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60th Anniversary of the Atomic Bomb
An anonymous reader writes "On July 16, 1945, the world's first nuclear bomb exploded at Trinity Site, New Mexico, marking the beginning of the Nuclear Age. Manhattan Project veteran Herb Lehr has no regrets: 'In a lot of respects I felt as if I had done something worthwhile. I am in no way ashamed of what I had done in any way, shape, matter or form. I did what I was told to do. I did it to the best of my ability.' Lehr will return to Trinity Site for the first time since the explosion. He said, 'I'm just interested in going and seeing it and maybe getting some memories back. Los Alamos was a whole interesting experience. It was something unique. I worked very hard down there.'"
WTF!!!
Lehr said it is unfortunate the bombs were used for war.
Sooo, what were you expecting, thermonuclear noisemakers?
Seriously, whenever someone tries to justify something truely horrific, it always comes out as the most asinine comment one could make, under those circumstances.
Much like this one...
It's strange to see how he's arguing that he doesn't feel ashamed (a moral feeling) and he argues that he was instructed to do so, so that makes it morally legitimate? He must be a bureaucrat.
I wonder what will happen in the next 50 years, as most countries should have nukes by then. It will not matter how wealthy a country is, their diplomats will smile and say "Defended by Nuclear Weapons". We are already there with North Korea, all that is missing for them is long range missles to deliver those Nukes to far away places.
Imagine smaller nations nuking each other. Does anyone think that Iran and Iraq would not have nuked each other in the 1980's when they had a decade long war? Or what about Israel, how many different nations want to nuke them?? And how would foriegn policy of Israel be different if the palestinians had Nukes? Would the Israeli government treat them any better?
And I can see former soviet union states getting Nukes. It could get to be messy. What country keeps setting off bombs in Moscow? Uzbekestan or is it Checkizstan. The Chenyans I think. I am too lazy to look it up at the moment, but I believe they are the ones who took a theater filled with people hostage and then killed a bunch of them, and the same people who took a school of 1000+ hostage and killed half the elementary school kids. They held a bunch of 6 to 11 year olds for 4 or 5 days without water or food. If someone can torture another human like that, setting off a nuke probably would make them loose sleep.
Will there be no wars in the future if everyone has nukes, because everyone will be scared of starting a major conflict? Or will it be like the game Civilization where as soon as everyone has nukes, they use them?? At least our leaders have deep bunkers. In 20 years when the radiation clears, they can come out of the bunkers and start the game all over.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Had the US not developed and deployed the bomb, someone else would have been the first to use it.
Questions about our righteousness in nuking Japan (who themselves slaughtered even more civilians in Nanking than we killed with 2 A-bombs) will never die, but I'm confident that the US getting the bomb before China, the USSR and other nations, made it possible for us to scare everyone into not using them again.
We sure as heck could not have ended the war with harsh insults in Japanese... a direct invasion would have cost millions of lives and left Russia open to join in. Ask the Germans what happened when the Soviet men came into Berlin, and overlay that disaster onto Tokyo...
This isn't meant as a troll or flamebait, seriously, I think millions of lives were saved, perhaps billions.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
a world in progress...
How I hate the sentence "I did what I was told to do". Everybody should check the orders against his conscience, no matter where they come from.
It is this attitude that made WWII, or better the nazi regime, possible in the first place. And everyone living with that attitude is, in my eyes, a coward, who is too afraid to think for himself.
How else could you explain that, by order of the DOD, soldiers were forced to remain close to the detonation to check for its impact on human beeings, while it was well known for years that there were long-term illnesses caused by it.
Poor excuse, not acceptable in war crimes trials. Read some of the quotes here.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
"Please remember that Plutonium, especially pure, refined Plutonium, is somewhat dangerous. Wash your hands with soap and warm water after handling the material, and don't allow your children or pets to play in it or eat it."
or "Now hide the completed device from the neighbors and children. The garage is not recommended because of high humidity and the extreme range of temperatures experienced there. Nuclear devices have been known to spontaneously detonate in these unstable conditions. The hall closet or under the kitchen sink will be perfectly suitable."
definately have the end user in mind. It's these thoughtful tips that make this probably the best DIY WMD kit! /sarcasm>
Seriously, whenever someone tries to justify something truely horrific, it always comes out as the most asinine comment one could make, under those circumstances.
This is a question that I have wondered for some time, as I have read his books.
It seems that many of the people who helped build the atomic bomb were later pushed out of any talk about how the bomb was to be used. Oppenheimer lost his top secret clerance and was labled a communist by the FBI. Some in government wanted to jail or kill him, they were worried he would defect to the Soviet Union in the 1960's. I think Senator McCarthy had public statements about wanting to see Oppenheimer jailed.
If there is a team of 3 or 4 that is 90% responsible for building the worlds worst weapon, should they have a say if it is used? Or do they lose that right when the finish making it? Without them, the bomb could never have been made. It seems like a huge burden to have for life, knowing your creation killed so many people.
And why did the USA need to drop 2 bombs on Japan? Didn't the first one do enough to scare the crap out of them? How far was Truman ready to go? Kill every Japanese person on the earth.
And didn't the USA during WWII jail every American citizen that looked Japanese by force, even if they never broke any laws?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
"Had the US not developed and deployed the bomb, someone else would have been the first to use it."
Ah, what a nice "argument". You can't of course know if someone else would have used it, but stating it as a fact seems such a great justification for US action, doesn't it?
Besides, I hope you never have to stand before a court of law, because believe me, these hypothetical arguments are not going to impress the judge.
"Questions about our righteousness in nuking Japan (who themselves slaughtered even more civilians in Nanking than we killed with 2 A-bombs) will never die, but I'm confident that the US getting the bomb before China, the USSR and other nations, made it possible for us to scare everyone into not using them again."
Gee, it's great that you are confident about it. I'm sure those who died because of the bombs would be delighted to hear it.
"We sure as heck could not have ended the war with harsh insults in Japanese... a direct invasion would have cost millions of lives and left Russia open to join in."
Jesus, at least get your facts straight. Russia did join the war against Japan which prompted Truman to his famous words, that that meant: Finis Japan!
About the bombs saving millions of lives, this argument has been refuted so many times already that it's really embarassing to bring it up again. The first problem with your argument is that it doesn't take the situatuion at the time into account. Japan was already trying hard to find a way to surrender. This was one of the reasons that people like Eisenhower thought it was a grave mistake, to say at least, to drop the bombs.
It also doesn't take into account that the estimates on which those who decided to drop the bombs operated in no way support the notion that millions would be killed should an invasion indeed occur. It's in fact quite funny that the estimates at the time were speaking of thousands of deaths (terrible enough, but not millions), then after the war the number of half a million lives saved was the official justification, only to be extended to a million and now to several millions.
"Ask the Germans what happened when the Soviet men came into Berlin, and overlay that disaster onto Tokyo..."
As I'm German myself I'm well aware of what happened when the Soviets came into Berlin and though a lot of things were terrible you can rest assured that people in Germany consider themselves very lucky to not have been subjected to the bomb.
Also, what does that have to do with the atomic bomb? Nothing?
"This isn't meant as a troll or flamebait, seriously, I think millions of lives were saved, perhaps billions."
Jesus, its not often that one has to read so much bullshit in one sentence. Billions? Yeah, sure....
Thanks mods for modding parent up, it really was an impressive posting.
Almost every post here is a defense of the nuclear attack on Japan or of atom bombs in general (while almost every one is written as if this was a very radical and unique position). It gets me a little worried. Slashdoters used to be computer nerds and computer nerds used to be humanitarians. Does everyone also believe that making "small, tactical nukes" is a good idea? After all, terrorists could make a devastating attack on a major city and kill millions, so according to that projection, killing a few tens of thousands of people to prevent that would be more than worth it. You can always conjure up some "projection" to defend any number of casualties...
Link.
Man can render unspeakably terrible things to his own kind. Death walls and gas chambers are only ghastly instruments that remind us of what mankind is capable. Is it some twisted part of the human condition? Is our psychology so simple to manipulate? Is this capacity for moral distortion within each of us?
Atrocities are not unique to the Nazis. My father likes to remind me of Japanese war crimes committed against POWs. There is no cause so noble or philosophy so infallible that human cruelty has not made a foundation from it. Even today well meaning people of conscience are drawn to polar opposites and debate whether President Bush is a righteous man or a war criminal.
The scale and efficency of the Nazi killing machine is what shocks us so, but it reenforces what we already know: this kind of holocaust can never happen again. Even though it does, and like lemmings we turn a blind eye. Rwanda? Somalia? And how many people are unconsciously hardening their hearts against Americans on one side and Arabs on the other, or the Israelis against the Palestineans? If the dam were to break, would we again see organized slaughter of the Nazi kind?
I think far more dangerous than the mind-numbing horrors of which the preserved Nazi implements of death remind us are the horrors that even reasonable men justify. One and a half million people died in Auschwitz and Birkenau, but more than four hundred thousand human beings died in blast and fallout from the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is tragedy in every life lost, but where they differ is in how they are both seen fifty years later.
Aside from a few isolated fools, the Holocaust is condemned by every soul the world over. But sentiment on the two bombings remains divided, even met with passioned approval by entirely reasonable people. War is a harsh thing, and military strategy is a long way from genocide. But tell me, were the women in line at the bank in Hiroshima and the children in the schoolhouse in Nagasaki any less innocent than those who perished in the gas chambers?