mjh's blog

Never again!

Sunday Times: DEATH DROP: Never again, say A-bomb survivors [ 07aug05 ]

“I thought I was dying, everyone was burning, and the students who were sitting next to the windows, their faces were melted, their arms and hands were burnt,” said the spritely grandmother who remembers every aspect of the tragic day.

The bright light of the blast, centred 1.7km away above Hiroshima’s Industrial Promotional Hall, brought Mrs Ginbayashi to her feet, “then the building collapsed around me and I fainted”.

Seconds later — though she thought hours had passed because of the darkness caused by the atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud — “I woke up and everybody was screaming”.

As a member of the final generation of atomic-bomb survivors, known in Japan as “hibakusha“, Mrs Ginbayashi is one of a dwindling number who can provide personal accounts of the horror unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki three days later.

CTV.ca | Hiroshima survivor recalls flight from death

Setsuko Thurlow and a few others ran to the countryside. It was a surreal flight. Though it was just before 9 a.m., the girls fled in complete darkness.

“Perhaps it was because of the dust, smoke and particles in the air that blocked the sun,” says Thurlow, who now lives in Toronto. “It was the strangest feeling.”

The girls joined a small stream of people fleeing the city. “The people were burned and blackened. They could hardly see because their eyes were so swollen. They didn’t have the strength to run or scream for help. They just whispered, ‘Help me. Help me.’”

Thurlow remembers stepping over dead bodies as part of the “ghostly procession.”

That night, she and other survivors sat on a hillside looking down on the city that had been their home.

“We watched the entire city burn,” she says.

The bombing on Aug. 6, 1945, in Hiroshima killed an estimated 140,000 people — roughly half the city’s population at the time. On Aug. 9, a second atomic bomb, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki.

Japan surrendered on Aug. 15, ending the Second World War in the Pacific.

To this day, historians debate whether the bombings were necessary, with some saying even more would have died had the war raged on.

Buffalo News – Two bombs, two nations, two views By JOSEPH COLEMAN

The people of Hiroshima that day witnessed the apocalypse: Dropped from a B-29 named Enola Gay, the bomb flashed above the city, then consumed it with power equal to 12,500 tons of TNT. The center of the blast burned at 5,400 degrees Fahrenheit – double what it takes to melt iron.

The blast obliterated the city center, igniting infernos. Survivors suffered agonizing deaths from burns and radiation poisoning; many who appeared unscathed later succumbed to cancer and other ailments. The death toll in Hiroshima was 140,000; in Nagasaki, 80,000. [Nagasaki ... was only bombed after cloud cover made the preferred choice, Kokura, too difficult to hit accurately.]…

Critics – among them many Japanese and also some Americans – believe President Harry S. Truman’s government had other motives: a wish to test out a terrifying weapon, the desire to defeat Japan before the Soviets arrived and the need to strengthen Washington’s hand against Moscow in what would become the Cold War. …

“They could have dropped it on an island or a military base, I don’t know, but they chose an untouched city,” said Hataguchi. “Why did they choose in that way? It’s hard to say it was an experiment, but it wasn’t necessary.” …

A recent joint poll by the Associated Press and Kyodo News agency found widely diverging views: 68 percent of Americans but only 20 percent of Japanese believed nuclear weapons were needed to end the war quickly.

The poll, conducted by Ipsos in the United States and the Public Opinion Research Center in Japan, questioned 1,000 Americans and 1,045 Japanese and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

On both sides of the Pacific, however, older respondents were more likely to believe the bomb was unavoidable, while younger people tended to be more questioning.

The historical debate has focused on several questions: How many would have died in a U.S. land invasion? Might the Japanese have surrendered if offered better terms? Was Tokyo already too exhausted to fight on for long? Should the bomb have been demonstrated over an uninhabited area before it was dropped on a city? …

Adm. William D. Leahy, chief of staff to the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Army and Navy, opposed the bombings and in his memoirs considered them on par with “the ethical standard common to barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

Honest Duhbya

New York Daily News – Home – Bush’s truth decay
Less than 1/2 of nation finds W honest: poll
By KENNETH R. BAZINET
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON – One of President Bush’s most attractive traits has been his reputation for straight talk, but a new poll yesterday found that fewer than half of Americans think he’s honest.

Only 48% of respondents to an AP-Ipsos survey think he’s honest, while 50% do not, the poll indicated. That is a five-point drop from January, when 53% of Americans thought Bush was an honest President.

Moreover, some 56% of Americans think he’s too cocky, up from the 49% in January who said they view Bush’s confidence as arrogance.

A solid majority still see Bush as likable and a strong leader, but Bush’s overall job approval was at 42%, with 55% disapproving.

Ipsos News Center – Polls, Public Opinion, Research & News
President Bush’s Approval Ratings

What Intelligence?

Top News Article | Reuters.com
Leading Republican differs with Bush on evolution
By Jon Hurdle

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) – A leading Republican senator allied with the religious right differed on Thursday with President Bush’s support for teaching an alternative to the theory of evolution known as “intelligent design.”

Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, a possible 2008 presidential contender who faces a tough re-election fight next year in Pennsylvania, said intelligent design, which is backed by many religious conservatives, lacked scientific credibility and should not be taught in science classes.

Bush told reporters from Texas on Monday that “both sides” in the debate over intelligent design and evolution should be taught in schools “so people can understand what the debate is about.”

“I think I would probably tailor that a little more than what the president has suggested,” Santorum, the third-ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate, told National Public Radio. “I’m not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom.”

Evangelical Christians have launched campaigns in at least 18 states to make public schools teach intelligent design alongside Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Proponents of intelligent design argue that nature is so complex that it could not have occurred by random natural selection, as held by Darwin’s 1859 theory of evolution, and so must be the work of an unnamed “intelligent cause.”

If Bush is too extreme for Santorum, gawd help us! mjh