Eyewitnesses to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

[method77]

People who were 300 meters from ground zero actually survived the blast and tell about it. These survivors are known as hibakusha– "people exposed to the bomb. "Amazing stories.

Link

[Kooperman]

The stories of the eyewitnesses to Hiroshima and Nagasaki are moving, though disturbing. May humankind never again err so spectacularly as we did during that week in 1945.

Try explaining that to George Bush, the kid who enjoyed pulling wings off of insects so he could watch them suffer.

[Redneck4sure]

May humankind never again err so spectacularly as we did during that week in 1945.

No error. Both bombs functioned flawlessly. The error was made almost 4 yrs earlier on Dec 7, 1941.

[method77]

huge debate there Red

[Redneck4sure]

Sorry, I retired from debating when I got out of high school.......avoided it while in college......now I just cut to the chase and argue.

[Tiremonkey2000]

WOW very interesting reading

[method77]

that's the reason I posted it. Whether it was right or wrong to drop the bombs

[Kooperman]

I think it was overkill dropping the bomb, although I can see a legitimate argument being made that dropping the first one saved American lives that would have been lost in furthur combat. I see no defense for dropping the second bomb.

[Redneck4sure]

After the first one was dropped, the U.S. told Japan to surrender. They refused. Three days later we nuked them again. They surrendered. Sounds like a plan to me.

Maybe they thought we only had one bomb. After the second they surrendered. Little did they know we only had 2 bombs and it would have taken some time to build another one and get it to Japan.

[method77]

what Koop said

[KiwiCoromandel]

my father served in the pacific with the royal new zealand airforce during ww2 (he lied about his age when he volunteered) and he was stationed at guadalcanal as an aircraft mechanic flying corsairs as well....he was the standard (flag) bearer for the new zealand armed forces contingent at the signing of the Japanese surrender documents aboard the battleship Missouri in the Bay of Tokyo on Sept. 2 1945..he brought back with him many pics of ground zero in hiroshima and nagasaki that he took just after the surrender..some of them are pretty ugly..he never said much about it....we are cataloguing and scanning through them all now..when i`ve finished them i`ll post some on site.....

[CTC Command]

My dad spent from 1943 on crossing back and forth the Atlantic, somehow his ship missed getting sunk by the wolfpacks though he watched as other ships in his convoy got torpedoed and sink to the bottom. Then he spent 6 weeks on the beach in the invasion of Normandy--while on small boat duty June 7 1944 his LST collided with Canadian ship and went into drydock without him. Somehow he survived that too. In the spring of '45 he came stateside--they were refitting his ship and he was on his way to the Pacific for the main invasion of Japan when they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

First I have to agree with Red on the mistake that was made. Second, Japan would not have surrendered without a bloody hand-to-hand, house-to-house invasion that would have left nearly every Japanese person dead and killed over 1 million Allied troops. Third, Japan wasn't our only problem in the summer of 1945. It is almost certain that Stalin would have tried to push the boundaries in Europe west while we were busy in Japan. World War II would not have ended with just 60 million dead in August of 1945.

How many more millions would we want to add to that horrific number?

I am not minimizing the destruction these bombs had on the personal lives of those killed or injured in either Japanese city. But in pure realpolik, trading the lives of 150,000 for some unknown quantity at least 10 times higher...there is no mistake there.

Not to mention, some of us (kiwi? me? at least), many of us, maybe most of us, would not be here today to argue about this if Stalin had been free to play in Europe while the US was bogged down in an invasion of Japan.

[method77]

every European was at war back then....

what are you talking about CTC? What Stalin? Stalin was on the same side with the rest of us. If fact, his army conguered Berlin and the Germans surrendered. The signing that took place the day before in Paris did not finish the war and everyone knows that (at least in this part of the planet)

What about the british, french and the rest of the armies here? Would they just wait around for mother US to save us? Please.

[method77]

I just want you to know that you know the US side of the story and that's normal but the rest of us, especially the ones living here, know our side of the story.

[Kooperman]

I can't say that I agree with a whole lot that CTC and Redneck say. When Truman dropped the bomb(s) it was as much for political reason as it was for military. The Russians were wanting some of the territory in Japan when they surrendered...Truman wanted to avoid giving it to them, so the bombs fell. Japan's war effort was running on fumes and bombings by the Air Force would have finished them off, as General Curtis LeMay argued. Eisenhower himself said :

[After bomb dropped] "The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that damn thing ... I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon." General Eisenhower.

Here are some people who disagreed with the atomic bombing:

http://www.doug-long.com/quotes.htm