Hiroshima Day: A Worthy Cause

The BBQ Pit
1

I have to have a whine about something that happened on my University campus recently. I am an ethics student and some what of a activist, I have a strong sense of social justice. Recently I helped some friends from a politic organisation to stick up a heap of posters informing people about Hiroshima Day, a day of organised demostration in opposition to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear warfare. The demonstrations are multi-issue and a great oppotunity to hear informed speakers. Yet the morning after postering I noticed someone had intentionally ripped down and postered rave and night club posters all over the Hiroshima Day posters, WHY WHY WHY?

:frowning: :frowning:

What kind of ignorant, twisted and gutless lowlife could be against a anti-war movement? The use of an Atomic weapons has never saved a life, dispite the wishful thinking of apologists. I urge those of you who are oppossed to weapons of mass destruction and the production and use of atomic or nuclear weapons to demonstrate that opposition.

Hiroshima Day is on the 4th of August, for those living in Queensland, Sunday 12:30pm King George Square. Thanx for your replies.

2

I suppose it could be that the raver just wanted the poster space and wasn’t particularly interested in what had to be removed to gain it.

[sub][old saw][/sub]No more Hiroshimas? Easy. No more Pearl Harbors.[sub][/old saw][/sub]

3

This is true. Weapons are used to end lives. So it was in Hiroshima. You’ve heard it argued otherwise?

Weapons do, however, provide great incentive to stop waging war.

4

And the alternative, a city-by-city conventional weapons strategy inc which millions of Japanese and allied soldiers and civilians would have died would have been preferable?

Sorry, buster, but that kind of protest is just fuckin’ useless. You’re an earnest, naive college student preaching to a crowd of your fellow earnest, naive college students. You’re not going to reach anybody who doesn’t already agree with you. Antinuclear activism has been around since Bertrand Russell was leading the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but we still have nuclear weapons. That we have fewer weapons today has much less to do with lefty whinging than with national self-interest backing arms negotiations.

In addition, you’re fighting a strawman–no sane nation is FOR nuclear weapons, but at the same time, no sane nation is willing to be the victim of nuclear blackmail, either. The US has been reluctant to sign START III not because it loves nukes, but because it is fearful that if it totally eliminates nuclear arms, other nations who have nukes could threaten the US. To paraphrase Sean Connery in The Untouchables, Never bring a knife to a gunfight.

In any event, your little campus event is just preaching to the choir. If you want to change things, get involved in real politics. Support leftist candidates who agree with your stance on nuclear weapons. Run for Parliament yourself when you reach the right age. Talk to people in your immediate circle who disagree with you and try out your arguments on them.

If you’re going to protest, do it effectively.

5

Will the Hiroshima Day be scheduled before or after Bataan Death March Day and Rape of Nanking day?

6

Glad to see the knee-jerk “Don’t-mention-Hirosima-it-sounds-like-you’re-criticizing-America” crew is out in full force.

Let’s be honest with ourselves – if America had attacked the harbour at Hiroshima, and Japan retaliated by dropping a couple atomic bombs on the Hawaiian Islands, the whole world would now be celebrating “Hawaii Day” – quite rightfully, too, given the massive loss if innocent civilian life that would entail.

Is anyone else tired of America arguing “moral correctness” when it is the victim, and “defending our interests” when it’s the perpetrator? Pick one or the other. There’s no excuse for massive nuclear proliferation on any side.

7

When Japan starts using material in its schools about its wartime behaviour, instead of trying to portray itself as a victim of a monstrous injustice then maybe I’d be more inclined to see Hiroshima less favourably.

From the rape of Nanking, to the excesses in Manchuria, the use of slaves worked to death, through to medical experiments on prisoners, right the way to cannibalism of captured Australian and American airmen and yet the Japanese nation still lives in denial.

Perhaps it is better to forget the past, but I seriously doubt it.

Selective memory is just about the worst option, dictators are very adept at this trick.

Innocent Japanese died at Hiroshima, but the greatest casualties from aerial bombardment were killed in huge firestorms in Tokyo, somehow these deaths don’t seem to attract the same interest.
Anyhow, I can understand that you have feelings toward this issue, but you are going to have to realise that people, despite your best efforts, don’t care, are not interested, do not appreciate anything you are trying to do for them, are openly hostile to your opinions, think that getting a rise out of you becaues you care is funny, all sorts of reactions.

I’m afraid Joe Public is not the deserving, misunderstood, unjustly criticised group that you might think, some are like that but very many are not, if you enhance the life of just one of them then you will have achieved something, but it takes a special kind of person to get involved in political issues without any expectation of reward or approval.

Look at the politicians in circulation today, 'nuff said.

8

Hamish, have you ever heard of Mutually Assured Destruction? Nuclear proliferation is a good thing. If the US was the only nation with the bomb, we almost certainly would have used it again.

Where is the knee jerking? Elf6c, gobear, Beelzebubba, Ringo each provided well-reasoned responses. No one is saying “Don’t mention Hiroshima”. People are pointing out that Japan was far from a victim in World War II, and that the bombing of Hiroshima quite certainly killed fewer people than a ground invasion of Japan.

Also, more civilians died in the firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo than did in the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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Glad to see the knee-jerk “Don’t-mention-Hirosima-it-sounds-like-you’re-criticizing-America” crew is out in full force.
[/quote]

This amuses me because, of course, anyone reading this thread will instantly see that no one has said anything about not criticizing America.

Glad to see the knee-jerk “all Americans are oversensitive jingoists” brigade is out in full force. Too bad, HAMISH, that you couldn’t wait for someone to actually act like an oversensitive jingoist before complaining about it, but then I guess when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

10

This kind right here, pal.

You need to ask yourself if anything is worse than war. I can tell you, as a Navy veteran, we feared failure in our mission much more than war.

Was eliminating Nazism worth it? Or ending American slavery? These happy occurrances couldn’t have been accomplished without a good war.

I may have more to say about atomic weapons later, but for now, I’ll just say that when antiwar means cowardice or surrender, it’s worse than useless.

11

Is that a voice from the great white north? It is so small and weak I can’t hear it very well. I suppose it doesn’t matter.

Marc

12

I don’t deny the atrocities committed by the Japanese government and military. But most of the people who died in at Hiroshima were civilians, and had no say in the operation of their government. If anyone made the case that the Japanese emperor/military were somehow justified in their military operations, I would also take them to task. But that’s not the one-sided argument I hear most often on these boards.

We’ve had dozens of these Hiroshima threads on the board, and if my remarks seem peremptory to you, Jodi, perhaps they’ll seem less so given that history. It always degenerates into a “Oh, don’t listen to them – they’re just America-haters” argument intedned to stop debate.

One-point-two million people died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nuclear weapons are indiscriminate, very likely to hit civilians. If similar weapons were used against the US, regardless of whether the country using them had a legitimate reason to attack, I would be equally outraged. I don’t think there’d be any question of a world-wide day of memorial.

America has lead the way in nuclear proliferation. It is not a good thing. Every nuclear weapon built by any side increases the risk for all of us. Even if America never elects a president stupid enough to drop them (and I have my doubts about your current one), they could always be stolen or sold by unscrupulous military personnel on the black market.

Then there’s the paranoia factor – every country that has nuclear weapons encourages other countries to develop them as a defence – further increasing our risk.

Mutually-assured destruction? Nuclear proliferation is the fastest route there.

13

Mr. Moto put it nicely but I’ll add my $0.02 anyway.

Being anitwar is all nice and fine. What sane person would want to see people bombed and shot? War is a miserable fact of the human condition.

That said sometimes there is nothing to do but go to war. Japan with its imperial expansion, Germany with its quest for world domination and hideous pogroms are two of the more recent times when some ass needed kicking which unfortunately meant killing a shitload of people. If you have a viable alternative for stoppping these two countries that didn’t include killing someone I’d like to hear it.

As for atomic weapons never saving a life you couldn’t be more wrong. At the high-end I have heard a stat of 340,000 killed in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but most stats I see are in the 150,000-200,000 range. However, even going with the high number the smallest estimate I’ve seen for invading Japan in a conventional manner in WWII would have seen 500,000 casualties. In some estimates I’ve seen that number go as high as 2,000,000! So, right there more lives were saved than lost due to atomic weapons.

Additionally, how many wars do you think have been avoided because countries with atomic weapons can’t afford to go toe-to-toe? Sans atomic weapons I’d bet dollars to dimes that the US and the former USSR would have come to blows at least twice in the last 50 years (Berlin and Cuba). However, both countries realized that with nukes pointed at each other fighting would be a very slippery slope to armageddon. As a result the US and USSR fought it out between each other more by proxy than directly. Miserable though that is from a purely statistical number count it is arguably better than the alternative of fighting directly.

It’s a free country (Australia, Canada or the US) so knock yourself out protesting whatever you see fit. However, you would do better to get your head screwed on straight if you don’t wish to be taken as some left-wing loony with an axe to grind. You will have a much better chance of advancing your agenda if you approach others from a calm and reasoned standpoint.

14

On preview I see Whack-a-Mole already got here with some numbers, but why waste the time I swiped from my boss?

I’m sure over time more than that have died in those two places, but as to the fatalities from the atomic bombs, the Avalon Project gives figures of 66,000 dead at Hiroshima and 39,000 dead at Nagasaki. Infoplease gives a figure of 110,000 killed for both cities together and attributes another 230,000 subsequent deaths to injuries and radiation exposure. Another site gives figures of 70,000-80,000 killed at Hiroshima and 35,000-40,000 killed at Nagasaki, and attributes another 45,000 from wounds and radiation to the bombing.

This site quotes a report by the Nagasaki City Atomic Bomb Records Preservation Committee:

This page gives the highest total estimate I ran across, attributing 340,000 deaths to both blasts and later deaths from injuries and radiation.

15

Mr. Moto put it nicely but I’ll add my $0.02 anyway.

Being anitwar is all nice and fine. What sane person would want to see people bombed and shot? War is a miserable fact of the human condition.

That said sometimes there is nothing to do but go to war. Japan with its imperial expansion, Germany with its quest for world domination and hideous pogroms are two of the more recent times when some ass needed kicking which unfortunately meant killing a shitload of people. If you have a viable alternative for stoppping these two countries that didn’t include killing someone I’d like to hear it.

As for atomic weapons never saving a life you couldn’t be more wrong. At the high-end I have heard a stat of 340,000 killed in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki but most stats I see are in the 150,000-200,000 range. However, even going with the high number the smallest estimate I’ve seen for invading Japan in a conventional manner in WWII would have seen 500,000 casualties. In some estimates I’ve seen that number go as high as 2,000,000! So, right there more lives were saved than lost due to atomic weapons.

Additionally, how many wars do you think have been avoided because countries with atomic weapons can’t afford to go toe-to-toe? Sans atomic weapons I’d bet dollars to dimes that the US and the former USSR would have come to blows at least twice in the last 50 years (Berlin and Cuba). However, both countries realized that with nukes pointed at each other fighting would be a very slippery slope to armageddon. As a result the US and USSR fought it out between each other more by proxy than directly. Miserable though that is from a purely statistical number count it is arguably better than the alternative of fighting directly.

It’s a free country (Australia, Canada or the US) so knock yourself out protesting whatever you see fit. However, you would do better to get your head screwed on straight if you don’t wish to be taken as some left-wing loony with an axe to grind. You will have a much better chance of advancing your agenda if you approach others from a calm and reasoned standpoint.

16

(SORRY FOR THE DOUBLE POST)

First off, every new nuclear weapon built by the US doesn’t increase the risk of nuclear holocaust one iota. The US already has plenty to see that happen. Any new nukes are merely upgrades or replacement of old nukes. The only new nuclear weapons you really need to worry about are those that the likes of Saddam Hussein might build someday.

MAD has actually worked for the last 50 years. Nukes in the hands of relatively stable (such as the US, Great Britain and as the USSR used to be) countries aren’t too much of a threat. All sides are well aware of the sheer devastation that such a thing would cause. It’s the penny-ante states that you need to worry seriously about as they don’t feel they have much too lose and everything to gain by using a nuke.

As nice as it would be to wave our magic wand and make all nukes disappear and be impossible to build it is one genie that simply won’t go back into the bottle. If the US hadn’t developed nukes in WWII someone would have eventually. Once such weapons were developed you are stuck with them. Is it comfortable living with the threat of nukes? Certainly not but given that they ARE here and given that they ARE NOT going away we need to find the best way to live with them. That way has been Mutually Assured Destruction and so far no one has thought of a better way to ensure the peace. All of the people spouting, “NUKES ARE BAD! NUKES ARE EVIL!”, won’t change a thing. 2+2=4 just as nukes are a fact of life today no matter how much you’d like to pretend otherwise.

17

One more thing…

The Japanese populace was being prepared to repel the Allied invaders and by populace I do mean everyone who could shake a stick. Those that might not be up for actual combat were prepared for kamikazee attacks. Of course, no civilian ‘army’ prepared in this manner would stand a chance against a battle-hardened, professional fighting force but they would have numbers on their side. In short it would have been a bloodbath that would see Allied soldiers having to shoot the elderly, women and children.

For those that didn’t fight many would opt for suicide. The Japanese had been taught that Americans were pure evil and would do horrible things to the women and children. I saw a video of women with children clutched in their arms throwing themselves off of cliffs to their deaths rather than be captured (I think that was in Okinawa but I’m not certain). On Okinawa the military there fought to a 95% casualty rate (basically saying that the Japanese would quite literally attempt to fight to the last man).

Where in all of that do you find the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki more reprehensible? It wasn’t pretty I’ll grant but the alternatives seem even worse to me.

18

Whack-a-Mole,

OK, I give up.

Sparc
:::Wonders if Whack-a-Mole thinks Sparc is just a loon or if he didn’t go on debating for lack of grounds to stand on:::

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Obligatory link

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Pro-Axis Day: A Worthy Cause :

I have to have a whine about something that happened on my University campus recently. I am an underwater basketweaving student and some what of a activist, I have a strong sense of a snivelling guilty conscience. I don’t know what I feel guilty for exactly, but there it is… Recently I helped some friends from a politic organisation to stick up a heap of posters informing people about “Huzzah for the Axis Day”, a day of organised demostration in opposition to the freedom and democracy that the use of atomic weapons in World War Two helped to bring about. The demonstrations are multi-issue and a great oppotunity to hear informed speakers. Yet the morning after postering I noticed someone had intentionally ripped down and postered rave and night club posters all over the “Huzzah for the Axis Day”* posters, WHY WHY WHY?

What kind of ignorant, twisted and gutless lowlife could be against the Pro-Axis “Blame America First” movement? The use of an Atomic weapons saved the lives of thousands or millions of Allied troops and we’d rather they’d have been killed. They were soldiers after all. Barely human. I urge those of you who are oppossed to World War Two veterans or people in the military in general to demonstrate that opposition.

Fenris

*All sarcasm aside, let me say that tearing down the posters, regardless of the contempt I hold you and your ilk in, was completely, absolutely wrong (and gutless. Showing up at your rally and mocking your idiotic ideas on the other hand sounds like my idea of a good afternoon well spent.). Assuming you had the right to put them up (ie the consent of the property owner), the people who tore them down should be prosecuted for vandalism.