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with Americans’ fury over Pearl Harbor, Japan’s mistreatment and killings of Allied POWs, and its slaughter of civilians across Asia,
Forgot to mention Japanese test of biological weapons on the Chinese, that they were also pursuing the atomic bomb, and the mass rapes in China and Korea.
Patrick Sheehan liked this
“the Japanese deserved what they got.”
My own bias
also interviewed twelve other hibakusha, some of whom had never told their stories to anyone outside of their immediate families. I met with Nagasaki atomic bomb specialists, including historians, physicians, psychologists, social workers, educators, and staff researchers at atomic bomb museums, hospitals, research centers, libraries, and survivor organizations. I also studied the written testimonies of more than three hundred Nagasaki survivors as well as privately printed documents, collections, government sources, and thousands of archival photographs of Nagasaki before and after the
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Were epidemiological studies conducted? If so were those records reviewed?
nuclear war.
Don't like this usage as it implies countries engaged in a hostile exchange of nuclear weapons. In reality we deployed a weapon against which they had no defense. Nuclear attack or detonation may be more appropriate.
I countered this by cross-checking survivors’ accounts against support documentation to verify or expand on their memories of events, places, and people.
Cool
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The League of Nations protested this action, and in 1933, Japan withdrew as a member, hostile to this criticism and to perceived disdain from the United States and other Western nations over its quest for equal military, political, and social standing.
“One hundred million [people], one mind” and “Abolish desire until victory.”
Captain Beahan remembered it “bubbling and flashing orange, red and green . . . like a picture of hell.”
young boy grabbed at ash and paper
How contaminated was this material? Hopefully he washed his hands.
During the war, Yoshida’s teachers had incorrectly warned their students that drinking water while injured would result in excessive bleeding and death—so Yoshida held out all day with no water to ease his extreme dehydration.
Fuck. Not drinking while laying in water takes self discipline.
Dō-oh felt completely alone.
Wow. Quite a will to survive.
she applied machine oil to try to soothe the raw, dust-filled flesh of his back.
Oh fuck. That can't be sanitary.
Truman’s statement contradicted the U.S. government’s position that the atomic bombs were delivered on Japanese military targets.
Not really. The military targets were in the cities.
“monochromatic, soundless hell.”
The city’s chaotic rescue and relief efforts that day were supported by hundreds of local and prefectural soldiers, policemen, firemen, civil defense and government workers, teachers, neighborhood association leaders, and individual adults and children who carried out assigned or self-designated tasks.
Neighbors helping neighbors
Soldiers at the Western Army Headquarters in Fukuoka blindfolded, handcuffed, and executed seventeen Allied POWs.
I hope they were tried and shot.
was initially told that General Douglas MacArthur—the newly appointed Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) and head of the U.S. occupation in Japan—was a fervent advocate of freedom of the press.
As long as it was favorable to him.
Later that year, General Groves testified before the U.S. Senate that death from high-dose radiation exposure is “without undue suffering” and “a very pleasant way to die.”
Obviously bullshit
He regularly reset the broken bone in her arm so it wouldn’t heal in the wrong position.
They couldn't splint it?
his deeply held beliefs that it was God’s providence that carried the bomb to Nagasaki so that Japan’s largest Christian community could sacrifice themselves to end the war. On
Egotistical rationalization in the extreme that neglects the fact it's not a martyr sacrifice since they didn't choose their fate and ignores the orders of magnitude more deaths of Buddhists and Shintos.
It would take five years for the city of Nagasaki to accomplish the nearly impossible task of counting the number of dead and injured from the atomic bombing.
unbearable
Not to be a pedantic asshole but technically it wasn't unbearable because he withstood it, coped, and survived. Basically this is the long way of saying I would have chosen a different adjective.
significantly underweight.
Is this because of radiation or due to the lack of food throughout the war years.
Maggots crawled through his flesh, creating an incessant sensation that Taniguchi could not relieve.
Oh fuck
In between visits, however, the salve hardened beneath the bandages, like a cast. “Every time I went back,” he remembered, “the doctor told me to look out the window—and then he tore off the bandage. Blood poured out. It was excruciating.”
Thankfully wound care has come a long way.
and an act of providence, for which the people must give thanks for being chosen for such a high purpose.
That's fucked
without providing information about the potential genetic risks from radiation exposure that the ABCC believed might exist for these children.
Probably a violation of the informed consent practices of today that didn't exist then.
ABCC has continued its lifelong investigation of potential genetic effects on children conceived and born after the bombings to one or both parents who were survivors. Studies have shown no observable effects on this population to date, but scientists will not draw conclusions until after they have studied these adults as they age.
Even after stories of hibakusha suffering emerged in the United States, President Truman never publicly acknowledged the human impact of whole-body, large-dose radiation exposure or expressed regret for using the atomic bombs on civilians. He came close, however, at a November 30, 1950, press conference, when he took a question about the possibility of using a nuclear weapon in Korea to end the deadly international conflict there. “There has always been active consideration of its use,” Truman responded. “I don’t want to see it used. It is a terrible weapon, and it should not be used on
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Even ten years after the bombings, hibakusha were experiencing excessive occurrences of numerous medical conditions, including blood, cardiovascular, liver, and endocrinological disorders; low blood cell counts; severe anemia; thyroid disorders; internal organ damage; cataracts; and premature aging. Many survivors suffered multiple illnesses at the same time. Countless others experienced a generalized, unexplainable malaise—later nicknamed bura-bura (aimless) disease—with symptoms including overall poor health, constant fatigue, and, according to survivors’ physicians, “insufficient mental
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Childhood leukemia rates had peaked between 1950 and 1953, but since then, adult leukemia cases had increased beyond normal levels, a situation that would not change for decades. By 1955, other cancers had also begun to occur at rates far higher than for non-hibakusha. Thyroid cancer incidences rose in the 1960s, and within the next five years, stomach and lung cancer rates escalated. Incidences of liver, colon, bladder, ovary, and skin cancers, among others, also increased.
Dr. Nagai and others in Nagasaki had sought to preserve the church ruins northeast of the hypocenter as a symbol of the destroyed city, but other Catholics had found the sight of the demolished church unbearable.
I would have kept the ruins
It’s been fifty years. What have I been doing, being sad for fifty years?
In response to Japanese critics’ long-standing complaints that its exhibits had focused solely on hibakusha suffering without critical wartime context, the museum planned to expand its scope to include documentation of the Nanjing massacre, Japan’s experiments with biological weapons on humans, and its seizure and sexual exploitation of women of other Asian nations as “comfort women” for the Japanese military. The proposed exhibit created a furor among conservative Japanese nationalists, who protested and made anonymous threats to museum curators and museum staff. The museum subsequently
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Holy shit. Cultures are the same the world over.
“helping to bring World War II to a merciful end,”
Who gives a shit of it was a merciful end. It just needed to end and the enemy suffered instead of us. That would have been my position.
“Even if it is true that the atomic bombings saved thousands of Americans,” veteran Dell Herndon wrote to the editor of the Whittier Daily News in California, “it is our patriotic duty to acknowledge the results of those bombs.”
Well said Dell
community of noncombatants?”
In total war all parts of the nation are targets to destroy their infrastructure and ability to fight. The ship yards and munitions factories were valid targets.
For members of the Nagasaki Foundation for the Promotion of Peace, human imagination alone was incapable of grasping the true impact of the atomic bomb.
Have to agree. You're talking about releasing the energy that binds matter together.
Gaman: Enduring the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity
but that the radioactive materials they ingested—such as dust or water—also irradiated their cells from the inside.
Could be neutron flux
The basis of peace is for people to understand the pain of others.
A.K.A. empathy
