The 65th anniversary of Hiroshima

And your personal connection with vaporizing all those poor people would be?

Jap-coms are bad, mmkay?

Very much anti-A-bomb over here. Not so much for the devastation it caused but for inspiring that stupid home run call every time Alex Rodriguez goes yard. Give it a rest, Sterling.

No bomb, no Godzilla. Life's full of trade-offs.

I learned in high school that not dropping the bomb and invading Japan could have cost many times the lives than actually dropping the bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

I don't know how true that is since it was speculation, but I distinctly remember my high school history teacher showing us the growing proportionality of Japanese to American deaths the closer we got to Mainland Japan.

I'm of the mind that the bomb had just as much to do with telling the Russians not to fuck with us in the future, personally.

I guess I'll watch Barefoot Gen in 'celebration' tonight?

That was certainly no small part of it, what with Russian and American soldiers nose-to-nose in Germany at the time.

Kate, your father was 59 when you were born? May I inquire how old your mother was?

That did have a part to play in it was well. The United States and Russia were allies due to convenience. And invading the mainlands of Japan would have cost so many lives on both sides, the Japanese would mostly not have surrendered and would keep fighting till the bloody end.

Nothing cruel but high-five your dad next time you see him for me.

like wise, your father must be one smooth man.

There is no question the Bombs ended WWII and prevented more deaths on both Allied and Japanese sides.

It is also true that the Allies were in no condition to take on Soviet Russia, and you had Gen Patton saying we should march on Moscow, so yeah there was I'm sure the desire to send Russia a strong warning.

What's sad is that we don't seem to have learned much by using the technology about which Einstein said "now everything has changed except how we think" (paraphrasing).

There is a new generation who has no concept of what Nuclear weapons can do, and seem eager to discover for themselves what they are capable of

We all get right-wing propaganda shoved down our throats as kids. It's a product of every bitterly disappointed asshole in the community not being able to be upwardly mobile over the last three decades because of the decisions of the policymakers they themselves voted into power and falling into teaching gigs in a broken public school system as a result. I remember, for example, being told over and over as a small child that World War II, not the New Deal, got us out of the Depression. I believed it... until I actually read independent sources citing actual data and realized that these mouthbreathers on the faculty were just regurgitating talking points from the right-wing scream machine and nobody was in a position to make sure these people weren't passing off their retarded second-hand propaganda points as actual fact in a classroom setting.

Personally, I think it says a lot that everyone actually involved in dropping the bomb--from Eisenhower to Oppenheimer--saw it as a black mark on the national soul and almost every person who defends it now is the same kind of person who condones torture, pre-emptive war, and the death penalty.

Can't it be both? I'm on the side that says it was probably the right thing to do, but also a really horrible thing I wish we hadn't done.

Somehow, the argument that we had to commit one of the worst crimes in human history to end a war or had to irradiate two civilian population in one country to intimidate another, separate country aren't very convincing. Those seem like the arguments of a sociopath trying to rationalize his crimes, really. "Your honor, I HAD to shoot my ex-wife and her boyfriend. If I didn't the cost of the alimony would have been ruinous and my current girlfriend would think I'm an easily taken chump. Mr. .22 solved all those problems, don't you see?"

I can't believe I'm posting in the political section but whatever.

While the New Deal was no doubt instrumental in the recovery, you can't write off WWII as having no effect. Incidentally, they both used massive amounts of government funds to power them.

Agreed. When you're talking about dropping a fission device on a civilian city, about thousands of children dying of radiation poisoning, justifying the act based on mathematical estimates (even if accurate) seems callous to me. (No offense meant to anyone in this thread.)

But after all I'm just a wimpy east-coast pacifist so who really cares what I have to say about war.


I wish every man, woman and child in this country would be made to watch Peter Watkins' THE WAR GAME (excerpt). Or barring that, at least every sitting president.

I wouldn't mind reading that data...source?

I didn't write it off as having no effect, I said it's not true that it's what got us out of the Depression. I said that because it's factually accurate.

WWII's role in building post-war prosperity was introducing women into the workforce, reinvigorating American manufacturing, making the United States one of the two remaining superpowers on the planet, and allowing more people to go to college than ever before on the GI Bill.

The New Deal's role was creating the actual economic infrastructure that made any of that make a difference. Things like insuring bank deposits, social security, Medicare, breaking industrial monopolies on things like energy, putting into effect reforms that kept the banking industry relatively honest until the dark days of Reagan fell over the republic and so forth.

The New Deal is what got us out of the Depression and kept us out. WWII was just one of many things that led us to inject capital and opportunities into the system that that policy template created.

When I was 13 I went to the Hiroshima museum. My mom and I were the only Americans in it at the time. There have been few times in my life that I've wanted to crawl into a hole that much.

Still, I find it all fascinating.

I guess I just wasn't clear on what you wrote. But the U.S. wasn't clear of the depression because of the New Deal, partially because I believe some of that stuff got repealed before the war.

Fact is that it did help when we were in complete economic chaos, but I argue that it is the war that kept us out. Our economy went through a mini recession in 1937-38 before the war. There are obviously arguments on both sides about why, but if it hadn't been for the war the depression would have persisted longer.

Back on topic: For those that feel the A-bomb was the wrong decision, what would you have liked to see as the solution?

"There are arguments on both sides" doesn't mean it's actually debatable. There are facts.



There isn't a "mini recession" that challenges the idea that FDR's team/Keynes was right about how to deal with the market crisis. Rather, what there is is the passage of austerity measures, which do deal a blow to the recovery but the recovery picks right back up prior to our entry into the war.

Now, why would you lie about something like this? It is in the interest of conservatives to clothe their wolf-like loyalty to bankers and corporate interests in the interest of populism, it's the only way they can get low information voters to consistently vote against their own interests. How do you do that? You convince them that Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, and War is Peace/up is down and black is white. Bascialy you lie and repeat the lie until it becomes truth to the proles. It's been their playbook for most of the modern era of American politics.

If it's abundantly clear that austerity measures are going to hurt Main St. but hugely benefit Wall Street, it's hard to sell even to the morons who join 9/12 groups. So they invent an alternative reality/idealized history that shows that their side has always been right. It's what their entire movement hinges on. It's why they reinforce it by appealing to their caricature of the Revolution all the time and doing things like taking Jefferson out of textbooks in our schools. The little lies pave the roads to the big ones.

I think dropping the Bomb was the correct decision, yet don't condone torture, pre-emptive war or the death penalty. You really need to broaden your circle of acquaintances.

More Japanese died from the regular olde fire bombings of Tokyo than died from the Atomic bombs. Men, women, children. Were those deaths somehow "better" or "more moral"?
The point of the bomb is you have one single device that does the damage of a fleet of B52s. The proportion of cause and effect is all out of whack. That's what's so horrible about the Bomb.

As regards WWII. What the New Deal did and WWII did were in effect the same exact thing: pour a shitload of money into projects with no normal economic calculus in mind. If we'd built all those planes, jeeps etc and then just dumped them into the Atlantic, economically it would have had the same impact.

An interesting fact I learned recently about the New Deal: It was working pretty well until 1937 when FDR decided to pay off the deficit and cut government spending. The country immediately went into a recession as a result.

Eh but what good is history in these modern type times, anyway?

This would be a stinging rebuke if I had used the qualifier all, which I didn't.

You're forgetting effects such as radiation poisoning and birth defects in both humans and animals. Unlike traditional weapons, it's a weapon of mass destruction that keeps on rolling for decades after the bomb has gone off. That's what makes its use so evil and inexcusable.

The New Deal did much more than simply pump dollars into the economy. If that were true, we'd have had the bubble and bust cycle reappear long before everybody's favorite batshit crazy, Jelly Belly swilling geriatric got into office. (The part about WWII's contribution is largely true, though.)
Again, that's proof that putting forth austerity measures during a recovery period is a horrible idea, not an argument that the New Deal was ineffective. It actually points out that the enemies of FDR were wrong and he was right about what was needed at the time. It's an argument against conservative ideas, not for them. Citing this as an argument against the idea that the New Deal was the primary factor in Depression recovery reminds me of Mormons who cite the story of Joseph Smith's second "reading" of the runes, i.e. it shows that they don't understand that it proves Joseph Smith was full of shit.

A lot more Japanese civilians would have died in an invasion of the Japanese islands, whether by Allied attack or by suicide, either to avoid occupation (as was seen on numerous islands in the Pacific campaign) or as a last-ditch defense of their homeland. By no means am I untroubled by the carnage and death caused by the bombs, but compared to reducing most of Japan to rubble in an conventional campaign? It was the lesser of two monstrous evils.

Here's the thing: the idea that it was either nuking them or invading them is a false dichotomy. The Empire of Japan was not unwilling to surrender at that point. It was unwilling to surrender unconditionally, which is reasonable. In terms of the way the West had traditionally thought about war in the Common Era up to that point, demanding unconditional surrender is beyond the pale, it's literally against every formulation of the Just War Theory ever presented.

No matter how you cut it, what we did was evil and unreasonable. We used the threat of nuclear weapons to try to get the Empire of Japan to do something we always thought was unjust and used nuclear weapons on them until they did it. It's an injustice compounded by injustice.

This into relation of using the bomb to show Russia what we are capable of? Or it's use on Japan in order to have them surrender?

Both. Russia is the current squeeze/ally he is trying to intimidate by killing someone else. The double murder of the ex-wife/former ally and her lover represent dropping bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The ruinous amount of alimony is the cost in blood and treasure of the--falsely--claimed otherwise necessary invasion Japan.

In the Japanese anology where does Pearl Harbor fit in?

That would be the soon-to-be-ex-wife serving divorce papers.

There was a terrific PBS documentary (may have been a Frontline episode) about the bombing of Japan, and how the common meme that it prevented massive casualties on both sides is not necessarily the case. I'll see if I can find a link for it, because I found it terribly enlightening.

Uh, we did. In the 40 years following WWII we went through a recession once every 4-5 years or so (on average). In the 30 years since 1980, we've seen one every 7-10 years and, with the exception of 2008, have been much shorter and milder than the majority of recessions that preceded them.

The New Deal did a lot of good, but from a pure economic perspective it's not much different than the stimulus bill we were blessed with recently. Not to mention the fact that GDP soared 11%, 9%, and then 12% in the 3 years beginning in 1933...4 years before The New Deal was "completed." It's hard to imagine a new measure having such a dramatic effect within such a short time frame without the main driver being, naturally, government spending. ETA this can further be supported by the dramatic increase in the savings rate over the same 3 year period...it's not as if consumers were actually spending any money.




Im not arguing against the New Deal, but I am saying that it's a bit naive to claim that it was our saving grace when there are a ton of other factors that contributed to our growth in the 30s prior to WWII. Also, to suggest that boom and bust cycles didnt exist prior to 1980 is a tad disingenuous as well. Like you said above, politics tend to get in the way of facts sometimes.

Did this soon to be ex-wife sneak up and kill a few family members?

If you can indeed locate it I'll fax you a hundred dollar bill. I'm extremely interested.

Same here, I'll love to watch it as well. I have no money but I still have plenty of "thank yous" to hand out.

I got you, MoonBase. Gimme your fax number.

This might be it: an episode of The American Experience titled Victory in the Pacific. From the synopsis:

I'm not positive this is the one I remember, but it might be. There are some great related links there too concerning the final months of the war.

I think the bombs had just as much to do with the Soviet Union as they did Japan. We were basically telling the rest of the world not to fuck with us, and such an ugly display of military might is more than a little disgusting and should leave us a little ashamed in retrospect.

Dropping one bomb, I can almost understand from a strategic and militaristic point of view. But why did we drop two? Yes, Japan hadn't officially surrendered yet, but they had just been hit with an atomic bomb, were surely confused, disorganized and struggling with the decision of where to go from where they were.

The second bomb is the true crime, because it just makes it look like we got caught up with our brand new destructive toy and couldn't wait to try it out again.

Mines stay deadly for years after wars, but yes I take your point about radiation poisoning.

FYI I was not arguing that the New Deal was a bad idea: my point was exactly that it was a good idea and austerity measures at the wrong time derailed it to some extent. You are wrong to assume FDR was not for the austerity measures by the way: he was not a Keynsian and believed that deficits needed to be paid down.

A couple of links of note. Both are from a rather far-left viewpoint, but well-written and argued cogently enough to justify a reading no matter your stance:

The first covers censorship in the wake of the bomb dropped on Nagasaki:

The second is a Robert Fisk piece about the merit of apologizing for any such tragedy decades after it's passing:

The coverup described by the first article is troubling if not exactly surprising in these times. It seems to imply that the military viewed the long-term devastation wrought by the bomb as offensive enough to merit concealment, which undercuts statements that it's use was not only a strategic necessity, but a moral one. As a show of brute force that information would only have underscored the significance of America's new weapon; suppressing it at the very least suggests there were doubts at very high levels shortly after the bombs were dropped. As there should have been, to my mind.

It's good and mostly quick reading, in any case.

Edited to add thanks to Jacob for the PBS link higher up. Watching that sort of thing is always wearying, but it's a good piece.

In college, one of my proffesors, went on about how Americans are ignorant about the end of WWII. Basically that Japan wanted to surrender, but the US ingored them, only to use the bomb twice.

I think he said, Japan's only condition of surrender before the bombs, was that Hirohito was to be left untouched, to which the US refused. But then after the bombs, and Japans second surrender, the US accepted it, and then didn't remove Hirohito, so basically, the US just wanted to use the bombs, most likely to show the USSR what we have.

I for one, don't like that we used the bombs, but I accept that we did for it for the lives of our serviceman. My grandfather was a pilot in the Pacific during WWII, and the war ending when it did got him to go home to my grandmother. I think in the end, if there was even a 10% chance that we would have had to invade Japan to end the war, the bomb was justified.