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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Lest We Forget: Hiroshima Day

Lest We Forget: Hiroshima Day

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48Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    It would have been nice to have had a decent president who could appropriately commemorate this anniversary.

  3. 3.

    Zinsky

    Sobering to remember that the U.S. is the only country that has used nuclear weapons on a civilian population – TWICE!! It’s hard to understand where the U.S. has any moral high ground at all to stand on, given that we snuffed out 150,000+ innocent human lives in the Hiroshima/Nagasaki terrorist attacks. Thanks for the gentle reminder….

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    Relevant opportunity to again recommend the Barefoot Gen graphic novels. Also the animated film.

  5. 5.

    Aleta

    Thanks AL. Here’s an online commemoration from NM tonight.

    Hosted by the New Mexico 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima/Nagasaki Committee and Pace e Bene.

    For the last three and a half years, the New Mexico 75th anniversary Committee, with Pace e Bene, has been planning national in person vigils with great national and local speakers for August 6 and 9, 2020 at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Because of COVID-19, we have moved everything to a one-hour online event to commemorate Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

    https://paceebene.org/hiroshimaday2020

  7. 7.

    Jeffro

    So, um…anyone else subscribe to the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk’s newsletter?  That’ll put some pep in your step every month!

  8. 8.

    ExpatDanBKK

    If you ever get a chance to go, I’d highly recommend visiting Hiroshima. Pictures don’t do the 原爆ドーム/Genbaku Dome justice. The fact that you can stand next to a structural artifact that “survived” is incredibly moving. You can feel the souls of the people who were there. Not as much well known is another surviving building, the restored Rest House – 1st floor is an information centre while the 2nd/3rd/basement floors were left alone. The museum, park and cenotaph are stunning as well.

    Despite that, Hiroshima is a very charming city and the people are just wonderful. I met a class of high schoolers who were excited that I was an American, and non-judgementally wanted my opinion on what happened there. Charming and refreshing, we felt much the same on the subject (horrible but arguably had to happen because of the culture of Japan at the time). Do ride the 1940s streetcars, try the local food: famous for seafood (especially oysters) and tsukemen (“soupless ramen”), enjoy the parks and coastline. It was a favourite excursion of ours when we lived in Osaka.

  12. 12.

    Anne Laurie

    @ExpatDanBKK: Just fished it out of the trashbin.  I don’t understand why it got sidelined, either… strange & wonderful are the ways of FYWP (Fekk YOU Word Press)…

  13. 13.

    Gemina13

    @NotMax: 

    Not to mention “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes,” as well as “Grave of the Fireflies.” I read the former in 6th grade, and have yet to watch the latter, which a commenter on YouTube summed up as, “the best movie you’ll never want to see again.”

  16. 16.

    Gemina13

    @Omnes Omnibus:  And many U.S. civilians wholeheartedly believed, as my mother (then a teenager) did, that “the Japs got what they deserved.”

    Oddly, my mother later read “Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes” and cried.  When I watched a documentary on the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in my 30s, she caught a glimpse of one of the “Hiroshima maidens,” gasped, and left the room.  Yet I don’t delude myself that that made a difference in her thinking, or that understanding the consequences of dropping the bombs would have cut U.S. support.  It may have been a different time, but we can see the same mindset today.

  17. 17.

    Mike in NC

    Fat Bastard once said “what’s the point of having nuclear weapons if you aren’t willing to use them”? Apparently not many people cared.

  19. 19.

    Martin

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yep. And we had individual bombing campaigns that were just as effective – 100,000 dead in Tokyo, a million homeless. A million people died in Stalingrad.

    The bombing was a horrible act in the midst of a horrible war. Ask Korea about the 100,000 or so sex slaves that the Japanese took and have barely acknowledged.

    It would indeed be nice if the US could be more of a leader on nonproliferation and the elimination of nuclear weapons. We make intermittent progress and then elect a shithead who wonders what the point is of having nukes if you don’t get to use them.

  22. 22.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud:

    It would have been nice to have had a decent president who could appropriately commemorate this anniversary. 

    And D-Day 75, and V-E Day 75 and the bombing of Nagasaki and V-J Day 75.

  23. 23.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Omnes Omnibus: Tokyo.  I remember reading about it in a WWII book series as a kid, and the …. glee with which the writer described the wooden houses going up …. of course, back then, I partook in the glee.  Sigh.

  24. 24.

    Kelly

    My Uncle Walt was bombardier on B29 out of Tinian. Very matter of fact about his service. Aimed the bombs that started firestorms in Japanese cities. He was on a reconnaissance flight over Nagasaki the day after.  He did not think the nuke was crueler than the firebombing.

  26. 26.

    WaterGirl

    @ExpatDanBKK: If that was your first comment ever, it would have to have been approved manually, and it doesn’t show up until that  happens.

    If that wasn’t your first comment, I am not sure what happened since your long comment is there now.

  27. 27.

    WaterGirl

    @Baud: He probably likes countries that haven’t been bombed, especially with nuclear weapons.

    Trump seems to want to play with his nukes, right?  So acknowledging this wouldn’t suit him from that aspect, either.

  29. 29.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Gemina13:

    have yet to watch the latter, which a commenter on YouTube summed up as, “the best movie you’ll never want to see again.” 

    That pretty much sums up Grave of the Fireflies.

  30. 30.

    WaterGirl

    @ExpatDanBKK: Yes, some foreign languages will get you thrown into spam.  It may be that Anne Laurie was totally on the ball and snatched you out of spam and approved your comment as soon as she saw your “hey, what happened to my comment” comment.

    Once you are marked “not spam” you should be able to post with your japanese characters in other posts, without getting caught anywhere.

  31. 31.

    prostratedragon

    @Kelly:  My father was a ground soldier. His unit did in-between hurt locker stuff, so were on the way to follow the invasion troops when the bomb dropped. He wound up inventorying a huge ammo dump at Yokohama and saw many things there that were so horrible he also thought the Bomb could hardly have been worse, though it would still be worth banning something that could do so much damage so “economically.” Whole thing made him a peacenik.

  33. 33.

    Ruckus

    I once attended a lecture by Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the plane that dropped the first bomb. He seemed to have accepted the dubious honor of being the first, followed the company line that it was necessary at the time and helped end the war. He didn’t seem to be much inclined to think that it would be OK to do it again. This was in the late 90s at the Wright Patterson AFB museum. I’m still not sure how I felt about hearing him, it was history, it was horrible history and he knew it. It was war and lots of horrible things happen in war. Which is why we should never do it unless there is absolutely no other answer.

  34. 34.

    OldDave

    @mrmoshpotato: Indeed.  We saw “Grave of the Fireflies” a year or so back in the theater.  Very impressive animation that I’d just as soon never see again.

  35. 35.

    trollhattan

    @ExpatDanBKK:

    I would like…wrong word, feel a need to visit. My kid toured Dachau almost exactly one year ago and it was profoundly meaningful to her and an important linking to a generation who did not grow up hearing war and holocaust stories from those who lived them. (TBF her German teacher brought holocaust survivors to class to testify, and sadly those souls are now lost.)

    My childhood was surrounded by soldiers and sailors who fought in both the Pacific and European campaigns and this resurrection of Nazism would have had no traction then. We forget at our peril.

  36. 36.

    laura

    Spouse’s dad had signed up for the Army in WWII and had been allowed to pursue his geology degree from Northwestern to UC Berkely because he was physically a wreck from the deprivations he suffered as a motherless child in the depression. Then he was called up and was part of the landing forces. He remained agast at the use of atomic bombs till then end of his life. He was also convinced that but for the bombings, he’d  surely have died along with untold numbers of other ground forces.

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    @Kelly:

    If body counts mean anything, certain firebombing raids had higher numbers than the two nuclear bombings. Nagasaki’s toll would have been much higher without fortunate geographical features deflecting the blast (it was the second city on the target list).

    We cannot, yet need to understand that “modern” fusion bombs are orders of magnitude more powerful while deliverable anywhere in the globe in scant minutes. One hope I hold for Biden is he has links to both WWII and the Cold War, and understands the importance of nuclear disarmament.

  38. 38.

    Eunicecycle

    @trollhattan: my father was at the liberation of Dachau. Both my brother and son have visited recently and it was a very emotional experience, even more so knowing their father/grandfather had been there. My dad didn’t talk about it much, but he became very angry at any Holocaust denial. He saw it first- hand.

  39. 39.

    trollhattan

    @Eunicecycle: 
    I salute him and can’t envision how badly scarring that experience must have been. We are left to honor the victims and liberators and ensure their tales are told across time. Anything less is clearing the path for its repetition.

  40. 40.

    Eunicecycle

    @trollhattan: very eloquent, thank you. He was a good and kind man who was damaged by the experience of war. He said anyone who wants war has never fought in one.

  41. 41.

    PJ

    @Zinsky:  We killed a lot more people than that in WWII. Some facts you may not know:
    – More people died in the firebombing of Tokyo than in Hiroshima;
    – More people died in the fighting on Okinawa than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined;
    – the alternatives to using the atomic bomb were either a blockade of Japan, or an invasion, either of which would have taken millions of Japanese lives (not to mention likely tens of thousands of US lives).

    War is terrible. It involves killing people, which is why it should be avoided if there are better alternatives. But the war with Japan was started by the Japanese, and the fact that hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians died in the war is not an unexpected consequence.

  42. 42.

    NotMax

    @PJ

    One thing which happened not often brought up is that in the aftermath the Doolittle raid on Tokyo the Japanese killed hundreds of thousands of Chinese (estimates vary but are generally 250,000) in retaliation for those who harbored the flight crews who had made it there. This included using poison gas and deliberately introducing cholera, typhoid, anthrax and dysentery.

    By early June, the devastation had begun. Father Wendelin Dunker observed the result of a Japanese attack on the town of Ihwang:

    “They shot any man, woman, child, cow, hog, or just about anything that moved, They raped any woman from the ages of 10 – 65, and before burning the town they thoroughly looted it.”

    He continued, writing in his unpublished memoir, “None of the humans shot were buried either, but were left to lay on the ground to rot, along with the hogs and cows.”
    [snip]
    …The Japanese flew 1,131 raids against Chuchow—Doolittle’s intended destination—killing 10,246 people and leaving another 27,456 destitute. They destroyed 62,146 homes, stole 7,620 head of cattle, and burned 30 percent of the crops.

    “Out of twenty-eight market towns in that region,” the committee’s report noted, “only three escaped devastation.” The city of Yushan, with a population of 70,000 —many of whom had participated in a parade led by the mayor in honor of raiders Davy Jones and Hoss Wilder—saw 2,000 killed and 80 percent of the homes destroyed. “Yushan was once a large town filled with better-than-average houses. Now you can walk thru street after street seeing nothing but ruins,” Father Bill Stein wrote in a letter. “In some places you can go several miles without seeing a house that was not burnt.”

    That August, Japan’s secret bacteriological warfare group, Unit 731, launched an operation to coincide with the withdrawal of Japanese troops from the region.

    In what was known as land bacterial sabotage, troops would contaminate wells, rivers, and fields, hoping to sicken local villagers as well as the Chinese forces, which would no doubt move back in and reoccupy the border region as soon as the Japanese departed. Over the course of several meetings, Unit 731’s commanding officers debated the best bacteria to use, settling on plague, anthrax, cholera, typhoid, and paratyphoid, all of which would be spread via spray, fleas, and direct contamination of water sources. For the operation, almost 300 pounds of paratyphoid and anthrax germs were ordered.

    Technicians filled peptone bottles with typhoid and paratyphoid bacteria, packaged them in boxes labeled “Water Supply,” and flew them to Nanking. Once in Nanking, workers transferred the bacteria to metal flasks—like those used for drinking water— and flew them into the target areas. Troops then tossed the flasks into wells, marshes, and homes. The Japanese also prepared 3,000 rolls, contaminated with typhoid and paratyphoid, and handed them to hungry Chinese prisoners of war, who were then released to go home and spread disease. Soldiers left another 400 biscuits infected with typhoid near fences, under trees, and around bivouac areas to make it appear as though retreating forces had left them behind, knowing hungry locals would devour them.
    [snip]
    “After they had been caught unawares by the falling of American bombs on Tokyo, Japanese troops attacked the coastal areas of China, where many of the American fliers had landed,” Chiang [Kai-shek] cabled to Washington. “These Japanese troops slaughtered every man, woman and child in those areas. Let me repeat—these Japanese troops slaughtered every man, woman and child in those areas.” Source

  43. 43.

    Gemina13

    @OldDave:   My SO has seen it, and promised me that he’ll watch it with me if I need company.  Because we both cry at Kodak commercials (and I can’t bear to see him cry), I’ve tried repeatedly to gin up my courage and watch it alone.  The last time I chickened out so badly on watching a movie was when a friend wanted to watch, “The Devil’s Rejects.”

  44. 44.

    Cermet

    War is always terrible; that said, glad world war two allowed hitler to be defeated (though, the U.S. role was very secondary to that end.) The Japanese killed many, many millions of Chinese (the number is not known but many consider it on a par with Russian losses or even greater.)

    As for the atomic bomb – terrible weapon compared to other weapons certainly because of its potential; the Tokyo fire raids on Japan killed essentially as many and in a worse manner for most of its victims.

    In some ways, learning the horrors of nuclear war helped make it less likely (or I hope.)

    Japan certainly deserved its complete defeat of a very horrible government and mass murdering military/war.

  45. 45.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @PJ: – the alternatives to using the atomic bomb were either a blockade of Japan, or an invasion, either of which would have taken millions of Japanese lives (not to mention likely tens of thousands of US lives)

    That’s the common belief, but it’s probably wrong. What prompted the surrender was most likely the Soviet Union’s declaration of war on Japan on 9 August (Nagasaki Day).

    The Japanese knew they were beaten but were aghast that an unconditional surrender would have exposed the Son of Heaven (Showa/Hirohito) to prosecution, imprisonment and perhaps execution by the victors for war crimes. Their ambassador to the USSR had been negotiating through the neutral Soviets in search of some way around this.

    In his broadcast to his nation (15 August) Hirohito cited the use of “weapons of great force” by the US, but that (it is now believed) was a convenient excuse. When Foreign Minister Molotov presented the USSR’s declaration of war (NB exactly 3 months after V-E Day, just as the Soviets had promised at Potsdam), the last chance for negotiation evaporated.

    (As it happened it didn’t matter: the US found it convenient to retain the Emperor as a figurehead, so we just pretended the surrender was “unconditional” – in the same sense that, a few months after the USSR removed its ballistic missiles from Cuba, the US dismantled its obsolescent IRBM sites in Italy and Turkey, pretending there was no quid-pro-quo.)

    But at the time (& for many years after) it was widely believed that the bombs caused the surrender. Paul Fussell, who was an infantry lieutenant in Europe preparing for transfer to the Pacific to take part in the invasion of the Home Islands**, summed up the reaction of the GIs to Hiroshima: It meant we were going to live. (ETA: Probably the same reaction of a certain diesel mechanic on Okinawa at the time, who years later would become my father.)

    An aside: World War II was an ugly, ugly war, and by 1945 the anger and hatred were so deep there was precious little that either side would not have done to the other (poison gas being a partial exception). It’s not that 20th Century humankind was any more angry, hateful or vicious than prior editions – cf. the one-third of the Germanic states that perished in the religious wars of the 16th & 17th centuries – but technology had exponentially expanded the scope of atrocities and the speed at which they were committed.

    ** Later an English professor & author of one of the best books I’ve ever read, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975).

  47. 47.

    PJ

    @Uncle Cosmo: I don’t understand why Hirohito would cite the atomic bombs that were dropped as the reason for surrendering when the actual reason was the Soviets invading Manchuria.  I mean, the Japanese knew they had lost the war long before this, and they were prepared to defend the main islands down to the last senior citizen.  Why would the loss of a colonized territory, which they were not prepared to strongly defend, matter so much?  Do you have any references for this?

  48. 48.

    SWMBO

    “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”  Jimmy Carter

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