8/9/2012 Nagasaki atomic bomb anniversary remembered

Source: euronews
Date: 8/9/2012 08:44 CET


Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda has joined the annual ceremony to remember the World War II bombing of Nagasaki.
As many as 80,000 people died on the August 9 1945, if not instantly, then from the effects of radiation.
The occasion, 67 years on, must have reminded Noda that the effects of radioactivity have once again threatened the lives of tens of thousands of Japanese.
Last February’s powerful earthquake and Tsunami led to a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant. It was the worst nuclear disaster since Chenobyl.
Tomihisa Taue, the city’s mayor reminded the audience gathered at a peace park close to the Nagasaki bomb’s epicentre that 19,000 nuclear weapons still exist in the world.
“In order for ours to be the last city attacked by this technology, the use of nuclear weapons and their development must be clearly prohibited,” Taue said.
The bomb was code named ‘Fat Man’ and came three days after a similar attack on Hiroshima, which killed up to 140,000 people.
Nagasaki was one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and a strategic target for the allies during World War II.
A roughly 7 square kilometre area of the city was destroyed.
The bombings were ordered by then US president Harry Truman, whose grandson Clifton Truman Daniel attended the ceremony.
Days after the bombing, Japan surrendered.

8/9/2011 66th anniversary of 1945 Nagasaki A-Bomb, lasting human tragedy

Today is the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki by a plutonium atomic bomb produced at Hanford, which was dropped on August 9, 1945. The bomb killed 70,000 people immediately, but over time the death toll reached over 100,000. The official line is that the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki helped end World War II in the Pacific, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers. However, Japan at the time had already lost its navy and air force and were at the mercy of the U.S. even before the atomic bombs were dropped. There are many who believe the Japanese were desperately seeking a way to surrender to the U.S. months prior to the dropping of the A-bombs. Quoting the article "Was the Atomic Bombing of Japan Necessary?" by Robert Freeman:
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After the Japanese fleet was destroyed at Leyte Gulf in October 1944, the U.S. was able to carry out uncontested bombing of Japan’s cities, including the hellish firebombings of Tokyo and Osaka. This is what Henry H. Arnold, Commanding General of the U.S. Army Air Forces, meant when he observed, “The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” Also, without a navy, the resource-poor Japanese had lost the ability to import the food, oil, and industrial supplies needed to carry on a World War.

As a result of the naked futility of their position, the Japanese had approached the Russians, seeking their help in brokering a peace to end the War. The U.S. had long before broken the Japanese codes and knew that these negotiations were under way, knew that the Japanese had for months been trying to find a way to surrender.

Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, reflected this reality when he wrote, “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace.the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.” Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman, said the same thing: “The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

Civilian authorities, especially Truman himself, would later try to revise history by claiming that the bombs were dropped to save the lives of one million American soldiers. But there is simply no factual basis for this in any record of the time. On the contrary, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey reported, “Certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped.” The November 1 date is important because that was the date of the earliest possible planned U.S. invasion of the Japanese main islands.

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To this day there are lasting after-effects of the A-bomb. Have we learned anything from this tragic use of force?

RT News interview with Jacob Hornberger, president of The Future of Freedom Foundation