Slashdot Mirror
Twilight of the Bomb
merbs writes: On the 70th anniversary of the first nuclear bomb, Motherboard's Brian Merchant toured its crater with one of the last living Manhattan Project scientists. Here's the inside story of the road to the bomb, with the 90-year-old Murray Peshkin—the youngest man to work on the Project that built the bomb, and the first to set foot in its crater. From the story: "There are still nine nuclear nations that, between them, have stockpiled 16,300 weapons. And this network of decades-old nuclear armaments, some of which are still aimed at various strategic choke points around the globe, leaves civilizational scale death-becoming a technical possibility. Before all that, though, the atom bomb was one of the most successful science experiments of all time. It was the product of billions of dollars in government spending, hundreds of the world’s top scientists working in concert, in secret, in a city built from scratch in the desert, and a bygone patriotism united by common, Manichean cause: stop Hitler, defeat the Japanese."
Murray Peshkin does not have to take pride in his work, but he should not feel that he is party to a war crime either
Mr. Peshkin is not a war criminal. America's entrance into World War II ended up saving more lives than had it chosen not to get involved
The war criminals were and are the Japanese, the Germans, the Italians, and those who gave support to them
America's dropping bombs on Japan was not without justifications - it was the japs who attacked the Pearl Harbor first, and the japs were also attacking and invading other countries, from Korea to the North to the strings of pacific islands to the South, and all the way to Burma to the West
Along the way the japs committed atrocities that were so horrible not even the Islamic Terrorists of today could hope to match.
Furthermore, Japan as the aggressor country not only refusing to officially apologize for the crimes they and their ancestors have committed to other people, many of them, including the current Japanese Prime Minister, Shinto Abe, are doing everything they can to whitewash the barbaric acts that their fathers/grandfathers had done.
Before the japanese apologists launch their ad hominem attacks on me, let me include some links to photos documenting the atrocities that were carried out, by none other than the japs -
http://www.documentingreality....
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pini...
http://www.documentingreality....
No, Mr. Peshkin is *NOT* a war criminal!
Thanks to Peshkin and the team which built the bombs, the two bombs that were dropped in Japan successfully halted the japs from perpetrating even more heinous massacres, illustrated by the photos above
We must be fully aware of the scams the japs are busy doing today - maximizing the effect of their 'victim card' while denying everything (and refusing to apologize for) the crimes they did to others
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
A demonstration of the bomb, with Japanese military officials invited to see it, was considered by the US. It's hard to justify why that was not even tried first, before moving directly to the bombing of civilians.
Of course it is hard, because you weren't there, living through it at the time...
You're playing Monday morning quarterback, which is why the whole thing looks crazy to you 70 years later...
But if you bothered to learn your history you'd understand why it was used...