Shadows of Hiroshima

Asim...

the power of emotions that you were able to envoke within me..was, for me..an epiphany.

thought provoking piece.

z.rizvi.

Re: RR

Thanks for making my point for me.

It seems that you did not understand what I was trying to say. My problem with the politically correct viewpoint is that it seeks to judge the past based on the prevailing social criterias of the present. It seeks to atone for the sins of the past and there is nothing wrong with that, but to imply that you can change the past and feel good about, by your PC behavior is a bad idea. People back then did not have our social awareness and thus, should not be judged by our standards.

If they did wrong, as in the white lynchings of blacks in the south, we should certainly condemn that behavior, but we should not coddle the blacks to make up for the past. As to your first paragraph and the list therein included, I will merely say that I am against all of those practices. You should not judge the past, but only learn from it, so as to avoid its pitfalls. Trying to change the past to suit your sensibilites is a flawed idea that does disservive to all cooncerned.

As to your last paragraph, you have to judge those examples in the context of time, as they happened. Most of the actors involved in those examples did not have the benefit of hindsight as we do. You have to base their decisions on the facts they had available to them
and not from the vantage point of our perspective. You can not correct all injustices in the past and you should not even try to, to you can make sure it does not happen again.

Hope this explains my viewpoint on the subject.

Re: Ferozk

I take it you are not a big PC fan. Would you rather: call the blacks ``Niggers,`` allow sexual harrassment at the workplace, keep minorities from jobs, persecute suspected ``commies`` by defaming them, keep ``separate-but-equal`` schools and segregated drinking fountains, burn crosses at the civil rights activists` houses, lynch anyone by a mob who disagreed with you?

ALL of this was considered OK by people not very long ago and anything that was done to change it all was called ``Political Correctness.`` I don`t know the color of your skin, but if it`s not white, you`d not be a happy camper in the ``good old, politically incorrect, past.``

And, on a separate note, if the Japanese deserved it because they started it, then, what about: Vietnam? Korea? Grenada? Sandinistas in Nicaragua? Panama? Qaddhafi`s daughter? the pharmaceutical plant? Mossedegh in Iran? Zia in Pakistan? Palestine? Don`t people of all these places have any rights?

Feel free to add to the list.

very powerful..and thought-provoking piece...just wish more of our youth would think like that, and learn from history..never to repeat their ancesors` mistakes...

Asim: well-done!

An evocative article on the demerits of nuclear war and why the ghost of Hiroshimia should caution us against the horrors of a possible nuclear exchange. The author`s anguish, on the scale of destruction, he saw is empathic. I know a host of people who have visited the twin nightmares of the atomic age and they all, without expection, ask the same question: why ?

All these people, well meaning no doubt, just infuriate me to no end. Hiroshimia has become a rigid mantra for the present politically correct generation. If you should ask the question why, then it is clear that Pearl Harbor means nothing to you. Japan attacked the United States` fleet without a declaration of war and killed nearly 2500 Americans in the process. That attack bred a hatred for the Japanese in the Americans and unified the country as never before, just for the express purpose of excating a revenge for Pearl Harbor. Hiroshimia was the pay back for Pearl Harbor.

It is useless to judge the people of that era by the present standards of politically correct idealism. All the regrets about Hiroshimia should not detract us from the fact who were the aggressors. Japanese occupiers butchered millions in China; turned Korean women into whores to service their garrisions in that country; decapitated allied POWs to honor the code of Bushido and performed medical experiments on living American POWs. All these facts the Japanese would not even admit to or allow to be printed in their history texts.

Are the Japanese really the victims as they pretend to be ? Lets accept the truth as it is; the Japanese started a war they could not finish.

I am not going to list the reasons why the weapon was dropped, but before you cry for the Japanese, ask a few American veterans of the Pacific Theater of Operations what they think. If you have an inkling of how savage the fighting was at Iwo Jima or the scores of Pacific islands and atolls the Americans fought the Japanese, you`ll have an appreciation of what the Americans were expecting their casualities to be during the invasion of the Home Islands. I personally know veterans who were at Iwo Jima and were slated to be in the first wave to go ashore.

They all told me, the reason that they were discussing their stories with me was, because of that bomb. They were not expected to live. The first wave was supposed to suffer 95-100 percent casualty rates. It was a war to the death and there was no second prize for the lossers. The Americans were determined to win and the atomic weapons were just that, weapons to be used to save American lives and end the war.

If you are going to preach the lessons of history, do not be selective, but tell both sides of it. If you are going to remember Hiroshimia, then remember Pearl Harbor too. History should not be viewed through the prism of the present day, but it should be seen in its former glimmers with the intentions of understanding its past passions. Don`t judge the past with the hindsight of today, but try to understand it as seen through the eyes of those who experinced it; with all their prejudices, fears and hopes. Lest we forget its lessons, lest we forget.....

Haunting and effectively written. I`m not sure I completely agree with the author on all the points, but still it makes one think.