(1)
On August 6, 1945 the United States of America chose to become the only nation in the history of the world to deliberately, with malice aforethought, use nuclear weapons against real live people.

We bombed the holy fucking shit out of the city of Hiroshima.

Despite all the self-serving propaganda we put forth immediately, and since, the military necessity of this nuclear attack was extremely debatable. (The lunatic, unpatriotic voices arguing that the nuclear attacks were a) unnecessary and b) did nothing to hasten the end of the war include such well known flakes as General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, General Carl Spaatz, Brigadier General Carter Clarke, Admiral Ernest King , Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph A. Bard and Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.)

We used this unthinkable, unforgivable weapon with full awareness of what it would do, and to whom. We used it with perfect 20-20 foresight as to the unspeakably obscene horror that we would wreak on the Japanese public. That is to say, on civilians. Mainly on women, children and the elderly.

To our eternal and everlasting shame, we used it precisely because it would wreak unspeakably obscene horror on women, children and the elderly.

We dropped that fucking bomb. And we saw exactly what it did. We observed and recorded the total annihilation that resulted.

And we liked it so much, we did it again three days later. We bombed the holy fucking shit out of the city of Nagasaki. Just for an encore. Just because we could.

And let there be no doubt that the main reason it was okay to do this was because everyone knew the Japanese people were subhuman. They counted for less than animals, because they were not only subhuman, they were also evil.

And so we, who were — and of course still are, and always will be — good and great and glorious, did our duty for the forces of freedom and truth and justice and liberty by wiping out in the blink of an eye tens of thousands of those savage subhuman slant-eyed Japs.

The blast, heat, fire and radiation from the first atomic bomb to hit Hiroshima killed an estimated 90,000 people immediately and 145,000 by the end of 1945. In Nagasaki, some 40,000 were killed immediately, with another 30,000 dying by the end of the year. In each instance the majority of those killed were civilians.

Take a moment to add up those numbers. Within just five months the death toll directly attributable to those two nuclear detonation events had exceeded 300,000. And that doesn’t even begin to address the unspeakable horror suffered by the twisted mangled deformed survivors who died later of the lingering after-effects of radiation poisoning.

In the vicinity of the spot where each bomb exploded, death was virtually inescapable. However, vicinity here is described as a one kilometer area:

…a plaque where the Nagasaki bomb detonated that said everyone within a one kilometer area was killed instantly — except an 8-year-old girl who had fallen asleep in a bomb shelter.

Try to wrap your mind around that. Virtually everyone in a one kilometer area died instantly.

And we liked it so much we did it again.

Man, we were good! We were fucking great!

(2)
Last night was the HBO premiere of filmmaker Steve Okazaki‘s “White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, which AP describes as “HBO’s disturbing documentary on survivors of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan”.

Why is the time finally right?

“History is always worth recording and if there is a moment in history that hasn’t been recorded and you’re in a place where you have the resources, you should do it,” said Sheila Nevins, head of HBO’s documentary unit. She hopes it becomes a document of record shown in schools.

The uncomfortable footage of cities reduced to rubble and grotesquely deformed survivors has received relatively little circulation because — unlike the well-recorded Holocaust — this was something done by Americans, Nevins said.

HBO and Okazaki also felt the same urgency experienced by “The Greatest Generation” author Tom Brokaw and Ken Burns, maker of PBS’ epic series on World War II coming this fall. People who fought and survived World War II are dying quickly now, and soon there will be no more eyewitnesses.

The film is built on stories told by 14 survivors, with childrens’ pictures depicting the bombing and footage of the injured that was banned from the public for 25 years.

So now, after 62 years, maybe it is finally time for us to start looking at ourselves in the mirror?

And not a moment too soon, the way things are looking, the way things are going. And, especially, given some of the things people are starting to say.

Here’s the NYT, weighing in on this documentary:

The final third of the film is almost unwatchable as Mr. Okazaki turns to clips of survivors (including some of those in his present-day interviews) from the weeks after the bombings. Their burns and other injuries are simply ghastly. “The patients in the hospital, both adult and children, would hear the nurses coming down the hall,” one man recalls, “and as they approached, everyone would beg to be killed.”

Sometimes, unimaginable horror comes to life. Sometimes it needs to.

(3)
The Japanese suffered the attacks, and the pain and suffering they witnessed and endured left them with a deep, irrevocable commitment to having no truck with nuclear weapons. Ever.

Shouldn’t our guilt and shame have had some similar effect on us?

Maybe we just didn’t — and don’t — have enough of the Japanese sense of honor to react that way?

So, if the savage subhuman slant-eyed Japs turned out to be more civilized and honorable than us, then who the hell are we?

(4)
The Rev. John R. Long in an op-ed piece in The Buffalo News Opinion:

Nobel Peace laureates in their recent “Rome Declaration” proclaimed that these weapons threaten civilization itself. “Nuclear weapons are more of a problem than any problem they seek to solve. In the hands of anyone, the weapons themselves remain an unacceptable, morally reprehensible, impractical and dangerous risk. The use of a nuclear weapon against a state without nuclear weapons is patently immoral. Use against a state with nuclear weapons is also suicidal. These weapons have no value against terrorists or criminals.”

In the hands of anyone. Don’t look now, but I think they’re talking about us.

Sometimes the good and great and glorious, fighting for the forces of freedom and truth and justice and liberty, are the most dangerous.