{"id":6007,"date":"2009-08-11T02:09:28","date_gmt":"2009-08-11T10:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=6007"},"modified":"2009-08-15T11:25:09","modified_gmt":"2009-08-15T19:25:09","slug":"hiroshima-and-nagasaki-the-inside-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/11\/hiroshima-and-nagasaki-the-inside-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Hiroshima AND Nagasaki: The Inside Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
    \nAt 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>." <\/ol>\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. <\/ol>\n

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

      ================================================<\/strong>
      \nADDENDUM (After 32 comments):<\/p>\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.<\/p>\n

      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:<\/p>\n

      McNamara: “He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals.<\/a>” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      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.] […]<\/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":[56,167,3,18,90,120],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-japan","category-military-industrial-complex","category-news","category-nukes","category-roosevelt","category-world-war"],"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\/6007","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=6007"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6026,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6007\/revisions\/6026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6007"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}