Important Words on the Hiroshima Anniversary
John Pilger:
When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.
He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short", after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead." Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.
In the immediate aftermath of the bomb, the allied occupation authorities banned all mention of radiation poisoning and insisted that people had been killed or injured only by the bomb's blast. It was the first big lie. "No radioactivity in Hiroshima ruin" said the front page of the New York Times, a classic of disinformation and journalistic abdication, which the Australian reporter Wilfred Burchett put right with his scoop of the century. "I write this as a warning to the world," reported Burchett in the Daily Express, having reached Hiroshima after a perilous journey, the first correspondent to dare. He described hospital wards filled with people with no visible injuries but who were dying from what he called "an atomic plague". For telling this truth, his press accreditation was withdrawn, he was pilloried and smeared - and vindicated.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a criminal act on an epic scale. It was premeditated mass murder that unleashed a weapon of intrinsic criminality. For this reason its apologists have sought refuge in the mythology of the ultimate "good war", whose "ethical bath", as Richard Drayton called it, has allowed the west not only to expiate its bloody imperial past but to promote 60 years of rapacious war, always beneath the shadow of The Bomb.
The most enduring lie is that the atomic bomb was dropped to end the war in the Pacific and save lives. "Even without the atomic bombing attacks," concluded the United States Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946, "air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
The National Archives in Washington contain US government documents that chart Japanese peace overtures as early as 1943. None was pursued. A cable sent on May 5, 1945 by the German ambassador in Tokyo and intercepted by the US dispels any doubt that the Japanese were desperate to sue for peace, including "capitulation even if the terms were hard". Instead, the US secretary of war, Henry Stimson, told President Truman he was "fearful" that the US air force would have Japan so "bombed out" that the new weapon would not be able "to show its strength". He later admitted that "no effort was made, and none was seriously considered, to achieve surrender merely in order not to have to use the bomb". His foreign policy colleagues were eager "to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip". General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project that made the bomb, testified: "There was never any illusion on my part that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was conducted on that basis." The day after Hiroshima was obliterated, President Truman voiced his satisfaction with the "overwhelming success" of "the experiment".
posted by spooked at 5:42 PM
14 Comments:
The Japanese massacred approximately
300,000 military and civilians during the so-called Rape of Nanking in 1937.
In Iris Chang's book, she notes: "there is "compelling evidence" that the Japanese themselves, at the time, believed that the death toll may have been as high as 300,000. She cited a message that Japan's foreign minister Hirota Koki relayed to his contacts in Washington, DC in the first month of the massacre on January 17, 1938. The message acknowledged that "not less than three hundred thousand Chinese civilians [were] slaughtered, many cases in cold blood.
The Imperial Japanese Government, prior to and during WWII could easily be said to have been one of if not the world's most militarily aggressive governments at that time.
I've read a fair amount about all of the above (and highly recommend
Richard B. Frank's book "Downfall")
and I don't have any doubt whatsoever about whether Japan would have used atomic bombs if they had them.
In my view, President Truman's decision to use atomic bombs was justified.
Yes, the Japanese military were extremely vicious and barbaric. That does not excuse dropping the nukes when the Japanese had already offered to surrender, and it does not justify dropping it on Japanese civilians!
it does not justify dropping it on Japanese civilians
it certainly doesn't.
the jap civilians would not have endorsed the atrocities that their military committed then any more than u.s. civilians would endorse the atrocities that are being committed now.
that is, if the mcmedia ever allowed the u.s. civilians to see what is actually being done in the name of u.s. freedom inc.
Spooked said "the Japanese had already offered to surrender".
Are you talking about a conditional surrender or "peace" or what?
Evidence please. Thank you.
The bombs weren't dropped because the Japanese were "extremely vicious and barbaric".
The bombs were dropped to bring WWII to an end. The Japanese would certainly have done the same if they had had atomic bombs.
the bombs were dropped in order to show the world what the u.s. can and will do.
the japanese civilians were murdered and you cannot justify that murder with the claim that the japanese would have done the same.
You are entitled to your opinion about why the U.S. used "the bombs".
It's unfortunate that anyone has to die in war but given the Imperial Japanese Government's stated aim of
fighting to the very end, there is every reason to believe that they would have used any weapons or bombs to defeat their enemies - and that
includes using atomic bombs if they had them. Thank goodness they didn't.
"given the Imperial Japanese Government's stated aim of
fighting to the very end"
But that's an important point made in the piece-- they offered to surrender! WHy is this so hard to grasp?
No formal surrender offer was tendered to the U.S. Gov't. Besides,
the U.S. was not prepared to accept
anything less than an unconditional
surrender and the only kind of feelers that the Japanese sent out were vague and were NOT authorized by
Emperor Hirohito. The only thing that a few of their diplomats ever talked about was a desire for "peace".
As usual, nothing but lies from our well-paid, resident Intel Asset.
He understands well, Spooked, what you are saying and what Pilger wrote. But he posts nothing but official lies, and Intel hangouts and gatekeeping.
Now Pilger states that the Japanese tried to surrender since 1943. But it’s even worse than that. There never needed to be a war, and everything official written about Pearl Harbor is a lie. Of course my Ultimate Truths series details the real purpose of WWII here:
www.anonymous-physicist.blogspot.com
Now the book “Infamy: Pearl Harbor And Its Aftermath” by John Toland (read here) makes some things clear. It is important to note that Toland had been a “good, old, official historian” earlier. He had earlier books on WWII, and just repeated the standard dogma on Pearl Harbor. But when he uncovered the truth, he couldn’t stomach lying any more about what he found.
Not only does that book detail how the top Americans knew of the attack well beforehand, Toland also details what actually happened in Washington D.C., between the Japanese Ambassador and Secretary of State Hull shortly before the attack.
The Japanese ambassador actually gave in (contrary to the official bullshit) to the American list of demands needed to avoid war between the two. (The Japanese knew they could never win.) When that happened, Hull then hit him with brand new demands, and the Japanese Ambassador knew that the U.S. Govt was, in effect, insisting on war, and that it was useless to negotiate. (And I am not making excuses for the monstrous things the Japanese regime did to so many people, before and during WWII. But remember who “opened up” Japan decades earlier, for the monstrous things that were to happen decades later--America’s Commodore Perry.)
The American regime’s usual way of lying and using circular logic is highlighted with events of the second half of WWII. While the British American Regime would absolutely not accept Japanese surrender until the planned event, that IMO was the real cause of having WWII--the nuking of human beings by the PTB for the reasons I have given in the above URL, the thousands of Americans who would needlessly die invading various islands were then insidiously used as a ploy for the rationale of nuking hundreds of thousands of children, women and old men.
That is, the lie went forward that a millions American soldiers would die, etc. etc. based on the thousands of American soldiers who were needlessly sacrificed in the earlier island invasions--when as Pilger cites, Japan would have been happy to surrender since 1943, and never wanted to go to war with the USA in the first place. And finally, President Harry Truman--the double 33--said that Hiroshima was a “military target.“
Now there have, since Toland’s book, been other books and articles that have further elaborated on the foreknowledge Roosevelt, General Marshall, Hull and others had of the Pearl Harbor attack. They knew from many sources, including electronic intercept, a Dutch ship had radioed the incoming attack fleet many days ahead, British intelligence (including involving British intel agent Ian Fleming no less), and other ways.
Of course, nearly all these works are still gatekeepers as most still try to provide false rationale for “needing to have WWII”, when we have revealed here that these are all ruses to get people to kill themselves en masse for an horrendous rationale I have again revealed in the first URL above.
But one of the more fascinating things about this, that I have found, and it’s little known (and not in Toland’s book) is the following.
Guess who has stated that President Franklin Roosevelt knew of the impending Pearl Harbor attack, and made quite sure it happened!
None other than President Richard Milhous Nixon.
Anonymous Physicist
""The bombs weren't dropped because the Japanese were "extremely vicious and barbaric"....The Japanese would certainly have done the same if they had had atomic bombs....there is every reason to believe that they would have used any weapons or bombs to defeat their enemies - and that includes using atomic bombs if they had them.""
...@9:37 and 7:15
wow that is a mighty job of justification for murder!
hey the U.S. are ALWAYS the good guys - no matter what they do.
Foreign Minister Togo stated: "On July 21, speaking in the name of the cabinet, Tōgō repeated,
"With regard to unconditional surrender we are unable to consent to it under any circumstances whatever.
The Japanese did, of course, ultimately surrender. They could have done so years earlier, but they didn't.
12.30 PM
Do you or do you not agree that the Japanese would have used atomic bombs if they had had them?
Do you or do you not agree that the
Japanese were extremely vicious and brutal?
Whether your answers to the above are yes or no, they have nothing to do with the decision to use atomic bombs.
The President made the decision to use atomic bombs in order to bring about an end to the war.
"The President made the decision to use atomic bombs in order to bring about an end to the war."
Wrong-- the point of this post is that this premise is false, and that the decision was motivated by evil motives.
Spooked said:
"Wrong-- the point of this post is that this premise is false, and that the decision was motivated by evil motives."
If that's your opinion, you've failed miserably to move it beyond being merely your opinion - and a poorly informed one at that.
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