Hiroshima

New photographs of the devastating results of the atom bomb drop on Hiroshima have just been released.  It is chilling to imagine a city full of bodies like this - lives instantly snuffed out by the blast.

It is the gravest of tragedies that this became necessary to inflict.  Japan was in the grip of a religious cult with Showa Tenno as God, and hellbent on conquest of the pacific.  In his name millions were killed and tortured.  Allied POWs were treated like animals.  Pearl Harbor was attacked without warning.  And New Zealand came within a thousand miles of being enslaved.

It is important to realise that not even this bomb was enough to get Hirohito to stop the war - there had to be a second one dropped on Nagasaki, so earnestly did the cult grip the Japanese leadership.  The people in these photos - ordinary people who knew no better than to blindly support their country - suffered and died as a result.

This is what blind ideology does to people.  They draw up a set of rules, sometimes they are good, sometimes they are bad, but what ends up happening is that people get sacrificed for the sake of the rules.  And it doesn't seem to matter what philosophy or religion you come up with, there will always be people who believe following the rules are more important than doing good by others.  Which was really the whole point of Jesus' message, and what he spent his time railing against.

Comments

[radar]

Couple of points.

"Allied POWs were treated like animals."

Says something about how horribly we treat animals that when POWs are tortured and starved to death that that is apparently being "treated like animals".

"Which was really the whole point of Jesus' message..."

Do you mean this 'message' from the book of Matthew, verse 10?

10:35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

10:36 And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

10:37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

Some message, or did you cherry pick some other part of the bible to fulfill your needs?

Or this from Matthew 15, where Jesus agrees with God that children who disobey their parents should be stoned to death:

"15:4 For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.

15:5 But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;

15:6 And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition."

I hope this 'message' never catches on in western society.

[Blair]

Waaaaaaay off topic radar. I don't care for your out-of-context Bible quotes. If you want to talk about the morality and tragedy of war, please do so, but otherwise take your bigotry elsewhere.

[Murray]

I observe two days from the Pacific theatre.

Pearl Harbour Day and Guadalcannal.

Both are the consequence of aggresive imperialist expansonist behaviour. By Japan.

So is Hiroshima Day but the slef loathing the west is evil tree huggers have hijacked that one with the wrong message.

If they want a never again the answer is simple, don't go round invading 16 countries in one week and we wont kick your asses.

One Anzac Day at Kranji in Singapore will cure most lefties of their delusions.

[radar]

Hey, you brought up Jesus and his 'message', not me. Christians who don't like certain parts of their Bible always bring out the out-of-context complaint first. It's funny.

As for Hiroshima, killing oodles of civilians was evil. If anyone else had done it it would be considered evil and rightly so, but because it was the United States, it aint. It was necessary to stop the war, but was killing so many innocent people really necessary?

[exclamation Mark]

How many more lives, military and civilian, would have been lost in around the Pacific if Hiroshima hadn't been bombed? Would NZ, which had already given so much in Europe and Africa, have been dragged into the fight?

was killing so many innocent people really necessary?
I think the answer to that is yes. Given Japan's death cult - kamikaze pilots etc - it was clear that the Japanese were going to fight on come what may. The atomic 'king hit' was the only answer that didn't involve a lot of time, effort and lives for a very war weary America. And I'm sure given those circumstances they gave little regard to how their actions would be viewed by a very liberalised world 60+ years on.

As for Hiroshima, killing oodles of civilians was evil.

You could say the same about the bombing of Dresden but most people don't because A.) it wasn't America who did it, B.)it was payback for the bombing of London and C.) the English didn't use atomic weapons which for some reason are seen as more evil than conventional bombs because they involve the "N" word.

The killing of civilians is horrible but that's what happens in wars, history will always have less sympathy for the civilians of the Aggressor's populace.

[Murray]

We were already "dragged into it".

HMNZS Gambia fired the last shots of the war being under kamakazi attack when the ceasefire came into effect.

If the japanese hand't attacked the rest of the Pacific without provocation then several million chinese wouldn't have been murdered and bombing the crap out of them wouldn;t have been required would it.

Try learning history off something more than a Green Party hand out wont you.

If you come back with any more anti-American knee jerk CRAP I'm going to clog up Blairs site with every single Japanese atrocity from 1926 on and then cover their denialist revisonism since 1945 - which is much like yours.

Blair doesn't have that much space to spare.

[Paul]

Check that link again - the photos have been pulled, and may not have been Hiroshima.