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Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author’s permission.

Originally written in 2015 for the 70th anniversary; updated in 2020 for the 75th anniversary; reposted below along with a podcast for the 79th anniversary.

It Should Never Be Done Again: Hiroshima, 75 Years Later

August 6, 1945. Hiroshima. A Japanese city roughly the size of Houston. Incinerated by the first atomic bomb. Three days later, Nagasaki. Japanese surrender followed. It seemed the bombs had been worth it, saving countless American (and Japanese) lives, seeing that a major invasion of the Japanese home islands was no longer needed. But was the A-bomb truly decisive in convincing the Japanese to surrender?

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Why No Hollywood Movie on Nagasaki Atomic Bombing?

In the 1952 movie Above and Beyond, movie idol Robert Taylor played handsome Col. Paul Tibbetts, straight out of Central Casting, who piloted his B-29 Enola Gay to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima 79 years tomorrow. We all grew up in awe of Tibbetts, Enola Gay and the perfect mission which incinerated Hiroshima from the first A Bomb dropped in anger. My awe eventually turned to revulsion from a horrendous, senseless war crime.

But who piloted what plane that dropped the second A Bomb on Nagasaki just 3 days later? The American Story has largely erased the saga of the Nagasaki mission for good reason. It was a colossal screw up that almost got the pilot court martialed; indeed, nearly detonated Fat Man over the Pacific en route.

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Shock Poll: Most Americans Oppose US Troops Defending Israel

On today’s Ron Paul Liberty Report:

A new poll released yesterday by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs shows that a solid majority of Americans oppose using US troops to defend Israel – the lowest level of support for defending Israel since the poll began in 2010. Meanwhile both political parties insist the US will defend Israel if Iran retaliates. Also today, US sends troops BACK into parts of Iraq!

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Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Most Americans Don’t Want US Troops To Fight for Israel

A new survey from the Chicago Council finds that most Americans oppose sending U.S. forces to defend Israel if it comes under attack. If Israel is attacked by Iran, 56% oppose U.S. intervention to defend them. If Israel is attacked by any of its immediate neighbors, 55% oppose sending U.S. troops to defend them in that scenario. Now that these scenarios are not so hypothetical, most Americans aren’t interested in having the U.S. military come to the rescue.

Support for U.S. intervention to defend Israel has declined significantly since 2021. Three years ago, 53% of the public supported direct intervention, and now that figure is 41%. Support among Democrats has dropped 6 points to 35%. Support has dropped among independents by 14 points, and among Republicans it has dropped 17. Most Republicans still favor intervention.

Unfortunately, no one in the administration seems to know or care that most of the country doesn’t want the U.S. to rush to Israel’s defense. The Biden administration has been sending more ships, jets, and military personnel to the Middle East in the wake of the Israeli government’s latest reckless and provocative attacks. If Iran and its proxies launch their reprisals in the coming days, American deployed on the ground and at sea throughout the region will be at much greater risk and the U.S. will even closer to the major war that every administration official keeps claiming not to want.

Read the rest of the article at Eunomia

Daniel Larison is a contributing editor for Antiwar.com and maintains his own site at Eunomia. He is former senior editor at The American Conservative. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.

He Took the Only Photos in Hiroshima on August 6

Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Between Rock and a Hard Place.

It’s in vain to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present. ~ Charles Dickens

Yoshito Matsushige, a photographer for the Chugoku Shimbun newspaper in Hiroshima, took the only pictures in that city on August 6, 1945, that have surfaced since and confirmed as taken then.

On that day, Matsushige wandered around Hiroshima for ten hours, carrying one of the few cameras that survived the atomic bombing and two rolls of film with twenty-four possible exposures. This was no ordinary photo opportunity. He lined up one gripping shot after another but he could only push the shutter seven times. When he was done he returned to his home and developed the pictures in the most primitive way, since every dark room in the city, including his own, had been destroyed. Under a star-filled sky, with the landscape around him littered with collapsed homes and the center of Hiroshima still smoldering in the distance, he washed his film in a radiated creek and hung it out to dry on the burned branch of a tree.

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