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The Horrors of Hiroshima in Context
Townhall.com ^ | April 21, 2016 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 04/21/2016 4:41:02 AM PDT by Kaslin

The dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remains the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history.

No one knows exactly how many Japanese citizens were killed by the two American bombs. A macabre guess is around 140,000. The atomic attacks finally shocked Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese militarists into surrendering.

John Kerry recently visited Hiroshima. He became the first Secretary of State to do so -- purportedly as a precursor to a planned visit next month by President Obama, who is rumored to be considering an apology to Japan for America's dropping of the bombs 71 years ago.

The horrific bombings are inexplicable without examining the context in which they occurred.

In 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on the unconditional surrender of Axis aggressors. The bomb was originally envisioned as a way to force the Axis leader, Nazi Germany, to cease fighting. But the Third Reich had already collapsed by July 1945 when the bomb was ready for use, leaving Imperial Japan as the sole surviving Axis target.

Japan had just demonstrated with its nihilistic defense of Okinawa -- where more than 12,000 Americans died and more than 50,000 were wounded, along with perhaps 200,000 Japanese military and civilian casualties -- that it could make the Americans pay so high a price for victory that they might negotiate an armistice rather than demand surrender.

(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Japan
KEYWORDS: apologytour; hiroshima; invasionofjapan; johnkerry; nuclearweapons; resident0bama; vdh; victordavishanson; worldwarii
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To: ronnie raygun
Rewriting history: it's what socialists do.


21 posted on 04/21/2016 5:10:15 AM PDT by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: katana

Obama isn’t trying to gather a kumbaya convention here, which would make more sense than what he is really up to — he’s trying to make the USA lick the world’s jackboots.


22 posted on 04/21/2016 5:11:24 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: Travis McGee

Tubman wouldn’t be an unwelcome figure. She obviously wasn’t rooting for Democrats, and the GOP could have a field day explaining just why.


23 posted on 04/21/2016 5:12:23 AM PDT by HiTech RedNeck (Embrace the Lion of Judah and He will roar for you and teach you to roar too. See my page.)
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To: Kaslin

An interesting read is ‘Last Train From Hiroshima’. Tells about the group of people who, having survived the Hiroshima bomb, fled to safety in... Nagasaki, arriving just in time for that bomb to drop. Personal accounts of people who survived both bombs.... Rare birds, indeed.


24 posted on 04/21/2016 5:13:06 AM PDT by ArtDodger
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To: Travis McGee

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Olds


25 posted on 04/21/2016 5:13:29 AM PDT by kanawa (Being an insider in a fight with other insiders does not make you an outsider.)
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To: Diogenesis
@4: "Obama is the evil that has transformed America into its own enemy ... until the undocumented Indonesian is removed."

Obama is the TRAITOROUS evil, fully supported by Traitorcongress.

26 posted on 04/21/2016 5:17:23 AM PDT by Carl Vehse
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To: HiTech RedNeck

I agree completely


27 posted on 04/21/2016 5:20:23 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him. He got them and now we have to pay the consequences)
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To: HiTech RedNeck

This crap is one main reason I want trump!


28 posted on 04/21/2016 5:20:31 AM PDT by napscoordinator (Trump/Hunter, jr for President/Vice President 2016)
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To: ArtDodger

One of my distant relatives, Lt. Durden William Looper, was on board the B24 Liberator Lonesome Lady when it was shot down over Japan. The surviving crewmen were brought into Hiroshima where they were held, together with other captured American airmen, in the local Japanese military police headquarters by chance, less than eight hundred yards from where the Enola Gay’s atom bomb was soon to explode. All the prisoners and their guards were killed, or died soon after.

Here’s a link to a book written about the incident.
http://www.amazon.com/Date-Lonesome-Lady-Hiroshima-Returns/dp/1571686304


29 posted on 04/21/2016 5:23:46 AM PDT by 109ACS (When hiking in bear country, always take along a fat guy.)
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To: 109ACS

That is rotten... to survive a plane crash and then die in a nuclear bomb.


30 posted on 04/21/2016 5:26:10 AM PDT by ArtDodger
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To: 109ACS

Thanks—did not know this.

Free Republic is a fount of knowledge.


31 posted on 04/21/2016 5:27:23 AM PDT by exit82 (Road Runner sez:" Let's Make America Meeping Great Again! Meep! Meep!")
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To: jmacusa

Re:11

Really? Anything?


32 posted on 04/21/2016 5:28:28 AM PDT by Fury
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To: zek157

” ... but more people died firebombing Tokyo”

Beat me to it. Not to mention the 1,000,000 or so civilian and military deaths that would have occurred as a result of a full-scale invasion of the Japanese mainland.


33 posted on 04/21/2016 5:30:59 AM PDT by riverdawg
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To: riverdawg

More like 1,000,000 American dead and wounded, and over 5 million dead Japanese, military and civilian.

No apologies.


34 posted on 04/21/2016 5:33:01 AM PDT by exit82 (Road Runner sez:" Let's Make America Meeping Great Again! Meep! Meep!")
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To: Kaslin

John Kerry inspecting what he hopes Iran will do over Tel Aviv.


35 posted on 04/21/2016 5:34:25 AM PDT by Lx (Do you like it? Do you like it, Scott? I call it, "Mr. & Mrs. Tenorman Chili.")
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To: Jack Hammer

Apologize for Bataan and every other atrocity.


36 posted on 04/21/2016 5:36:56 AM PDT by BobinIL
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To: HiTech RedNeck
Japan had the will to fight by means of brute manpower, but not this kind of technology.

They were working on it and they had others.

They were planning in the fall of 45 to start spreading weaponized plague to the US and Australia.

Considering how transportation was in those days with people flying off to Europe and the Middle East it would have gone global in weeks if not days.

You want horror? Think of war torn Europe being hit by the Black Death on Steroids.

It would have made the 1919 Flu Epidemic look like a cold.

37 posted on 04/21/2016 5:37:43 AM PDT by Harmless Teddy Bear (Proud Infidel, Gun Nut, Religious Fanatic and Freedom Fiend)
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To: Kaslin

Look up Japanese nuclear weapons program sometime.
Japan had a nuke in Feb 1945, months before our nuke.
They just didn’t have enough fissionable material for a device they could actually use on us.


38 posted on 04/21/2016 5:38:23 AM PDT by BuffaloJack (Slavery will continue to exist and thrive as long a Islam continues to exist.)
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To: Eric in the Ozarks

HST thinks he would have, and he thought they would have been right to do so.


39 posted on 04/21/2016 5:40:14 AM PDT by stationkeeper
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To: Kaslin
The dropping of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 remains the only wartime use of nuclear weapons in history.

I'm sure that will change once the Iranians get a nuke. Kerry and obungo are more concerned about apologizing for the US than with preventing psycho-states from getting WMDs.

40 posted on 04/21/2016 5:40:29 AM PDT by Rummyfan (Let us now try liberty.)
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