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Need to verify a claim about Hiroshima bombing

Discussion in 'BBS Hangout: Debate & Discussion' started by Mathloom, Oct 11, 2009.

  1. Mathloom

    Mathloom Contributing Member

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    A colleague mentioned to me that people celebrated in the streets of America when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. So far, I haven't been able to find anything confirming this..

    Can anyone help me find anything confirming or refuting it?

    I've asked on the D&D simply because it didn't fit on the hangout. I don't think it's a useful topic for debate, but maybe for discussion. As in, how did the American public perceive the bombing, etc.. It would be interesting if you know someone who was watching at the time, listening to the radio, etc.

    The main reason why I've asked here is because most of the people on this board are more interested and read-up on these kinds of topics.
     
  2. mateo

    mateo Contributing Member

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    There was dancing in the streets on VJ Day, when the war was declared over. That was 8 days after Hiroshima.

    When we bombed Hiroshima, there was no cable news network to hype it up immediately. In fact, I believe the news broke via Truman's radio conference that afternoon. Considering that we had been firebombing Japan for weeks, and the fact that no one knew what an atomic bomb was, I seriously doubt this was anything more than another radio report of an attack. The details trickled in later.

    Overall, I know that American opinion on the attacks was overwhelmingly positive because the bombings led to the end of the war. However the concept of Americans dancing in the streets after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is pretty ridiculous.

    Your colleague might want to open a book sometime.
     
    1 person likes this.
  3. rimrocker

    rimrocker Contributing Member

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    I believe Mateo is correct.

     
  4. aghast

    aghast Member

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    I liked this NPR piece about changing attitudes about the dropping of the bomb.

    <embed src="http://www.npr.org/v2/?i=4786615&m=4786616&t=audio" height="383" wmode="opaque" width="400" base="http://www.npr.org"></embed>
    As to the first point below, we did firebomb, which is to say almost completely incinerate, vast swaths of Japanese cities and the inhabitants of those cities, using conventional weapons. There isn't really that great a moral distinction between incinerating 100,000 Tokyo civilians in two days of fire-bombing and near-instantaneously incinerating 70,000 Hiroshima civilians. The ethical fallout from both is revolting.

    We did a pretty great job preceding, and during, World War 2 of making the Japanese people into a subhuman other. Here's some quality propaganda from the period, aimed at children (note the high-larious joke about fire-bombing civilians roughly 1:20 in):

    <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pjLfyooJQEc&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pjLfyooJQEc&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

    So, because the atomic bombs were necessarily twinned with the end of the war, one can't necessarily suss out exactly why this sailor and nurse were so particularly easy that day, though certainly with hindsight, along with the elation over the imminence of peace, it leaves a bad taste in one's mouth:

    [​IMG]
     
  5. DaDakota

    DaDakota If you want to know, just ask!

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    Oh come on !

    No one danced in the streets when we bomed Hiroshima, no one even know what the H-bomb was or what happened.

    Sure there was celebration on VE and VJ day.

    I think your friend (Or you) is trying to find justification for other idiots around the world celebrating horrific events.

    And seriously, who is here that recalls events from 64+ years ago?

    DD
     
    #5 DaDakota, Oct 11, 2009
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2009
  6. Mathloom

    Mathloom Contributing Member

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    That's great inf guys, thanks!!

    It seems clear to me that the general public knew little about the bomb and were generally in the dark. I doubt they even saw pictures for a long time..

    I'm going to milk those links for all the info and again, really appreciate the help!
     
  7. Mathloom

    Mathloom Contributing Member

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    That's probably my fault, I didn't mean to make what looks like a "cleverly" disguised thread lol.

    The topic we were discussing was directly related to the people who celebrated 9/11 and subsequent events and it led to this comparison. I hope that's not offensive in some way, I think it's a fairly natural line of thought..

    There's no justification for celebrating human death. It's more of a "why do humans do this" line of thinking than a finger pointing exercise.

    Again, sorry if it came off that way.

    Also, I was hoping maybe parents or grandparents would be good sources of info for this kind of thing. I wasn't expecting a bunch of 75+ year olds to answer obvously..

    Though I could've been easily fooled by your grumpiness lol

    I think as humans we're so easily loaded with emotions if we're fed the right stuff. When you hear about a kid in Africa dying of starvation, it sits in your mind for 1 second. But when you hear about someone dying who you saw even for 5 seconds, you feel like something serious has been lost and it will play in your mind for a while. It's like losing a piece f yourself. It's the human connection. Media has shortened the connection, but probably contains more concentrated and planned distortion than ever. I don't think we could ever celebrate the death of a person, no matter how much we hate them, if we only saw their face once. But when the "enemy" is faceless and soulless, and you are fed the right dosage of hatred, that human connection diminishes, even if it never goes away.

    So we either need to be able to filter better, send better and/or come to the realization that the communication is poor and should be treated as such.

    In case you were wondering about my intention with his thread DD, that's basically what we discussed.
     
  8. Ottomaton

    Ottomaton Contributing Member
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    A good site for understanding the intersection of popular culture and the evolving understanding of atomic weapons in the USA is:

    http://www.conelrad.com/

    It isn't until the early 1960's that the public really has anything beyond a comic book idea of what radiation and fallout could do.

    This is the classic example of the silly thinking that people had 1950's:

    <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-2kdpAGDu8s&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-2kdpAGDu8s&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

    There was a movie released in 1959 called On the Beach, which was based on a book by the same name. It was more or less the first widespread understanding that enough fallout could end life on the planet. IIRC, even then the more millitant types wrote it off as "pinko propaganda" or something like that.

    <object width='320' height='255'><param name='movie' value='http://i.cdn.turner.com/tegwebapps/tcm/tcm-www/static/flash/popup_player.swf' /><param name='FlashVars' value='id=191963' /><embed src='http://i.cdn.turner.com/tegwebapps/tcm/tcm-www/static/flash/popup_player.swf' FlashVars='id=191963' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' width='320' height='255'></embed></object>
     
    #8 Ottomaton, Oct 11, 2009
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2009
  9. DaDakota

    DaDakota If you want to know, just ask!

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    Well use your noodle then......

    No one had real time information back in the 40s....people were all in the dark, they got very little information just what the government wanted them to hear....for the bond raising, and propaganda.

    No one even knew what an H-bomb was, I mean project Manhattan was very secretive.

    And the idiots/morons/losers that were dancing in the streets after 9-11 should be ashamed......

    No human being worth their salt, should celebrate a tragedy against mankind, that is sick.

    I don't care how envious, or how much you hate a government, people around the world are the same......everywhere, and one human life has value...to us all.

    DD
     
  10. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    Couldn't agree more, DD, except to say it was an atomic bomb, not a hydrogen one, which came out (I think) in the early '50's. Almost no one knew what an atomic weapon was. It was considered in the realm of science fiction, if it was considered at all. Also, put me among those wondering why, at this point in time, this is of interest as a topic. We killed and maimed far more Japanese via firebombing than we did with either atomic bomb. As for WWII government propaganda, that's been discussed here before. It should come as no surprise that the Japanese were portrayed in a negative and cartoonish way after December 7, 1941.
     
  11. Air Langhi

    Air Langhi Contributing Member

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    I think people who were dancing in the street probably only get their info from propaganda. They aren't so much different than those american's back in the 40's.

    American's back then were pretty racist and did some pretty terrible things to their own people.
     
  12. rocketsjudoka

    rocketsjudoka Contributing Member
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    I found this part from the quotes that Rimrocker had posted very interesting.
    [rquoter] "Americans are famous for a certain naive self-righteousness, even arrogance. We like to see ourselves as possessed of special, unique virtue. Ours is a great nation."92 If America was truly the "chosen" people of God and the purveyors of goodness and righteousness, then how could we have committed such a horrid act against our fellow humans beings? The question was too much for the average American to answer, so a process of inversion and apathy began to emerge.
    [/rquoter]

    This attitude still seems present in the US and even with the access of news coverage that we have for the most part we are apathetic towards the suffering caused by the US in recent wars. Shock and Awe bombing of Baghdad was shown in an almost celebretory manner in 2003 while we freely accept euphemisms like "collateral damage" for those civillians killed. At the same time those who bring up the suffering of civillians have often been derided as being un-American.
     
  13. Deckard

    Deckard Blade Runner
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    I disagree about the comparison of Americans in the '40's and those in the few corners of the world gleeful about 9/11. The culture then was far different than the cultures of those celebrating 9/11. I started to preface that with "in my opinion, " then decided that was rediculous. It's not just opinion, but fact. What I partially agree with you about is "American's back then were pretty racist and did some pretty terrible things to their own people." Yes, many, many Americans were racist back then, many out of plain ignorance, and what was taught in many public schools about race was largely excrement. Also, it is a fact of history that a huge injustice was done to those Americans that happened to be of Japanese descent during the war.

    However, you don't want to be too broad with the statement. There were many Americans who weren't racist at all. My father was an adult back then, a man who saw combat against the Japanese in the Pacific during the war, and he was far from being racist. In fact, he helped end discrimination at the university where he ended up as a department chair (thanks to the GI Bill, the first from that side of my family known to get a degree), and he was a native Texan. So while in general I wouldn't find a lot to disagree with, you don't want to paint with too broad a brush.
     
  14. aghast

    aghast Member

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    The next day's Times:

    [​IMG]

    This was Truman's announcement, released on "Day One" hours after Little Boy. It ran in the next day's papers, accompanying Truman's radio address on the night of.

    It certainly has a, "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds," air to it:

    PBS American Experience
    Here's a sample leaflet dropped on the Japanese after Hiroshima, taken from the relevant Truman library section:

    [​IMG]
    And then, on the 9th, Nagasaki, which by any stretch of morality is far, far less defensible than Hiroshima. As pointed out, August 6 and atomic warfare changed everything, and we gave the Japanese three days to consider this new landscape before hitting them again? Just three days?

    Oddly enough, I've read that an '80s television movie about nuclear fallout, The Day After, had a profound effect on Reagan's attitude toward nuclear warfare, helping to lead to the INF treaty. Probably an oversimplification, but an interesting take.

    Don't remember the original source, but here's Wikipedia's version:
     
  15. DaDakota

    DaDakota If you want to know, just ask!

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    I am not going to argue the use of the bomb......different eras.....

    The US did give the Japanese warning, they dropped the bomb, asked them to surrender again, didn't get a response and they dropped the 2nd.

    War is brutal, you have to get brutal to win it.......I hate it.....think it is awful, but if you are going to war, you have to be willing to whipe out the enemy and their culture completely......

    This thread was made as a complete hogwash bit to try to somehow show the MORONS who danced after 9-11 that the US did it too......which is not apples to apples....at all.....different eras, different info....different everything.

    Mathloom is being intellectually bankrupt and he knows it.....

    DD
     
  16. Kojirou

    Kojirou Member

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    I have a particular loathing for Hiroshima threads, given that my mother is the complete picture of the unrepentant Japanese, but here goes.

    Just reading that, one would naturally think that the A-Bomb is just a really, really big bomb no different from the huge amounts of smaller bombs that we dropped on the Japs to begin with.

    Three days should have been enough time for the thugs who ran Japan to get their heads out of their asses, but they didn't. Hence the second one. And how long were we supposed to wait for the second one if not three days?

    As for a few arguments about the bomb:
    Frankly, the bombings saved lives purely through stopping the invasion, but there's another way in which it created a better world, and that is quite simply that the bombs prevented Japan, and hence South Korea, from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union. If Japan hadn't surrendered when it did, then the Communists would have invaded, and Japan would have at best been split into a North and South Japan, and at worst fallen completely under Russian hands, which would have been very, very bad for Japan as both races absolutely hate each other even now. Furthermore, there would have been no way that South Korea could have been saved if Japan hadn't surrendered when it did, which would mean all of Korea under that thug Kim Jong-Il today, a not very nice prospect.
    Furthermore, by using the bomb and showing what terrible devices they were, it could be argued that bombing those two cities even saved the world by showing just what can truly be done by nuclear weapons, thus reducing the willingness of politicians to use them.

    Just some food for thought. Note that I don't necessarily believe the above, though I think that debating the morality of nuclear weapons vs. firebombing and so on is pretty r****ded and a sign of the fact that America is way too obsessed with being on the moral side in international affairs, which is ultimately our greatest weakness if we wish to stay on top.
     
  17. Honey Bear

    Honey Bear Contributing Member

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    Easy to say when the country doing the bombing has no culture of their own. Perhaps that's why, as Kojirou mentioned, America is so keen on emphasizing how morally conscious they are... since we all know they are driven by corporate interests.

    Your attempt at using your noodle, once again, has been incinerated by an atomic bomb of factual evidence.

    I think you depict the picture of a self loathing Japanese boy, desperate to find an identity outside of his ethnic roots. Reading that paper makes it very clear that people understood how powerful the bomb was.

    "Steel Tower 'Vaporised' in trial of mighty bomb"

    "20'000 tons of TNT"
     
  18. Nook

    Nook Member

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    To be fair, this is an attitude in most powerful nations. Look at the USSR, Nazi Germany and even G.B. when they were a world power.

    Also the situation with Japan was unique in some ways. Dropping the bomb was widely believed to the american soldiers lives and end the war....
     
  19. Nook

    Nook Member

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    Not again... once again, I will point out that the United States is less than 250 years old. America has developed a great deal of culture in a short period time.
     
  20. Kojirou

    Kojirou Member

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    ....wow. Just wow. So when other Japanese people my age and myself understand that we did horrible, horrible things 70 years ago, probably merited the bomb, and argue with the older generation who want to pretend that Nanking never happened and the Chinese were grateful for what happened back then, then we're self-loathing people who want to find a new identity. That's just :rolleyes: .

    And I would point out that while Americans knew the A-Bomb was a strong bomb, they did not think of it as the end-all be-all of weaponry - for quite some time after World War II, there were military experts who argued that atomic weaponry would not significantly change warfare and could not change the face of war by themselves.
     

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