Re: Victims

[William V Lipton <liptonw@DTEENERGY.COM>]

Many thanx for your expression of decency.  Unfortunately, this seems to be a

rare quality.  Would the "body counters" be nitpicking about "historical

accuracy" if the victims were their families?



The opinions expressed are strictly mine.

It's not about dose, it's about trust.

Curies forever.



Bill Lipton

liptonw@dteenergy.com









> On 6 Aug 2002 at 12:43, William V Lipton wrote:

>

> > What is the purpose of this argument over the "body count"?  If the bomb

> > killed "only" 140,000 rather than 226,870 persons, does that make it

> > acceptable?

>

> Franz Schoenhofer wrote:

>

> As far as I understood from the news posted on RADSAFE, this is the number

> of by the Hiroshima authorities officially acknowledged victims . Couldn't

> we leave it at this point and this definition and not argue about whether

> somebody really was killed by radiation or heart stroke? I would go so far,

> that people have suffered from the bombing both physically and without any

> doubt also psychically - or are there any hardliners who regard the bombing

> as "fun" for the ones who survived????? Is a victim only one, who has a limb

> missing or has cancer developed which is acknowledged by American scientists

> as having originated from the radiation of the bomb? I have a collegue in

> her early sixties, who still has nightmares about the bombing - with

> conventional bombs! - of Vienna, though she was a very small girl then. I

> myself remember the ruins of Nuremberg on a visit to an aunt, when I was 10

> years old in 1954. Has anyone of the "body counters" posting to RADSAFE ever

> been in Hiroshima and the atomic bomb museum? Or to Nagasaki? Has anybody of

> those ever recognized, how much has been destroyed - not only property but

> cultural heritage, especially in Nagasaki? Probably not. I have been in

> Hiroshima twice and in Nagasaki once.

>

> Shame to those who discuss whether somebody was a "victim" of the bomb or

> not. 140 000 deaths is a number I cannot imagine, 226 870 I cannot imagine

> either - so for me personally the difference is against all my scientific

> knowledge simply not existent!

>

> ...

>

> I think that the bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki was such a tragedy,

> that the question raised is of no importance at all.

>

> Franz



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