The U.S. dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki 64 years ago this week.
This seems to underscore how we are still learning how horrific those weapons are:
NAGASAKI (Kyodo) A team of researchers has succeeded in photographing radioactive rays coming from the cells of people who died in the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The pictures are evidence that the nuclear "death ash" continues to emit radiation from a corpse even after 60-plus years, according to Kazuko Shichijo, an assistant professor at Nagasaki University, a member of the team.
I also read an article in the Japanese magazine Aera this week claiming the U.S. used the weapons _ even though it believed Japan was already on the verge of surrendering _ to see how the bombs affected humans. In other words, the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were experimental guinea pigs for the U.S. military. As evidence, the article noted the U.S. dropped a uranium bomb on Hiroshima and a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki - and sent in researchers to examine residents in both cities as soon as the war was over.
I think this raises a good point - why did the U.S. use a plutonium bomb in Nagasaki on Aug. 9 if it already saw the uranium bomb worked in Hiroshima on Aug. 6?
The U.S. line has always been that President Truman ordered the bombs used to save lives in the view millions of Japanese and Americans would have died during a U.S. invasion of the mainland.
My dad, who survived the extremely bloody Battle of Okinawa in and was scheduled to join the mainland invasion as a grunt in the Marine Corps, tended to agree with this view. But it's an issue worth studying.
