which said this was the first anniversary of 'the worst day in America's history'. I quickly came up with a few alternative candidates. What do the panel think?
colours, I like your answer better than mine. Though actually I'd consider the bombing of Nagasaki (August 9th, 1945) even more shameful - they had to rush to get the bomb dropped before the Japanese surrendered, or they'd never get their test data on the plutonium bomb...
In context, when conventional raids on Tokyo etc were killing tens of thousands of people a night, and when Operation Olympic (the invasion of Japan) was due to start in two months with a million US & Allied deaths expected, having seen the utterly defeated Nazi Germany fight on to the last Berlin street a few months earlier...
... I don't find using the two atom bombs that bad.
One test is to see what the victims thought at the time, and the Japanese don't seem to have thought it an unreasonable thing to have done.
When they dropped the first bomb, they had *no* idea if it would start a chain reaction that might end the world. But they dropped it anyway.
I think there are many Japanese who think it was an unreasonable thing to have done, perhaps the families of the 200,000+ people who died either from the blast or from the effects of the radiation over the following 20 years.
We only have one planet, and you just don't "shit where you eat"
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lovingboth
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Date: 2002-09-11 07:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-09-11 09:47 am (UTC)... I don't find using the two atom bombs that bad.
One test is to see what the victims thought at the time, and the Japanese don't seem to have thought it an unreasonable thing to have done.
(no subject)
Date: 2002-09-11 10:54 am (UTC)I think there are many Japanese who think it was an unreasonable thing to have done, perhaps the families of the 200,000+ people who died either from the blast or from the effects of the radiation over the following 20 years.
We only have one planet, and you just don't "shit where you eat"