Hiroshima

In class today, we began talking about the damage that 9/11 has caused our country. I brought up the theory that Ward Churchill had gotten in so much trouble for teaching in his college class; did America do something to deserve the terrorist attacks? Ward Churchill said that the bombings of Hiroshima could be seen as an example of something America has done that could have caused it's image to be painted so ugly. My class didn't like the fact that I was suggesting that Hiroshima wasn't justified and it ended up turning into a very heated class debate; almost everybody against me. 

Look, I've had my fair share of being the odd man out in discussions. I think the stronger you stay to your true convictions versus giving into normative social influences makes you a stronger debater but I'm not going to lie, it really sucked to be singled out like that. I looked up more information later on about a legitimate justification for the bombings of Hiroshima because I wanted to fact check the other students. To the attack that states "the bombing of Hiroshima saved thousands of other lives"- this is a false statement that president Truman's cabinet put together to justify the use of the atomic bomb. Japan had sent multiple attempts to create peace treaties with the US in Spring of 1945. Months before the end of the war, Japans leaders declared that "defeat was eminent". Every one of the peace treaties were overturned by the United States and as history goes, they dropped the atomic bomb on August 6th. To the attack that "Hiroshima was a military base and thus needed to be destroyed" or "Hiroshima needed to be destroyed because they were manufacturing weapons": this is a flat out lie. Almost all of the victims of Hiroshima were civilians and the United States Strategic Bombing Survey stated in it's official report: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen as targets because of their concentration of activities and population."(http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html). On top of that, all manufacturing factories had been put out of business in early April due to and oil shortage. To make it all worse, there was mass food shortages in Nagasaki and Hiroshima and almost all of the population were malnourished (these are not the "emperor crazy, weapon dwelling, American flag burning" enemies that so many people imagined; they were weak, tired, and sickly people who, for the most part, were in favor of ending the war). 

These were just a few main points that were argued in todays discussion that I thought deserved a little editing. As I made clear during class today, I was not arguing that Hiroshima shouldn't have happened. I was merely trying to show that there are parallels between the horrors of 9/11 and of Hiroshima. 3,000 were killed in September and an estimated 140,000 died in August, 1945. I am not saying that one is worse than the other and I do understand the points that everyone was trying to make in class today. I get it, I really do. I just also believe that there is a sense of American narcissism that when we are attacked it's because other people are crazy and that when we attack other people, we are justified. Just think about it a bit. Post your comments if you'd like, but be nice.

-Donna