On 6 and 9 August 1945, the United States detonated two atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. The aerial bombings together killed between 129,000 and 226,000 people, most of whom were civilians.
Eye-witness accounts of the bombing’s aftermath depicted a kind of apocalyptic horror: Father Wilhelm Kleinsorge, a German Jesuit priest, encountered a group of soldiers whose “faces were wholly burned, their eye-sockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks… Their mouths were mere swollen, pus-covered wounds, which they could not bear to stretch enough to admit the spout of the teapot.”
Dr. Michihiko Hachiya, a survivor, spoke of “streetcars were standing and inside were dozens of bodies, blackened beyond recognition. I saw fire reservoirs filled to the brim with dead bodies who looked as they had been boiled alive”.
President Harry Truman made the case to the public that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a necessary and humanitarian means of forcing Japan’s surrender. This view was not held, however, by military commanders or leftist American dissidents.
Once American forces had Japan under military control, they imposed censorship on many images related to the U.S. bombing campaign. Among the images banned was a picture of a partially incinerated Nagasaki child, taken by Japanese photographer Yōsuke Yamahata. These restrictions were not lifted until 1952.
Among the first Americans to denounce the bombing were socialists such as the Trotskyist James P. Cannon, who publicly denounced the use of nuclear weapons as “an unspeakable atrocity”.
The dissent of military commanders was not public, however. In 1950, Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, wrote: “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan”. In his memoirs, President Eisenhower, then General of the Army, confessed that “dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary”.
Dropping the Bomb: Hiroshima & Nagasaki - Shaun 💀
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I like how Avatar is one of the most unapologetically anti-imperialist works of popular media but it’s also a white savior narrative about an American Space Marine who not only gains the trust of the indigenous people by pretending to be one of them (blueface) but in fact becomes their chosen one.
Pandora truly is a land of contrasts
The Chapo line on it is correct, IMO. He has to be “the savior” because he is the only one who understands at all what is coming for them. There’s a deleted scene from the first movie where it shows Jake on an Earth where basically all nature has been paved over and the sky is blocked out with advertising, and that makes Sully’s motivation much more clear, IMO.
Yeah, and there’s like a job for us in the imperial core in ending imperialism - in the narrative of Avatar, they need Earth people to stop killing them because they have such an advantage in tech, numbers, and honestly just naked brutality, they need more people like Jake and Michelle Rodriguez or the other humans to betray the evil imperialists and throw as many wrenches in the machine as they can.
Seeing my posts on a non-hexbear website is weird.
I don’t remember why I initially removed the black of this emote (prob some weird hangup I had about non-transparent bgs) but I’ve restored it to it’s rightful original being
yes algorithm, please show me 1 month old posts with 0 upvotes or comments on my front page, thank you!
new hidden prank camera concept: being nice to people
