X-Message-Number: 18058 Date: Sat, 1 Dec 2001 19:11:06 +0900 (JST) From: "Matthew S. Malek" <> Subject: Comment on nuclear weapons Dear Mike, > nuking Japan in 1945 is generally thought to have saved millions of > lives by ending WWII even if many thousands were killed. Keep in mind that many historians have concluded that this is _not_ true. Remember that Germany's Third Reich fell in May of 1945. The atomic bomb was not dropped until August 6th, 1945 (8:15am JST). At this point, it was pretty clear that the was with Japan, the remaining Axis power was on its way to completion, even with only conventional weaponry. Thus, it is highly doubtful that millions more lives would have been lost in the atomic bomb had not been deployed. Its use _did_ cost 200,000 people (mostly civilians) their lives. Furthermore, the damage did not end there, as many survivors (some of whom were in utero at the time of the bomb) have lived with decades of health problems as a result of the atomic bomb. Indeed, many of these survivors are still alive, and in their sixties and seventies. Paying for the advanced health care that some need is an ongoing problem. Despite popular rhetoric to the contrary, it seems that the strongest motivation for deploying the bomb was _not_ the "save millions of military personnel by sacrificing hundreds of thousands of civilians". The United States and the Soviet Union had made a then-secret pact that the USSR would enter the Pacific War three months after Germany's defeat. Although Japan was losing the war, the United States wished to hasten its defeat so that the Soviets would not have a place at the bargaining table when the post-war negotiations for the Pacific were made. This is why the bomb was deployed in the third month after the German defeat. It also puts former President Harry Truman the same class of politician as Adolf Hitler. =>Long Life to All, =>Matthew ---------------------------+------------------------------------------------- Matthew S. Malek | "Judging by his outlandish attire, he's | some sort of free-thinking anarchist!" ---------------------------+------------------------------------------------- QUOTE OF THE WEEK: "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly rediscovered sense of national security. God Bless America." --Katie Sierra, West Virginian student suspended for expressing these words on a t-shirt (in the so-called land of the free) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18058