In a small town in Washington state, pride and shame over atomic legacy | Hacker News Reader

In a small town in Washington state, pride and shame over atomic legacy

america.aljazeera.com

26 pointssamclemens20 comments

I'm sure there could be hours of heated debate over this, but every time a "mascot" issue like this pops up I wonder why they don't just frame it differently:

1) Does the mascot accurately represent the current values of the community, or 2) can a different mascot represent those values better?

Teams, schools, even companies will routinely rotate out their mascots/logos/brands/slogans for something new, and they don't generate too much controversy. But when the status quo is deemed politically incorrect, people start to look at that potential change as an affront to their personal values, and their resistance to change can cause stagnation.

It's okay to be proud, and it's okay to remember. We don't have to erase or burn history, but we do have to recognize that the future belongs to the new generation, and they get to decide how they want to represent themselves to the world.

During WWII the Puyallup fairgrounds used to be an internment camp[1].

Growing up in Puyallup, we were taught what had happened. WWII -- specifically Japanese internment -- is a big part of our history curriculum.

I think you have to find a balance. On one hand, creating the bomb that ended WWII was a huge part of their lives and is a huge part of their history. I don't think you need to throw that away. But I don't think the bomb should be cheered for any reason, other than perhaps ending half of the bloodiest war we've (perhaps ever) seen.

This is something that, I think, they'll grow out of. You can only hold on to the vitriolic or blindly patriotic view of the bomb for so long, and not many of my generation hold the same beliefs that our parents and grandparents do (regarding the bomb). Sooner or later it'll just be another "thing" in the town -- a folksy sort of reference that reminds you of the 1940s -- but that's about it.

Anyway, very interesting article. Let's cleanup Hanford please.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Harmony

is there a mascot celebrating Dresden bombing? Or fire-bombing of Tokyo? There is not much difference, beside "efficiency", between those and Nagasaki/Hiroshima. Decades ago it seemed a meaningful strategic bombing operations. Today we understand that it was horrible war crimes (though committed because of not fully understanding of the degree of criminality of it than out of a pure evil will... but again, winners write the history ...). We've evolved (and, for example, the Miloshevich/Karadzhich were prosecuted as war criminals for atrocities much smaller in scale than the above mentioned, and nobody would imagine a mascot celebrating those mass killings even though strategically they are indistinguishable from the strategic bombings of civilian targets in the WWII), and taking down the symbols celebrating the crimes of the past looks natural as part of that evolution.

>is there a mascot celebrating Dresden bombing? Or fire-bombing of Tokyo? There is not much difference, beside "efficiency", between those and Nagasaki/Hiroshima. Decades ago it seemed a meaningful strategic bombing operations. Today we understand that it was horrible war crimes...

No. No, we do not see it that way.

For the most part, America stands alone in seeing it that way. It is widely considered a war crime, albeit in a war that was replete with them.

So you assert. Even if true it's meaningless.

Well, it does have the meaning "it is widely considered a war crime", which is all I was asserting in the first place. I'm not really interested in a semantic argument with you, nor discussing the topic of whether Americans do or should give a fuck about their image internationally, nor even whether the term "war crime" makes any sense in the first place. The parent claimed "we understand that it was horrible war crimes" and unless you interpret "we" to mean "literally every single extant member of the human race", then the claim is accurate.

It's meaningless because if "widely considered a war crime" is the standard than it's more of a popularity contest than a crime. The whole concept of criminality relies on objective criteria in place at the time of the event. All the legal bases for that widely considering is based on treaties and fluffy documents rendered after the war.

It's also meaningless because the whole concept is flawed. Crimes do not occur above the sovereign nation state level. "War crimes" is a convenient excuse for the winner of a conflict to execute the leaders of the losing side. It's victor's justice.

Objective criteria which are established... how exactly if not by popularity contest? And if making the criteria ex post facto also wins the popularity contest, then ex post facto it is, regardless of whether that offends your sense of justice.

(It's not really ex post facto anyway - you simply apply the existing (1945) standards for what was considered a war crime, and find that the bombings fit the bill [1]. That seems to me the best way to do it - what would you prefer? That no one had used an atomic bomb before, need not exclude the possibility of the first such use of one being a war crime.)

That said, I mostly agree with your take on war crimes in practice, if not in principle. But if the allies had lost the war the bombings would have been considered a war crime by the victors, without a doubt. In that sense it is appropriate to call it a war crime. Again, it was a war crime in a war replete with them, and it was not the worst of them either: it was certainly no Holocaust, and I don't think the two bombings taken together even rise to the level of one Rape of Nanjing, either - but it was a war crime and yes, that is the popular opinion of it globally.

Try to keep in mind that I'm mainly defending the original statement "we understand that it was horrible war crimes". That is an accurate statement, even if you have grounds to think that people are wrong to see it that way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombing...

"It is widely considered a war crime"

Evidence? Whether allied strategic bombing of Germany/Japan was a "war crime" is partly a legal / technical question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime#Definition

In regard to the strategic bombing during World War II, it should be noticed that at the time, there was no international treaty or instrument protecting a civilian population specifically from attack by aircraft,[34] therefore the aerial attacks on civilians were not officially war crimes. Because of this, the Allies at the trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo never prosecuted the Germans, including Luftwaffe commander-in-chief Hermann Göring, for the bombing raids on Warsaw, Rotterdam, and British cities during the Blitz as well as the indiscriminate attacks on Allied cities with V-1 flying bombs and V-2 rockets nor the Japanese for the aerial attacks on crowded Chinese cities.[35]

If you're a US citizen you can go on the free day-long Hanford facility bus tour. However you feel about the work they did there it's pretty interesting to see bits of the history.

http://www.hanford.gov/publictours/

Anecdote time: my brother plays baseball for this school and my wife is from Hiroshima. I didn't realize what their mascot is until we visited this past Spring and attended a few games. I was more embarrassed than she was upset, mostly because she didn't care at all.

Washington is fairly far from NY, but I wonder how these people commenting on how it is not distasteful would feel with a 9/11 mascot for a school team. Specially with bad puns about planes hitting buildings and some light-hearted representations of the tragedy.

You see, some people are proud of the 9/11 attacks, even if they did not got to participate in it directly. They may not use the world "liberal revisionist" for people they know who do not agree, but I'm pretty sure they will have some name to call them.

Perhaps some people can draw the distinction between a sneak attack on a civilian target by a group of fanatics, and a technology developed during wartime to be used against a declared enemy, with the intent ending such conflict so their friends and family could return home.

Or maybe we're just fated to become the Hypersensitive, Hyperventilating States of America at this point.

imho, the distinction isn't relevant because it's not about the justification. diplomacy and bombs can both end wars but the culture that glorifies bombs is always going to be morally suspect to the culture that glorifies diplomacy because it's possible we forgot why we needed bombs.

I didn't see they celebrating the atom or the technology. The names, the symbols and the phrase all symbolize the bombardment itself. Of civilians, no less. Not that clear of a distinction.

Luckily for us, this is a benefit of local, state, federal separation of powers. Does the mascot of a small town upset you? That is fine. Plutonium, 9/11 or otherwise. As long as a majority of its townsfolk approve of it.

When it can be shown that their mascot is directly denying the life, liberty or pursuit of happiness of americans, this will be a valid conversation. Until then, its a squeaky wheel undeserving of grease.

> When it can be shown that their mascot is directly denying the life, liberty or pursuit of happiness of americans, this will be a valid conversation.

Note well the word "directly". The mascot of Yuma (Arizona) High School is the Criminals. (Yuma was the site of the Territorial Prison, back before statehood.) Does that symbolize denying liberty to some Americans? Absolutely. Does it actually deny anyone their liberty? No.

Not only was it the side of the prison, but students were actually TAUGHT in a former prison for a while in 1910 until a school could be built.

This mascot is just a bad one, and in more than one sense. After a quick look to the article, I'll swear to have read 'wall of fart' somewhere. Aesthetically is a bad design IMAO

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