Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs
designobserver.com
designobserver.com
It would be fun to see pictures of the one million American and ten million Japanese casualties projected during the invasion of Japan, as well.
In school (in Europe) I remember being taught how horrible the two bombs were and that it was somewhat good that the war was put to en end, but with much more stress on the former. I was never taught about the atrocities committed by the Japanese.
I think that we should show photos of Nagasaki. Hiroshima, it could be argued, was necessary to end the war quickly and effectively. Nagasaki was more morally grey: chances are, Japan would have surrendered without it.
That was in the 1940s. According to wikipedia, population of Asia in 1950 was 1402 million. Now China would have been the highest during that time too and other countries Would have had a good number too. So even by wild guess that 10 million you said would have been almost 10-15% of the whole goddamn population of Japan!!! Seems like men in those days were crazy to spill the blood of so many.
War is no fun. Doesn't make it any less a requisite part of the human condition.
This is not to mention that the US military protected Japanese scientists of Unit 731 who knew they were committing war crimes by exposing civilians to bacteriological and chemical weapons, which after WW1 were considered to be war crimes. None of the people who actually committed a war crime was prosecuted by the American governments, they were pardoned and protected so the US military could get their research.
I believe that Hiroshima and the completely pointless bombing of Nagasaki should be shown in context. In that context it should also be shown that the US military exposed innocent people to the most cruel deaths humanly imaginable.
I'm sorry but the inhumanity of Unit 731 is far outweighed by the US protecting them.
This isn't to mention that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings actually killed allied POWs and even Japanese-American citizens. That exposure to extreme gamma radiation causes scar tissue to separate from ordinary tissue and any injury from even decades before to reopen and help the person bleed to death, that's if they don't die from shitting out their bowls (literally) or dying from the flu as the radiation destroys their bone marrow. This not to mention the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission refusing to give medical aid to the survivors of the bombing so that they could get better results.
Oh and how about the US military personnel who mutilated Japanese corpses and took home trophies from corpses. The civilian fear of this was so great in Japan that it caused the mass suicides of Saipan and Okinawa.
My personal opinion on the war is that both the US and Japanese committed enough crimes between them that there should never be forgiveness over the events. It's a great shame that the US military didn't get punished for its war crimes, just like the majority of the Japanese military didn't and just like the majority of the German military didn't.
War is inhumane and full of atrocities, just like what's coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan. The simplest way to avoid war crimes is to simply avoid war.
What was that for? To make a better bomb? Why don't we stop fighting and do something better? Heck, I'm gonna stop fighting with my neighbor about the cigar bits he throws out of his window. I could write 2 more lines of code by that time.
I remember a quote from the movie 'Troy' - Imagine a king who fights his own battles. Wouldn't that be a sight?
What if we send our leaders on a 1-on-1 battle instead of a million men. We could save a lotta blood.
The problem is that war evolves. It used to be small-scale and formal. Then the U.S. devised guerilla warfare in the Revolutionary War and suddenly that was impossible.
If there was a way of enforcing the deal after the duel, this would work. But there's no way to prevent people from reneging.
Also, what would that change? Suddenly, the best leader isn't the brightest or the wisest but the one who's best with a gun.