11 people gathered at Worcester City Hall today to repent, as Americans, for the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and to call for nuclear disarmament.
A recent poll found that 61% of Americans think the bombing was “the right thing” to do. There are two ways to look at this. Was the bombing an effective way to bring WWII to an end? Was the bombing a horrible crime?
I think the answer to the second question is “Yes.” As to the first, Wikipedia is a good place to start. Hiroshima: Was It Necessary? is another introduction.
For another take on disarmament, one expressed by several passersby today, see Randy Newman’s “Political Science.”
Related:
Was the bomb necessary? According to Stephanie Cooke in her 2009 book “In Mortal Hands: A Cautionary History of the Nuclear Age,”(Cooke’s has written about the nuclear industry since the 80’s and currently writes for “The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists” and her book in endorsed by Dr. Helen Caldicott and Amory Lovins), she cites that General Leslie Groves told Joseph Rotblat(founder of Pugwash and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize) at a dinner in January 1944 that “You realize, of course, that the main purpose of the (Manhattan) project was to subdue the Russians.”p.26
Was the bomb necessary? Certainly not against the Japanese in the Pacific, and certainly only in the context of a long-running geopolitical strategy that bankrupted both the Soviets and the U.S. and has left perhaps the greatest immediate threat to the survival of humanity.