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G-7 Leaders At Hiroshima To Urge More Visits to Nuclear Bombsites (voanews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Sunday leaders from the G-7 countries gathered in Hiroshima Sunday, a gesture which the Japanese government hopes will send a message of peace and nuclear nonproliferation. The seven world leaders will first honor the dead at Hiroshima Peace Park and visit an atomic bomb museum, which the Associated Press calls "a dream come true for many surviving victims, who have for decades campaigned to bring leaders of nuclear states to Hiroshima to see the damage." In addition, Japan hopes that the world leaders will also issue a "Hiroshima Declaration," which reportedly will call for more transparency about stockpiles of nuclear weapons, but also more visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki by both world leaders and young people.
71 years and they still haven't haven't fixed the place?
What about just listening to the song "Forever Young" by German Cold-War-era supergroup Alphaville instead?
Then I'll happily go visit
I'd love to visit the Nevada Test Site but cannot catch the reservation window. Come on Obama, listen to these folks and allow more visitors!.
...that has used nuclear weapons of mass destruction on civilians.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima will forever live on as America's shame.
Attempts to justify the mass murder as "ending the war" are pathetic. As all scholars know, the bombs did nothing of the sort. It was the entry of the Soviets into the war and the threat of an invasion of the Northern islands by the Red Army that convinced the Japanese leadership to finally surrender.
Of course, actual events are often at odds with the Hollywood version of history the Americans are so fond of creating.
Sunday leaders? Who leads for the rest of the week?
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
How about all the other Japanese War Crimes?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Further, the irony is that the firebombings of Tokyo killed as many people as the nukes did. Where are the protests of that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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Finally, would invading have been better?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"During World War II, nearly 500,000 Purple Heart medals were manufactured in anticipation of the estimated casualties resulting from the planned Allied invasion of Japan. To the present date, total combined American military casualties of the seventy years following the end of World War IIâ"including the Korean and Vietnam Warsâ"have not exceeded that number. In 2003, there remained 120,000 Purple Heart medals in stock. The existing surplus allowed combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan to keep Purple Hearts on-hand for immediate award to soldiers wounded in the field."
We are STILL handing out WWII Purple Hearts to this day because we ended up not having to invade. If the Japs didn't want to get nuked, perhaps they shouldn't have started a war of aggression.
The Military G-7 Leaders At Hiroshima To Urge More Visits to Nuclear Bombsites
And in other news, American military leaders urge more visits to Pearl Harbor.
(And Dachau)
Since America pulled out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty causing the Russians to pull out of SALT-II, it's all talk and no action. Nuclear disarmament is as dead as it was in the 1970's.
where atomic weapons weren't used, there is no nation of Japan, just the mass graves of thousands of allied soldiers, millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians (most of whom died of disease and starvation).
Nothing grows there because of the defoliants that were used. The Japanese are extinct.
Still the whales and dolphins are a lot better off than in our timeline.
Does it matter how you kill people, or how efficiently, surely it is the number of people killed that is most relevant? Ideology killed far more people than technology ever did. Total dead in WWII, about 70 million, number of people killed by communism in the following decades, about 60 million.
They spent decades telling people that nuclear weapons make places uninhabitable for centuries, and thus scaring many people into supporting a push to disarm the west (they never made a serious effort in China or Russia to push for disarmament).
If too many idiots who have been so indoctrinated, and who normally only watch comedy shows and fiction shows paying little attention to the real world, are exposed to modern Hiroshima and Nagasaki on TV then they might start asking questions - like how these places could be thriving metros only 70 years after being nuked, and why they were told such a thing was impossible. These places were rebuilt decades ago and would not be what they are today had they only just now been rebuilt and re-occupied.
I am absolutely NOT saying that nuclear bombs are good, or that the damage of an atomic bomb is the same as from a hydrogen bomb, or any other such nonsense. What I AM saying is that the very existence of these modern cities destroys a bunch of the dishonest propaganda that has been used in the West over the past few decades, and the people whose politics both used that propaganda and to some degree depends on that propaganda ought to thing seriously before drawing too much attention to these cities as they are today rather than to the much-more useful images of them from 70 years ago. Nuclear weapons are certainly powerful and certainly have many undesirable effects, but they were not responsible for most of the industrial-scale death of WWII which was largely performed with rather mundane weapons, and the Deaths in those two Japanese cities, while appalling, probably saved millions of lives on BOTH sides by eliminating an allied ground invasion of Japan which the Allies estimated would cost a million allied lives and even more Japanese lives. Indeed, had Japan surrendered after Hiroshima, Nagasaki would have been spared and the world would now only have one example of a nuked city.
1. Japan itself convinced the US to drop the bomb on Hiroshima. When US troops fought the Japanese from island to island on the approach to the big island, they encountered waves of fanatical suicide attacks on land, and from the air. American soldiers were shocked to encounter large numbers of Japanese civilian women who killed their children and then killed themselves in front of the Americans rather than simply surrendering and being given food and water. Japanese sailors at sea who'd been aboard ships that were sunk would frequently swim away from US sailors who were trying to pull them from the water (a centuries' old international naval traditions of plucking enemies from the sea, everyone sailor's true adversary), often choosing to drown themselves. The imperial leadership of Japan had convinced its population that Americans were barbarians who would treat them so badly that death was preferable. This was evil propaganda intended to convince the people to sacrifice themselves to protect their emperor-god from the disgrace of surrender.
2. Japan itself brought-on Nagasaki. After Hiroshima, the US told the imperial Japanese government to surrender or face more, and the imperial Japanese government chose not to surrender. The allies at the time were demanding "unconditional surrender" and when they Japanese, AFTER Nagasaki still refused to unconditionally surrender and instead asked to be allowed to preserve their emperor, the allies compromised and allowed that condition - but the action proved the imperial govt would have been willing to get nuked some more to preserve the moron in the palace. The Japanese negotiations were NOT focused on the Japanese people, who would have been saved BEFORE Hiroshima had the emperor held any concern for his citizens and surrendered THEN.
3. NO American president could have possibly sent American men to invade Japan and die by the hundreds of thousands and then later have been exposed to have had a weapon he could have dropped from one plane with no American casualties at all and won the war. Such a president would have been forcibly removed from office, and tried and executed for treason. This was a WORLD WAR. Millions of people were dead and maimed.
I am one of those Americans who is glad the bomb was developed AND used. I Had family who fought and probably would have died had the bombs not been used, and who rejects the silly out-of-context moralizing by people who have no experience with war and are too young to know anything about REAL war (as opposed to the phone mini-wars we now pretend to wage).
Have gnu, will travel.
Nagasaki is famous for crucifying christians, sometimes hundreds a month; still waiting for the declaration of apology.
Since apparently the eventual plan was to drop bombs as part of the invasion of operations Olympic and Coronet to soften up the Japanese. It was my understanding one of the reasons to use them for real was to figure out how far in front of the invasion to drop them so they didn't take out the troops. Oh, and they had one more ready for the end of August and then the US was REALLY going to ramp up productions. (Something like 20-30 nukes by the end of 45.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The Imperial Japanese government, in league with NAZI Germany, was waging total war against the US, using American POWs as test subjects in biological and chemical weapons tests, working British POWs to death, EATING allied POWs, etc. and as Germany collapsed, Hitler sent a U-Boot to Japan with plans for NAZI jets and rockets and a supply of uranium to assist the Japanese nuclear bomb development program. Japan was meant to be Hitler's revenge from the grave. The Americans captured the Japan-bound U-Boot and transferred the fissionable material to the Manhattan project. Google: U-234
Why bring the people to the bomb sites, when you can bring the bomb sites (future ones) to the people. Let's nuke'em all!
If only a bombing site were closer to me. Perhaps we could drop some more bombs so that more people can witness the destructive power they hold. That way people won't have to travel all the way to Japan.
This is stupid, IMHO, and sounds like a means to guilt people into visiting Japan and spend some money there.
I made a trip to Germany some years ago to visit a friend stationed there while in the US Army. We took a look at some old castles, churches, drank some German beer and ate some German food. We also saw Hitler's "eagles nest", the remains of the Berlin wall, a memorial to the Jews killed, and a concentration camp museum. A memorable experience but not near as memorable as seeing films on the concentration camps, or Youtube videos of talks on the subject, or just listening to my grandparents talk about what World War II meant to them. There are ways to relate the horrors of war to people besides a viewing of where it happened. I admit that we should not destroy these sites, or prevent people from visiting them, but visiting the sites is not the only way to understand what happened there.
What is also lost is how "mutually assured destruction" may have kept the Cold War from becoming a one that burned at a million degrees over Manhattan.
I think that the USA should keep it's nuclear weapons. Even if we never use them again in anger I do believe that their mere presence keeps us safer than if we got rid of them.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Given that the nuclear powers have decided that Iran should have nuclear weapons ASAP, the Japanese notion that world leaders should visit the site of nuclear attacks will come much quicker than they might have dreamed!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No actual problems left so lets go back and wallow in the old ones. The direct result of the bombs, the surrender, the subsequent governance and unwavering economic and military allied status with the US is that Hiroshima is a thriving metropolis worth hundreds of billions and populated by 1.17 million healthy, safe Japanese. But lets set all of that aside and haunt the remnants of a 70 year old war so we can tsk tsk at the US.
Pathetic.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Fun fact: the US military was going full-on for the invasion of the Japanese home islands. The atom bomb was top-secret, remember? Casualty estimates were huge for both sides. The Japanese had a defense plan, and it was a good one. They had correctly predicted what the Americans were going to do. It would have been a bloodbath. When the Japanese surrendered it was a huge relief to both sides.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Tailhook writes:
So by your logic, if some demented evil country pulverized American cities with nuclear bombs, that would be entirely fine and excusable because the US would be prosperous a few decades later?
You need to watch where your reasoning leads you, because you're clearly insane and have no understanding of human suffering.
The government of Japan and the "chosen nation" government of USA cooperated in the atomic bombing of H. and N. Both of them were happy with the result. That's because the aim of those A-bombings was to entirely eliminate christianity from Japan. The nukes hit the two centres of christian religion in Japan, one catholic and one protestant.
Christianity was instantly reduced to a mere thousandths of a percentile or just a rounding error, even though until August 1945, christianity was a small, but measurable minority in Japan that was highly respected, due to their association with knowledge and modernity of the western world. Christians of european origin introduced medicine, sports, rigorous science and engineering to Japan and local convertees remained at the forefront of japanese modernization of hardware, culture and thought.
Obviouly, the shinto-buddhist elite in Japan didn't like the christian ideas or the rare white immigrants or the vast majority of ethnic japanese christian convertees. The "chosen nation" government of USA also didn't like christians, since their tribe has been against followers of Jesus for over 1900 years, so the perfect conspiracy was created. Both sides were happy with the result of the A-bombs that fell.
Had christianity remained strong and respected in post-WW2 Japan, today there would be much less problem with near-zero birth rates, wide-spread self-confinement (hikikomori), tentacular schoolgirl porn and other deviant forms of behaviour. The strong moral guideline of christianity, which was a strong voice even in its small but measurable minoroty position, is sorely missing from Japan to this day. Locals cannot differentiate between good and evil, as that notion is missing from the shame-based worldview of shintoism.
Considering the japanese elite was so happy with the Ch-eraser nuking of H. and N., it is no wonder the memorial events are so low-profile in both cities. The majority shinto-buddhist japanese population has been silently educated that it was essentially a great thing those alien and non-conformal christian cities were levelled.
how petty and small-minded many Americans are, and how they love to smear Hiroshima in the face of the Japanese, 70 years on. I think that one day, it will be you who will rightfully get old shit rubbed in your own face.
Why was the US under any obligation to take the Japanese wishes into account?
They started a war, behaved abominably during it, and lost it. I don't see why people are claiming they were owed anything.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
today there would be much less problem with near-zero birth rates
Heh. Yeah, they could look like India instead as a high birth rate on limited landmass requires building vertically to house all of the population.
I wonder, were the leaders of Israel, India and Pakistan present, together with the midget nut from North Korea? They have nukes too, you know...
as those first nuclear bombs were exploding just partly. They are not even close to modern nuclear bombs, which are much more damaging.
After such a visit a politician who does not have a technical background may think that it is survivable, and that there could be even PR ceremonies and visits afterwards. What is not true at all.
The leftist use of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to try to convince the poorly educated portion of the voting publics in the Western nations to support policies and politicians who supported nuclear disarmament had nothing whatsoever to do with a poorly-designed, poorly-built, poorly-operated, civilian nuclear power plant that had NO CONTAINMENT BUILDING melting down and then exploding. It also had nothing to do with one spy being killed with Polonium in London.
and again, the anti-nuke activists infest Western nations, but never made any significant effort to convince the people of any Communist nation to disarm and/or de-nuclearize. They are too often like the morons with the doomsday clock, or the Rosenbergs, - working only to undermine the West. Even now with Russia in violation of the curently-existing nuclear treaties and actually deploying new ICBM and new warhead designs, and with Russia now in violation of the number of nuclear warheads they are allowed to have, the response from the leftists who pretend to oppose all nukes is.... {crickets}.... because at their core they are Marxists and they have no problem with the world's worst Marxists being armed to the teeth. Hell, these leftist activists are fine with ANYBODY having nukes except the countries with representative governments and free market economics.
younger post-war generations of Japanese. History is important, particularly so we can avoid repeating it. People like you need to learn to separate discussions of historical events decades ago from presumptions of "microaggressions" and violations of "safe spaces". One can discuss what long-dead military leaders serving a now-dead leader who held himself up as a God did, without any presumption that the grandchildren of those men have any guilt over anything. It's similarly absurd to blame young Germans today for the Holocaust even as we must all preserve the memory of that event - just as no young American is to blame for bombing Hiroshima or Nagasaki and it's silly to expect them to apologize for it.
The US and Japan were friendly trading partners for decades before WWII. We had no natural reason to hate each other and the large number of cherry trees in DC are there as a gift from Japan to the US in that pre-war era of friendship. In Japan, there is a similar remnant of that era of goodwill: baseball. The Japanese embraced America's national pass time.
Sadly, it was the imperial government of Japan which decided to go on a rampage across the Pacific gobbling-up neighbors like Korea and China and savagely mistreating those people that led the US to put sanctions on its old friend. The US was trying to negotiate a peaceful arrangement with its friend Japan in early December 1941 when the Emperor and his men chose to deal with the issue by trying to eliminate the US Navy at Pearl Harbor. The fact that Admiral Yamamoto had attended college in the US during that peaceful pre-war era meant that he well understood the American people and what the attack he was ordered to make would result in. Unfortunately, his nation's leaders did not listen to his warning that he could give them a short term victory but that the blowback would be severe. The fight between the imperial government of Japan and the US was a tradgedy of history, but it does not mean permanent emnity between our peoples. American military personnel and Japanese military personnel fought each other as they were ordered to, and certain individual survivors were physically and psychologically scarred by it, but as a general rule the people on both sides were able to rapidly re-learn to get along post-war and our two nations have been friends for a total of well over a century with WWII being a 4-year long abnormality. The Japanese are still playing baseball and Washington never uprooted its cherry trees. I was at an event years ago with 'Pappy" Boyington (a famous WWII Marine aviator) and he was with one of the former Japanese pilots he'd flown against in the war. They had flown to the event together in a private plane and seemed to be getting along quite well.
Today, when Japan complains about US bases, or when Americans complain about trade, it's really just people in each county complaining that they think their leaders negotiated worse deals than they should have, rather than outright national or ethnic hatred. When Trump complains about Japan, you will note that he generally does it as part of an attack on the competence of OUR government while complementing their government and people for having been smarter in their negotiations and he has said he'd be fine with them having nukes (NOT something one would say of an enemy). Arguments between the US and Japan are more like sibling rivalry than actual consequential fights.