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Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Fictions and Facts
Laforge, John
http://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/08/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-fictions-and-facts/Date Written: 2018-08-08 Publisher: CounterPunch Year Published: 2018 Resource Type: Article Cx Number: CX22845 The New York Times reported that year, “Many historians believe the bombings [of] Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, which together took the lives of more than 200,000 people, saved lives on balance, since an invasion of the islands would have led to far greater bloodshed.” Many historians, perhaps; but not that many. Abstract: - Excerpt: About the US atomic destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, popular accounts still stick to the false but "greatest generation" story that, "Without [them], more Japanese would have died in a US assault on the islands, as would have tens of thousands of Americans," as Mike Hashimoto wrote in the Dallas Morning News in 2016. On the contrary the chief historian of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, J. Samuel Walker, wrote in the journal Diplomatic History in 1990, "The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it." Still, the myth that the mass destruction of 200,000 was necessary to save lives is believed by millions in the US who refuse to consider or accept the historical record. This greatest of the "greatest generation's" yarns may help some sleep at night, and to think better of killing civilians than does the rest of the world, but it doesn't help abolish nuclear weapons. Subject Headings |