Hiroshima - slight return

I recently went to the A-bomb museum in Hiroshima and it was a bit of an eye-opener. Now, I don't want to reignite the debates about whether the use of the bomb was militarily/tactically necessary so here's a few other things I discovered that were rather upsetting.

1. After the war, when the Japanese state was in tatters, the US constructed a 'clinic' in Hiroshima - The Atomic Survivors Research Centre. A-bomb survivors visited it hoping for some relief from all of the terrible side effects of the bomb only to discover the centre existed only to examine victims and not treat the. It wasn't until 1953 that any form of medical treatment for A-bomb victims came in to being. That strikes me as being cruel beyond belief...

2. Hiroshima was but one of a number of targets considered by the US and UK. In the weeks leading up to the final decision none of these targets were conventionally bombed so that the allies could better measure the true effects of the A bomb....

3. There was a fierce debate amongst the US military elite about whether the populations of the target cities shoud be a given a warning. None of the cities was ajudged to have had any credible anti-aircraft defences so the decision to bomb without warning was made purely on the basis that it would be more useful to bomb the population too - to see what happened.

4. The surrender treaty offered to the Japanese prior to the bombing was designed to be rejected. It demanded the complete dismantling of the centuries old emperor system. As the emperor was regarded a a living God the treaty effectively demanded that the Japanese stop believing in God. The more cynical amongst you might think that the US were going to use the bomb no matter what the Japanese did or offered.

All of this stuff comes from public, declassified war documents on display in the museum. Btw, the first third of the museum is devoted to Japanese war crimes...

laters

Slater

Posted By: slater, Aug 11, 14:07:22