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Japan marks Bikini Atoll hydrogen test bomb anniversary

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This test should never have been conducted, and shows the stupidity of human beings, and carelessness for others, in regards to furthering their own agendas. RIP to the victims of this.

That said, are we going to hear from the JT posters who say we should just forget and move on to the 1800 who marched to commemorate this event? I mean, it was 60 years ago already, right?

1 ( +6 / -5 )

The protest by the people of Yaizu is admirable; yet they would also have done well to acknowledge the whole generations of Marshallese people who were even more directly affected by these tests-- and they would do much better to petition the government in Tokyo and the US Embassy to really get their voices heard.

4 ( +5 / -1 )

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be considered war crimes, because it targeted hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians.

0 ( +8 / -8 )

@Barbara Trout, absolutely! Even MacArthur was against them as being completely unnecessary. The reality is that the bombings were really a part of the Cold War which was already underway.

0 ( +5 / -5 )

There is a big difference between bombs and energy. The two should not be confused. You can make a bomb from Petrol (or gas). Coal will defiantly kill us all if we don't stop using it or find a safe way, the same nuks.

7 ( +7 / -0 )

And yet many are confused about China wanting to mark the Rape of Nanking??

2 ( +6 / -4 )

"The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be considered war crimes, because it targeted hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians."

A tactic aimed primarily at curtailing war cannot be considered a "war crime." The bombs forced Japan to make a hasty surrender, thereby saving many more lives on all sides (possibly including that of my father's).

(The revisionists who doubt that assessment might want to read the emperor's surrender speech.)

3 ( +7 / -4 )

" (The revisionists who doubt that assessment might want to read the emperor's surrender speech.)"

Have you never played chess? If you only play one or two steps ahead you might as well not play at all.

Other than the standard US public school textbook paragraph on the atomic bombings, there's a wealth of factual information readily available nowadays that clearly expound on the multiple reasons the US dropped the Little Boy and Fat Man.

" Many U.S. military leaders as well as ex-president Herbert Hoover, argued that it was simply an extension of the already fierce conventional bombing campaign, and therefore militarily unnecessary. [254] This, together with the sea blockade and the collapse of Germany (with its implications regarding redeployment), could also have led to a Japanese surrender. As the United States dropped its atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union launched a surprise attack with 1.6 million troops against the Kwantung Army in Manchuria. "The Soviet entry into the war", noted Japanese historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, "played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrender because it dashed any hope that Japan could terminate the war through Moscow's mediation"."

-5 ( +4 / -9 )

@smithinjapan

I believe you are comparing this to Japan's attitude toward Korea. The big difference is that those Japanese people do it once a year at most, and nobody throws feces at American Embassy like Koreans do at Japanese embassy.

Koreans wake up everyday thinking about what to complain about Japan, throughout the year, every year for the past 60 years. Japanese have moved on, that's why we need this reminder. Koreans don't need any reminder, they think about it every day LOL

-6 ( +6 / -12 )

can't see how it can matter if people keep electing pro-nuclear representatives. No one can stop that but Japanese themselves

2 ( +3 / -1 )

If Japan put just 1/2 as much umbrage into into their own past war crimes as they do with the A-bomb and atomic bombs in general their neighbors would have very little ground to pound them on in regards to past actions. When Japanese shake their head in wonder at how China and Korea can be so upset about something that happened so long ago all they need to do is a take a new look at the outrage factory that exist in Japan around nuclear weapons.

0 ( +4 / -4 )

And here we go again ranting about Japan versus Korea and what was right or wrong with dropping bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Re-read the article. This is about the 60th anniversary of the Bravo nuclear test, which was conducted by THE US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY in 1954 in the Marshall Islands, at Bikini Atoll. Islanders were forcibly taken from their lands beginning in 1946--not even a year after Hiroshima-- and there were a total of 67 horrible atmospheric tests all the way up to 1958. The Bravo test was huge, however--15 megatons--and its resultant cloud of fallout blanketed the northern Marshall Islands, irradiating hundreds of people and leading to many of their early deaths, birth defects, and a permanent loss of their homeland, not to mention enormous psychological damage. Japanese rarely acknowledge this history at all, and Americans even less so. We ought to pause for a moment too to realize that the reason we even know the basics about radiation's effects on human beings, as we do now in our safety precautions with Fukushima, is because of the enormous sacrifices that so many Marshallese people were forced to make, and all the unwarranted experiments that American researchers did on them under the recently declassified Project 4.1. That's what this news story is about-- about the tragedy in the Central Pacific that also affected a fishing boat from Japan.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

“I want to see nuclear power abolished,” Akira Ibi, a 70-year-old Yaizu citizen, told the Jiji Press news agency, adding he also wanted to get rid of a nearby nuclear power plant on the Pacific coast.

Let's burn fossil fuels instead! and import everything Japan needs for energy consumption,putting aside Japanese energy security concerns.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

Back to the topic. I agree with smithinjapan. These tests should never have happened. These text constitute a true nuclear crime. I recall a contemporary US newsreel which said the Bikini residents were being moved to where the banana were better. This how the US dismissed tine thousands of years of island culture before destroying it. Today the Marshal Islanders are the Palestinians of the Pacific.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Hey miserable one, where do you find this stuff! Hoover was 12 years out of power, from the wrong party, disgraced in the public's eyes as the "cause" of the depression. No one cared what he thought then or now.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

@Kabukilover, the people of Bikini were relocated to the island of Rongerik in Rongelap Atoll, another atoll that was considered within "safe" distance from the tests at Bikini. They were not so foolish as to believe what the US officials told them; they left under great duress and the Americans literally burned their village as they were being "evacuated." But Rongelap Atoll was already inhabited, and Rongerik was believed by many to be a cursed place because of its poisonous fish and lack of edible plants or easy access to fishing. People relocated there began to starve within a year, nearly ten years before this Bravo test in 1954 began. And then everyone in Rongelap was irradiated by fallout and severely sickened. This is ALL relevant to Japan, by the way, because up until 1945, I hope you all realize that the Marshall Islands had been a colony of Japan for thirty years. I do not agree that Marshallese are like Palestinians. Most of the 29 atolls/islands of the Republic of the Marshall Islands are inhabitable and Marshallese live there. But several places are forever uninhabitable. Puts things in perspective when you think about Fukushima as well-- it's been a whole sixty years since the Bravo test, and still Islanders cannot/are afraid to return home. How long will it take for people to ever be able to reside safely near Fukushima Daiichi??

1 ( +1 / -0 )

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