posted August 07, 2010 11:22 PM         

i realize they ended the war and therefore had their purpose. but i'm sure the perps of 9/11 thought they had cause too, something we the receivers don't like to admit. we paint them as inhuman ghouls who don't mind killing innocent people and couldn't possibly have a LEGITIMATE beef with us the happy, healthy americans.

at the time truman portrayed hiroshima as a "military base" omitting the fact that thousands of civilians would also be affected...some 200,000 of them in fact. so there must have been some supposition that people would be revolted at dropping this horror to end horrors on civilians and children...these days no such prettying-up is considered necessary, is it? are we dead from the neck down?
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C08%5C07%5Cstory_7-8-2010_pg13_5

i have the dubious pleasure of sharing my birthday with the nagasaki bombing. different year, but they both come round every year together all the same.

posted August 08, 2010 12:43 AM         

(I am reminded of a Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark -OMD- song Enola Gay)

I had the opportunity to listen to C-Span radio for about 45 min today, I caught the Truman Presidential address about the bombing....and Oppenheimer's very long and well expressed thoughts/ fears / and philosophies about what we had wrought through science.

I didn't realize that the scientists were ostracized and shunned; the fear factor of the gen public. Similar to the Darwin battles in a way.

anyhow Oppenheimer was fascinating to listen to...his voice creeped me out a little, it was the voice of conscience? Yea that's how it sounded, very weighted, not his voice necessarily but the cadence, wear y.

I will add more later about your post...nighty nite for me.

posted August 08, 2010 10:54 AM         

quote:

---

On August 6, the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Late in the evening of August 8, the Soviet Union, in accordance with Yalta agreements, but in violation of the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact, declared war on Japan, and soon after midnight on August 9, invaded the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Later on August 9, the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The combined shock of these events caused Emperor Hirohito to intervene and order the Big Six to accept the terms for ending the war that the Allies had set down in the Potsdam Declaration. After several more days of behind-the-scenes negotiations and a failed coup d'état, Hirohito gave a recorded radio address to the nation on August 15. In the radio address, called the Gyokuon-hôsô (Jewel Voice Broadcast), he read the Imperial Rescript on surrender, announcing to the Japanese populace the surrender of Japan.

On August 28, the occupation of Japan by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers began. The surrender ceremony was held on September 2 aboard the U.S. battleship Missouri, at which officials from the Japanese government signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, officially ending World War II. Allied civilians and servicemen alike celebrated V-J Day, the end of the war. However, some isolated commands and personnel from Japan's far-flung forces throughout Asia and the Pacific islands refused to surrender for months and years after, into the 1970s. Since Japan's surrender, historians have debated the ethics of using the atomic bombs.

Hostilities formally ended when the Treaty of San Francisco came into force on April 28, 1952.

---

The true numbers of the dead will never be known as disease was so prevalent with the survivors, and particularly new births.

You think about the baby boomer's and an entire generation that were raised w/ the thought of duck and cover under the wooden school desk to protect against nuclear Holocaust.

Put the worms back in the can? We sold pieces, parts, and technology to those we most fear. Seems we set up a bit of a worm farm. Was that partially to keep the war machine going? So that those that profit most monetarily continue on?

posted August 08, 2010 09:55 PM         

no, as soon as we showed off our nuclear power everyone else flocked to get them some, too! and that has been the excuse for keeping the M/I complex blossoming ever since. (not that it started then...) and everyone can blame everyone else for keeping it going ("we HAVE to have enough to at least stalemate THEM")