Hiroshima, Nagasaki to pitch for 2020 Olympics

Yahoo! ^

[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.

[bobby.223]

EVIL!!? that sounds like more bleeding heart liberal blame America crap. I suppose those B-29 conventional bombing runs just dropped M&M’s.. or maybe cigars?? those B-29 firebombing raids didn’t kill anyone did they? were those raids EVIL also? those raids would have continued until there was nothing left of those japs. if the two big ones were not dropped the ENTIRE country would have been obliterated by continued B-29 raids. the jap people would have held out until the very end. (If they fought and died as they did defending countless south pacific Islands, how hard long and determined do you think they would have battled to save their very homeland)? those 2 bombs SAVED the lives of American pilots, American POW’s and also the American lives of those who would have been involved with the ground/sea invasion of japan. never mind that the russians very well could have over run the entire country by the time our conventional bombing ceased.

[tanknetter]

[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]

Messed up my original reply (and thanks to the Admins/Mods for making the correction for me!).

The information above is factual, but incomplete and doesn't tell the real story ... it almost infers that the population dropped so drastically (far in excess of those killed on 8/6/45) because of the bombing.

The full story is that Japan had a militarized industrial economy that was absolutely shattered at the end of the war. Japanese fled all the cities, regardless of how devastated they'd been, because there was no work to be had - even where the factories hadn't been destroyed there was no demand for output. Without work, there was no way to eat.

On top of that, Hiroshima was a military city, being the headquarters for both the Second Army and one of the Japanese regional armies. When the military went away, so did all the jobs supporting it.

Finally, the city ate a Katrina-sized Typhoon in mid-September 1945. A lot of the infrastructure in the city that survived the bombing was wiped out.

[RGSpincich]

Hiroshima/Nagasaki 2020.

Apologizing will become an Olympic event.

[tanknetter]

It didn’t save a single life. An invasion could have been avoided agreed to let the Japanese keep the emperor.

Factually incorrect, as the final set - released in 1995 - of released decrypts (as pointed out here) show. Letting the Japanese "keep the emperor" wasn't the option the Japanese government was willing to live and die on: it was keeping the current governing structure, regime and players:

To wit: Their (Big Six) minimal goal was not confined to guaranteed retention of the Imperial Institution; they also insisted on preservation of the old militaristic order in Japan, the one in which they ruled... They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor.

[Lurkina.n.Learnin]

Thanks
From that wikipedia article

“On Monday, August 6, 1945, at 8:15 AM, the nuclear bomb ‘Little Boy’ was dropped on Hiroshima by an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay,[11] directly killing an estimated 80,000 people. By the end of the year, injury and radiation brought total casualties to 90,000-140,000.[12] Approximately 69% of the city’s buildings were completely destroyed, and about 7% severely damaged.”

Do you agree with these numbers ?

[tanknetter]

Do you agree with these numbers ?

Yup, they look about right. Going with the high-end estimate of 140,000 dead within five months after the bomb, leaves a population of roughly 280,000. To get down to a population of 137,197 means a little more than half the survivors (143,000) decamped for other parts.

[Poe White Trash]

Thanks for the link to the Frank essay. The section on Joseph Grew was especially immuminating.

Frank concludes:

“There are a good many more points that now extend our understanding beyond the debates of 1995... The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood—as one analytical piece in the “Magic” Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts—that “until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies.” This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945.”

[HenpeckedCon]

This reminds me of the most famous last words ever spoke...
“What the Fu(k was that?!?!?”
Mayor of Hiroshima
August 6, 1945