August 9th, 1945
Sixty years ago today, three days after Little Boy flattened Hiroshima, on August 9th, 1945, the city of Nagasaki, Japan was bombed with the plutonium bomb Fat Man.
I really cannot describe how that bombing wrenches my heart.
Kurt Vonnegut, one of my all-time favorite authors, pretty much sums up my feelings with this quote: “... while the Hiroshima bomb may have saved the lives of ... friends in the U.S. armed forces, Nagasaki still proved that the United States was capable of senseless cruelty.” test
December 7th, 1941. Nagasaki. September 11th, 2001. Abu Ghraib.
Do the first really justify the second? Is revenge a worthy reason?
There are many reasons people cite for bombing this city only three days after annihilating another. The only one I really believe is propaganda. Make Tokyo believe what we are capable of. Make the Russians fear us more. Secure a role of Superpower in the world.
I see us doing the same thing in Iraq, only little bombs at a time so as not to bring attention to what we are really doing there.
May we listen to History’s lessons one day.
posted by Katherine Zander @ 11:36 AM
4 comments
4 Comments:
that's the injustice of it, i think. we can make the argument that bombing the first city had its logical foundation.
but the second? why?
in iraq, we are creating far more fires than we can stamp out. we did exactly what bin laden wanted us to do after 9/11. react with fear and misplaced aggression.
e+
I totally agree. We've been playing into his hand for the past four years.
Sick.
I'm not happy the bomb was dropped, but I'm also not happy about what the Japanese army did to deserve it. Just a little self-education would go a long way....I'm including a link to Google Search Results for "The Bataan Death March." Bataan Death March Search Results
Sam -
I agree that the Japanese did horrific things during WWII. Not just the Battan Death March, but forcing Chinese and Korean women to be concubines for Japanese soldiers, medical experimentation on prisoners, and that whole Pearl Harbor thing just to name a few. But does that justify killing, maiming, and torturing with a long, slow, painful death hundreds of thousands of people who were simply going to work and feeding their babies?
Is the torture, rape, and humiliation of children at Abu Ghraib justified because zealots not from or supported by Iraq flew planes into our buildings and killed thousands of our own innocents?
You know, that whole "two wrongs don't make a right" thing Mom always said.
America has become a Hypocracy, if I may politicize that word. How dare we condemn others for doing the same thing we are doing.
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