Chamblee54

At 8:15 am, August 6, 1945, Hiroshima got nuked. It was the start of a new era. Since Japan is 13 hours ahead of Georgia, and standard time was used, the literal anniversary is 8:15 pm, August 5.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was working in Hiroshima when the bomb hit. He survived, and found a train to take hime to his home town, Nagasaki.
The device dropped on Hiroshima, the Little Boy, had an estimated force of 13 kilotons of Trinitrotoluene, or TNT. A kiloton of TNT is roughly a cube whose sides are ten meters. This device is fairly tiny compared to many of the warheads developed since. Many of the modern appliances are measured in megatons, or millions of tons of TNT. The Soviet Union had a bomb with a capacity of 50 megatons, or 4,000 times the size of the Little Boy.
The largest weapon tested by The United States is the Castle Bravo. This device destroyed Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The two piece swimsuit was named for this island. The Castle Bravo device had a yield of 15 megatons of TNT. This is roughly 1,000 times the power of the Little Boy.
The decision to drop the bomb has long been controversial. There are a lot of factors and gray areas, and the issue does not lend itself to sound bite solutions. The conventional wisdom is that Japan surrendered because of the nuclear attack. This meant the war was shortened by at least a year, there was no invasion of Japan, and many lives were saved. PG is scared by the moral calculus involved in a decision like this….do 100,000 civilian deaths prevent the deaths of 500,000 soldiers? PG suspects that even G-d herself would lose sleep over that one.
There is also evidence that the bomb was not needed. Japan was whipped in August 1945. The air raids were conducted in daylight with little resistance. A debate was going on in the Japanese government on whether to continue the fight.
An event happened the day between Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, which influenced the Japanese decision to surrender. The Soviet Union had agreed to help the United States with the war against Japan. On August 8, The Soviet Union invaded Japanese occupied Manchuria. There are indications that Japan knew the fight was hopeless at this point, and would rather surrender to The United States than The Soviet Union. This is one of the gray areas that never seems to be mentioned.
The United States wanted the war to end quickly for obvious reasons, and a few subtle ones. America did not want to share the spoils of Japanese war with The Soviet Union. There were already tensions between the two allies, and the cold war was not far off. Many felt The United States used the Little Boy as a warning to The Soviet Union.
When you get your moral software out, you might want to figure in the effect of opening the nuclear Pandora’s box. Would the nuclear bomb have been developed by other countries if America had not led the way? The science is not that complicated…after all, America hit paydirt with the Manhattan Project fairly quickly. Nonetheless, there is karma involved in using a terrible new device on a civilian population. The United States started the wind of the arms race, and has yet to feel the whirlwind.
This is a repost. The pictures are from The Library of Congress. Ansel Adams took pictures of Japanese Americans, in a World War Two internment camp. The ladies in the bridge game are Aiko Hamaguchi, Chiye Yamanaki, Catherine Yamaguchi, and Kazoko Nagahama.

There is a bit of commodity wisdom. you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” Credit, or blame, for this morsel is usually given to Winston Churchill. Others say it was George Bernard Shaw, or Benjamin Disraeli.
A French politician, François Guizot has what may be the oldest attribution. “N’être pas républicain à vingt ans est preuve d’un manque de cœur ; l’être après trente ans est preuve d’un manque de tête.” “Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.”
In the embedded graphic, the sixty year old’s possession is a gut. This would apply to the famously corpulent Winston Churchill, who was sixty in 1934. At the time he was a forgotten politician, disgraced by his blundering in the Great War. Other pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
There is a page at the Churchill Centre website for Quotes Falsely Attributed . It includes this gem. “”The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash.” Churchill’s assistant, Anthony Montague-Browne said that although Churchill had not uttered these words, he wished he had.”

The Russian Federation recently Putin put in some tasteless regulations about homosexuals. The knee jerk reaction of some is to boycott something Russian. The 2014 Winter Olympics are scheduled to be held in Russia. Some say there should be a rainbow hued boycott. A look at recent history makes one wonder if this is really a good idea.
In 1979, Russia was the dominant republic in the Soviet Union. On December 24, 1979, with possible provocation from the United States, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. A war ensued, with many women and children killed by the invading army.
The 1980 Olympics were held in Moscow, the Soviet Capitol. The United States decided to protest the invasion of Afghanistan by boycotting the Moscow Olympics. To get even, the Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
The American boycott had little impact on the war in Afghanistan. American arms shipments to the rebel forces did have an impact on the war. The Soviet army was defeated, and the Soviet Union collapsed soon afterwards.
After the Soviets left, the rebels had weapons left over. The rebels became the Taliban, and Al Queda. The result was 911, ruinous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and economic hardship. Is this what happens when you boycott Russia? Pictures from The Library of Congress.