6 August, 61st Hiroshima Anniversary

On Sunday evenings, I usually watch TV. Except for the evening news, it is the only TV I regularly watch.

Tonight was the normal anniversary so of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and how it affected the biggest victims of World War 2, innocent Japan. Why, here it was, trying to free China and other Asian countries from Western imperialism so that it could impose Japanese imperialism, when all the sudden the whole world showed up at Japan's door and started attacking it for no good reason. This unfair Western aggression against poor, innocent Japan began when Roosevelt tricked the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor.

I personally believe it was absolutely wrong to attack a city when it was known that so many non-combatants would be killed. You may argue that women were contributing to the Japanese war effort, but you cannot make that argument for children. We intentionally killed women and children. Intentionally because we knew it would happen and it was more than "collateral damage." Japan was doing the same thing and worse in China, but that is no excuse. Another problem is that the bombings allows Japan to see itself as, and to play, a victim of the war and escape accepting responsibility.

There are many other reasons why I think it was wrong, but it has been argued and debated for years, and I can add nothing new. The bomb however, in no way excuses anything that Japan did in the war, nor does it make Japan a victim of the war that they started.

(Most people are not aware that Japan had attempted to build an atomic bomb during WW2, as had Germany. They failed having never come close, but they tried. I don't doubt that they would have used it had they had one. The scene of a Japanese fighter pilot warning children to take cover during the Pearl Harbor raid in that bad Pearl Harbor movie a few years ago wouldn't have been likely.)

Anyway, this is normal every year at this time. There be more on the 9th, the anniversary of Nagasaki. Then, on August 15, the anniversary of Japan's surrender, Koizumi will go to Yasukuni shrine and worship convicted war criminals to appease the right wing and others, including the families of some of the veterans. Oh, I'm sorry, he said he goes to pray for peace. It's a matter of the heart.