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“The injured were sprawled out over the railroad tracks, scorched and black. When I walked by, they moaned in agony. ‘Water… water…’
I heard a man in passing announce that giving water to the burn victims would kill them. I was torn. I knew that these people had hours, if not minutes, to live. These burn victims – they were no longer of this world.
‘Water… water…’
I decided to look for a water source. Luckily, I found a futon nearby engulfed in flames. I tore a piece of it off, dipped it in the rice paddy nearby, and wrang it over the burn victims’ mouths. There were about 40 of them. I went back and forth, from the rice paddy to the railroad tracks. They drank the muddy water eagerly. Among them was my dear friend Yamada. ‘Yama- da! Yamada!’ I exclaimed, giddy to see a familiar face. I placed my hand on his chest. His skin slid right off, exposing his flesh. I was mortified. ‘Water…’ he murmured. I wrang the water over his mouth. Five minutes later, he was dead.
...
Everywhere, as far as my eyes could reach, all the houses had collapsed, all the trees and electric poles had been broken down. About two kilometres away, around the spot which later proved to be the explosion centre, thick dark smoke whirled up from a sea of yellowish dust.
I remained stunned, completely stunned. The next moment I heard a faint groan, then disconnected words that seemed to come up from the bottom of the earth: "Yuko . . . dead . . . I’m dying . . . don't stay ..." It was my wife, but it was not anything like a voice uttered by a human being: it was a voice squeezed out from the last bit of life in death's grip. "What? Be strong now! . . . Where are you? Where are you?" As if in reply, a pile of tangled timbers moved with a creaking noise. Bleeding all over, my wife stood upright, with our two-month-old baby tightly in her arms.
All around us we heard shouting, groaning, cursing, voices calling father, voices calling mother, voices in search of brothers and sisters. All over the central part of town flames were shooting out as if the earth's crust had been ripped open. And these sorely burnt men and women all in stark nakedness! It was as if our corrupt world had come to an end, giving way to hell. My wife was most painfully wounded. On her whole body were stuck countless fragments of glass, large and small, that reflected pallid lights like a glittering spearhead of a demon. She could see nothing.
I took my wife on my back, and held the baby on my left arm. We walked three hundred metres, stepping barefooted on the debris and broken sheets of glass that went to pieces under our weight, and took refuge on a sand bank in a river where the tide had ebbed. Here we joined hundreds of suffering people, and the sound of the frantic search of parents for their children was heartrending enough to make one giddy.
....
But it wasn't that bad, right?
is this your source? - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1946/08/31/hiroshima
if not I’m curious to read the full source text please.
Oh wow. They have the full book there?
This is from the book Hiroshima by John Hersey. I remember reading it in high school. It's a great book.
I'm sorry, I just googled for eyewitness accounts, but I can't remember what article I copied from.
Yeah, the bombs’ effects were horrific. It’s absolutely amazing that even that level of devastation was able, in the balance, to save lives.
I don't understand. What balance, what lives?
The prevailing sentiment was that the Japanese would not surrender until their home islands were totally conquered. Their government was in the process of preparing the civilian population to fight to the death. (Research the invasion of Okinawa if you want to know what a US invasion of the main island would have been like.) In a version of the trolley dilemma, the American rational was that the loss of life in two horrific attacks that would shock the Japanese into surrender was less evil than the alternative of invading their home islands.
I'm not making that argument, or saying there were no alternatives, just that the Americans were weighing the loss of life (including civilians) involved in a nuclear bombing against the loss of life (including civilians) in invading the islands.
Notwithstanding other unthought of solutions, the strategy worked, and the apparent alternative would have been brutal.
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Didn't they want to surrender on their terms though?
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They weren't in much of a position to set terms, were they
I mean no they weren't, but when they set terms that they were going to get anyways... is it really setting terms?
Allieds had decided together and told the Japanese that they'd accept nothing but unconditional surrender. At that point asking for anything would be an attempt to set terms.
lol, the prevailing sentiment according to Taniwha420, the human pretzel, so called for the shocking degrees they bend facts to fit their narrative. puff puff? I think I'll pass.
There's just as many voices, and evidence, that the Japanese were looking for a way out of the war. There were other "non-brutal" options you ignore, pretending they didn't exist. It would be one thing if you presented both sides honestly, but clearly you're just AFP, another fucking propagandist.
They did not save any lives, that is a completely made up invention. In fact Imperial Japan cared little about the atomic bomb, and even if a land invasion had become necessary, the USA had made a deal with the USSR to invade on land.
This was the real reason for the bombings, not to beat Japan into submission, which Roosevelt's deal with the USSR for a land invasion ensured, but to show the USSR the destructive power the US held. Truman was a staunch anticommunist, and refused to let the USSR play the part Roosevelt negociated in a land invasion.
It was a war crime with no benefits at all except to show off to the USSR, who would develop nukes themselves 4 years later anyway. An absolute tragedy which proved to be entirely useless.
Your understanding of the historical record is not only fatally incomplete; it’s also riddled with inaccuracies and purposefully promulgated falsehoods. Get less history from pop sources and ideologically steered texts.