[ RadSafe ] ATOMIC OVERLOOK

[Strickert, Rick (Consultant)]

Regarding the claim about the atomic bomb used on Nagasaki (or Hiroshima):  "The monstrous crime was using it just as starting shot of the cold war."

This is simple a personal political opinion of some people, devoid of the reality of WWII.  Here's an opinion from someone else:

“The atom bomb was no ‘great decision’… It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.” – Harry S. Truman, at a Columbia University Seminar, April 28, 1959, New York City.  As quoted in The Buck Stops Here: The 28 Toughest Presidential Decisions and How They Changed History, Thomas J. Craughwell, Edwin Kiester Jr., Quarry Books, 2010, p. 178.

Here are some other relevant quotes:

“We have spent two billion dollars on the greatest scientific gamble in history — and won,” President Harry Truman, The New York Times, Tuesday, August 7, 1945, p. 1

"Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans." 
("Public Papers of the Presidents: Harry S Truman, 1945", pg. 212).

“During a meeting at the White House in October 1945, [Robert] Oppenheimer tried to convey his deep moral crisis. ‘Mr. President, I have blood on my hands,’ he remarked. ‘Never mind,’ Truman replied, ‘it’ll all come out in the wash.’ (According to some accounts he offered Oppenheimer a hankerchief.) ‘Don’t you bring that crybaby in here again,’ Truman later told an aide. ‘After all, all he did was make the bomb. I’m the guy who fired it off.’” — Excerpted from The Bomb: A Life (Gerard J. DeGroot, Harvard University Press, 2004, p. 111)

“Don’t bother me with your conscientious scruples. After all the thing’s superb physics.”  – Enrico Fermi, taken from Brighter than a Thousand Suns, Robert Jungk, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1970, p. 202.

“Science has nothing to be ashamed of, even in the ruins of Nagasaki.” – Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974), Science and Human Values Harper and Row, New York, 1959, p. 73

“No country without an atom bomb could properly consider itself independent.” – Charles de Gaulle (1890-1970), New York Times Magazine 12 May 1968, pp. 102-103. 


Rick Strickert
Austin, TX