Hiroshima memorial: PM Naoto Kan makes nuclear pledge

[alp227]

Source: BBC News

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan has repeated a pledge to reduce reliance on nuclear power, as people mark the 66th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing.

Thousands gathered at the city's peace memorial to observe one minute's silence in memory of the 140,000 killed by the US atomic attack in 1945.

Mr Kan used the occasion to address the crisis caused by a tsunami wrecking the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in March.

He promised to challenge "conventional beliefs" that nuclear energy was safe.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14430109

[MouseFitzgerald]

1. Yet some people here still think dropping the bomb was awesome

[hack89]

2. Not awesome - just necessary. nt

[MouseFitzgerald]

3. Yeah, screw them they deserved it

Any and all nations must cower before the military might of the USA or risk nuclear annihilation.

[hack89]

4. Bad things happen when you start wars you can't win

It's one of those hard facts of life.
I

[sudopod]

5. They shouldn't have voted for...oh wait. nt

[ForeignandDomestic]

6. History is written by the victors..

Ironically we start wars all the time, I guess might makes right huh?

[hack89]

7. We didn't start WWII - we just ended it. my

[tuckessee]

18. Does that apply to the US?

What price should innocent American civilians pay for the unwinnable wars in Iraq, Afghanistan & Lybia? Would you find the nuking of an American city an acceptable pennance for those illegal wars?

You got off scot-free for the unwinnable war in Vietnam but maybe your luck is running out.

[plumbob]

9. Not really necessary to end the war. But we wanted to impress Joe

Stalin and make him jump back a little after the war.

He WAS impressed, and then said, "Wow, I gotta get some of those!" and a wasted couple of generations of duck and cover and fear resulted.

When that wore out finally, we got global terrorism. Now people are tiring of that, so I guess it's going to be international financial crises.

Fear, fear, fear. All the better to get people to not ask questions about what the "leaders" are doing.

[hack89]

10. Since Joe had spies in the Manhattan project

He would have got some regardless of whether we dropped or not.

[plumbob]

11. See, HE knew that, but we didn't. Or we did, and just wanted to see the

new toy used in the field.

Either way fits with our approach to foreign affairs - kill 'em whether you know why or not, AND make as much noise (shock and awe, anyone?) as possible.

[hack89]

12. Japan invaded China in 1933 and started a slaughter

that would last 12 years and killed millions. They invaded the rest of Asia in 1941 and commenced to kill hundreds of thousands more. If you can't see who the true evil party was then your moral compass is seriously broken.

[plumbob]

14. And that made it necessary to drop the bombs? Ike didn't think so, nor did

MacArthur, nor a whole lot of other military and diplomatic folks.

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


"...in 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


Lots more at the link.

Nothing wrong with my moral compass. I'm against killing civilians in all wars by all sides. You?

[hack89]

15. Regardless of how we ended the war, hundreds of thousands of Japanese would have died

Blockade resulting in starvation and disease (the least violent way to end the war) would have certainly have killed more old, sick and very young then the atomic bombs. All of the other options would have resulted in prolonging the war and more civilian deaths.

Here is the issue you refuse to address - every day in the countries occupied by Japan thousands were dying of disease and abuse. How many more of these innocents would you have been willing to see die so that the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be spared the atomic bomb? Because without the atomic bombs the war would have lasted longer - and many more of those civilians you care so much about would have died. Sometimes there is no easy answer - war on the scale of WWII sometimes boils down to a brutal calculus of which actions save lives in the long run. The atomic bombs were such a case.

BTW - Ike was wrong about Japan seeking to surrender. There were some inquiries made by Japanese diplomats but by then all power lay in the hands of the military and they certainly were willing to fight to the end.

[plumbob]

16. Glad you have more knowledge than Ike or MacArthur. I certainly

can't match that level of revealed knowledge. Now you just keep believing what some 11th grade high school history teacher told you, eat your beans, pledge the flag, and you'll be fine.

I'm not fit to dispute your knowledge which is so superior to the two theater commanders of the day, so I will bid you a fond adieu and wish you a nice day.

[hack89]

17. Why did you ignore my main point and latch on to my throw away comment?

When do you think the war would have ended without the atomic bombs? How many civilians would have died in that period?

[plumbob]

19. Read my link. Both Eisenhower and MacArthur thought the Japanese

were days away from surrendering; all they had to do was put some face on the Emperor's surrender. Now that is the opinion of the two theater commanders, so whale away.

BTW - NO bomb ever saved lives. That's akin to the "we had to destroy the village to save it" nuttiness from Vietnam.

There's a reason the US never signed the Geneva Accords, and it's not because we're nicer than everybody else. We just want to do what we want to do - it's just an extension of that Manifest Destiny mental illness and American exceptionalism delusion.

[hack89]

20. Find a Japanese general that agreed with them and you might have something

it was just their opinion - Ike never set foot in the theater so what the hell did he know about it? Nimitz certainly did not think the Japanese were on the verge of surrender.

The US ratified the 4th Geneva Accord in 1955. We had ratified the previous accords as well.

[plumbob]

21. Nope. Nimitz didn't think the bombs were necessary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.<72>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conference_(1954)

The Geneva Accords



Students demonstration in Saigon, July 1964, observing the tenth anniversary of the July 1954 Geneva Agreements
On April 27, 1954, the Conference produced a declaration which supported the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Indochina thereby granting its independence from France. In addition, the Conference declaration agreed upon the cessation of hostilities and foreign involvement (or troops) in internal Indochina affairs. Northern and southern zones were drawn into which opposing troops were to withdraw, to facilitate the cessation of hostilities between the Vietnamese forces and those that had supported the French. Viet Minh units, having advanced to the far south while fighting the French, retreated from these positions, in accordance with the Agreement, to north of the ceasefire line, awaiting unification on the basis of internationally supervised free elections to be held in July 1956.<10> Most of the French Union forces evacuated Vietnam, although much of the regional governmental infrastructure in the South was the same as it had been under the French administration. An International Control Commission was set up to oversee the implementation of the Geneva Accords, but it was essentially powerless to ensure compliance. It was to consist of India, Canada, and Poland.
The agreement was among Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, France, Laos, the People's Republic of China, the State of Vietnam, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom. The United States took note and acknowledged that the agreement existed, but refused to sign the agreement, to avoid being legally bound to it.


And now, since you have misquoted Nimitz, branded your own opinions as superior to Ike, and all without the slightest link or documentation, I bid you goodbye. I hope your astonishing intellect gets you everything you've got coming.

[hack89]

22. You have your Geneva Accords mixed up

Do I really have to explain it to you or do you want to figure it out for yourself?

[Violet_Crumble]

13. One of the reasons for dropping the bomb was to see what it did...

And to send a big warning to the Soviets. They didn't want the Soviets sharing the occupation of Japan like what had happened with Germany, and dropping the bombs ensured that it was all over before the Soviets could invade Japan and demand their slice of the spoils.

[lynne]

8. Not awesome. Was horrible. But we had little choice -

- and it ultimately saved American lives and certainly ended Japan's involvement in the war. My father was slated to be on a ship participating in the Invasion of Japan. The bomb ended that plan and ended the huge deaths they were forecasting it would cause.

A horrible thing to have to do and I sure hope we never have to do it again.