Text 16908, 68 rader
Skriven 2005-11-24 07:53:57 av Ward Dossche (2:292/854)
     Kommentar till en text av FRANK SCHEIDT
Ärende: Re: Collateral Damage
=============================
> MVDV> Or so you claim. Fact is that those two bombs killed over 300.000
> MVDV> people. Needlessly as impressing the Russians could just as well
> MVDV> have been done by blowing up some uninhabited island.
 
> Actually they killed maybe a *max* of 200,000 or so of the enemy
 
During the initial blasts that number must be about correct.
 
However, the Hiroshima Cenotapth held the names of 226,870 people on Aug.6
2002. That included the names of those that died of radiation-related causes
later ... from the Hiroshima-blast alone!
 
So when adding the number of victims from Nagasaki, Michiel's estimate seems
rather modest.
 
> -- we *were* at war you know ... [sigh] ... and by so-doing saved
> more than a million Americans as well as the enemy.  That day was
> a *great* one for civilization!
 
Why are you, and so many of your countrymen, convinced Japan would have to be
invaded?
 
In order to survive it had to rely on foreign imports. By blockading the
islands it could have been hungered into submission. Its fleet and airforce
were largely destroyed and the units that remained lacked the fuel to operate.
 
With hindsight we know that the A-bombs were unnecessary to win the war. They
were not used military in a strategic way, just to kill a whole lot of
civilians.
 
No-one knows what was discussed when Truman gave the go-ahead. Certainly
without the means of communication we have now Japan was described in a typical
enemy-style way which made them look real bad and needed to be annihilated.
Quite likely future relations with Russia were also on the agenda.
 
Then ... I bought the book 'The Rape of Nankin' by Iris Chang in which she
describes the attrocities by the Japanese army in China during the late
30-ies... Indeed, they gravely misbehaved there.
 
It is difficult to judge people and their actions from during WW2. It was
another era. My dad fought in WW2 and killed a German soldier ... does that
make him a murderer, a freedom-fighter, a hero or what? Without a war both
could have been friends perhaps.
 
Sometimes other odd stories emerge ... my grandfathers fought in the trenches
of WW1. Both have passed away a long time ago, but I remember one telling a
very odd story. Quite lately there is some talk again about the Christmas-truce
of 1914 when soldiers refused to fire at eachother and fraternised, they even
organised a footbal game ... won by the Germans.
 
He told me that after long stretches of time with shouting-back to eachother
details about their lives, one way to pass and receive news from their families
in occupied territories, they had a kind of an honour-code that when they noted
an ennemy leaving to go to a latrine you wouldn't bother him. It was considered
unethical killing an enemy while he was taking a dump. You just waited until he
pulled-back his pants up and was done.
 
Relatively new in the trenches one day he noticed a German who was sitting with
his pants down and relieving himself. My grandfather shot him. Within minutes
they got incoming heavy artillery-fire because "you just did not do something
like that then".
 
Greetings,
 
 \%/@rd

--- In-a-gadda-da-vida
 * Origin: "Leonard will be free" - http://www.leonardpeltier.org (2:292/854)