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78% of A-bomb survivors feel difficulty in conveying experience: poll

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Bless them.

13 ( +13 / -0 )

At the ripe old age of 79, people still want to go to seminars and talk about there experience and promote the destruction of these evil weapons, I wish you all the very best of health and keep up the excellent work

12 ( +12 / -0 )

Each one should be presented with a pro-nuke American with a gag on and encouraged to scream at them for as long as they desire. That might help get the words out. As an American I am completely embarrassed by pro-nuke Americans and their excuses for mass murdering civilians. American history does not teach us enough about the anti-nuke Americans, esp. those that were anti-nuke the instant they heard about the bombing of Hiroshima or its plans, such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adm. Chester Nimitz and Adm. William Leahy. Even that scoundrel Major General Curtis LeMay of all people opposed, and he should have faced a war crimes tribunal for indiscriminate fire bombing!

I may very soon start screaming in their stead before audiences. I am sick to death of my countrymen covering this filth up or even saluting it, despite the fact they are not responsible for it at all.

8 ( +11 / -3 )

America you won the war.

Wasn't enough to ban the nuke at the end of WW2? You saw the aftermath, the destruction and killing.

During the cold War, you and Russia got within meters of starting a nuclear war, you won the Cold War. Wasn't enough to ban it then either? Nope

America the world police... Won't lead on climate change.

America won't lead on a Nuclear Free World. They cry about North Korea or Iran wanting them, while America would never give them up themselves.

-3 ( +7 / -10 )

"American history does not teach us enough about the anti-nuke Americans, esp. those that were anti-nuke the instant they heard about the bombing of Hiroshima or its plans, such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adm. Chester Nimitz and Adm. William Leahy. Even that scoundrel Major General Curtis LeMay of all people opposed, and he should have faced a war crimes tribunal for indiscriminate fire bombing!"

History is not so simple. That war and the atomic bombings are personal. My father's brother, my uncle, fought the IJA with the US Army in the jungles of Guadalcanal. He was injured during the war, run over by an armored vehicle in the confusion that is war, and suffered what would become a life long disability. Despite the injury he was on his way to invade Kyshsu when the atomic bombings ended the war. He ended up part of the post war occupation force to his great and everlasting relief. My dad was in the Alps in what is now Slovenia right at the end of the European War, but there is poorly understood subchapter where the Yugoslavs were trying to take by force parts of Italy and the US Army was up in the Alps fighting Tito's forces pending a UN plebiscite on who would govern what. Another uncle on my mom's side was an Army Air Force pilot and another one of my father's brothers had a tanker torpedoed out from under him in the Atlantic. When he came home from that my dad told him "you stay home and take care of mom so I can join the Army" (my father was a machinist in a brass mill, exempting him from the draft as his skill was important to the war effort). His original unit was on its way to Okinawa but he was held in training as he needed an emergency surgery. He ended up with the 88th Infantry in Italy instead. My mom was part of the Manhattan Project developing nuclear weapons (though she personally had no idea what the project was doing until the first bomb was dropped, such was the degree of compartmentation used for security).

The invasion of Okinawa was seen as a rehearsal for the invasion of Japan itself. The casualties were far higher than anyone expected, especially the astounding civilian casualties. Scaling up the Okinawa experience to the size necessary to invade Kyushu and Honshu led to predictions of up to 1 million allied casualties and tens of millions of Japanese dead plus another 12-18 months of combat, meaning such a war would have lasted into 1946 and perhaps 1947. It was a sobering lesson for Allied leadership, and keep in mind that UK, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand forces would have been part of that meat grinder. They all had a stake in what decisions the US made. With that in mind the use of atomic weapons to conclude the war made complete sense and was actually an act of mercy for all involved. Even after the second such bombing General Tojo was determined not to surrender. Hirohito made it clear he wanted the war over and was prepared to surrender. He had to go into hiding and make the radio broadcast where he surrendered to the Allies in complete secrecy as the IJA was actively trying to arrest the Emperor and silence him. This is why the US did not prosecute Hirohito after the war was over and allowed him to remain on the throne.

8 ( +11 / -3 )

"During the cold War, you and Russia got within meters of starting a nuclear war, you won the Cold War. Wasn't enough to ban it then either? Nope"

A ban on nuclear weapons is a fantasy. Reduction is possible but not an outright ban. Why? What happens if all but one known nuclear power honestly and completely disarmed, but that one that didn't made a public show of disarming but managed to hide half a dozen weapons? They would be able at some time in the future to blackmail any nation they chose as they would be the only nation in possession of nuclear weapons. Consider also that Sweden rocked everyone back on their heels in 1970 when their Prime Minister announced to the world Sweden was ceasing it's nuclear weapons development program. Say what? Nobody expected that. Nobody was even aware the Swedes were developing a nuclear capability. In hindsight we know they may have conducted ten underground tests and were not discovered. Nobody knows, or at least nobody who does know is saying whether or not those tests were sub-critical or full nuclear detonations. And while the Swedes say they stopped their nuclear weapons program does anybody really know with absolute certainty they don't have something stashed away somewhere in a cave? Or at least are close enough to be able to assemble something rapidly in an emergency? And who else might have a going program that nobody has detected? Imagine what a country as vast as Russia or China could hide while claiming to be "disarmed". Nobody trusts anybody that far when it comes to nuclear weapons and thus nobody is willing to disarm themselves. Reductions in stockpiles could be accomplished I think but not complete disarmament.

Btw, we see how well Russia adheres to treaties. They were in violation of IMF for almost ten years before the US said comply with the treaty you signed or we will no longer be bound by it. Also consider that IMF didn't apply to China and the Chinese had developed a whole range of IRBMs and cruise missiles that violate the terms of IMF. Likewise Russia has resumed low yield nuclear testing in violation of the Test Ban Treaty. There is some evidence that China is likewise in violation of the treaty. The US has stuck with the treaty to date but there is pressure on the US side to resume testing now that Russia has.

6 ( +8 / -2 )

"...he should have faced a war crimes tribunal for indiscriminate fire bombing..."

All the major powers in WW2 practiced large scale indiscriminate bombing. The possible except is China, as it didn't have a proper air force. Why do so many people associate this exclusively to the US?

Indeed, Japan set the standard of indiscriminately targeting civilians long before the US entered the war, pounding China's major cities from the air. Go to the war museum in Singapore and see the photo of charred corpses of civilians scattered on the streets in downtown Singapore taken on the day after Japan unilaterally started the war.

Funny, how such events were never "crimes against humanity." The Japanese and their sympathizers had no problem bombing civilians, until it started happening to them.

-8 ( +1 / -9 )

JeffLeeToday  06:21 am JST

"...he should have faced a war crimes tribunal for indiscriminate fire bombing..."

All the major powers in WW2 practiced large scale indiscriminate bombing. The possible except is China, as it didn't have a proper air force. Why do so many people associate this exclusively to the US?

Funny, how such events were never "crimes against humanity." The Japanese and their sympathizers had no problem bombing civilians, until it started happening to them.

Japan was at that time an authoritarian dictatorship controlled by their military. Please don't put the US into the same category by saying they did it first so we could do it too.

It was General Curtis LeMay , considered the father of strategic bombing, who first oversaw the indiscriminate bombing of German cities and then of Japanese cities, himself who stated that if we had lost the war he would probably have been tried as a war criminal. Undoubtedly this was due to the fact that all legitimate bombing targets in Japan had already been destroyed, and that only left civilian centers as targets. Many people associate it with the US because of the sheer volume of dropped bombs and civilian targets involved, which killed far more people than the A-bombs.

6 ( +9 / -3 )

@Ossan

only left civilian centers as targets.

There weren't many "civilian centers" in Japan at the time. Japan's industrial facilities were dispersed throughout urban residential areas, a US Navy intelligence report at the time pointed out. Cultural sites such as Kyoto were a rare exception and the US military deliberately took it off the target list. (There was and still is a lot of industry facilities in Kyoto.)

Recently, NHK profiled one "innocent civilian victim," a woman still alive and in Hiroshima in August 1945. At the end of the report, very briefly, it mentioned she was on her way to her job -- a bomb factory, not far from her house. "Innocent"? Really?

-7 ( +1 / -8 )

JeffLeeToday  09:02 am JST

@Ossan

only left civilian centers as targets.

There weren't many "civilian centers" in Japan at the time

The strategic targets had already been totally destroyed, that is what "only civilian centers left" means. Air defense throughout Japan had been decimated to the point of free bombing with no resistance. Civilians recruited into factory work were still going where they remained because they had tom but were producing nothing because of the complete lack of materials. If you want to argue with General Curtis LeMay himself go ahead, but I tend to take his word for it over yours. And yes, non combatant civilians, the old, women and children are "innocent", really.

5 ( +7 / -2 )

It is not important to have hibakusha themselves speak live in public. This is far too taxing and will ultimately become impossible when they all reach a certain age. What should definitely happen though is for their memories to be recorded for posterity. The great value of this is demonstrated by the wonderful film "They Shall Not Grow Old" which matches recordings of World War I veterans telling their stories to appropriate footage. It is weird to think about it when watching the film, but since there are no surviving WWI veterans, everyone who speaks in the film has already died.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

If japan had the same weapon they would have used it on America and a few other countries no doubt. Stop playing the victim

-6 ( +0 / -6 )

Vince BlackToday  04:31 pm JST

If japan had the same weapon they would have used it on America and a few other countries no doubt. Stop playing the victim

The old speculative "IF" argument. Even if they had it, they had lost every waypoint base in the Pacific and did not even have a four engined long range bomber other than blueprints. So they could never deliver it anyway.

Civilians, the old, the women, the children in school who had their eyeballs melted were indeed victims. Just as civilians everywhere in every country in every war are "victims".

2 ( +4 / -2 )

It's a shame they don't teach what nasty things the imperial army did to innocent people abroad, like live experiments, bayonet practice, germ warfare. It's as if America just dropped a bomb or two just for the sake of it. There was a reason, whether justified or not. People in countries around Japan were liberated when the war came to an end. Ad still, the Japanese government didn't want to surrender. The first bomb should have been enough, and yet they continued to wage a campaign of terror and encouraged Okinawans to just kill themselves. I'm all for teaching the horrors of the atomic bombing, but with it has to come an explanation as to why it happened so history doesn't repeat itself.

Right at this moment, this is the last thing on my mind. This may sound cruel, but I am more concerned about the current pandemic.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

"The strategic targets had already been totally destroyed, that is what "only civilian centers left" means."

That is hardly the case at all. The Strategic Bombing Survey conducted by the US Air Force after WWII and declassified in the early 2000s shows that US strategic bombing of German and Japanese factories was surprisingly ineffective. Because the bombers had to fly in defensive box formations to ward off enemy fighters, bombing accuracy was terrible. Because the bombers flew at very high altitudes, bomb release was anywhere from 7 to 13 miles before the target. Bombs were free fall and unguided with CEPs on the order of hundreds of meters under the most favorable circumstances. The bombs dispersed widely after release with very few hitting their targets. In one raid 400 B-29 bombers attacked a big steel mill in Japan. One would think 400 bombers of that size should have flattened the place but only one bomb actually hit anything inside the plant and what it hit was unimportant. Production was not disrupted. The 500 lb bombs used in WWII would bring a factory roof crashing down and damage walls but production machinery usually survived. A bomb landing 100 meters away did no damage at all. The Germans quickly figured out that if they buried the water pipes and electrical cables under a reinforced floor they could usually have a factory up and running a day or two after an Allied bombing raid. Even big refineries the allies bombed were back up and running within a week. A good argument could be made that the most productive use of the B-29 during WWII was the aerial mining of the Sea of Japan. That effort sank a lot of Japanese shipping, kept a lot of other ships tied to the pier and caused a great deal of shortages of materials in Japan (US Navy submarines were equally important in strangling Japanese industry). But Japan was busy building ships, submarines, aircraft and a new tank to compete with the US M-4 Sherman when they surrendered. LeMay's argument was to bomb the workers themselves. Kill the workers or make life so hard they can't work productively and thus degrade the enemies war production. That didn't seem to work as well as thought either. In Germany the most productive use of strategic bombing turned out to be bombing the railways. When the Germans could not move coal to their power plants and steel mills every industry was affected.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

"The old speculative "IF" argument. Even if they had it, they had lost every waypoint base in the Pacific and did not even have a four engined long range bomber other than blueprints. So they could never deliver it anyway. Civilians, the old, the women, the children in school who had their eyeballs melted were indeed victims. Just as civilians everywhere in every country in every war are "victims".

I disagree. Ever hear of the Kamakazi? Number two, find out what the Nakajima G8N1 was. For a time the Japanese were ahead of the US in the development of a usable nuclear weapon. The Germans never achieved a critical mass in any of their nuclear experiments but the Japanese had. Something the US learned after WWII was a B-29 raid that missed its target by a mile unknowingly flattened a critical facility in Japan's nuclear program. No one in the US Navy at least that I knew when we became aware of this doubted for one minute that the Japanese would have unleashed nuclear Kamakazis on a US invasion fleet had they been able to develop a usable nuclear weapon before the end of WWII.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

The old speculative "IF" argument. Even if they had it, they had lost every waypoint base in the Pacific and did not even have a four engined long range bomber other than blueprints. So they could never deliver it anyway.

If japan had the same weapon they would have used it on America and a few other countries no doubt. Stop playing the victim

What a childish and heartless comment, Vince..*

Do you know the suffering those people have been through??..*

What about if you try to have compassion for war victims..*

I also disagree. Ever hear of "Operation Ketsu-Go"?

https://fas.org/irp/eprint/arens/chap4.htm

https://fas.org/irp/eprint/arens/chap5.htm

And there were reports that Japan did complete and tested a atomic bomb in the North Korea region of Konan (now on August 11, 1945 before it was overrun by the Russians.

https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-japan-bomb-20150805-story.html

Japan was planning to load the bombs on Shinyo-class suicide motorboats and sent out to meet the American invasion forces at Kyushu.

People today don't understand the Japanese military leaders and civilian mentality in 1945

Japan may have appeared beaten, but in actuality they still had a considerable army, navy and air force reserve in the homeland waiting for the Kyushu invasion. The Japanese civilian population were also prepared to sacrifice themselves to fight the invading Americans. It would have been a hellish battle more so than the Battle of Okinawa and the war would have dragged on well into 1946.

A popular 1945 Japanese war slogan sums up the thinking of the times: *The sooner the Americans come, the better...*One hundred million die proudly.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

"What a childish and heartless comment, Vince..

Do you know the suffering those people have been through??..

What about if you try to have compassion for war victims."

Considering the barbarities the IJA and IJN had already inflicted on their enemies including the over 50% of Japanese held POWs who did not survive the war do you actually doubt Japan would have used nuclear weapons against Allied forces if they had a workable atomic weapon before they surrendered?

Japan did not declassify until the mid 1980s the fact that a B-29 raid that missed its intended target inadvertently destroyed a critical nuclear weapons program site in Japan and set their nuclear program back enough that the US would be the first to use a nuclear weapon in combat. We were stunned to say the least when the Japanese released the documents on this matter. They had kept them secret all those years and apparently successfully hid them from discovery by US Army occupation forces. None of us doubted in the least that had the Japanese developed a workable nuclear weapon they would have immediately deployed it using their Kamakazi forces against the US Navy at the very first opportunity. I don't know why that thought offends you.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I suppose it is regrettable in the minds of the A-bomb survivors not to be able to live long enough to witness the abolition of all nuclear weapons and live in a world without nuclear weapons

But they (along with people today) forget that the A-Bomb Survivors DID LIVE IN A WORLD WITHOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS. The A-Bomb Survivors were born before 1945 and were a part of a good decade right up to 1945.

Up until 1945 nuclear weapons did not exist!

Was the Pre-1945 World a "Peaceful World"? Hardly. There was a World War being waged at the time and hundreds of thousand people being killed. (By the way, the Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums doesn't explicitly mention this fact.)

In 1941, there were NO nuclear weapons. But Japan attacked the U.S. and waged war anyways.

In 1939, there were NO nuclear weapons when Germany attacked Poland and started World War II in Europe.

In 1931, there were NO nuclear weapons when Japan embarked on its "Great Pacific" military expansionism throughout Asia.

In 1914, there were NO nuclear weapons when World War I began, and so on throughout history.

All the major wars fought prior to 1945 were fought with CONVENTIONAL weapons. All the wars fought since 1945 have been fought with CONVENTIONAL weapons.

The A-Bomb Survivors have told and retold their stories and their testimonies are well documented. it is firmly ingrained in each successive generations. The Hiroshima/Nagasaki Peace Memorial Museums is a legacy to their history and a reminder of the effects of nuclear weapons. For the past 75 years, the world have not witnessed the much anticipated nuclear World War III and the aftermath total destruction.

BUT, if nuclear weapons are abolished, it would be a backward step in world peace. The nations capable of waging a All-Out Total War like U.S., Russia and China, would revert back to using CONVENTIONAL weapons. Conventional weapons would make Total War thinkable once again.

It is ironic that nuclear weapons have actually promoted World Peace by making TOTAL WAR UNTHINKABLE. It has forced the major powers to seek resolutions through dialog and negotiations instead of the alternative mutual assured destruction.

If you want to see the effects of total destruction through Conventional weapons, look at the Battle of Okinawa and what it did to that island and its people. Look at the conventional incendiary bombings of Tokyo and Dresden.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

"It is ironic that nuclear weapons have actually promoted World Peace by making TOTAL WAR UNTHINKABLE. It has forced the major powers to seek resolutions through dialog and negotiations instead of the alternative mutual assured destruction."

The US attacked Iraq thinking it might have nuclear weapons? Meditate on this; if you have enough stealth bombers and can knock out enough of an enemies nuclear weapons with conventional ordnance, meaning popping their silos with big heavy bunker buster conventional bombs and hitting their mobile launchers using stealth aircraft you can reduce your enemies stockpile to the point they wouldn't dare launch a nuclear attack on you. This without ever launching any of your own nuclear weapons. Assume Russian and Chinese SSBNs are tracked 24/7/365 and the boats at sea would be destroyed in the opening hours of a war.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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