Sixty-six years ago, on August 5 (U.S. time) and August 6 (in Japan), the Nuclear Age began with a tragic bang, with the killing of over 100,000 people in Hiroshima, the vast majority women and children. Decades of a costly nuclear arms race followed. Nuclear power plants sprouted around the globe, as did the harmful effects of radiation on workers and soldiers exposed to bomb tests. Threats to use nuclear weapons (from world leaders or single terrorists) continue to this day, and America's "first-use" policy remains in effects.
At the end of July and early August, U.S. policymakers and President Truman made fateful decisions that meant the use of two atomic bombs against Japanese cities was almost inevitable -- virtually unstoppable. Then film footage and other evidence of the true effects of the bomb were suppressed for decades. We've been living with the nuclear after-effects ever since, from Hiroshima to Fukushima.
Related to publication of my new book and e-book Atomic Cover-up, on that film's suppression, I have been offering a daily record of what transpired leading up the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. (For more, including video of some of the suppressed footage, see my personal blog. Email: epic1934@aol.com)
On this day in 1945:
-- Pilot Paul Tibbets formally named the lead plane in the mission, #82, after his mother, Enola Gay. A B-29 that would take photos on the mission would later be named Necessary Evil.
-- Ten crew members of a U.S. plane shot down by the Japanese yesterday arrived... in Hiroshima. At least 23 Americans POWs were held in Hiroshima, and soon about a dozen would be dead. The news would be kept from the families and the American public for decades.
-- Pentagon summary based on "MAGIC" cables finds several intercepted messages from Sato, Japan's ambassador to Moscow, who conveyed his despair and exasperation over what he saw as Tokyo's inability to develop terms for ending the war: "[I]f the Government and the Military dilly-dally in bringing this resolution to fruition, then all Japan will be reduced to ashes."
-- The Soviets are two days from declaring war on Japan and marching across Manchuria. (See new evidence that it was the Soviet entry into the war, not the atomic bombing, that was the decisive factor in sparking rapid Japanese surrender.)
-- On Tinian, Little Boy is ready to go, awaiting word on weather, with General Curtis LeMay to make the call. At 3:30 p.m., in an air-conditioned bomb assembly hut, the five-ton bomb was loaded (gently) on to a trailer. Crew members scribbled words onto the bomb in crayon, including off-color greetings for the Japanese. Pulled by a tractor, accompanied by a convoy of jeeps and other vehicles, the new weapon arrived at the North Field and lowered into the bomb pit.
-- The bomb was still not armed. The man who would do, before takeoff, according to plan, was xxx Parsons. But he had other ideas, fearing that the extra-heavy B-29 might crash on takeoff and taking with it "half the island." He asked if he could arm the bomb in flight, and spent a few hours -- on a hot and muggy August day -- practicing before getting the okay.
-- PIlot Tibbets tried to nap, without much success. Then, in the assembly hall just before midnight he told the crew, that the new bomb was "very powerful" but he did not mention the words nuclear, atomic or radiation. He called forward a Protestant chaplain who delivered a prayer he'd written for this occasion on the back of an envelope. It asked God to "to be with those who brave the heights of Thy heaven and who carry the battle to our enemies."
-- The Enola Gay would take to the care about 2:30 a.m. on August 6 in the Pacific, but mid-afternoon of August 5 in the U.S.
-- Hiroshima remained the primary target, with Kokura #2 and Nagasaki third. The aiming point was directly over the city, not the industrial quarter, to create a "focusing effect." The city was surrounded by hills on three sides and it was thought that the first blast wave would bounce back on the city, destroying more of it and providing a test of the bomb's prowess.
-- Halfway around the world, on board the ship Augusta steaming home for the USA after the Potsdam meeting, President Truman relaxed. Truman's order to use the bomb had simply stated that it could be used any time after August 1 so he had nothing to do but watch and wait. The order included the directive to use a second bomb, as well, without a built-in pause to gauge the results of the first and the Japanese response -- even though the Japanese were expected, by Truman and others, to push surrender feelers, even without the bomb, with Russia's entry into the war on August 7.
--Shortly after 8 a.m. in Japan, the new weapons exploded almost directly over its target, killing 75,000 within minutes, and dooming another 75,000 to the same fate.
Greg Mitchell's new book (also out as an e-book) is Atomic Cover-Up: Two US Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and The Greatest Movie Never Made. He also co-authored, with Robert Jay Lifton, Hiroshima in America. Email: epic1934@aol.com
Follow Greg Mitchell on Twitter: www.twitter.com/GregMitch
What about the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor without a declaration of war? Was that a war crime?
How about the 40,000 Dutch civilians, mostly women and children, who were intentionally starved to death in the East Indies? War crime?
How about the hundreds of thousands of unarmed Chinese civilians who were murdered? Was that a war crime?
I do not like the fact that nuclear bombs were dropped on Japan, but I don't like the idea that the dropping of those bombs should be thought of as war crimes, either.
One of the criteria for war crimes is intent. You have to intend to kill civilians in all disproportion to legitimate war objectives. It's hard to argue the people who ordered the bombings knew exactly what the effects would be. There was still some question about whether the bombs would go off at all.
What was clear is that they knew some civilians would be killed. But that's not the end of the story either. By August 1945, the Japanese government had largely erased the difference between civilian and military. They were arming the populace, expanding the militias, handing out spears to high school girls, etc. That's appalling partly because it means all those people are now legitimate military targets. Oh, and fighting without a uniform means a court martial and a firing squad when they're caught, not a POW camp. That's the Geneva Convention rules. Also, most Japanese industry had become diffused into neighborhoods rather than concentrated in giant industrial centers as a result of Allied bombing, so they are legitimate military targets with acceptable proportions of civilian casualties too.
bombing of Peral
And why is there no memorial for the victims of Japanese atrocities? No day to honor those who did or did not survive the Bataan De@th March, the R@pe of Nanking, the POW camps.
Japan’s Fukushima Catastrophe Brings Big Radiation Spikes to B.C.
After Japan’s Fukushima catastrophe, Canadian government officials reassured jittery Canadians that the radioactive plume billowing from the destroyed nuclear reactors posed zero health risks in this country. In fact, there was reason to worry. Health Canada detected massive amounts of radioactive material from Fukushima in Canadian air in March and April at monitoring stations across the country. The level of radioactive iodine spiked above the federal maximum allowed limit in the air at four of the five sites where Health Canada monitors levels of specific radioisotopes. On March 18, seven days after an earthquake and tsunami triggered eventual nuclear meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan, the first radioactive material wafted over the Victoria suburb of Sidney on Vancouver Island. For 22 days, a Health Canada monitoring station in Sidney detected iodine-131 levels in the air that were 61 percent above the government’s allowable limit. In Resolute Bay, Nunavut, the levels were 3.5 times the limit. (How do all you Seattlites feel about this?)
Before the bombing the Japanese government was divided between equal civilian and military parties locked in a struggle over surrender, without consensus. The military leaders refused to back down, unwilling to accept defeat and dishonor, even after massive bombing attacks that killed hundred of thousands of civilians, with no effect on them who were ready to fight to the end. Had this deadlock remained the Japanese would have all starved to death because of a blockade or had been bombed into oblivion. Only when the atomic bombs were dropped was the deadlock broken. This act caused the Japanese emperor to end the political deadlock and demand surrender and peace achieved.
Operation Downfall was the overall Allied plan for the invasion of Japan near the end of World War II.
A study done for Secretary of War Henry Stimson's staff estimated that conquering Japan would cost 1.7-4 million American casualties, including 400,000-800,000 fatalities, and five to ten million Japanese fatalities.
Mr. Mitchell's entire post is fashioned to make it look as if America had other realistic options, or cavalierly chose to drop atomic weapons when the blame for starting the war and the way it ended falls entirely on the heads of the Japanese military. Given that American largess helped the Japanese to become a world economic super power after the war, that assumption seems a bit out of place.
I'm no UFO nut, but supposing they did come, investigating nuclear activity would be a believable raison d'être. They may have been repulsed beyond belief.