# The Bombing of Hiroshima, 65 Years On



## Pong (Aug 5, 2010)

August 6th, 1945. The B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay", flying alone over the Japanese Mainland, drops one bomb over the city of Hiroshima. On 8:15A.M, the bomb known as 'Little Boy' detonates and obliterates much of the city.







It is quite amazing that there have been no nuclear weapons used in War since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and hopefully there won't be any nuclear weapons used at all in the future.


----------



## parsifal (Aug 6, 2010)

There is scarcsly a more divisive issue than the dropping of the bomb. My view.....a necessary evil that in the end saved thousands, if not mllions of lives from death and starvation. The people who benefitted most out of the event were the Japanese themselves


----------



## seesul (Aug 6, 2010)

Ditto.
And from my point of view, shouldn´t the A-bombs have been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they would have been dropped later, probably during cold war.


----------



## Maestro (Aug 6, 2010)

Agreed.


----------



## Shinpachi (Aug 6, 2010)

No more.


----------



## seesul (Aug 6, 2010)

Aboslutely. WW3 would mean the end of this world. That´s why Nagasaki and Hiroshima have such a big meaning today an ever.


----------



## syscom3 (Aug 6, 2010)

I have an hour-by-hour account of the mission on my "this day on the Pacific" thread.


----------



## DerAdlerIstGelandet (Aug 6, 2010)

I look it in a very similar viewpoint with that of parsifal. I hope it never happens again though...


----------



## vikingBerserker (Aug 6, 2010)

A-Fricken-Men


----------



## Gnomey (Aug 6, 2010)

Agree with all that has been said. May we never see it repeated in anger.


----------



## ToughOmbre (Aug 6, 2010)

The atomic raids ended the war and saved countless lives! 

I've probably stated this before on another thread, but many of us who had fathers fighting in WW II, might not be forum memebers today (by that I mean alive!) if it were not for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

TO


----------



## RabidAlien (Aug 6, 2010)

Hiroshima memorial visit: unspoken apology or commitment to disarmament? - CSMonitor.com

While I'm all for scaling down on nuclear armaments (not naive enough to think we can all get huggy-feely and dispense with them altogether), what really gets me from this article is that they want us (the U.S.) to _apologize _for dropping the bomb? For ending a war that they (Japan) started??? WTF?


----------



## Shinpachi (Aug 7, 2010)

The US's choice was absolutely correct at the time.
No atomic bombs, no ending the war so soon.
If the Japanese had it first, they would also absolutely have used it on the allies with no hesitation.

What the victims and their families in Hiroshima and Nagasaki want the US and the world to know is, I guess, that their physical and spiritual agony which has been brought by the radioactivity still continues and will continue for more several decades till all of them die.

The number of victims by the bombing of Tokyo on March 10, 1945 was also enormous but the survivors had no chance to suffer such agonies fortunately.

Killing or hurting people by guns or swords manually on the ground is visible and it is easy for both an assailant and a victim to understood how it is tragic but, in case of bombing from the sky, it is not.
An assailant cannot see what has happened on the ground and he may have little consciousness of sin.
He only killed people statistically with his hands kept clean.


----------



## RabidAlien (Aug 7, 2010)

Agreed.


----------



## syscom3 (Aug 7, 2010)

The number of "extra" cancer induced deaths from residual radiation, ended back in the 60's.

Remember that both of these bombs were small and exploded in the air. The fallout was minimal.

For political purposes, the survivors of both those bombs claim that everyone who dies is a victim. And that's patently untrue. If you develop cancer 50 years after the event, don't tell me its bomb related because at that length of time, you enter the statistical probabilities from getting cancer from a multitude of reasons.

I tend to believe those sources that state that 120,000 (plus or minus) for Hiroshima, and 100,000 (plus or minus) for Nagasaki as the number of fatalities directly attributed to the bomb and fallout. 

These were ghastly weapons used in a war that in itself was ghastly. 

I remember back in 1995 when I was in Asia when the 50th anniversary of the bombings were observed. On an English language news station (I think it was the BBC) an elderly Chinese woman quite plainly said "why did they stop with two? There were terrible cruelties inflicted upon the peoples of Asia in those war years and any attempt of portraying the Japanese as victims is absurd.

We are 65 years removed from these bombings. Japan and (Germany) have long been defeated and have rejoined the righteous ranks of nations. Lets celebrate that and not listen to a few people who want to proclaim the war makers as the true victims.


----------



## RabidAlien (Aug 7, 2010)

Agreed, Sys. Again, I have to say, put the past behind but carry the lessons forward.


----------



## Shinpachi (Aug 7, 2010)

Not a bad conclusion.
Thanks syscom3, RabidAlien and Pong for the thread.


----------

