{"id":20917,"date":"2013-08-07T08:34:49","date_gmt":"2013-08-07T16:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=20917"},"modified":"2013-08-07T18:12:55","modified_gmt":"2013-08-08T02:12:55","slug":"why-we-really-nuked-both-hiroshima-nagasaki-in-just-3-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/07\/why-we-really-nuked-both-hiroshima-nagasaki-in-just-3-days\/","title":{"rendered":"Why “we” REALLY nuked both Hiroshima & Nagasaki. In just 3 days."},"content":{"rendered":"

OLIVER STONE:<\/b> … Every school kid — still, my daughter in her school, in private school, in good school, is still learning this: We dropped the bomb because we had to, because the Japanese resistance was fanatic, and we would have lost many American lives taking Japan. This is one — there’s no alternative to that story. \u00a0 —Oliver Stone on the Untold U.S. History from the Atomic Age to Vietnam to Obama’s Drone Wars | Democracy Now! <\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the alternative — a part of the truth that should be taught in good, honest, schools:<\/p>\n

At 8:16 on the morning of August 6, 1945, the world got a glimpse of its own mortality. At that moment, the city of Hiroshima was obliterated by a fireball that sent waves of searing heat, then a deafening concussion, across the landscape. Three days later, a second bomb hit Nagasaki. … [President Dwight D.] Eisenhower said in 1963 “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing<\/strong><\/em>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

… Besides the Manhattan Project’s internal momentum was an external motive. Its leaders had to justify the $2 billion ($26 billion in today’s dollars) expense to Congress and the public<\/b>… Byrnes…warned Roosevelt that political scandal would follow if it [the atomic bomb] was not used. … “How would you get Congress to appropriate money for atomic energy research<\/b> [after the war] if you do not show results for the money which has been spent already?<\/b>” …the U.S. had produced two types of bombs–one using uranium, the other plutonium. Whenever anyone suggested that the moment the bomb was dropped the war would be over, [bureaucrat] Groves countered, “Not until we drop two bombs on Japan.”<\/b><\/strong> As [historian] Goldberg explains… “One bomb justified Oak Ridge, the second justified Hanford.”<\/strong> Hiroshima was hit with the uranium bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy”; the plutonium bomb, “Fat Man,” was used against Nagasaki.<\/p>\n

From Why We Dropped The Bomb <\/strong>By William Lanouette, CIVILIZATION, The Magazine of the Library of Congress, January\/February 1995<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s hard for Americans who identify with the U.S. Government to accept the idea that that organization could have engaged in such horrendous acts – twice in three days – without pristine motives. Here’s what Vietnam era U.S. Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara – who was part of Gen. Curtis LeMay’s command when the bombs were dropped – thought about it: McNamara: “He, [General Curtis LeMay] and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals.<\/a>”<\/p>\n

\"Boy<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As far as war criminals go<\/a>, unfortunately we still have them<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OLIVER STONE: … Every school kid — still, my daughter in her school, in private school, in good school, is still learning this: We dropped the bomb because we had to, because the Japanese resistance was fanatic, and we would have lost many American lives taking Japan. This is one — there’s no alternative to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,22,56,8,167,434,18,131,19,9,120],"tags":[655,654],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-20917","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-culture","category-japan","category-military-spending","category-military-industrial-complex","category-never-forget","category-nukes","category-obama","category-propaganda","category-war-crimes","category-world-war","tag-dwight-d-eisenhower","tag-oliver-stone"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20917"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20917\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20924,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20917\/revisions\/20924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20917"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=20917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}