![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Link of the Day: Found Hiroshima Photos
Found in Watertown, MA: a suitcase of forgotten photos taken in the immediate aftermath of atom bomb drop on Hiroshima.
There's this one photograph, it's the last one in the article, where you see is the outline of this pair of feet on a bridge.
What it looks like: A chalk outline of feet.
What it was: A person right up until the bomb fell.
This is why I want to smack the shit out of people who joke about dropping nukes on another country. It isn't like some other photos of the immediate aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't already public. (WARNING: REALLY DISTURBING PHOTOS OF DEAD AND DYING PEOPLE! Click only if you're serious.)
While the Watertown find contains no people, there is something incredibly eerie about them, due in large part to the utter lack of life. So, seriously. If you're easily triggered, you may not want to go look.
Although I recommend you do. Maybe if more people took a really good look at those photos, maybe some people wouldn't joke so light-heartedly about war, let alone using nukes.
In addition, the article is pretty interesting. It's a real-life mystery that searches for where the photos came from, and how they ended up in Watertown, Massachusetts.
My favorite passage in the piece:
There's this one photograph, it's the last one in the article, where you see is the outline of this pair of feet on a bridge.
What it looks like: A chalk outline of feet.
What it was: A person right up until the bomb fell.
This is why I want to smack the shit out of people who joke about dropping nukes on another country. It isn't like some other photos of the immediate aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren't already public. (WARNING: REALLY DISTURBING PHOTOS OF DEAD AND DYING PEOPLE! Click only if you're serious.)
While the Watertown find contains no people, there is something incredibly eerie about them, due in large part to the utter lack of life. So, seriously. If you're easily triggered, you may not want to go look.
Although I recommend you do. Maybe if more people took a really good look at those photos, maybe some people wouldn't joke so light-heartedly about war, let alone using nukes.
In addition, the article is pretty interesting. It's a real-life mystery that searches for where the photos came from, and how they ended up in Watertown, Massachusetts.
My favorite passage in the piece:
The lack of visual evidence of the atom bomb’s effect has helped us to forget its devastating impact. To see is to remember. Up until now, there have been few publicly available images of what happened on the ground when the first atomic bomb exploded. As a result, Hiroshima has become, as the novelist Mary McCarthy wrote in 1946, “a kind of hole in human history.”
These images go some way towards filling in this hole in our historical memory. Taken during the weeks following the bombing, they show a landscape that is eerily vacant and quiet, like ruins from a vanished civilization. But why were they taken and by whom? And how is it that they ended up in a pile of garbage?
More...
no subject
Such horror.
no subject
For serious.
no subject
We must never allow this to happen again.
no subject
no subject
no subject
While I agree that Nagasaki wasn't justified, Hiroshima...*wavers hands*
I can understand the reasoning that went into the Hiroshima bomb drop. I'll even add that it's entirely possible that no one really understood what dropping an atomic bomb on a living, breathing city actually meant. I mean, a mushroom cloud out of a desert where no one lives doesn't quite replicate the utter extinction of every living thing in a city while turning a city into instant ruins.
While I'm not necessarily justifying Hiroshima — it's just that I'm not entirely sure that Truman and the generals completely understood what they had unleashed when the ordered Little Boy dropped. And if they did understand, I'm still not sure if they were right or wrong there, considering what they were up against. They may have saved lives in the long run.
Now, here we are in 20-20 land and we're horrified by this. But then again, we're not just horrified by what was done (Remember, Dresden was accomplished with conventional weapons, and it killed 20,000 to 40,000 Germans in a 2-day period...), but I think horrified because we know the kind of genie that was let out of the bottle on that day, and we know it's a genie that most of us have been born with hanging over our heads and will die (if we're lucky) with it hanging over our heads.
no subject
I grew up when they were still having bomb drills, and they told us that hiding under our desks would be safe. Yeah, right.
no subject
We were a very jaded lot, when I was in school.
But yeah...those pictures are just too striking.
no subject
I'm still conflicted over the necessity of dropping the bomb on Hiroshima, mainly because of practical considerations of the time that I'm not qualified to judge as an armchair quarterback being born more than two decades after it happened1 (I tend to lean towards it shouldn't have happened at all).
Nagasaki, on the other hand, I am totally outraged by. Not to downplay the horror of Hiroshima, though. The only argument that might justify dropping the bomb August 6 is that it saved lives in the long run. Dropping another one three days later completely undercuts that argument. Three days, especially back then, was practically no time at all to allow for a response.
Whoops. I'm ranting.
1Not that I'm judging anybody who is totally and utterly against it.
no subject
You could argue that Hiroshima did, in the long run or the short run, save both American and Japanese lives. And you could also argue that we hadn't really understood what "atomic war" meant in terms of dropping it on top of an actual, living city.
But Nagasaki...Jesus...Nagasaki. I'm still a little hazy on the reasoning why we dropped the second bomb on Japan rather than waited until the Emperor finished strong-arming the military generals into surrendering. I'm thinking that at that point, all we had to do was pretty much tell them we had Fat Man in bomber bay.
no subject
no subject
no subject
Have you ever read any accounts of Chinese girls who were forced to work as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers in the Phillipines. As far as I know the Japanese Government still denies that ever happened and I don't know if they still deny Nanking or not. But, I do in the 1980s- 1990s they didn't even teach that it happened in their text books.
Did you know that before either atomic bomb was dropped US bombers dropped leaflets telling the civilians that the bombs would be dropped and to get out of the city. The Civilians in the first city didn't believe it and the civilians in the second city had no idea the first city had been hit.
I have a friend whose Grandfather fought at Midway, I believe it was, I know for sure it was in the Pacific. His Grandfather is dead now but his Grandmother is alive. She remembers that time, and to this day she still hates the Japanese. Even though the wars been over for such a long time and the US and Japan have good relations now, she still hates them. So, if you're curious as to why those pictures ended up in the garbage she might have some perspective on why someone would throw them away that I just wouldn't have.
As far as was dropping the atomic bomb the right thing to do. I honestly don't know and I'm glad I didn't have to be the one to make that decision. Although, I feel quite sure we treated them after the surrender much better than what they treated anybody who surrendered to them before or during the war. In fact, they were still killing American Prisoners of War after they had surrendered. The one thing I do know for sure is, war is not funny and it shouldn't be joked about.
no subject
Because that's what I'm guessing your reasoning is here.
Because the Japanese did X to Chinese (and the Koreans...seriously, you totally forgot the shit they did to the Koreans, too), we're perfectly allowed to whatever we want to the Japanese.
[Oh, and dude, while we're trading war atrocities, look up Dresden sometime. Then get back to me.]
Look, while I appreciate what you're trying to say — and let me stress that I am not at all sure whether we were right or wrong to drop the bomb on Hiroshima (Nagasaki, however, was a straight-up war crime, no matter how you slice it) — saying "Well, the Japanese we really, really, really bad people in World War II" is a complete non-sequitor.
In fact, dropping the atom bomb on Japan had nothing (nada, zero, zilch) to do with Japanese war crimes. Japanese war crimes weren't even taken into consideration, so to even bring it up in the context of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is connecting to very unconnect-y things — and sounds an awful lot like justfying actions based on: "Well the Japanese did bad things, too!"
Look, we have to own up to what we did. We have to actually take a look at the whys and wherefores for what we did. And, let me stress again — I am not sure we did the right thing at Hiroshima — because I am looking at with the 20-20 hindsight of the awful can or worms that got opened the day we dropped it on a city. Prior to Hiroshima, I'm not convinced that we fully understood what "atomic war" really meant.
But Nagasaki? As someone noted above, the bomb drop on Nagasaki was straight-up mass murder — and if we're gonna play the "guilt game" (which you seem to want to do), makes anything and everything the Japanese did with respect to war crimes during World War II pale by comparison.
Sorry to be harsh, but if you're going to throw historical facts around, make sure you've got all the facts, not just the selected ones that uphold your point of view.
no subject
So if another country decides that it's perfectly a-okay to act monstrously to its POWs, conquered populations, and other countries, that makes it perfectly okay for the U.S. to monstrous as well?
Because that's what I'm guessing your reasoning is here. You'd be guessing wrong.
I read an autobiography from a woman who had been a very young Japanese woman who had survived the atomic bomb blast. She explained how her mother was incinerated in front of her eyes she talked about how she couldn't get married because nobody wanted their son's marrying her because of her radiation poisoning. She talked about what it was like seeing people sick and dying from radiation poinsoning. She talked about how for years American Doctors would see her and try to figure out what to do for her and others like her. She made it out to sound like it was something they didn't expect and didn't really even know much about treating to begin with. The reason why I knew about the pamphlets the flyers had dropped was because she talked about them in the book. Do you honestly believe that I would think that this poor woman deserved it? Or had it coming? Cause I didn't. I saw the pictures that you posted. I didn't read the entirety of the article you posted because her book pretty much laid everything out for me. I will find it and I will give her name and the book title it is a very sobering read. One thing I do recall about the book that she stressed was that the Japanese civilians appreciated that the Americans let the Emperor remain even if he was stripped of power.
I also find it interesting that you mention Dresden because in her book she mentions firestorming bombings, like Dresden, like Hitler did to London. Those Japanese city's were being bombed day and night so she said they couldn't imagine anything worse than that they all thought the atomic bomb was a lie. It was pretty clear they didn't want to have to invade Japan.
You also assume that Japan would have surrendered after Hiroshima but the Japanese Government voted on surrender and it didn't pass. The Emperor wanted it to. And in the end, he was the one who gave the order for surrender and many of his advisors never forgave him for it. Honor was a big deal in Japan Liz, and to surrender was to lose honor the way many of them saw it. In fact, Russia declaring war on Japan after we bombed them may have had more to do with their surrender than the bombings themselves. So, to say that we knew they would surrender when Hiroshima was bombed and that we just hit Nagasaki just to do it. I don't know if thats quite right when you consider that they were dealing with an enemy who'd rather die flying a plane into them or fight to the last guy on the Island rather than give up any ground is assuming alot.
I mentioned my friends Grandmother not because I think she's right or wrong to feel the way she does. It just astonishes me that after all these years that her feelings were so visceral. And the reason why I mentioned Nanking and other things is because human emotions play a part in War and the reasons people go to war whether we want them to or not and whether it's right or not. I'm not saying that I agree with it but what I am saying is I wouldn't want to be Roosevelt dealing with a mother whose son has been killed and know good and well she and others like her don't want me to invade Japan, they want me to bomb it. Because the fighting and loss of life was immense in every pacific theatre that we fought them up to mainland Japan and nobody paid more than the civilians in every place we had to fight. So I'm not sure they meant it as an atrocity the way that you do.
I wasn't trying to downplay the article or how Japanese civilians suffered I just wanted to make sure it was understood that it was alot more complicated. It wasn't so nearly black and white to those people as it seems to us now.
no subject
What I'm countering with is, "Dropping Little Boy and Fat Man on Japan had precisely zero to do Japanese War Crimes because the U.S. did not give a flying shit what the Japanese were doing to the Chinese or the Koreans."
In short, your argument is irritating me because it's not even an argument that was under consideration at the time we dropped those bombs. If you want to argument about the military reasons (and the only considerations and arguments the Truman administration was weighing were purely military), that's completely different. And you're right, it is complicated.
Bringing Japanese war crimes into it is a complete no-go because that issue is one that's completely separate from the atom bomb issue. Hell, we didn't even declare war on Germany because of the Hitler's crimes against humanity. If it was even on the list, it was very, very far down on the list above and beyond the military considerations.
Just to put your argument into another light...is it perfectly okay for (say) Canada to drop a nuke on our heads because what we did at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay? Because that's the equivalent that you're arguing here. [We won't get into the crap we tend to get into in Latin and South America...which is a whole other horror show.]
And as I've said repeatedly in this post — Hiroshima is hard to judge because the pre-Hiroshima mindset is impossible for anyone born after August 1945 to fully grasp when it comes to the use of atomic bomb or nuclear weapons. It's pretty clear from the article itself that the military had utterly no clue what they'd find when they walked into the rubble. They knew they'd find destruction, but they most certainly didn't expect to find the scope.
On the other hand, I am not in the least bit convinced that Nagasaki was necessary. As you point out in your above post, the fact that Russia was about to swing their guns on Japan may have played more of a role in their surrender than any atomic bomb did.
In short, I don't think I've got a simplistic view of the matter at all.
What annoyed me about your "Nanking 1939" argument is that it struck me as horribly simplistic — and a deeply dangerous argument — and argument that can very, very easily be turned on us. Furthermore, it wasn't even part of the deliberations at the time. So, yeah...just sayin'.
Also, you didn't read the article...
It's pretty clear you didn't even read the article, either.
no subject
thanks for the link
no subject
no subject
The photo of the footprints on the bridge has to be one of the two most powerful photographs I've seen. The other was one I saw on one of the first 9/11 documentaries (the few that were shown in the first weeks after) taken by someone going down the stairs in one of the towers of the face of the fire fighters going up past them.
Thanks for sharing the links.
no subject
But...yeah. The feet on the bridge...although the twisted staircase gives me a bit of a *burrrrrr* feeling.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Since I still haven't figured out how to make the text links? I'm posting full links. http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/7184
And while it could be argued that the Japanese still hadn't properly surrendered? I have yet to read anything that convinces me that immediate action couldn't have been delayed.
no subject