Posted on 10/11/2009 9:12:32 AM PDT by traumer
TOKYO – Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the victims of the only atomic bombings in history, are teaming up to try to bring the Olympics to Japan in 2020, the cities' mayors said Sunday.
Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba and Nagasaki Mayor Tomihisa Taue told a press conference they will establish a joint committee to work on a proposal based on world peace.
Both men are founding members of the Mayors for Peace 2020 Vision Campaign, which advocates for a global ban on nuclear arms. In a speech last month in Mexico City, Akiba said he firmly believed the world could abolish nuclear weapons by 2020 and suggested holding the Olympics that year in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to celebrate.
The Olympics announcement comes a little more than a week after Tokyo lost its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, which will be in Rio de Janeiro.
Tokyo organizers have not said whether they plan to try again. Only one city per country is allowed to submit a bid.
Other cities that have expressed interest in the 2020 Olympics include Istanbul, Budapest and Delhi. A host city is expected to be named in 2013.
Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara made headlines last week when he blamed his city's failure on behind-the-scenes deals, saying Japanese sports officials must become more adept in maneuvering the inner workings of the International Olympic Committee. Officials from Rio's bid described Ishihara's comments as "inappropriate."
Tokyo spent 15 billion yen ($166 million) promoting itself for the games.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Great, if they win we’ll never hear the end of how evil it was for us to drop the bombs.
...or they’ll promote it as ‘have a blast at the Olympics’.
By the way - Oprah looks like Hell....
I think it WAS evil to drop the bombs but don’t think the Olympics should go to Japan, or the U.S., or whatever.. Let’s put it in Greece next time and keep it there for good.
Victims? I think successful applicant is a better description.
Wouldn’t we have to wait 10,000 years because of the nuclear fallout. Isn’t this area uninhabitable ?
The way it’s going there will be several Hiroshimas in the Middle east before 2020.
My son, while in the navy, visited either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. He said it doesn’t look like anything happened there, and it is now a very pretty park.
That park took the place of what used to be one of the centers of the Japanese military industry, from what I understand.
From wikipedia
The population around 1910 was 143,000.[4] Before World War II, Hiroshima’s population had grown to 360,000, and peaked at 419,182 in 1942.[22] Following the atomic bombing in 1945, the population dropped to 137,197.[22] By 1955, the city’s population had returned to pre-war levels.[23]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima
Translation: "accurate".
Obama lost out to people who are even better at Machiavellian power politics than he is. ;)
Will the city of Qom (Iran) apply too?
The pre planning for the invasion of Japan estimated 20,000 US casualties.
Truman's decision to drop the two atomic weapons was largely based on this information.
A necessary evil at best.
Since there were more casualties than that in some of the invasions of outlying Japanese Islands, I don't think this can be correct.
Bullseye! That is EXACTLY what will happen.
Good idea in principle, but Im not sure Greece the country would be able to afford to do it every four years.
I love revisionist history: So Hiroshima and Nagasaki are “victims” now, are they? There was this little incident called “Pearl Harbor, along with the Rape of Nanking, the Philippines, Wake Island, etc., etc. The atomic bombs probably saved my late father’s life, along with a million other Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Coast Guardsmen and Airmen. I will not let these lies stand!
20,000 US casualties, and who knows how many Japanese?
The morality of whether to drop the A-bombs or not is something we agonise over now, but it was an irrelevent argument at the time. After six years of war, and millions upon millions of casualties, the world was traumatised and innured to suffering.
Truman's decision to drop the two atomic weapons was largely based on this information.
Truman was not locked into this false dichotmy. There was always a third choice: a conditional surrender. The chief sticking point from beginning to end was the Japanese insistence that they keep the emperor. Prior to the dropping of the bombs, however, the Truman administration summarily rejected pursuing that option. Even after the dropping of the second bomb, the Japanese STILL insisted on this condition.
Finally after Nagaskaki, Truman overrode his bitter end New Deal advisors who wanted an unconditional surrender, and agreed to accept the Japanese condition. Thus the final surrender was NOT unconditional. Had he pursued the option of a conditional at the beginning, he could have avoided both the mass slaughter of innocents AND an invasion.
Even if we assume that you are right, however, dropping the bombs would still be evil. Under the long established rules of war it is immoral to INTENTIONALLY target babies, little old ladies, and other non-combatants. Collateral damange is unavoidable but intentional targeting is beyond the rules of war. If an enemy did it to us or our allies during war. we would not hesitate to later prosecute them for war crimes.
As a sidelight, let me point out the Nagasaki was the heart of traditional Japanese Christianity. The Christians had held on to their faith despite tremdendous pressure for hundreds of years....only to be slaughtered by fellow Christians.
Sounds like “Da Bomb”!
The rules of just war were well established in 1945. Under those rules, it is immoral to INTENTIONALLY target civilians for slaugther.
Oh, great. Another opportunity for Lord Obama to apologize for the USA.
Your statement was total ignorance. If you even studied history you would had known that.....
1. Japan would not conceed to unconditional surrender. The military cliques were running the show and preferred suicide to surrender. Only when the Emperor ordered surrender talks did the military leaders conceed. Even then, junior officers staged a failed coup to prevent the Emporer from broadcasting his nation’s surrender.
2. Most of Japans’s cities were bombed, burned and blockaded with disease & starvation rampant.
3. Japan’s government and miliatary adopted the policy of “Ketsu Go”...to use the population in human wave attacks and suicide bombings. Women where issued bamboo spears while children were issued suicide backpacks to crawl under American tanks. The whole country devised various suicide traps, kamikazi vehicles and human wave battalions.
4. Five days before Hiroshima, US bombers dropped leaflets WARNING the Japanese populace that certain cities needed to be evacuated.
5. The invasion of Japan would had involved the Russians reusulting in a communist NORTH and allied SOUTH Japans.
6. Allies, in preparation for Operation Olympic, would had stockpiled its nukes (and thousands of tons of chemical munitions) for an all-out assault on the landing beachheads and key urban centers. The result (in addition to starvation, cold, and disease) would had killed millions and millions of Japanese civillians.
7. Hiroshima and Nagaski were legitament targets as both housed important munitions plants. Hiroshima was also home of the Japanese 3rd Army Group...a key command post which coordianted Japanese defensive operations in the southern island of Kyushu.
FYI: 3rd Army Group parade grounds was the target point (ground zero) for the Hiroshima Bomb.
Great post! I’ve always pointed out to the Kum-ba-ya crowd that dropping the A-bomb on two cities actually SAVED Japanese lives.
PS: More people died in the Tokyo fire bombings that in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That used conventional muntions...does that make you feed better Captain Kirk???
It didn’t save a single life. An invasion could have been avoided agreed to let the Japanese keep the emperor.
And your conclusion from this is....what? That it should be acceptable for our enemies to use a similar strategy of terror against our civilian population.
I will double check, but I think that is way off to the low side.
I thought the number was in the 100’s of thousands just on our side.
that is a non sequitor.....emporer was a non issue and is a red herring. The military cliques were running the show. Not until the Emporer read the damage reports did he overrule the miliatry leaders. He embraced Ketsu Go as well as numerous attrocities.
Japan’s pride and arrogance caught up to them. After years of slaughter, fanatical resistance.
READ KETSU-GO !!!!
You didn't read my post. I pointed out that even after Nagasaki that the Japanese STILL did not accept the demand for unconditional surrender. In the end, Truman overrode his New Deal advisors who wanted to totally destroy the imperial regime and agreed to the Japanese condition. Hence, the final surrender was NOT unconditional. Hence, Truman could have avoided both an invasion and the a bombs had he purused this option at the outset.
Which will be a big plus for them.
The emperor was very much an issue. To New Deal hardliners, he (and all he represented) the main source of the problem and had to be totally destroyed. If it was really a “non-issue” the U.S. would have agreed at the outset to a conditional surrender.
READ “KETSU GO”
YOU’RE REVISONIST HISTORY IS SICKENING.
13:40 of the video sums it up!!!!!
Thanks to those who had the fortitude to use these weapons and save lives.
As I said the other day; Harry Truman really should have won a Nobel prize for making this decision.
Eh, beats the hell out of losing a couple thousand (or tens of thousands) of American troops trying to quell an insurgency. What angers me much moreso than nuking Japan is FDR’s not-so-secret interventionism prior to Pearl Harbor which basically begged the Japanese to attack because the socialist left desperately wanted to go to war while the conservatives and most Americans wanted nothing to do with another (at the time) regionalized conflict.
Naturally, the American plan considered Japanese resistance. It noted the possibility that the invasion "will be opposed not only by the available organized military forces of the Empire, but also by a fanatically hostile population", which would result in high casualties. In a study done by the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff in Apr 1945, at least 456,000 casualties were to be expected for Operation Olympic alone. Some other evaluations were also done, and their casualty estimates ranged anywhere from 30,000 to 1,000,000. In preparation, the United States manufactured 500,000 Purple Heart medals to award to those injured in combat.
Harry Truman was evil?
wow .. that’s a shocker.
I agree about moving the Olympics to Greece permanently.
Well....most politicians are evil by their very nature but the Roosevelt/Truman New Dealers were more evil than most.
I once thought as you on this, but then something happened....I grew up and read the other side of the story.
Japan is not innocent in this endevour. You can blame their imperial pride and liberal Monday morning quarterbacking.
It’s like if the US Army was on the boarder of Germany and the Germans said, “Okay, we’ll surrender...but we get to keep Hitler and he’s still in charge.” Ain’t gonna happen boyo.
Think about it...
So, got the guts to see this video?????
You need to be more assertive! Quit being such a shrinking violet.
>>> I think it WAS evil to drop the bombs... <<<
Nonsense!
so, you’re reverting to “nanny-nanny-nanny boo boo” or “I know you are but what am I?” replies?
Guess I win :)
So, got the guts to see the video?
Now....that's an alternative history if I ever saw one. The German generals repeatedly tried to kill Hitler but Roosevelt, who was totally committed to the unconditional surrender theory for both Germany and Japan, refused to give them any moral support. He even joked about it when they were horribly executed! FDR held to the theory that they were aristocrats and thus were just as evil as Hitler.
By contrast, there was probably not a single Japanese general or admiral who wanted to overthrow the emperor. Despite this, FDR, Henry Wallace, and his bitter end New Dealer "reformers" applied the same theory for both the emperor and Hitler. Had he lived, FDR, in contrast to Truman, would have insisted that the emperor not only be removed but executed.
Whatever you say. Just don't turn over the checker-board like you did last time!
We are all inherently evil, singling out politicians seems a bit odd .. who votes for the ninnies?
I think the 20,000 were projections of the first day casualties based on our previous amphibious landings.
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