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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: freelyhovering who wrote (136390)	4/11/2010 4:22:20 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 543053

I think films about Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March and Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs should be required viewing by our HS students as we prepare them to guard us in the next wars. Definitely John Hersey's book. In my own view, one should make no claims about the morality of the nuclear bombing of Japan without reading that book. Carefully.

To: freelyhovering who wrote (136390)	4/11/2010 10:57:42 AM
From: Bread Upon The Water	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543053

All decisions of that magnitude are made in the context of the politics/culture of the times. The prevailing sentiment (as absorbed by myself back then and in the subsequent 50's) is that the dropping of the bombs was the right move (as in the right move for us as a country--not as in some morality play). If the decision came down to having the enemy civilians die vs. our soldiers--well you know the results. Nobody I knew was gleeful about it (although they were gleeful about the war ending). And you have to give credit to my districts School board which in 1959 opposed the VFW's demand for the teacher's head who taught, in the VFW view, "Hiroshima" too sympathetically. My main point is that if one is going to evaluate/critique the decision then one should take into account the circumstances and pressures faced by those who made the decision.