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Photo: Seizo Yamada (7 km northeast of Hiroshima)
Posted on 08/05/2009 10:16:39 PM PDT by B-Chan
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Photo: Seizo Yamada (7 km northeast of Hiroshima)
"The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid manyfold. And the end is not yet. With this bomb we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction to supplement the growing power of our armed forces. In their present form these bombs are now in production, and even more powerful forms are in development.
"It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far EastBefore 1939, it was the accepted belief of scientists that it was theoretically possible to release atomic energy. But no one knew any practical method of doing it. By 1942, however, we knew that the Germans were working feverishly to find a way to add atomic energy to the other engines of war with which they hoped to enslave the world. But they failed. We may be grateful to Providence that the Germans got the V-1's and V-2's late and in limited quantities and even more grateful that they did not get the atomic bomb at all.
"The battle of the laboratories held fateful risks for us as well as the battles of the air, land, and sea, and we have now won the battle of the laboratories as we have won the other battles.
"Beginning in 1940, before Pearl Harbor, scientific knowledge useful in war was pooled between the United States and Great Britain, and many priceless helps to our victories have come from that arrangement. Under that general policy the research on the atomic bomb was begun. With American and British scientists working together we entered the race of discovery against the Germans
"The United States had available the large number of scientists of distinction in the many needed areas of knowledge. It had the tremendous industrial and financial resources necessary for the project, and they could be devoted to it without undue impairment of other vital war work. In the United States the laboratory work and the production plants, on which a substantial start had already been made, would be out of reach of enemy bombing, while at that time Britain was exposed to constant air attack and was still threatened with the possibility of invasion. For these reasons Prime Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt agreed that it was wise to carry on the project here
"We now have two great plants and many lesser works devoted to the production of atomic power. Employment during peak construction numbered 125,000 and over 65,000 individuals are even now engaged in operating the plants. Many have worked there for two and a half years. Few know what they have been producing. They see great quantities of material going in and they see nothing coming out of these plants, for the physical size of the explosive charge is exceedingly small.
"We have spent $2 billion on the greatest scientific gamble in history--and won.
"But the greatest marvel is not the size of the enterprise, its secrecy, nor its cost, but the achievement of scientific brains in putting together infinitely complex pieces of knowledge held by many men in different fields of science into a workable plan. And hardly less marvelous has been the capacity of industry to design, and of labor to operate, the machines and methods to do things never done before so that the brainchild of many minds came forth in physical shape and performed as it was supposed to do. Both science and industry worked under the direction of the United States Army, which achieved a unique success in managing so diverse a problem in the advancement of knowledge in an amazingly short time. It is doubtful if such another combination could be got together in the world. What has been done is the greatest achievement of organized science in history. It was done under high pressure and without failure.
"We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories, and their communications. Let there be no mistake; we shall completely destroy Japan's power to make war
It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam.* Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum.
If they do not now accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth..."
-- President Harry S Truman,
Radio Address to the Nation
6 August 1945
69 years ago today.
--Barack Obama, Dreams of My Fascism /sarc>
presidential......regretable about war....most peoples want to live quietly and in peace, but when leaders become dictators anything can happen.....Hitler, Castro, Chavez.......finish the list as you will....
"The gratitude of every home in our island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. "
and may God bless Lt. General Curtis LeMay
my favorite all time speech.
Had it not been for the bomb, Japanese society would not be the way it is today, nor would all of the things that Japan has given the world be produced.
They went through an apocalypse of sorts, and are a better nation as a result.
The Americans and Japanese are thick as thieves. And that’s the way it needs to be. For the safety of all the Pacific.
Thank you, Curtis LeMay. Thank you, Douglas MacArthur, and in some respects, thank you to Emperor Showa for finally taking a stand and understanding that his country’s survival depended on getting rid of the fringe elements of his country.
General LeMay was in charge of the bombing campaign that eventually reduced most of the major cities in Japan into smoldering ruins. Nagasaki and Hiroshima were spared because the military wanted to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of the atomic bombs. The way they built their homes, everything just went up like kindling. A friend of mine was in the Air Force in WW2 and he said that towards the end, bomber crews sent to bomb Tokyo would sometimes drop their bombs in the ocean because there was nothing left to destroy in Tokyo.
the good General was my dad’s boss
Reading John Dower’s “War Without Mercy; Race and Power in the Pacific War.” Dower writes it’s incredible that within a few months of the war, the racism on both sides was put behind us.
I agree. The Japan-America relationship is as important to the world as is the Uk-America relationship. The United States and Japan should pursue even further integration — their strengths augmenting our weaknesses, and vice versa.
Japan started the war, and we did what we had to do to end it.
I agree. The decision to drop that bomb was made on 7 December 1945.
The evolutionary purpose for racism is to help win at war. The unnatural evolutionary pressure that drives human evolution is tribal warfare, where two tribes collide and the losing culture and/or gene pool is razed. Almost all human customs and traits can be traced to their advantage in war. A tribe with the trait of racism, hatred of another tribe hyped up by their leaders, has a fighting advantage over a tribe of indifferent competitors. It is probably not wise to succeed in eliminating all racism within a culture.
An Americanized Japanese girl with blue eyes:
Another thing in all likelihood you can thank an American GI for!
There was extraordinary racism on both sides.
We didn’t start the war, but we sure finished it.
The bomb save millions of Japanese lives, and saved Japan from the fate of Korea, because the Soviets would have taken their piece of Japan had the war continued.
Yes, that's because the Japanese are highly evolved tribal warriors, and so are we. If they did not hate us so much at the time, they would have lost much sooner. A useful feature of racism is it can be lowered quickly after war. A tribe that cannot turn it off is as much at an evolutionary disadvantage as one that cannot turn it on.
I don’t see how that’s possible. Isn’t the gene for blue eyes recessive?
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