Hiroshima - The 58th Anniversary

[Leica]

Today let us mourn the unnecessary death of thousands of innocent people which were killed in one of the histories most gruesome warcrime.

At 8:15 a.m., a bell tolled, marking the minute on Aug. 6, 1945 when the U.S. atomic bomb's explosion devastated this city, 429 miles southwest of Tokyo. For 60 seconds, tens of thousands of survivors, residents, activists and officials from around the world bowed in silence to commemorate the 160,000 people who were killed or injured in the blast.

Reminding the crowd of the "blazing hell fire that swept over this very spot 58 years ago," Akiba called all nuclear weapons "utterly evil, inhumane and illegal under international law."

Afterward, thousands of people lined up in the sweltering heat to burn incense, pray and shoot photographs at the arch-shaped stone memorial, which contains the names of hundreds of thousands of people who were in the city on the day of the bombing.

Hiroshima city added to the cenotaph 5,050 names of those who have died from cancer and other long-term ailments over the past year, raising the toll to 231,920, city official Yukiko Ota said.

Ceremonies will be held Saturday on the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, on the southernmost main island of Kyushu. About 70,000 people were killed by an atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki from a U.S. aircraft, three days after the one that leveled Hiroshima.

[Caldric]

No lets mourn all the dead of WWII, and celebrate the end of the worse conflict in human history just days after the Atomic bombing of Japan. Lets pay attention to the millions murdered in cold blood by Japan and Germany in their twisted idea of race and dominance of weaker people. Lets celebrate the destruction of their military forces by over 50 allied nations all across the globe, lets celebrate the end of an era of global conflict.

[Xanthro]

What an evil thing to say, that we shouldn't remember those who died in Hiroshima, instead playing the word game that only those died unnecessary deaths.

Just because their deaths were necessary and both shortened the war and saved the lives of millions of Japanese, doesn't mean we shouldn't feel compassion for their deaths.

Xanthro

[Dan W.]

Lets pay attention to the millions murdered in cold blood by Japan and Germany in their twisted idea of race and dominance of weaker people.

Amen. And I'll add that the atomic bomb saved hundreds of thousands of lives, no matter how horrible the outcome of their blast's on two Japanese cities.

[Leica]

Here is what General Eisenhower himself has to say about this war crime.

DWIGHT EISENHOWER
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

[David Brown]

Today let us mourn the unnecessary death of thousands of innocent people which were killed in one of the histories most gruesome warcrime.

"Japan's situation was hopeless, but on the 27th July, the Government of Admiral Kantaro Suzuki (Tojo had resigned the previous July after the fall of Siapon) rejected the Allied demand of unconditional surrender made at Potsdam. Nothing remained but to fight it out - Japan might lose but Allied casualties would be horrific.

It planned to meet the invasion fleet with 8,000 carefully husbanded aircraft (many of them kamikazes) and hundreds of explosive packed suicide boats and "human torpedoes". Ashore, 2,000,000 regular soldiers and a vast "Home Guard" would dispose of even more invaders"

QUOTED FROM :-
The Experience of World War 2 by John Campbell.
Theatres of War - The Defeat of Japan.

The Allies had plans to invade Japan but given the level of resistance, the death rates amongst military and innocent civilians would have gone way beyond the loss of life that was incurred in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Leica refers to it as a war crime, an Allied war crime. This has been a sentiment echoed in various threads across the Forum.

But Leica, in this instance who were the guilty party; the people who knew that defeat was inevitable and yet still put it's civilian population in the line of fire - or the the people who were fighting to keep the world free from the sort of tyranny that would not have allowed people like both you and I to be sitting at keyboards and being permitted to express our views freely on Forums such as this?

In addition, I have yet to meet an American, however rabidly right wing they may be, to be jumping up and down singing Uncle Sam's praises, waving the Stars & Stripes, while yodelling "God Bless America" for August the 6th.

How about we people stop using every opportunity to slam the Yanks for every action they took during WW2 - However we view it, we should remember that we have freedoms in this world, granted by the millions who paid with their lives so that we could have them, (freedoms that are denied in many countries even today) without which we would be all the poorer for.

Dave

[Caldric]

Good ol' Ike did not have any experience with the Japanese, easy to say such things with a defeated Germany under his belt. If he said it at all, Szilard tried to play innocent in the 1950's also, along with several others.

[Caldric]

Suzuki even stated there was no way to approach the allies for peace that for all intent and purposes they would remain strong in their stance of no surrender. Even though they may have been trying to find peace internally, externally all they had to say was fight to the last man. Considering Okinawa you would be a fool to think they believed anything otherwise.

Hindsight is a fantastic ability, revisionist like to use it constantly to make things appear as though they are different then they are. To hear them say it Japan was begging for peace at any cost and on their knee asking the Allies for mercy. Hardly the way it was in 1945.

[Leica]

Good ol' Ike did not have any experience with the Japanese, easy to say such things with a defeated Germany under his belt. If he said it at all, Fermi tried to play innocent in the 1950's also, along with several others.

So you are saying that one of the greatest generals and military experts you country ever produced did not have any experience about the asian war theatre ?

ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

[Leica]

Today let us mourn the unnecessary death of thousands of innocent people which were killed in one of the histories most gruesome warcrime.

"Japan's situation was hopeless, but on the 27th July, the Government of Admiral Kantaro Suzuki (Tojo had resigned the previous July after the fall of Siapon) rejected the Allied demand of unconditional surrender made at Potsdam. Nothing remained but to fight it out - Japan might lose but Allied casualties would be horrific.

It planned to meet the invasion fleet with 8,000 carefully husbanded aircraft (many of them kamikazes) and hundreds of explosive packed suicide boats and "human torpedoes". Ashore, 2,000,000 regular soldiers and a vast "Home Guard" would dispose of even more invaders"

QUOTED FROM :-
The Experience of World War 2 by John Campbell.
Theatres of War - The Defeat of Japan.

The good old and well known justification for a warcrime...

GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

[Caldric]

Good ol' Ike did not have any experience with the Japanese, easy to say such things with a defeated Germany under his belt. If he said it at all, Fermi tried to play innocent in the 1950's also, along with several others.

So you are saying that one of the greatest generals and military experts you country ever produced did not have any experience about the asian war theatre ?

ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

Yep sure did. This was 1945 not 2000, they did not have cell phones and smart bomb cameras and instant communications systems at their finger tips.

Leahy and others wanted to fight it out mano-to-mano after a long blockade starved perhaps millions of Japanese people.

To use Macarthur for a source when he was running for President against Truman one might as well ask Saddam if he would vote for Bush.

[Caldric]

But lets be honest Leica you do not care about any Japanese in WWII, you have a different agenda completely. And it just burns you up that Germany was a murdering warmongering nation ran by criminals. You have been on a crusade since you came to the forum to reduce the allies to the level of scum Germany and her allies bowed to in WWII.

[Leica]

ALBERT EINSTEIN
Einstein was not directly involved in the Manhattan Project (which developed the atomic bomb). In 1905, as part of his Special Theory of Relativity, he made the intriguing point that a relatively large amount of energy was contained in and could be released from a relatively small amount of matter. This became best known by the equation E=mc2. The atomic bomb was not based upon this theory but clearly illustrated it.

In 1939 Einstein signed a letter to President Roosevelt that was drafted by the scientist Leo Szilard. Received by FDR in October of that year, the letter from Einstein called for and sparked the beginning of U.S. government support for a program to build an atomic bomb, lest the Nazis build one first.

Einstein did not speak publicly on the atomic bombing of Japan until a year afterward. A short article on the front page of the New York Times contained his view:

"Prof. Albert Einstein... said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive and that it was probably carried out to end the Pacific war before Russia could participate."

Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb, New York Times, 8/19/46, pg. 1.

Regarding the 1939 letter to Roosevelt, his biographer, Ronald Clark, has noted:

"As far as his own life was concerned, one thing seemed quite clear. 'I made one great mistake in my life,' he said to Linus Pauling, who spent an hour with him on the morning of November 11, 1954, '...when I signed the letter to President Roosevelt recommending that atom bombs be made; but there was some justification - the danger that the Germans would make them.'".

Ronald Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times, pg. 620.

[Leica]

But lets be honest Leica you do not care about any Japanese in WWII, you have a different agenda completely. And it just burns you up that Germany was a murdering warmongering nation ran by criminals. You have been on a crusade since you came to the forum to reduce the allies to the level of scum Germany and her allies bowed to in WWII.

My intention is to change your (and others) singleminded and ignorant worldview and to improve your ability to percept things from different perspectives. With other words i want to help guys like you. So its your turn to take this chance or remain on the wrong way.

HERBERT HOOVER
On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs."

- quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

Hoover biographer Richard Norton Smith has written: "Use of the bomb had besmirched America's reputation, he [Hoover] told friends. It ought to have been described in graphic terms before being flung out into the sky over Japan."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 349-350.

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351.

[Leica]

But lets be honest Leica you do not care about any Japanese in WWII, you have a different agenda completely. And it just burns you up that Germany was a murdering warmongering nation ran by criminals. You have been on a crusade since you came to the forum to reduce the allies to the level of scum Germany and her allies bowed to in WWII.

Scum at both sides...

Article 6.
The Tribunal established by the Agreement referred to m Article 1 hereof for the trial and punishment of the major war criminals of the European Axis countries shall have the power to try and punish persons who, acting in the interests of the European Axis countries, whether as individuals or as members of organizations, committed any of the following crimes.

The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility:

(a) CRIMES AGAINST PEACE: namely, planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances, or participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the foregoing;

(b) WAR CRIMES: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to, murder, ill-treatment or deportation to slave labor or for any other purpose of civilian population of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war or persons on the seas, killing of hostages, plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;

(c)CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY: namely, murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated.

Leaders, organizers, instigators and accomplices participating in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes are responsible for all acts performed by any persons in execution of such plan.