Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
The 65th Anniversary of the Nuclear Age
The Trinity test used a plutonium implosion device, the same type of weapon that would be used on the city of Nagasaki just three and a half weeks later. It had the explosive force of 20 kilotons of TNT.
The names associated with the test deserve reflection. "The Gadget," something so simple and innocuous, was exploded in a desert whose name in Spanish means "Journey of Death." Plutonium, the explosive force in the bomb, was named for Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. The isotope of plutonium that was used in the bomb, plutonium-239, is one of the most deadly radioactive materials on the planet. It existed only in minute quantities on Earth before the US began creating it for use in its bombs by the fissioning of uranium-238.
There is no definitive explanation for why the test was named Trinity, but it generally seems most associated with a religious concept of God. The thoughts of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the project to create the bomb and the person who named the test, provide insights into the name:
"Why I chose the name is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: ‘As West and East / In all flatt Maps-and I am one-are one, / So death doth touch the Resurrection.' That still does not make a Trinity, but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, ‘Batter my heart, three person'd God.'"
Oppenheimer's reaction to witnessing the explosion of the atomic device was to recall these lines from the Bhagavad Gita:
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky,
That would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.
Did Oppenheimer think that he had become death that day, or that all of us had? Certainly that first nuclear explosion portended the possibility that worlds would be shattered (by a "Mighty One"?), as they were soon to be in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
This year marks the 65th anniversary of the Trinity test. We are now 65 years into the Nuclear Age. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki we have seen the devastation that nuclear weapons can inflict on cities and their inhabitants. We have witnessed a truly mad arms race between the United States and the former Soviet Union, in which the number of nuclear weapons in the world rose to 70,000. We have learned that one nuclear weapon can destroy a city, a few nuclear weapons can destroy a country, and a nuclear war could destroy civilization and most of the complex life forms on the planet.
Nuclear weapons have endangered the human species, and yet today there are still more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Nine countries now possess these weapons. Humanity is still playing with the fire of omnicide - the death of all. We are still waiting for the leaders who will take us beyond this overarching threat to our common future. Instead of continuing to wait, we must ourselves become these leaders.
On this 65th anniversary of embarking on the Journey of Death, we must change course and move back from the nuclear precipice. The weapons are illegal, immoral, undemocratic and militarily unnecessary. The surest way to bring them under control is by negotiating a new treaty, a Nuclear Weapons Convention, for the phased, verifiable, irreversible and transparent elimination of nuclear weapons.
The United States led the world into the Nuclear Age. President Obama has pointed out that the country also has a moral responsibility to lead the way out. This can be done, but not with a citizenry that is ignorant, apathetic and in denial. Sixty-five years on the Journey of Death is long enough. It is past time for citizens to awaken and become engaged in this issue as if their future depended upon it, as it does.
The fervent prayer of the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is "Never Again!" They speak out so that their past does not become our future. It is a prayer that each of us must join in answering, both with our voices and actions to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.
- Posted in
48 Comments so far
Show AllOppenheimer's "I am become death" remark reminds me of a line in Henry Miller's "Air-conditioned Nightmare", written just before the Trinity test in 1945, "America, you will be the death of the world".
Tony Vodvarka
Didn't Oppenheimer also make a more down-to-earth observation? "We're all sons of bitches now."
No, that was attributed to some Colonel or General who Oppenheimer worked under.
Oppenheimer, like Einstein, and a large portion of US Jews, was a committed socialist.
My favorite Oppenheimer quote was a year later, when he was asked to meet with Pres. Truman. When he sat down with Truman in the oval office Oppenheimer said, with considerable emotion: "Mr President, I have blood on my hands". Truman than responded with annoyance "Then, wash it off". He then turned to an aide and said: "Take this man out of here and never let him in here again". Oppenheimer was later the victim of witch-hunting in the early 1950's, and spent the rest of his life in obscurity, although he did add his name to some disarmament manifestos.
I am become Death,
The shatterer of Worlds.
Did Oppenheimer think that he had become death that day, or that all of us had?
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
The responsibility for producing the fissionable material was accepted by DuPont, even though "critical mass" was uncertain. The cost they charged for this research and production was One U.S. Dollar. The govt side, of course was represented by Gen. Leslie Groves. The DuPont side was represented by my paternal great-uncle Thomas. I am fairly certain he was invited down to observe Trinity with Oppenheimer.
And the real question is whether all those on the Manhattan District Project felt they had "become death that day". Tom seemed to feel that way, and wondered how history would judge DuPont for releasing the genie from the bottle. One of Tom's nephews - who graduated with Jimmy Carter from Annapolis - later established the journal PLOUGHSHARES, published by the University of Illinois, where he taught nuclear science.
That is a great story... it is amazing how many people were involved in the secret project and in many universities.
World War Two is the great one... so great that it's greatness is used to justify all wars now as Hitler is used to justify the killing of all enemies.. still.
It is amazing how many people were involved and how much secrecy was maintained. For a book recommendation that goes into all this in detail, and makes a case why giving the U.S. president commander in chief authority over the bomb led to the cold war, the wars currently being fought, and most of the troubles that stem from nuclear war. The book is Bomb Power by Garry Wills.
[It is amazing how many people were involved and how much secrecy was maintained.]
The secrecy was NOT maintained. Stalin knew about the Manhattan project before they selected the site to build the thing. The Germans might not have known about the bomb, I'm not sure, if they did find out about it they'd not have passed such information to their Fuhrer. The Japanese probably did know about the Project, how else would they have known what was dropped on them. Why else would they have been working on the same device?
My mother worked at a place called Bletchley Park during the Second World War. You may have heard about it. She, and the other people who worked there, never talked about that place until the secret was revealed in 1974. What she did mention after the fact was that they were all told not to trust the yanks with anything that was secret. The surprising thing about that wartime secret is that the yanks didn't spill what they knew about Enigma.
The fervent prayer of the hibakusha, the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is "Never Again!"
Did we drop the bomb on Japan to avoid an amphibious assault of their mainland and save the lives of countless American G.I.'s? That's what I was taught. According to the following sources the Japanese tried to surrender to the US in the spring and summer of 1945:
- "The Myths of August", by Stewart Udall, 1994
- Hearings Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, US Senate, June 25, 1951
- Japanese offer in July via the Soviet Union, NYT, 11 Aug 1993
Albert Einstein was a pacifist. He advocated conscientious objection and disarmament. Then came WWII. Einstein the pacifist did an about face. In Albert Einstein's Letters to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, referring to the bomb, he says, "A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air". No more the pacifist!
(http://hypertextbook.com/eworld/einstein.shtml)
The US spends more every year on defense than the rest of the world combined. Such excessive spending is not defensive at all - it is offensive. Call it what it is - The Department of Offense. DOO not DOD. The Spanish Armada was build to be used. Why do we spend 53 cents of every tax dollar on offense? Where is all this going?
See, "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb", Gar Alperovitz, Vintage Press (1995). The Japanese had been trying to surrender for weeks before Hiroshima. The two bombs were dropped, not as military necessity, all the major targets in Japan had been destroyed by this time, but as a demonstration to the Soviet Union. The Truman administration hoped that this new-found "super weapon" would intimidate the Soviets in the long run and help reverse the Roosevelt/Stalin detente at Yalta in the short (it did neither). The Japanese terms, unconditional surrender except that the Emperor would remain, identical to the terms the they had been offering all along, were then accepted.
Tony Vodvarka
Never mind WEEKS. The Japanese attempted to surrender fully a YEAR before the Bomb dropped. They sent the offer to surrender directly to General Macarthur. This was BEFORE Iwo Jima.
The terms of surrender were virtually identical to the ones they later signed on the Missouri and included the withdrawl of all forces from outside Japan , the withdrawal from Korea and Manchuria amd the like.
They had one condition. The emperor must not be charged with war crimes.
Macarthur forwarded this to the President of the United states and recommended it be accepted.
The US President refused indicating surrender MUST BE Unconditional.
Who were the real "fanatics"?
Now apologists for mass murder will claim that these surrender offers were not legitimate and use as example the mini coup orchestrated by "The War Party" late in the war.
They IGNORE the fact that the only reason the "War Party" had ANY influence at all was because they used the REJECTIONS of the offers to surrender along with US Insistence the surrender be unconditional with there being no protection of the Emperor as their rationale to continue the war.
They would have had NO SUPPORT amongst the military or the people if the USA agreed not to try the Emperor with war crimes which the USA went and did anyways.
Well, to be fair the Emperor was pardoned by Macarthur...Thus allowing Japan to keep a key part of there culture.
???. What?
I don't think he was 'pardoned', but he certainly wasn't charged with any war crime. The Emperor Hirohito lived until 1989, then his son was crowned Emperor...
The war in the Pacific did last too long, as all wars do.
Precisely. The Japaense were asking this be their only condition a YEAR prior to their surrender .
If the USA was going to GRANT that request anyways, why did they refuse to accept THOSE terms when offerred ? Why did they insist on UNCONDITIONAL surrender?
It obvious why. They did not want an early end to the war. They wanted to use those bombs.
"The Japaense were asking this be their only condition a YEAR prior to their surrender"
Umm, no. They had 4 or 5 conditions, like judge their own war criminals, all that were unacceptable at the time. Japan did not want to surrender. They wanted to negociate a peace. Big differene.
And before you tell me it's revisionist history i learned two kinds of history. The Soviet Communist version as well as the US version. And they both agreed on these facts. The only differnce was that Japan surrenderd cuz of the Soviet invasion in the Commie version and cuz of the nuclear strikes in the US version.
Anyway, that's water under the bridge. Good thing, the war was over and most of Europe and the world was free. It would be another 45 years for the rest of Europe to enjoy the same freedom.
Not to mention that the US is giving/sharing/helping nuclear expertise to the only countries who possess nuclear weapons in violation of the NPT - Pakistan, India, Israel.
Not to mention we are apparently planning a nuclear 1st strike partnered by Israel against Iran who is a signatory of the NPT
Our ongoing hypocrisy is really underwhelming.
Your sure of this?
If Israel would think Iran posed a nuclear threat they would have taken out their facilities by now. The international community would have expressed their token outrage and everyone would have been happy. It has happened before.
On a side note, India, Pakistan and Israel are not members of the NPT therefore they are not violation of the treaty by producing and storing nuclear weapons.
Because of a parting of the clouds on August 9, 1945, the residents of Kokura, Japan were spared and tens of thousands of inhabitants of Nagasaki were incinerated.
William L. Laurence, a science reporter for the New York Times, was on board one of the planes in the group that dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Mr. Laurence reported that the original target was the city of Kokura, but because of logistical problems and bad weather over Kokura, the pilot of the strike plane decided to try for Nagasaki. Nagasaki was also clouded over and the planes were almost out of fuel, but at the last moment the clouds parted and the bomb was dropped. [See "The Manhattan Project: A Secrete Wartime Mission", Kenneth M. Deitch (ed.), Discovery Enterprises Ltd., 1995]
When I think of that story I always imagine a mother walking through Nagasaki with her young daughter, who looks up at the sky and says "Look mommy! The sun's coming out!" A few moments later, they were both reduced to shadows burned into the ground.
William Laurence's report contains a poetic evocation of the moment of death:
"As the first mushroom floated off into the blue it changed its shape into a flowerlike form, its giant petals curving downward, creamy white outside, rose-colored inside. It still retained that shape when we last gazed at it from a distance of about two hundred miles.
The boiling pillar of many colors could also be seen at that distance, a giant mountain of jumbled rainbows, in travail. Much living substance had gone into those rainbows."
Mr. Laurence was also present at the first atomic bomb test in the New Mexico desert. He wrote that in the Los Alamos Lodge at breakfast after the test, one of the Harvard scientists present said this:
"This was the nearest to doomsday one can possibly imagine. I am sure that at the end of the world - in the last millisecond of earth's existence - the last man - will see something very similar to what we have seen."
As all the major cities of Japan had been destroyed by fire carpet-bombing, about 20, the list of candidates for nuclear attack that remained were of little military importance, except for the terror factor. The original choice was Hiroshima and Kyoto. However, one of the members of the responsible committee, a life-long student of Japanese culture and history, broke into tears over the proposed destruction of Kyoto's temples. Nagasaki was then chosen as the second target.
Tony Vodvarka
abvodarka:
I read the same thing too about Kyoto, the center of Japanese culture and history. Thank goodness that there was someone who knew this, and realized now important it was not to erase an entire culture's past.
The Spanish certainly did this with the Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs. So much was lost, and too, many leaders would have their tongues cut out, so as not to be able to pass on their culture's oral history.
Fast forward to Iraq and the looting of the national museum, and Rumsfeld's comment. 'When you've seen one vase you've seem them all."
I has no idea that NCLB was operating during WW II, but then it was a long time ago when Newton said that he arrived at his points of knowledge by standing on the shoulders of giants. I think we've become a civilization of mental midgets, and can anything good come of this?
stardust, I'm not sure that the War Department cared much about preserving Japanese culture. I'd guess Kyoto was saved by a powerful esthete's personal predelictions. What is striking to me is that a person can be moved to tears by the destruction of architecture but not by the deliberate incineration of the civilian populations of two dozen of the largest Japanese cities. The parallel between the methodical destruction of native American culture by the Spanish colonists and the destruction of the national museum during the last Iraq war is a good one.
Actually the original list was Kyoto, Kokura, Nijgata, Hiroshima. Kyoto was taken off the list at Henry Stimson's request. Nagasaki was added after Kyoto's removal.
Mr. Laurence's statement that the bomber group's intended target was Kokura is a first-hand account. He was on board one of the aircraft flying behind the strike plane. Not that it's worth quibbling about such a thing.
No quibble, just pointing out that Kyoto was on the original list to highlight the associated ironies.
VJ Day plus 60
by
Steve Osborn
15 August, 1945 and the world went wild!
The insanity that had begun in 1939 was over.
Imperial Japan had surrendered, its one wish granted.
Few knew it had been trying to surrender for months,
Asking only to keep its Emperor, but no one would listen,
Except a small group who wondered why.
We had a lesson to teach, to Japan and the world at large.
On 16 July, 1945, in the American desert, Trinity was detonated.
Far more powerful than expected, the super weapon worked!
Horrified, many scientists said, “It must never be used.”
The war department said, “Just what we need.”
Intelligence said, “They’re trying to surrender.”
“Bomb an offshore deserted island,” the scientists said.
“Maybe it won’t go off,” the military said, “we’d look foolish.”
“Destroying a city without warning is barbaric,” said the diplomats.
“They really want to surrender,” said intelligence.
“We’ll call the city a military target,” said Truman,
“The Russians will get a big surprise.”
6 August 1945, an elderly gardener looked up from his spade
Admiring the silver plane flying far above.
His shadow remains etched in the concrete wall behind him.
Schoolchildren, housewives, tradesmen
Blown to rags of flesh or vaporized, the lucky ones.
Thousands of others doomed to slow death and disease.
“They keep asking for someone to take their surrender,” said intelligence,
“Can’t we at least talk to them?”
“They have to be taught a lesson and the world must see our power,”
“Besides, we have to test the second bomb,”said the military.
And so the wheels were set in motion for the second demonstration
Of Hell on earth.
9 August 1945, above the city of Kokura, the Gods of Chance roll the dice.
A hundred thousand or more go about their business,
Unsuspecting of the doom flying above the thick cloud cover.
In Nagasaki, the people enjoyed the sunshine as the cloud cover broke.
“Secondary target is clear,” and their world suddenly ended in fire and shock
And radiation sleeting through their bodies.
“Now let them surrender,” said the military, “The test is completed.”
Two cities vaporized, two hundred thousand dead,
Survivors to suffer, some for days, some for decades,
And the nuclear arms race begun.
“By golly, we sure showed them!”
“We’ll let them keep their Emperor.”
15 August, 1945 and the world went wild!
The end of the war and of war itself!
There was dancing in the streets and love in the parks,
The blackouts ended in the streets and the homes.
Japan and Germany licked their wounds and hoped to recover.
In Washington, and the Kremlin, midnight oil was burning.
15 August 2005, nations have risen and fallen;
War and genocide again ravage the world.
Treaties made by thoughtful men have been discarded
In the name of profit and greed; nuclear horror again hovers
Over a world exhausted by war, famine and disease.
Only the aging survivors remember the bloody lesson, taught so long ago.
Steve Osborn
15 August 2005
Beautifully written.
The advent of the nuclear age was without doubt a cosmic milestone in the evolution of life on Earth. Never before was any species capable of completely annihilating itself, along with many other species.
The fact that the danger of nuclear annihilation is barely discussed in our time is the clearest indication that we live in denial.
At this stage of our evolution, in the psychological and ethical realms, we humans straddle two worlds - the world of the apes and the world of intelligent and compassionate beings. I find it hard to imagine that we will have the wisdom and courage to find our way past this terrible evolutionary threshold. Given the behavior of nations today, is it reasonable to expect that we will be able to avoid full-scale nuclear war for the next hundred, or thousand, or ten-thousand years? It's not difficult to imagine scenarios that could easily lead to a "do anything to survive" mentality among desperate and ruthless world leaders, causing them to initiate nuclear war - depletion of natural resources, catastrophic climate change, etc. Yet almost nothing is being done to extricate ourselves from this greatest of all existential threats to humanity.
I've never doubted that there is life, and intelligent life, elsewhere in the universe, but it's not clear how often it would be able to cross this "threshold of annihilation". Perhaps it only happens rarely; perhaps it hasn't happened yet.
Jonathan Schell "The Fate of the Earth" it says it all.
Its nice to forget more people were killed in WW 2 due to good ole fashion firebombing. Plus a second bombing run to destroy all the firetrucks- just to make sure the entire city burns to the ground...
True. But like the landmines and other unexploded ordinance that was left out after the war to explode years later the damage from the atomic blast was from ONE bomb. And the radiation continued to kill people after the war was over. Kinda like how the use of chemicals in the First War killed people years after the armistice was signed.
The horror of the 'Bomb' isn't that it's effective or its power to reduce cities to rubble and ashes. It's that the bomb will continue to kill years after it had detonated.
I doubt anyone will drop these directly on cities again. It's more likely that they will use modified versions to destroy the economy not the people. A 100 kiloton weapon exploded at 300 miles over Iowa would destroy every electronic device in the US and Canada plus destroy the grid as well. ( with the EMP burst) The ensuing chaos would destroy most of the population in a yr. No water systems, no food systems , no elevators in major cities, no communications, most of the cars electronics destroyed. But guns would work. The military would probably withdrawal into secure bases and wait or a civil war would erupt in the armed forces as half would want to try and save their loved ones and the other half wouldn't give a shit. This is how I see it ending for us. A few satellites with low yield EMP devices and Iran, N. Korea, Pakistan , Israel and probably others could place these weapons in orbit to be set off whenever. Using weapons on cities makes little sense since War is about winning and nobody wins when u use weapons that irradiate everything.
And as soon as everybody destroyed all their weapons, Stalin's modern equivalent (whoever he might be) would announce that he hadn't and would the world kindly surrender to him.
It only takes ONE side to wage war!
Atlas Shrugged was supposed to be a warning, NOT a newspaper.
The Japanese were not trying to surrender in the summer of 1945; they were trying to negotiate an end to the war, but couldn't agree among themselves as to what terms would be acceptable.
On June 8, 1945, an Imperial Conference confirmed the strategy decided upon by the "Big Six" (prime minister, foreign minister, army and navy ministers, army and navy chiefs of staff) who governed Japan: the Japanese would prepare to fight a "decisive battle" against the anticipated invasion of Kyushu, the southernmost of the Home Islands, in the fall of 1945. Their hope was to inflict US losses so severe that the US would drop its demand for unconditional surrender and negotiate some kind of compromise peace.
The Emperor was subsequently persuaded by Lord Kido, his closest adviser, that the Japanese war economy would collapse by the end of 1945. On June 22 Hirohito asked the Big Six to pursue a diplomatic end to the war. The Big Six decided to ask the USSR to mediate peace between Japan and the US. This was a futile and deluded course of action, since Stalin had promised at Yalta that he would go to war with Japan three months after the defeat of Germany, and was determined to regain everything Russia had lost to Japan in 1905. But while the Big Six agreed to seek Soviet mediation, they didn't even try to reach a consensus on negotiating terms.
On July 12 Foreign Minister Togo instructed Sato, his ambassador in Moscow, to ask the Soviets to receive a peace envoy. Sato asked Togo what terms was Japan seeking; Togo replied that they could not be anything like unconditional surrender. When Sato (no fool) said that the only hope for Japan was to surrender with a guarantee that the Emperor could be retained, Togo replied on July 21 that this was *unacceptable,* but that Japan could not yet state its terms. *All of these messages were intercepted, deciphered, and circulated* by US intelligence.
On July 26 the US, UK, and China issued the Potsdam Declaration, warning Japan that it faced "prompt and utter destruction" if it did not surrender. The declaration made no explicit reference to the Emperor, but did state that a "peacefully inclined and responsible government" would eventually be established in Japan "in accordance with the freely expressed will of its people." On July 28 Prime Minister Suzuki said Japan would ignore the Potsdam Declaration. Two days later Sato warned Togo that the accepting the declaration was the only way Japan could avoid war with the USSR. Togo replied on August 2 that the Japanese government still could not agree on concrete terms for ending the war.
Hiroshima was destroyed on August 6, on August 9 the USSR declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria, and later that day Nagasaki was destroyed. The Big Six met on August 9, with the prime minister, foreign minister, and navy minister favoring accepting the Potsdam Declaration on the condition that the Emperor be maintained, while the army minister and two chiefs of staff insisted on three additional conditions: Japan would disarm its overeas armies itself; Japan would not be occupied; and there would be more Allied trials of Japanese war criminals. These conditions explicitly contradicted three provisions of the Potsdam Declaration and would never be accepted by the Allies.
On the night of August 9/10 the Big Six met with the Emperor, who told them Japan must "bear the unbearable" and end the war. So, on August 10, *after* two nuclear bombings *and* the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, Japan made its *first* surrender offer, setting as its sole condition that the Emperor retain his "prerogatives" as a "Sovereign Ruler." This was understood in Washington as an attempt to preserve military rule in the name of the Emperor, and the US responded on August 11 by saying the authority of the Emperor would be subject to the Supreme Commander of the Allied occupation.
On August 13 the Big Six split over the US response. Hirohito again intervened, saying Japan must accept the American offer. Junior officers made an unsuccessful coup attempt; army minister Anami, leader of the hard-line faction, committed seppuku, and on August 15 Japanese radio broadcast a prerecorded address by Hirohito announcing the surrender.
So: the Japanese made no attempts to surrender before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only inept and indecisive attempts to open peace negotiations through the USSR, despite the inability of the Japanese leaders to define what terms they were seeking. When Ambassador Sato proposed surrendering on the condition that the Emperor be kept, his boss in Tokyo promptly rejected his suggestion, in a message US intelligence read at the time.
Your reasoning and apologism are both perverse and perverted. Even if Japan hadn't surrendered, dropping two atomic bombs was an act of cowardliness, monstrosity and complete disregard for humanity. You should be ashamed for this, as should all Americans, the greatest terrorist act ever perpetrated against innocent civilians in the history of mankind.
But, of course, Americans won't feel ashamed. Its economy since 1945 has been dependent on war and genocide. War is America's only export. Even to this day, trillions are approved to continue the butchering of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, but meager millions are denied to America's unemployed. The US and its people are rotten and its map a black stain on the face of Planet Earth.
He's just correcting the revisionist history you learned from Howard Zinn.
There were Japanese leaders who wanted to KEEP FIGHTING even after the 2 bombs were dropped.
Put things in context, do you know about the 2 million Vietnamese who starved from 1944-1945 since Japan decided to steal there rice( right after WW2 a crowd listening to Ho Chi Mihn actually started cheering after an American plane passed overhead) , or the 20 million plus Chinese who were killed by Japan's imperial Army( look up Nanking)from the 1930's to 1945 .
"the greatest terrorist act ever perpetrated against innocent civilians in the history of mankind.
"- This translates into- "Everything done wrong is America's fault, EVERYTHING" . History is more complex then many leftist want to believe . The atomic bomb was a horrible thing, the firebombing of Dresden, the killing of 2 million plus innocent Germans was a tragedy as well. BUT you can't change history and paint Germany as a victim ether. The only reason we don't have alot of books and movies about the suffering of the Chinese during WW2 is so we wouldn't feel smypathy for a cold war enemy. Did the poster say "Well Japan wasn't gonna surrender anyway, its good we done nuked em" . No, he's just correcting the myth that Japan was ready to surrender before the war ended.
Yep, you are right and old Howard Zinn is an idiot. We had every right to incinerate millions of civilians, babies and women in WW2. I mean, their MIC may or may not have wanted to surrender, so let's fry em. And we saw Japan's starvation of 2 million Vietnamese, and matched that by slaughtering a couple million ourselves 20 years later. Thanks for making me feel better about American atrocities. Do you have anything for the million Iraqis we've dispatched over the last 20 years? And I appreciate you calling the 20 million Chinese killed by the Japanese the greatest terrorist act against civilians in human history. I thought it was the 100 million that died in the slave trade that the US was such a big part of. I feel much better about that now. You are right, Zinn is a horrible man for teaching that mass slaughter of civilians can't be justified. God Bless America...rah rah rah!!!!
"I thought it was the 100 million that died in the slave trade that the US was such a big part of."
Slavery was a pretty bad thing but let's get our numbers right if we wanna be taken seriously. Population of Africa was under 100 million in the 1800.
The slave trade lasted 100's of years. Would 50,000,000 deaths make people take it seriously? Slavery was just a "pretty bad thing?" What would you consider a "very" bad thing?
Don't take it out on me. I was just trying to keep you honest.
You might wanna check the Iraqi deaths numbers as well. One might think the US single handedly took out 4% if Iraq's population (didn't even manage that with Japan in WWII). I mean the firebombing of Japan including the two nuclear stikes we are gonna be celebrating in a couple of weeks barely killed 600000 Japanese.
I know this is the time of the year when certain groups start wringing their hands about the US winning WWII and freeing a sh!tload of people from nazi and fascist oppresion. I can live with that. It usually lssts until abt Aug 9 and then there's a reprieve until next year). But at least let's keep the numbers in the ballpark.
Your attempt to justify a heinous crime against humanity is cynical, cold and very typically American. Just because there were horrible things done by other nations, it doesn't make it okay for the US to commit even more horrible crimes.
Howard Zinn was a man of principles, not an American propagandist like you.
DShill I see this is your first post on CD - Welcome!
For me the "nuclear age" began with the discovery of radioactivity by Henri Becquerel long before 1945. If an applied nuclear technique is required to mark the beginning of the "nuclear age" it is not the explosion of the first atomic bomb but the becoming critical of the first nuclear reactor (then known as "pile") at the University of Chicago which happened before the first bomb explosion. After all, nuclear reactors are still producing electricity around the world while nuclear bombs are not exploding every day.
"""Nuclear weapons have endangered the human species, and yet today there are still more than 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world. Nine countries now possess these weapons."""
******************************************
Always, ALWAYS with the concern of the human species as if no other forms of life are pertinent to why humans exist at all. THIS is more of the threat to LIFE as a whole whether we use nuclear weapons, conventional weapons, do ourselves by protecting the sanctity of the ever burgeoning human poplulation(which is to be found TOTALLY unsustainable) or some other mass form of genocide.
Many years ago, my philosophy professor mentioned a study he had read about. It was to find the most radiation resistant living things on earth.
Their findings? The most radiation resistant creature was the South African Mulberry Bot Fly, which dined on the South African Mulberry, which happens to be the most radiation resistant plant!
"There is the future," I said.
"The United States led the world into the Nuclear Age. President Obama has pointed out that the country also has a moral responsibility to lead the way out."
Yes, but don't take it from a chump. Take it from your own heart. The USA led the world in pursuing power via both fossil and nuke energy, creating an energy race, like an arms race, inspiring a number of aggressive regimes, in Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and later the Soviet Union. The current risk is that USan influence will inspire Chinese imperial ambitions, or at least USan ambition be used as a pretext for Chinese ambition. Why would the Chinese not want to expand, to counter the USan challenge?
Ambition fuels ambition. So don't be afraid to hold the chumps accountable. You know who they are.
Just reading these comments leads me to believe that the real danger to life on earth is not the atomic bomb. The real danger is the human mind. Countries aren't dangerous. Soulless psychopaths and their acolytes are bringing us to this end. And, many of us just patriotically and religiously follow behind.
If Obama really means what he is saying, why did the US just recently, and secretly, reach agreement with Israel on nuclear weapons? Nuclear isn't as much a danger as so-called leaders itching to pull the atomic trigger.
Thank you David Krieger for your sober and excellent article on the dangers we face and on the critical need for the early abolishment of nuclear weapons worldwide.
May I add that the new book "Apocalypse Never: Forging the Path to a Nuclear Weapon-Free World" is without any question the most serious, important, and hopeful book that I have read in my lifetime.
1. "Apocalypse Never" by Dr. Tad Daley (Rutgers University Press, 2010) is by far the most important book that I have ever read in my lifetime. I wholly recommend it for your review and study. Tad has among other accomplishments served as the late great Senator Alan Cranston as his research director, grass-roots organizer, and brainstorm partner.
2. Dr. Daley begins by reviewing the multitude of environments in which nuclear weapons could be used -- accident, mismanagement, terrorism, or national intentional use. Instances of all these have happened or nearly happened before. The author provides a wealth of shockingly convincing background information and quotes to back up his warnings. The well-known Cuban Missile Crisis was just a start. It seems self-evident to me that if we keep pursuing our present lackadaisical course and if humankind is not able sooner or later to get these monstrous exterminators down to zero nuclear weapons under adequate international inspection, then an eventual nuclear catastrophe of unimaginable proportions is not just possible, but will with time become a virtual certainty. We are talking about your and my children and our grandchildren.
3. But in spite of this evident danger, Dr. Daley remains an optimist in the spirit of the great Norman Cousins, Albert Schweitzer, and Martin Luther King. Not content with reviewing the horrendous (and little appreciated) dangers facing all of us humans, he goes on to show how the abolition of nuclear weapons, and perhaps of other weapons of mass destruction, can be accomplished given the will and the drive of all of us.
President Obama himself has taken a giant step in the right direction, concluding an agreement with the Russian President to mutually cut our enormous arsenals by a third. This first step, taking place in the presence of our large remaining stockpiles, does not affect the "balance of power" or our "security." But of course, as we proceed along the road to zero nuclear weapons, we will have to learn to institute a legal structure along with an appropriate inspection infrastructure. (My opinion.) As you are probably aware, even Henry Kissinger, Sam Nunn, William Perry, and George Shultz have seen the handwriting on the wall and have authored a landmark opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal.
The most important lesson from the current disastrous Gulf oil spill is to see it as a "shot across the bow." We have learned unambiguously that things happen, things that were neither designed nor expected. The time is now to see that things don't happen with nuclear weapons, whose result could be not the despoiling of the Gulf but indeed the extermination of human life.
You can get the book from Amazon.com for less than $20. I strongly urge you to read it and pass its crucial information on to your friends.
Felix Rosenthal.