Nagasaki remembers atomic attack

The Japanese city of Nagasaki is marking the 60th anniversary of its destruction by a US atomic bomb at the end of World War Two.

At least 70,000 people died in the world's second nuclear bomb.

<snip>

Some historians argue that the attack was seen as necessary because Japan had not surrendered, reports the BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington.

But others believe that the attack enabled the American military to try out plutonium as a nuclear weapon.

<snip>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4133572.stm

with a kid who was born in the interment camp at Santa Anita racetrack. What a strange country this is.

May it never happen again. Edited to add: Hiroshima is more generally known, but I strongly believe that Nagasaki is by far the worse, uncalled for mass murder. No flames please and don't bother to try to convince me otherwise, just expressing my opinion.

:kick:

Even after Nagasaki, it took Japan five days to surrender. The U.S. should have given Japan an extra few days. On top of that, the bomb missed its target and the industrial section of Nagasaki was left relatively sheltered by a hill.

Masahito Hirose, who was 15 years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, talking about his cousin.

edit to add link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4742021.stm

of radiation contamination. They innocently went to find their relatives.

But it's the least we can do, to remind people and to make sure that this never does happen again.

Some people just don't get that it doesn't matter what "side" these people were on.

It was ghastly beyond belief. The river was full of dead bodies trying to escape the burning heat, from infants to the elderly. That is just one scenario.

Keiko Ogura tried to help the many injured after the bombing
Keiko Ogura was eight years old when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
She still lives in the city.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4739615.stm

May we never unleash such damage ever again. Thank you.

in Romania during WWII.
She rarely spoke about the horrors she saw as a child.
When she did speak, I couldn't get the images her words created out of my head.
And she was like these survivors, she told me these things so that I would realize, we can never let it happen again.

We need to stop the inhumanity

It's good to know there's people who can see past the war toys and kill counts and how necessary this was.

Thanks for listening.

I have been to both Hiroshima and Nagasaki's Peace Museums and, though both visits were visits that I believe every person should make should they have the chance, I prefer the latter. The museum in Nagasaki has a small area that details the (Japanese-initiated) origins of the long path of war that led to the destruction of the city. The last time I was in Hiroshima was twelve years ago, so I do not know if they have updated their exhibit to include such a recognition, but at that time it did not have one.

The Hiroshima exhibit has remarkable models of the impact zone and remnants of the destruction of the city. Incidentally, after I toured the museum I sat in on a seminar with a hibakusha (A-bomb survivor) who told his story. One cannot come away from a visit to Hiroshima without getting a dim echo of the real horror of the event.

What I will not forget from the Nagasaki's exhibit is the short poem hand-written by a little girl about what she saw at the (Mitsubishi?) factory. The english translation, I think, is "And the Crows Plucked Out Their Eyes." It seems that the local residents went back for their relatives. However, there were hundreds, if not thousands of Korean forced laborers at the factory who had been killed by the blast. Not having families in Japan, nobody came looking for them... and they were left in the open.

Never.