#Hiroshima | Nagasaki

[xtruss]

Atomic Secrets: The Scientists Who Built The Atom Bomb 💣

Science and the military converged under a cloak of secrecy at Los Alamos National Laboratory. As part of the Manhattan Project, Los Alamos — both its very existence and the work that went on there — was hidden from Americans during World War II.

Many of the thousands of scientists on the project were not officially aware of what they were working on. Though they were not permitted to talk to anyone about their work, including each other, by 1945 some had figured out that they were in fact building an atomic bomb.

In 1943 J. Robert Oppenheimer was named the director of the Bomb Project at Los Alamos, a self-contained area protected -- and completely controlled -- by the U.S. Army. Special driver's licenses had no names on them, just ID numbers. Credit: Courtesy of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Archives

Robert Oppenheimer's wife Kitty was not above scrutiny. All who were affiliated with the project -- and their spouses -- were thoroughly screened and had a security file with the FBI. Credit: Courtesy of the F.B.I.

Less than a year after Oppenheimer proposed using the remote desert site for the laboratory, Los Alamos was already home to a thousand scientists, engineers, support staff… and their families. By the end of the war the population was over 6,000, and the compound included amenities like this barber shop. Credit: Time Life/Getty Images

Atomic Bomb Project employees having lunch at Los Alamos. Though food was often in scant supply, residents made the best of life in their isolated community by putting on plays and organizing Saturday night square dances. Some singles’ parties in the dormitories reportedly served a brew of lab alcohol and grapefruit juice, cooled with dry ice out of a 32-gallon GI can. Credit: Copyright Bettmann/CORBIS

Completely self-contained, the Los Alamos facility did not officially exist in its early years except as a post office box. Scientists’ families were mostly kept in the dark about the nature of the project, learning the truth only after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Credit: Courtesy of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Archives

Credited with inventing the cyclotron, University of California-Berkeley physicist Ernest Lawrence (squatting, center) looks on as Robert Oppenheimer points out something on the 184” particle accelerator. Harvard University supplied the cyclotron that was used to develop the atomic bomb. Credit: Copyright CORBIS

The Trinity bomb was the first atomic bomb ever tested. It was detonated in the Jornada del Muerto (Dead Man’s Walk) Desert, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. The test was a resounding success. The United States would drop similar bombs on Japan just three weeks later. Credit: Courtesy of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Archives

Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves inspect the melted remnants of the 100-foot steel tower that held the Trinity bomb. Ensuring that the testing of a bomb with unknown strength would remain completely secret, the government chose a location that was so remote they had to import their water from over 150 miles away. Credit: Copyright CORBIS

Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves stand in front of a map of Japan, just five days before the bombing of Hiroshima. Credit: Copyright CORBIS

Though there was no evidence that Oppenheimer had betrayed his country in any way, several officials called his loyalty into question in the Cold War environment of 1954. After being subjected to months of hearings, “the most famous physicist in the world” eventually lost his government security clearance. Credit: Reprinted courtesy of TIME Magazine

[theconcealedweapon]

Americans: "I don't understand how people could possibly be cruel enough to believe that 9/11 was justified. Only a monster could believe that."

Americans: "Nuking Japan was justified."

[trans-rights-coastalmangoes]

just finished trigun maximum. can't believe they expect me to just continue on with my day like nothing happened

[komsomolka]

South Africa's anti-imperialist President Nelson Mandela speaks up that the US dropped bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in order to threaten the Soviet Union, which had emerged victorious from the fight against fascism.

[enbycrip]

If you’re not aware, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were deliberately not bombed with the firebombs that destroyed most of Tokyo and other Japanese cities in 1945 because they were two of a number of cities deliberately selected as locations for atomic bombings.

They wanted a “pristine” test of their new weapon on a previously undamaged city.

The US knew those cities were full of civilian refugees when they bombed them. They had herded them there.

Parallels, huh?

[i-am-aprl]

A US SITTING Senator Lindsey Graham is openly advocating for Gaza to be nuked on national television. War mongers. Genocide mongers.

Source: MSNBC

[captain-price-unofficially]

Japanese mother and her son in the rubble of Hiroshima, four months after the bomb was dropped. Dec 1945

[sarahalainn]

8月6日 広島 🕊️

Lest we forget, 6th August Hiroshima

#HiroshimaDay

8月9日 長崎🕊️

Lest we forget, 9th August Nagasaki

#NagasakiDay

… and yet the world keeps forgetting

一本の鉛筆が、あれば　

「戦争は嫌だ」と、私は書く

[whereserpentswalk]

Idk if this is a hot take or not but I feel the need to stress: no discussion about the bombings of hiroshima and nagasaki has any reason to mention Japanese war crimes. Literally nothing a government does justifies killing random people who happen to live in that government's territory. It is genocidal rhetoric to act as if a group of people can do something that justifes killing massive amounts of them.

There is an idea in western culture that we can judge warcrimes based on how "good" of a group were the victims. This dates back to the conquest of the Aztec empire, where things that horrified Europeans at the time where justified by bringing up terrible things done by the Aztec government. People defend the Spanish empire on those grounds today. It's so pervasive that it'll even come up when people are talking agaisnt genocides (they'll bring up native groups being peaceful as the reason why westward expansion was bad, as if them being human wasn't enough).

Would Russia be justified in nuking the US because the US government committed warcrimes in the middle east? (Actually speaking of Russia, you'll see this rhetoric when tankies bring up Ukraine's nazi problem.) Because if not, and you think hiroshima and nagasaki were justified, then you have to give a reason other then the fact that you judge the lives of westerners and nonwesterners differently.

If someone brings up crimes a group committed, real or imaginary, when arguing about atrocities committed agaisnt them, they've already told you that they don't believe people of that group have rights, that they believe anything can be done to them if it's justified.

There is no crime someone can commit, that's so bad that it justifies killing a stranger who happens to speak the same language as them.

[humanoidhistory]

"First picture of results of atomic bomb." From the front page for the Gainesville Daily Register, Texas, August 13, 1945.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Nobel Peace Prize winner: Gaza like Japan after U.S. atomic bombs

By Gary Wilson

Toshiyuki Mimaki, co-chair of Nihon Hidankyo, the Japanese organization honored with the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize for its anti-nuclear activism, drew comparisons between the plight of children in Gaza and those impacted by the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

“In Gaza, bleeding children are being held (by their parents). It’s like Japan 80 years ago,” Mimaki said at a news conference in Tokyo. “Children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki lost their fathers in the war and their mothers in the bombings. They became orphans.”

[icedsodapop]

Literally! 226,000 civillians died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and as of 2022, 118,935 hibakusha (explosion-affected people) are still alive today. The hibakusha are still being discriminated today when in comes to marriage and work prospects. But sure Chris, let's makes another film centering the dude who spearheaded the fucking project that created the hibakusha 😒🤷🏻‍♀️

[theconcealedweapon]

Dropping the nuclear bombs in Japan was a massive act of terrorism.

And it's not "defending a Nazi ally" to point that out.

The Japanese military were a Nazi ally. The innocent civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, including babies, were not.

Israel is a terrorist state. But I would never even consider nuking Israel as an acceptable response. That would only kill innocent civilians, not those actually responsible for the genocide.

If someone nuked a highly populated city in the United States in response to something Trump did, would you see it as justified? Or is it only justified when it happens in other countries to other people?

[safije]

People defend dropping the atomik bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by saying Japan committed war crimes in Nanjing or elsewhere, making it sound like the US did it in the name of justice for Koreans and Chinese, but then you learn afterwards the US pardoned the Japanese scientists who tortured and experimented on Chinese civilians in exchange for data. America did not care about civilians in East Asia, if they did they would've punished the war criminals instead of punishing all the civilians (including Koreans) that were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[mysharona1987]

From the Washington Post.

Oh, Israel learned everything it knows from the US.

Also, Dr Bresser is a very terrible doctor. I thought doctors were meant to save people?

“Nah, let’s just starve one million children to death.”

[philosophicalconservatism]

The Morality Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki

A small debate has arisen in Conservative circles over the morality of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One side proclaims that the decision was evil because it targeted innocent civilians on a massive scale (regardless of how many lives it may have saved) and furthermore anyone who will not denounce the decision is evil themselves. The other side declares that it was a moral decision because it saved more lives than it claimed. Now one error that many critics of the decision seem to make is that they speak as though this was merely a choice between the deaths of the innocent civilians of these two cities, and the deaths of a larger number of armed troops on both sides. It was not. If it were it would be an easier decision.

The first thing that needs to be acknowledged is that, like contemporary discussions of slavery, this is a discussion of a different moral climate. Innocent civilians were not merely targeted by the H bomb but were regularly targeted by conventional bombs during the war in a way that would be entirely unthinkable today. Entire cities were bombed out. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians were killed in German cities alone. So the grim practical choice here was between years and years of more targeted conventional bombing of innocent civilians, or these two acts against Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

If I were personally sent back in a time machine and given the power to make this decision I could not, for I am a product of a different time. The question is whether or not, within the context of that time, this was the best decision. In my opinion it was for the time. Some will object to my claim that this was a different moral climate pointing out statements of the era that express an awareness of the evil of targeting civilians. But we can do the same thing with slavery. Every single major founding father is on record condemning the institution of slavery as grossly immoral. This does not change the fact that it was a different moral climate; for in today's Western world the very notion of slavery is unthinkable.

The targeting of civilians was not some extreme deviation peculiar to World War 2 either. It was practiced in World War 1, and in most earlier wars, indicating that the extreme taboo against it presently is indeed a convention of the modern world.