Thought for the Day

[taerowyn]

Today got me thinking about US History. We all get certain dates drilled into us:

December 7th

June 6th

July 4th

September 11th is going to be a big one

So why not August 6th? I would think that the impact that August 6th had on both US history and humanity itself would make it at least as, if not more, important than all these other dates, but maybe that's just me.

Comments

An apple under a tree.

[shinkuru.livejournal.com]

From the invasion of China in 1937 to the end of World War II, the Japanese military regime murdered near 3,000,000 to over 10,000,000 people, most probably almost 6,000,000 Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war.

I find it funny (funny sad, not funny "ha ha") that when people talk about how wrong it was to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing the immediate and eventual deaths of 240,000 Japanese civilians, the brutal genocide being perpetuated by the Japanese government is rarely mentioned. When the Japanese sent supplies to their troops in the field, they sent Chinese women along with the food and ammuntion; these women were raped to death. Not raped once. Not raped twice. Raped time after time, until they died of internal bleeding and shock. Can you imagine lying on a pile of sand, far from home, hungry, thirsty, naked, being raped by strangers, a long line of them, one after the other, until something inside tore open and you were allowed to die, only so that the woman chained up next to you, and the woman chained up next to her, could serve the same purpose?

If only speaking of war trivia it is of historical interest that we are the first people to use an atomic bomb, more specifically as a non-tactical attack (if the Japanese had not surrendered when they did, three more atomic bombs would have been tactially deployed to clear the way for the three companies we would have been used to breach the main-land). Personally, I find the moral debate about the weapons' usage to be rather offensive. August 6th, 1945 isn't a day we decided to go out and attack a foreign country for the express purpose of seizing territory and subjugating foreign populations; the Japanese began doing that a decade earlier. Yes, we are guilty of attacking civilian population centers, but at the time, that was the basis on which any war was fought. When fighting a country, thousands of air raids were flown to destroy factories and government facilities. There was no concept of "smart bombs," only the practice of flying a few thousand feet over the city and dropping such massive amounts of ordinance that the target was guaranteed to be destroyed if by nothing more than sheer chance. At that point in history (at least more so than now), war meant brutal retaliation against the civilian infrastructure to destroy a country's capacity to wage war. The atomic bombs were in fact far more efficient at this than anything we could have used at the time; they had the added threat of being utterly unstoppable by the Japanese, which is in large part the reason the Japanese government was "allowed" to surrender without losing face, thus ending what would have certainly continued to be a brutal and costly (in lives) war.

It is most certainly an awful weapon. But eight hundred years ago, the Christian church called the crossbow "a weapon of such horrible violence, that no Christian should wield it against another human, be they infidel or devout." War is awful. Awful weapons will be used from now until the end of time. We used an awful weapon to attack a nation which we had been in a protracted war with for nearly four years, a country which had been invading most of south-east Asia for the last decade, forcing huge populations into brutal internment projects that killed millions of civilians. Japan knew we had nuclear weapons at our disposal, but their government continued to engage in the war, understanding full well (but I can only assume desperately hoping not) that we had the capacity to use those nuclear weapons. I think we, as a population, both the U.S.'s and the world's, find it hard to muster sympathy for a couple hundred thousand dead people who helped to power a government that slaughtered millions without provocation.
--me

P. S.: I dearly hope you are referring to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and not some personally meaningful occurence I have never heard of.

Re: An apple under a tree.

[taerowyn.livejournal.com]

Yes, that is what I was refering to; however I think you might have taken my refernce differently then I meant it. I am not condemning the actions of August 6th and 9th. In the place and time they were, if not totally neccessary, at least important to the times. I'm just saying that they should be remembered.

In some ways more painful is the fact that their experience appears to be fading from the collective memory of humankind. Having never experienced an atomic bombing, the vast majority around the world can only vaguely imagine such horror, and these days, John Hersey's Hiroshima and Jonathan Schell's The Fate of the Earth are all but forgotten. As predicted by the saying, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," the probability that nuclear weapons will be used and the danger of nuclear war are increasing.

This from Tadatoshi Akiba, Mayor of Hiroshima (http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/peacesite/English/Stage3/S3-2E.html).

A sentiment I can agree with.

[shinkuru.livejournal.com]

Understood. I most certainly think the time of nuclear proliferation is upon us. It sounds cliche in this time of "terrorists and rogue states," but there really are a lot of people out there who have a grudge, if not against us, against someone else. It has been a very long time since I read it, but I once read a Tom Clancy novel (yes, I know, Tom Clancy, eww) about terrorists detonating a nuclear bomb in the U.S. (I swear they blew it up during the Super Bowl at Mile High, but it seems to have been revised for the recent movie version, unless my memory is again failing me). In the afterword, Tom Clancy said that after his research into the subject, he was convinced that anyone with ten to fifteen years and many millions of dollars (not as many as you would hope for, though) could get a nuclear weapon to pretty much anywhere they wanted to detonate it. This was a long, long time ago that I read this, before the collapse of the Soviet Union lead to the supposed proliferation of nuclear material on the black market, though I am beginning to lose faith that this material is out there; wouldn't someone have used it by now? It probably just got lost in landfills somewhere or something. That's beside the point. That's against the point. The point is: we're going to wake up on some morning, pour a cup of coffee, eat a bowl of cereal, turn on the television, and the news will be covered with the reports of New York or Moscow or Jerusalem or Beijing, devastated by nuclear fire. I think this fifty years of "peace" is like laying a coffin in the ground. As time goes on, the casket is forgotten, but there are always more people to bury. I think before our end comes, this world will remember the taste of nuclear power unleashed on human life. It will be a terrible thing.
--me

Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain

[shinkuru.livejournal.com]

By the way, an obvious sign of my steadily softening mind, I had to look up June 6th to figure out what happened on that day. How sad is that?
--me

Re: Invasion of the Idiot Dog Brain

[taerowyn.livejournal.com]

Time away from school has some frightening effects. My main loss has been basic math skills, it's pretty pathetic to see.

[samjooky.livejournal.com]

September 11th is going to be a big one for a little while, but give it 15 years and *everyone* will be cracking jokes about it then.

It'll be on email lists passed around university faculties that say "The current generation ... is too young to remember the attacks on September 11th / Doesn't know any living world war II veterans / etc."

It'll be like the Challenger disaster, or the fall of Saigon, or flooding in some third world country. Sure, a lot of people died, but wasn't that years ago? And besides, there's something new on TV ....

... and this is all assuming an even bigger terrorist attack doesn't happen between now and then, either.

I'm feeling rather cynical today, excuse me.

[schwa242.livejournal.com]

Sure, it'll have it's jokes, but I do think it's going to end up as a day off from work, or at least school, within the next couple decades. As for the Challenger disaster, I compare the memory of that more with the memory of what happened on April 20th. Which April 20th over the last decade? You have a few instances... take your pick).

-- Schwa ---

[samjooky.livejournal.com]

Which April 20th? Dude, every 4-20 is just fiiiiiiiiner by me ... *puff*

Err, anyways. I guess I compared the Challenger to September 11 to Oklahoma City to Columbine all because they all had about the same effect on me. Precious little.

Don't get me wrong, I was as interested in the news of what happened as anyone else, but I wasn't directly affected nor was anyone I know, and as far as my life goes now, 99.99% of it is exactly the same as it was on September 10th. And I think that's the same for most Americans.

If we get a new Federal holiday out of it, fine, just don't take away one of the 10 we get already.

Re:

[schwa242.livejournal.com]

Which April 20th? Dude, every 4-20 is just fiiiiiiiiner by me ... *puff*

Lessee... if I rememember correctly:

Columbine high school hi-jinks

Oklahoma City bombing

The storming of the Waco compound

Quite possibly Ruby Ridge, but I could be wrong, and besides, it didn't make much news, and...
Hitler's birthday!

-- Schwa ---

[samjooky.livejournal.com]

http://www.four20.com/meaning.html

Re:

[schwa242.livejournal.com]

well yeah i know that one too but i didnt menshin it b-cuz it seemed like you already knew and you ever look at your hands oops i dropped my papers

[samjooky.livejournal.com]

Goddamn stoner hippies dead heads!

Re:

[taerowyn.livejournal.com]

I'm assuming 1999? I agree, though you beat me to it. The Challenger, floods, Columbine etc, are all either few dead, freak accidents, the actions of a few against a few, very distant or some combination there in. This was an unprovoked attack on a large number of innocent Americans on our soil. It is going to be a December 7th if not something larger.

Yes, jokes will be made but EVERYBODY will know what September 11th was. April 20th? Not so much. Can you tell me the date of The Challenger? There's a distinct differnce in how they will be remembered.

[samjooky.livejournal.com]

Well, part of that is just 'cos everyone *is* referring to it simply as "9-11" or what-not. It's got a made-for-tv-movie name as it is! 'Course, people in the 20s knew damned well what the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month was. They probably also thought people would always know what that was. How many folks do you think have any idea what THAT (http://www.vfw.org/amesm/origins.shtml) is about? And it could be a debatably more important day (New Yorkers might disagree) than September 11th. It's all about perspective. In 100 years a couple people will remember, but no one will care about September 11, 2001.

Re:

[taerowyn.livejournal.com]

Well, I still know what that is (although I did doublecheck to make sure I was remembering correctly).

It's all about perspective. In 100 years a couple people will remember, but no one will care about September 11, 2001.

I don't think this is true, people still care about December 7th. It may not be as potent and important as it was years ago, but it's remembered and cared about. Furthermore, as to perspective, if things keep going as they are with changes in civil liberties etc. people are certainly going to remember 9/11 as the reason all that changed.

Yes, as you said earlier 99. whatever % of the people's lives haven't changed, but our perceptions of our safety, of our role in the world etc. have and 9/11 will be remembered as the cause of that. I don't think one hundred years is going to wash this one away.

Re:

[schwa242.livejournal.com]

January 26th or 28th, I believe. I actually did have that one memorized for a while.

But, then again, that's just the way I am.