Hiroshima marks 60th anniversary

August 6th, 2005 at 21:01 Björn Hallberg

One of the most heinous acts of all time.

Hiroshima today marked the 60th anniversary of the world’s first atomic bomb attack.

Vowing to never allow a repeat of his city’s tragedy, Hiroshima’s mayor called on the nuclear powers to abandon their arsenals and stop “jeopardising human survival.”

One should also remember that the suffering is still going on.

Including those initially listed as missing or who died afterward from a loosely defined set of bomb-related ailments, including cancers, Hiroshima officials now put the total number of the dead in this city alone at 242,437.

This year, 5,373 more names were added to the list.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is that some people go out of their way to justify these war crimes. I can see how Japanese officials at the time would make the best of the situation and try to cover up their cognitive dissonance, struggling to find a silver lining to the horror. But even to this day there are bloodthirsty people, in the US predominantly, who blatantly and arrogantly justify past events by euphemisms such as “saving lives” and “necessity” and various other callous statements. I wonder if one would get the same benefit of a doubt if one had the nerve to suggest that other similar villainous acts, like say the Holocaust or the killing fields of Cambodia, were also excusable. Sure, you can always find some angle from which anything is acceptable, but the question isn’t so much a technical one as it is one of morality and hypocrisy. Yet these people get away with it. And not only that, they are socially and economically rewarded for it.

Entry 196 filed under: Asia, North America, Weapons Systems. This entry was posted 3 years, 5 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.