{"id":40,"date":"2008-08-09T20:04:09","date_gmt":"2008-08-10T01:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/2008\/08\/09\/in-response-the-lies-about-hiroshima-by-cameron-reilly\/"},"modified":"2008-08-09T20:11:13","modified_gmt":"2008-08-10T01:11:13","slug":"response-to-the-lies-about-hiroshima-by-cameron-reilly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/2008\/08\/09\/response-to-the-lies-about-hiroshima-by-cameron-reilly\/","title":{"rendered":"Response to &#8216;The Lies About Hiroshima&#8217; by Cameron Reilly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the <a href=\"http:\/\/gdayworld.thepodcastnetwork.com\/2008\/08\/08\/the-lies-about-hiroshima\/\">TPN blog<\/a>, Cameron talks a bit about the wholesale acceptance of the &#8216;it preserved lives&#8217; justification for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He doesn&#8217;t accept it at all, and quotes from an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.informationclearinghouse.info\/article20444.htm\">article by John Pilger<\/a> questioning this justification.<\/p>\n<p>I read three main points in what he says and cites:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>evidence of a desire for &#8216;demonstrating the weapon&#8217;<\/li>\n<li>evidence suggesting Japan was willing to surrender <b>before<\/b> the bomb was dropped<\/li>\n<li>that if Japan was unwilling surrender unconditionally, she could have been coerced into doing so through conventional means short of a land invasion (such as strategic bombing).\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s sufficient evidence to determine that the US purposefully refrained from accepting a Japanese surrender in order to test their weapon. That said, the evidence does seem to suggest this as a possibility worth considering.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, here&#8217;s what I said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I think you&#8217;re right that there was a desire to demonstrate the new weapon to the world in the decision to drop it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.\n<\/p>\n<p>But, I&#8217;m also pretty convinced that there wasn&#8217;t another way out that would have resulted in less loss of life, <i>assuming the Japaneses weren&#8217;t willing to sue for peace<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t attach any special moral value to the use of a nuclear weapon as opposed to, say, massive loss of life due to strategic bombing or a land invasion. Consequently, it doesn&#8217;t seem logical to suffer or cause more deaths than those caused by the bomb in order to avoid it&#8217;s use*. I&#8217;m not a military expert, but given the casualties caused by strategic bombing and the experience of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, I think both would have resulted in more deaths. I&#8217;m not sure you&#8217;re arguing that these would have been <i>better<\/i> choices, though.<\/p>\n<p>I also don&#8217;t see it as particularly useful to dwell on the fact that American generals held such gung ho attitudes towards the war &#8211; it&#8217;s awful, but I&#8217;m not convinced any other winning side would be more gracious.<\/p>\n<p>To me, the really interesting part of this is the possibility of Japanese surrender, and the suggestion that these overtures were simply not followed. This is a pretty strange attitude for the American government to have taken, particularly given the losses taken at Okinawa and Iwo Jima &#8211; conducting those campaigns in the face of a Japanese desire to surrender (and, given the losses taken on both sides) would be truly twisted.<\/p>\n<p>Have you seen any more evidence of this desire? It would be really interesting to see primary source material for this &#8211; particularly on the idea that America was treating the late Pacific campaign as preparation for an eventual confrontation with Russia.<\/p>\n<p>One <a href=\"http:\/\/longstreet.typepad.com\/thesciencebookstore\/2008\/08\/deciding-to-use.html\">telling piece of evidence<\/a> to attitudes at the time was recently mentioned on BoingBoing &#8211; a survey of scientists at a US national lab in Chicago taken four days before trinity. The plurality of votes was for &#8216;a military demonstration in Japan followed by a renewed opportunity for surrender&#8217;, suggesting that no such opportunity would exist during the lead up. Even more interestingly, the second most voted option was for a non-military demonstration in front of Japanese delegates &#8211; meaning that those who voted for the military demonstration were actively deciding that people needed to die for the &#8216;demonstration&#8217; to be compelling. Chilling..<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, interesting and provocative post, as always..<\/p>\n<p>* Of course, to honestly play ethical calculus with this, you have to take into account the long term effects of the bomb on the environment and the surviving populace; effects that simply weren&#8217;t understood at that time. The risk of these long term effects can&#8217;t then have been considered, and it&#8217;s pretty reasonable to be appalled by this.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the TPN blog, Cameron talks a bit about the wholesale acceptance of the &#8216;it preserved lives&#8217; justification for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He doesn&#8217;t accept it at all, and quotes from an article by John Pilger questioning this justification. I read three main points in what he says and cites: evidence\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/2008\/08\/09\/response-to-the-lies-about-hiroshima-by-cameron-reilly\/\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[84,6,83],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","tag-nuclear","tag-weapons","tag-ww2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meme-hazard.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}