Caption* at the end of this post
U.S. bombing of the city of Nagasaki on August 9, just a few days after they had launched the world's first nuclear attack with a different kind of atomic bomb, was an even worse crime than bombing Hiroshima.
Hear me out.
These war crimes are always sold to the U.S. public as having been "necessary" to end WWII without an invasion of the Japanese mainland that was sure to cost the lives of many in the U.S. military. But the Japanese were already negotiating to surrender, and knew the war was lost for them. Some have speculated the U.S. went ahead anyway in order to both test the weapons, and intimidate their WWII ally the U.S.S.R. in a spectacular kick-off to what would become the Cold War.
U.S. citizens knew that some kind of catastrophic weapon had been deployed, and that the Japanese emperor soon surrendered, but it wasn't until John Hersey's long piece in the New Yorker in August, 1946 that many learned the gruesome details. Even then, the protracted suffering from radiation poisoning of the surviving hibakusha (a term that had to be coined) was largely unknown.My own grandfather, drafted into WWII, was among the first U.S. troops to enter Nagasaki after the bomb. Despite pestering by his daughter (my mother), he would never talk about it. Thus the label, the "Silent Generation."
When young people find out about the disaster visited on Hiroshima, they ask an essential question: Why did the U.S. drop an atomic bomb on the people of Hiroshima? I think this propaganda film made by the Army about Okinawa is a succinct explanation of the overall strategy, though it leaves out the build-up to Pearl Harbor engendered by blocking oil shipments to rapacious Imperial Japan.
Place in Japan | What U.S. citizens “know” | What I “know” |
Hiroshima 広島市 | Bombing it saved untold numbers of U.S. lives by making a ground invasion of Japan unnecessary | Japan was already negotiating for surrender, and had long since lost the war; their economy was so crushed that they were building kamikaze planes without landing gear in order to save yen; President Truman said: we have spent so much money building these weapons, we have to use them. |
Nagasaki 長崎市 | The Japanese still didn't surrender after Hiroshima, so we had to show them we weren't kidding. | We were in too much of a rush to allow three days for Japan to react to Hiroshima with unconditional surrender; we were testing a completely different type of nuclear weapon; we were making an example of Japan so the Russians i.e. Soviets, the Chinese, and anybody else would think twice before challenging our power to destroy. |
Suzuki said August 9 is the most important day of the year for the city of Nagasaki. He said the average age of the atomic bomb survivors is over 85 and some of them will be attending the ceremony amid the severe heat.
He added, "After comprehensively considering the matter, including the risk that an unexpected situation may arise, I made the decision to refrain from inviting the Israeli ambassador."
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