Hiroshima marks 75 years since atomic bombing in scaled-back ceremony

[webfact]

Hiroshima marks 75 years since atomic bombing in scaled-back ceremony

By Elaine Lies

 

The Atomic Bomb Dome is seen in front of the venue holding a ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, western Japan, August 6, 2020, on the 75th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city. Mandatory credit Kyodo/via REUTERS

 

TOKYO (Reuters) - Bells tolled in Hiroshima on Thursday for the 75th anniversary of the world's first atomic bombing, with ceremonies downsized due to the coronavirus and the city's mayor urging nations to reject selfish nationalism and unite to fight all threats.

 

Though thousands usually pack the Peace Park in the centre of the Japanese city to pray, sing and offer paper cranes as a symbol of peace, entrance was sharply limited and only survivors and their families could attend the memorial ceremony.

 

The city said the significance of the anniversary of the bombing that killed 140,000 people before the end of 1945 had prompted its decision to hold the ceremony despite the spread of the virus, but taking strict precautions.

 

"On August 6, 1945, a single atomic bomb destroyed our city. Rumor at the time had it that 'Nothing will grow here for 75 years,'" said mayor Kazumi Matsui.

 

"And yet, Hiroshima recovered, becoming a symbol of peace."

 

At 8:15 a.m. on Aug 6, 1945, U.S. B-29 warplane Enola Gay dropped a bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" and obliterated the city with an estimated population of 350,000, where thousands more died later from injuries and radiation-related illnesses.

 

On Thursday, as cicadas shrilled in the heavy summer heat and the Peace Bell sounded, the crowd stood to observe a moment of silence at the exact time the bomb exploded.

 

"When the 1918 flu pandemic attacked a century ago, it took tens of millions of lives and terrorised the world because nations fighting World War I were unable to meet the threat together," Matsui added.

 

"A subsequent upsurge in nationalism led to World War Two and the atomic bombings. We must never allow this painful past to repeat itself. Civil society must reject self-centered nationalism and unite against all threats."

 

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe attended as usual, but the number of foreign visitors was down. Overall attendance was scaled back to less than a tenth of the usual figure, with chairs spaced far apart and most people wearing masks.

 

Matsui urged Japan to ratify a 2017 United Nations pact banning nuclear arms, but Abe avoided any direct reference, saying Japan would "work as a bridge between nations" to abolish nuclear weapons.

 

Keiko Ogura, who was eight when the bomb blast knocked her off her feet, has dedicated her life to working for peace.

 

"The nuclear danger is spreading around the world, and under that mushroom cloud, no one can escape," she told a recent news conference.

 

The anniversary was a top trending topic on Japanese Twitter as most users offered prayers for world peace, although one drew a parallel with this week's huge blast that killed at least 135 in Beirut, the Lebanese capital.

 

"I really hadn't been able to imagine it before, but looking at the damage from the Beirut explosion and imagining something several times more powerful, I was struck with a huge sense of fear," wrote the commenter, identified as "Sato-san."

 

The bombing of Hiroshima was followed by the bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, instantly killing more than 75,000 people. Japan surrendered six days later, ending World War Two.

 

(Reporting by Elaine Lies; Additional reporting by Linda Sieg; Editing by Michael Perry and Clarence Fernandez)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2020-08-06

 

- Whatever you're going through, the Samaritans are here for you

- Follow Thaivisa on LINE for breaking COVID-19 updates

[DoctorG]

I just saw the story of the British Lancasters that were ready to do the deed if the Enola Gay was not readied in time. Very interesting. I did not know this beforehand.

[phantomfiddler]

Watched it on the news, and the ticker tape said "America has never apologized for the attack" !!! And neither should they ! The Japanese committed so many atrocities around Asia during this period, but above all ..... THEY STARTED IT !  Anyone or any country that starts violent confrontation for no good reason deserves everything and anything they get in retribution ???? 

[oldhippy]

23 minutes ago, phantomfiddler said:

Watched it on the news, and the ticker tape said "America has never apologized for the attack" !!! And neither should they ! The Japanese committed so many atrocities around Asia during this period, but above all ..... THEY STARTED IT !  Anyone or any country that starts violent confrontation for no good reason deserves everything and anything they get in retribution ???? 

You are very wrong: "the" Japanese did NOT START IT.

It was started - like all wars - by the emperor, the army, and other hiso nationalists.

And were the bombs aimed at them? NO, they were aimed at the loso.

A horrible war crime - not committed by the American loso, but by the American hiso.

I hope I cleared this up for you.

Feel free to apologize to humanity.

 

[Dazinoz]

Recently learnt my uncle was a POW and worked on the Thai Burma railway. After it was finished he was sent to a POW camp in Hiroshima and was there when the bomb went off. The camp was 89km direct line of sight from ground zero but the flash and shock were felt in the camp as written by a POW at the time.

[4MyEgo]

No need for atomic bombs these days, we have viruses that mysteriously pop up their ugly selves every decade or so. 

 

Edited August 6, 2020 by 4MyEgo

[3NUMBAS]

reason was they were all feared as kamikazi flyers so had to be dealt with ruthlessly.. just would not surrender

[oldhippy]

52 minutes ago, 3NUMBAS said:

reason was they were all feared as kamikazi flyers so had to be dealt with ruthlessly.. just would not surrender

Yep, every single Japanese inhabitant of Hiroshima and Nagasaki owned  his own jet to play kamikaze with.

How many fighter jets were destroyed by those 2 bombs?

How many emperors and generals died?

 

 

 

[puipuitom]

Not the Uranium bomb on Hiroshima nor the Plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, but the Soviet invasion of Manchuria ( Japanese territory in the north of China) on 9 Aug 1945 was the real reason to end WW2 for the Japanese. But this the USA could not know. They were terrified after the experience of Okinawa, Iwo Jima seen the self-sacrificing of the Japanese military as civils, with worse to come if the US would invade mainland Japan.

Second: Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night, an attack with a biological weapons developed by Shirō Ishii in September 1945 on Southern California

3: the Japanese were bound to kill all “Whites”, POW as well as civilians including women and children, starting from 17-19 August. As they did on Palawan and before by hundreds of thousands in China, especially Nanking.

See also https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4913066/japanese-troops-killing-british-sikh-pow-target-ww2-pictures/

Truman had no time to take any risk.

[oldhippy]

8 minutes ago, puipuitom said:

Not the Uranium bomb on Hiroshima nor the Plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, but the Soviet invasion of Manchuria ( Japanese territory in the north of China) on 9 Aug 1945 was the real reason to end WW2 for the Japanese. But this the USA could not know. They were terrified after the experience of Okinawa, Iwo Jima seen the self-sacrificing of the Japanese military as civils, with worse to come if the US would invade mainland Japan.

Second: Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night, an attack with a biological weapons developed by Shirō Ishii in September 1945 on Southern California

3: the Japanese were bound to kill all “Whites”, POW as well as civilians including women and children, starting from 17-19 August. As they did on Palawan and before by hundreds of thousands in China, especially Nanking.

See also https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4913066/japanese-troops-killing-british-sikh-pow-target-ww2-pictures/

Truman had no time to take any risk.

You are probably right on all those points.

 

But:

QUOTE: Truman had no time to take any risk.

 

Why not bombing a palace or military targets?

So it was a horrible war crime after all.

 

 

[puipuitom]

30 minutes ago, oldhippy said:

Yep, every single Japanese inhabitant of Hiroshima and Nagasaki owned  his own jet to play kamikaze with.

How many fighter jets were destroyed by those 2 bombs?

How many emperors and generals died?

It is NEVER the general, president, emperor of king, who does the killing, but the soldier. Same it is the civilian, who makes the arms, the ammunition, the explosives and all supporting material. All follow orders, maybe in the fear to be killed himself when they do not follow these orders.

Only at the end the Russian soldiers shot several of their their officers, the civilians went in strike. Same in Germany in Sept-Oct 1918 at several places, like Kiel ( the navy)

[johng]

5 hours ago, DoctorG said:

I just saw the story of the British Lancasters that were ready to do the deed if the Enola Gay was not readied in time. Very interesting. I did not know this beforehand.

I watched a documentary   "Trinity and Beyond"

amazing how many "A bombs" the Americans detonated on their own soil !

 

[puipuitom]

2 minutes ago, oldhippy said:

You are probably right on all those points.

 

But:

QUOTE: Truman had no time to take any risk.

 

Why not bombing a palace or military targets?

So it was a horrible war crime after all.

The plan was to bomb Kyoto, the old Japanese city, but opposed by many: "you also do not destroy Rome". Tokyo was just out of range of the B29.

Hiroshima was NOT a flower-power city with only artists, but "an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage  and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged".

At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of industrial and military significance. A number of military units were located nearby, the most important of which was the headquarters of Field Marshal Shunroku Hata's Second General Army, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan,^[112] and was located in Hiroshima Castle. Hata's command consisted of some 400,000 men

Hiroshima was a supply and logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a communications center, a key port for shipping, and an assembly area for troops. It was a beehive of war industry, manufacturing parts for planes and boats, for bombs, rifles, and handguns.

 see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki 

 

Learn your history, or big chance you will make the same mistakes again.

 

The Target Committee nominated five targets: Kokura (now Kitakyushu), the site of one of Japan's largest munitions plants; Hiroshima, an embarkation port and industrial center that was the site of a major military headquarters; Yokohama, an urban center for aircraft manufacture, machine tools, docks, electrical equipment and oil refineries; Niigata, a port with industrial facilities including steel and aluminum plants and an oil refinery; and Kyoto, a major industrial center. The target selection was subject to the following criteria:

• The target was larger than 3 mi (4.8 km) in diameter and was an important target in a large city.
• The blast would create effective damage.
• The target was unlikely to be attacked by August 1945.

[puipuitom]

Just now, johng said:

I watched a documentary   "Trinity and Beyond"

amazing how many "A bombs" the Americans detonated on their own soil !

 

Then nobody knew anything about radioactive fallout.

[oldhippy]

23 minutes ago, puipuitom said:

The plan was to bomb Kyoto, the old Japanese city, but opposed by many: "you also do not destroy Rome". Tokyo was just out of range of the B29.

Hiroshima was NOT a flower-power city with only artists, but "an important army depot and port of embarkation in the middle of an urban industrial area. There are adjacent hills which are likely to produce a focusing effect which would considerably increase the blast damage  and it is such a size that a large part of the city could be extensively damaged".

At the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of industrial and military significance. A number of military units were located nearby, the most important of which was the headquarters of Field Marshal Shunroku Hata's Second General Army, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan,^[112] and was located in Hiroshima Castle. Hata's command consisted of some 400,000 men

Hiroshima was a supply and logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a communications center, a key port for shipping, and an assembly area for troops. It was a beehive of war industry, manufacturing parts for planes and boats, for bombs, rifles, and handguns.

 see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki 

 

Learn your history, or big chance you will make the same mistakes again.

 

The Target Committee nominated five targets: Kokura (now Kitakyushu), the site of one of Japan's largest munitions plants; Hiroshima, an embarkation port and industrial center that was the site of a major military headquarters; Yokohama, an urban center for aircraft manufacture, machine tools, docks, electrical equipment and oil refineries; Niigata, a port with industrial facilities including steel and aluminum plants and an oil refinery; and Kyoto, a major industrial center. The target selection was subject to the following criteria:

• The target was larger than 3 mi (4.8 km) in diameter and was an important target in a large city.
• The blast would create effective damage.
• The target was unlikely to be attacked by August 1945.

And there I was thinking that the expression "collateral damage" was invented during the Iraq oil war...

[Tug]

I agree with puipuitom the main reason the Japanese finally surrendered was the russan steamroller running them out of Korea with the atomic bomb a big factor as well that beeing said with the hindsight of time and history I wish they could have (demonstrated) the bomb in a more humane way.The inescapable horrific truth imo is it probably saved a lot of Japanese lives by avoiding the invasion,not to mention the American lives as well let’s all work towards never letting something like that happen again

Edited August 6, 2020 by Tug

[oldhippy]

13 minutes ago, Tug said:

I agree with puipuitom the main reason the Japanese finally surrendered was the russan steamroller running them out of Korea with the atomic bomb a big factor as well that beeing said with the hindsight of time and history I wish they could have (demonstrated) the bomb in a more humane way.The inescapable horrific truth imo is it probably saved a lot of Japanese lives by avoiding the invasion,not to mention the American lives as well let’s all work towards never letting something like that happen again

QUOTE: I wish they could have (demonstrated) the bomb in a more humane way.

 

I agree 100 percent.

But that would be too much to ask from warcrazed military, politicians and nationalists - and no hindsight needed, just foresight.

[IAMHERE]

Truman didn't 'OK' the dropping of the bomb, he didn't give the order to do so. The orders to use the bomb were written and signed before he became president and nobody thought to tell him, or he wanted reasonable deniability if things went wrong. It is not as if Truman said "OK guys, go drop that bomb.".

[puipuitom]

1 hour ago, oldhippy said:

And there I was thinking that the expression "collateral damage" was invented during the Iraq oil war...

In 1945 the Allied bombed the old city of Dresden, with nearly no military present.

 

Bye-the-way: "oil war": just ccompare the costs of that war for the Americans with the total value of all oil in Iraq: better the yanks would have stayed at home if it was only for the oil. That's also why the Yanks went home so soon again. 

https://quillette.com/2019/05/06/the-iraq-war-was-not-about-oil/ 

Edited August 6, 2020 by puipuitom

[puipuitom]

36 minutes ago, oldhippy said:

QUOTE: I wish they could have (demonstrated) the bomb in a more humane way.

 

I agree 100 percent.

But that would be too much to ask from warcrazed military, politicians and nationalists - and no hindsight needed, just foresight.

How ? By inviting a few hundred politicians and military to a test site in the US, spoiling weeks or months, with who knows what would have happened during that time ? Biological Japanese bombs on LA, San Fransisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver ? A million dead "whites" in Japanese prison camps ? ? Sovjet army in Shanghai and Busan ? ? Would YOU as US president defended that choice? 

[puipuitom]

38 minutes ago, IAMHERE said:

Truman didn't 'OK' the dropping of the bomb, he didn't give the order to do so. The orders to use the bomb were written and signed before he became president and nobody thought to tell him, or he wanted reasonable deniability if things went wrong. It is not as if Truman said "OK guys, go drop that bomb.".

Just read some publications on Internet 

 

https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm

[IAMHERE]

6 minutes ago, puipuitom said:

Just read some publications on Internet 

 

https://www.nps.gov/articles/trumanatomicbomb.htm

Yes, me too. 

"No known written record exists in which Harry Truman explicitly ordered the use of atomic weapons against Japan. The closest thing to such a document is this handwritten order, addressed to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, in which Truman authorized the release of a public statement about the use of the bomb."

[rabas]

1 hour ago, oldhippy said:

QUOTE: I wish they could have (demonstrated) the bomb in a more humane way.

 

I agree 100 percent.

But that would be too much to ask from warcrazed military, politicians and nationalists - and no hindsight needed, just foresight.

You may make up whatever history you like but in fact they considered dropping a demonstration bomb in Tokyo bay as a more human approach. It was decided that such a demonstration would do little convince them to surrender and they only had 2 bombs. Wasting one could lead the Japanese to realize there were no more bombs and they would never surrender leading to even more death and destruction.

 

The fact that Japan did not surrender after Hiroshima validates that argument.

 

[trucking]

The dropping of the bombs ultimately saved more lives than were lost by dropping them , both Japanese and allied.

 

Anyone who cannot see the obvious truth of this is a fool.

[Logosone]

10 minutes ago, trucking said:

The dropping of the bombs ultimately saved more lives than were lost by dropping them , both Japanese and allied.

 

Anyone who cannot see the obvious truth of this is a fool.

Total lie, anyone who claims that should read some history.

 

The Japanese were already suing for peace.

 

The dropping of the atomic bomb which burned alive women and children was a horrible war crime.

 

Despicable.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Logosone

[Orton Rd]

2 hours ago, Tug said:

I agree with puipuitom the main reason the Japanese finally surrendered was the russan steamroller running them out of Korea with the atomic bomb a big factor as well that beeing said with the hindsight of time and history I wish they could have (demonstrated) the bomb in a more humane way.The inescapable horrific truth imo is it probably saved a lot of Japanese lives by avoiding the invasion,not to mention the American lives as well let’s all work towards never letting something like that happen again

Demonstrating would not have worked, they still did not surrender after the first one was dropped. They let off the Japanese too lightly, the Emperor should have been shot. Look at NHK quite often they never ever cover Japanese war history except for a very narrow view and no responsibility is ever mentioned.

[stevenl]

8 minutes ago, trucking said:

The dropping of the bombs ultimately saved more lives than were lost by dropping them , both Japanese and allied.

 

Anyone who cannot see the obvious truth of this is a fool.

 

4 minutes ago, Logosone said:

Total lie, anyone who claims that should read some history.

 

The Japanese were already suing peace.

 

The dropping of the atomic bomb which burned alive women and children was a horrible war crime.

 

Despicable.

Far from a total lie, but a between historians hotly debated issue. See e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

[puipuitom]

40 minutes ago, rabas said:

You may make up whatever history you like but in fact they considered dropping a demonstration bomb in Tokyo bay as a more human approach. It was decided that such a demonstration would do little convince them to surrender and they only had 2 bombs. Wasting one could lead the Japanese to realize there were no more bombs and they would never surrender leading to even more death and destruction.

 

The fact that Japan did not surrender after Hiroshima validates that argument.

 

Think also about the fire-storm as result of bombing of Tokyo. Neally the entire city was devastated, in front of all decission makers in Japan, but with result: zero.

 

 

[Scott]

Post and replies violating Fair Use Policy have been removed. 

 

[puipuitom]

41 minutes ago, Logosone said:

Total lie, anyone who claims that should read some history.

 

The Japanese were already suing for peace.

 

The dropping of the atomic bomb which burned alive women and children was a horrible war crime.

 

Despicable.

So... 2 atom bombs, the Soviet storm over Mansuria ( continued till the signing of the surrender in the Bay of Tokio, so NOT after 15 Aug) and still 6 days to evaluation, thinking, discussing.. when "already suing for peace"? Yes.. peace on Japanese conditions...