Barefoot Gen, HIroshima Destroyed - YouTube
This cartoon was made by a survivor. Totally worth the watch, and heartbreaking. This type of stuff makes me rage so hard at the government.
There was a terrible smell in the air. Thinking the bomb that hit us might have been a yellow phosphorus incendiary like those that had fallen on so many other cities, I rubbed my nose and mouth hard with a tenugui (a kind of towel) I had at my waist. To my horror, I found that the skin of my face had come off in the towel. Oh! The skin on my hands, on my arms, came off too. From elbow to fingertips, all the skin on my right arm had come loose and was hanging grotesquely. The skin of my left hand fell off too, the five fingers, like a glove.
I love how people try to pawn this action off as "saving lives and ending war." Give me a fucking break. People still get sick to this day from this stupidity. And then the US runs around telling everyone else they can't have nukes or nuclear power, when they are the only idiots who have ever used it in this fashion.... TWICE.
I'm half white, half Japanese, American, with a Nuclear Engineering degree who has worked in nuclear power plants and turned down jobs at Oak Ridge. I think that makes me qualified to say fuck anyone who used nuclear technologies for offensive purposes.
Yes, the Japanese were doing some horrible and unethical stuff too. That makes it okay. Tit for tat? We all compromise our morals every time we see someone else do something wrong.
So the nazis were bad for putting people in camps and gasing them out; but the united states can drop bombs on civilian cities (Dresden, or the cities in Japan) and that's ok?
Well, fuck you too, it wasn't tit for tat, if those fucking japs weren't bombed to oblivion they would still be raping and pillaging and killing millions of people which apparently ok with you since you are half Japanese.
An eyewitness account:
"I Thought My Last Hour Had Come..." - Robert Guillain - The Atlantic
Excerpt:
Fact: states murder. They always will. Given the psychopaths in charge; the power and authority they assume for themselves; the legitimacy bestowed upon them by an unthinking, unsuspecting, and misled populace; and the vested interests at stake, it is inevitable.
You can dress it up and try to make it palatable, but it still comes wrapped in blood and misery.
Welcome to democracy.