sickness, FAR, FAR MANY *MORE* would have died if the fighting had been al-
lowed to go on using traditional warfare.
To all who object to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and who are under
35 years of age: If your father, like mine, was in that war, and if he was
in the Phillipines (or that general area of the world), then he was being
prepared for the assault on the home islands. I know my father was. He was
a Captain in the Army, and he was in one of two divisions which were going
to be the first ones to make the assault. The final decision as to which
division would actually be THE first was going to be made by coin toss, in
order to make sure that no favoritism could be suggested for such an ugly
assignment. The anticipated casualties for the first 20,000 men sent were
estimated at about 60-70%, which is MIGHTY high. The next time you're
thinking of accusing the U.S. of being such horrible place for having
dropped nuclear weapons on Japan, think about the fact that, if they HADN'T
been dropped, you would have only had about a 30-40% chance of being here
to sit on your duff and complain about it all.
--
Karl Kleinpaste
...![ [seismo, allegra]!rochester!ritcv, rlgvax]!ccieng5!ccieng2!kfkmmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (02/09/84)
===================
In round numbers approximately 1 million casualties would
have resulted from the necessary invasion of the main islands
of Japan. In case you don't remember, the Japanese soldiers
were dedicated, fierce men of war who would fight to the last
man defending the OUTLYING parts of their island empire ( i.e.
Okinawa etc. ). Can you imagine their ferocity in defending
the home islands?
Bob Brown {...pur-ee!inuxc!ihnp4!clyde!akgua!rjb}
===================
According to the history I read, this notion of 1 million American
deaths to invade Japan was an unreal fear. The Japanese had tried
to sue for peace before the Hiroshima bomb, but the Russians had not
passed on the message (Russia was neutral at that time). Instead,
the Russians noted that the Japanese recognized themselves to be
defeated, and declared war so as to get a share of the spoils.
There was no need for either bomb to have been dropped, although
it is unlikely that Truman knew it at the time.
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt