Reply to: Today's the Day

[Menelaus]

One of they guys I worked with in the 70s had been a POW in Japan... he said he'd been at Nagasaki on the day... dunno if it was true or not though.

When the plant had Japanese visitors, they had to hide him away coz he didn't have much of a regard for them...

That I can understand.

[zeitghost]

Here's a nice piece of lunacy...

http://www.archive.org/details/a-bomb_blast_effects

It goes on a bit...

Why anyone in their right mind would have people walking around ground zero that soon afterwards is quite beyond me...

Then again, it really was MAD, in more ways than one...

[EternalOptimist]

Ten people, I believe. I've never managed to find out if any of them survived the second bomb. But it's salutary to remember when you think you've had a piece of bad luck, just how bad luck can get.

I am sure one of them was a British POW.

I read his account as a kid but I cant remember too many of the details

[Menelaus]

Considering I'm a "child of the bomb" I knew nothing about the applied civil engineering uses of nuclear devices that have been done, nor of the fallout on USA citizens by the USA.

(I knew about Australia and the Bikini Atoll so at least I'm not completely fick.)

One of the two dive sites I've yet to dive in the world that I absolutely, definitely must before I shake off this mortal coil is Bikini Atoll.

Some crackin' wrecks there, apparently.

[RichardCranium]

Considering I'm a "child of the bomb" I knew nothing about the applied civil engineering uses of nuclear devices that have been done, nor of the fallout on USA citizens by the USA.

(I knew about Australia and the Bikini Atoll so at least I'm not completely fick.)

[Menelaus]

Give him a tenner and he might let you

IGMC etc (cab on speed dial)

[Zippy]

If that's good luck, you can shove your 'lucky' heather up yer arse.

Give him a tenner and he might let you

IGMC etc (cab on speed dial)

[RichardCranium]

As we say where I come from..."lucky white heather"

If that's good luck, you can shove your 'lucky' heather up yer arse.

[Menelaus]

Link 1:



Link 2 for more information.

As we say where I come from..."lucky white heather"

[RichardCranium]

Ten people, I believe. I've never managed to find out if any of them survived the second bomb. But it's salutary to remember when you think you've had a piece of bad luck, just how bad luck can get.

Link 1:

On March 24, 2009, the Japanese government recognized Tsutomu Yamaguchi as a double hibakusha. Tsutomu Yamaguchi was confirmed to be 3 kilometers from ground zero in Hiroshima on a business trip when the bomb was detonated. He was seriously burnt on his left side and spent the night in Hiroshima. He got back to his home city of Nagasaki on August 8, a day before the bomb in Nagasaki was dropped, and he was exposed to residual radiation while searching for his relatives. He is the first confirmed survivor of both bombings.

Link 2 for more information.

[expat]

... of the 64th anniversary of the dropping of the first (and, to date, only) hostile plutonium bomb - dropped on Nagasaki (the second target - they missed Kokura).

Irrespective of what one might think of Japanese atrocities in Manchuria or against British / other PWs, the death of 80,000 people in one single event is truly worthy of quiet reflection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Na...Hypocentre.jpg

In an example of the application of Murphys Law, a number of people had travelled from Hiroshima (after the first bombing - August 6th) TO Nagasaki before the bombing of August 9th.

Ten people, I believe. I've never managed to find out if any of them survived the second bomb. But it's salutary to remember when you think you've had a piece of bad luck, just how bad luck can get.

[Menelaus]

For clarification:

1. I'm an ex-serviceman and my only view on nuclear weapons from a philosophical perspective is that they're absolutely horrendous but - as is the obscene way of the world - the prospect of MAD kept NATO and WarPac from frying each other

2. Despite being a math-hound, my first love was always physics and I hope I understand in some small way why Einstein wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in November 1947

The great physicist would live to regret his lobbying: “Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb,” he told Newsweek in 1947, “I would have done nothing.”

(Source: http://theamericanideabook.theatlant...r_or_peace.php)

2. My initial post was a call to remember those who died that day

[Zippy]

HAB - not a day for celebration, indeed. I'm afraid I don't subscribe to your view that nuclear weapons would have been used anyway. The scientists believed they understood the power (in terms of physics, emitted neutrons etc.) of what they had created but didn't understand what that would actually mean to real people. Maybe a few more years research and that would have become apparent? And therefore their use would have been unthinkable?
Maybe one good thing that came out of the Manhattan project was some kind of modest advance in ethical thinking re scientific research.

I believe Menelaus was just saying we should think about the day(s). And I agree.

[OwlHoot]

In any case, General Douglas MacArthur estimated that invading Japan by conventional means would have cost at least 1,000,000 lives, and might even have meant starting a war against the Russians (who were planning to invade Japan themselves in October 1945).

[HairyArsedBloke]

As someone said to me many years ago, “If they hadn’t used them then, they would have used 'em later and we’d all gone up in smoke.” By which he meant that they would have more likely been a nuclear exchange during the cold war, when both sides had them, because there would not have been those horrific images to calm the leaders down.

They cannot be un-invented; it was inevitable that they would be created at some point in time. There will never be a time in the future that they will never ever exist. Now go and live with it.