I’m not sure you followed my point. The post-war estimates that you’re citing (i.e. the ones that didn’t figure in to Truman’s calculus) were shaded to producing as dire an outcome as possible to rationalize ex post facto. In other words, they were painting as dire a picture as possible.
(And given that I’ve been responding to you respectfully and without any personal animus, I’d appreciate it if you’d remove the eye-rolling emoji–I don’t think it’s helpful in polite conversation; how about replacing it with a dolphin or an ice cream cone? Everyone loves dolphins and ice cream.)
ETA: along with several things, we apparently disagree about the meaning of “remove.” Oh well.
There wasn’t a revisiting of the SIGINT quality immediately after the war in order to justify the bombing. It was more along the lines of “Were we correct in analysis of who, what, where.” To evaluate effectiveness They didn’t care about justification; the need to justify it is a much more recent development. There was never a question if more Japanese would die in losing a couple cities versus an invasion. It’s obvious more would die from an invasion. There was no effort to justify the bombings; at the time it was self-evident to them that their use was necessary. The only real question was to demo it, or use it on a city.
Years later, a CIA analyst went over the SIGINT to produce a paper.
This paper was personally interesting, being a former SIGINT analyst. It was interesting to see how accurate our analysis was. We really only had SIGINT and IMINT, unlike in Europe where we had all three.
To be clear: One can’t have a discussion about why a mushroom cloud is a contentions mascot for a school, as explained by a Japanese student, and not also consider discussion of the events surrounding that cloud (i.e., the war). You can’t really disentangle the two and call the events of the war “offtopic” as a result.
I agree that the events of the war are on topic. The events of the war are what provide the context to understand what is going on here. I guess what I struggle with is the discussion about whether or not the events of the war were right or justified with no effort to bring that around to the highschool or the student. If anyone was saying “America was right to drop the bomb on Japan, it ultimately saved lives, and therefore this highschool student’s complaint is nonsense” I feel like that would be on topic, but also I’d think that was dead wrong and there’s no way that “and therefore” works.
But no one seems to be arguing the “and therefore” part. No one is actually arguing there is a connection between the two things. So I feel like the whole thread is an insinuation that somehow the validity of this student’s feelings about the highschool logo hangs on whether American leaders made a good call in the first half the 20th century. But it’s just an insinuation, so there is nothing to discuss and no one to discuss it with.
That’s true for sure. The radioactive plume is quite close to the Columbia. Of course the river was a valuable resource for Hanford, but in addition to better designed containment they could have sited the storage better as well.
Sadly, we can’t force people to debate a certain stance.
My personal view is that whether or not you consider the mascot to be “appropriate” has a lot to do with what the “atomic era” means to you, and to understand that, you need to understand the local, national, and international sense and the implications therein.
The problem is, we as humans are really not very good at thinking that way. If you grew up in an era where atomic technology was the key to clean energy and a safer world, it can be difficult to come around to “clean” having some pretty large asterisks and “safe” having a pretty huge human cultural cost when actually used as weapons.
I think a similar example of symbolism might be the Japanese rising sun flag, which means very different things to different groups of people.
Interesting example. They usually edit that out in various games, anime, and manga exported to other parts of Asia. I am not sure if they do that for US exports (I recall some articles about it for places like China and Korea.)
But I wouldn’t expect a foreigner in Japan to get much traction if they pointed out someone wearing a rising sun flag shirt brings up negative feelings.
Hanford, to be specific, was used as a plutonium production facility during WWII and the Cold War. As Wikipedia says, “During the Cold War, the project expanded to include nine nuclear reactors and five large plutonium processing complexes, which produced plutonium for most of the more than 60,000 weapons built for the U.S. nuclear arsenal. […] Many early safety procedures and waste disposal practices were inadequate, and government documents have confirmed that Hanford’s operations released significant amounts of radioactive materials into the air and the Columbia River.”
Obviously, the effects of inadequate waste disposal practices did not have the same effect as dropping the bomb on Japan. But it’s important to point out that the Hanford Site is still costing us lots of money to clean up, and, possibly, still causing health problems. So maybe it was understandable for Richland High School to have a mushroom cloud logo (and yell “nuke 'em!” during games, as per Wikipedia’s article on Richland High School) during the period when a lot of people in Richland worked at Hanford. But the dropping of the bomb is now controversial, and there’s little to no controversy over the pollution. So you’d think they’d switch to using something else.
I guess to me that issue is how the logo is currently affecting people who are alive now. I think a lot of people would be more comfortable if there were a rule that could be applied to screen logos and mascots and determine objectively whether they were okay or not, but that can’t exist.
Imagine you’ve got a small town and the highschool’s mascot is a coyote. One year rabid coyote gets into town and bites some people, three children die, the community is devastated. How would the conversation about whether to keep the coyote mascot go? “We objectively determined that coyotes are an inoffensive mascot and therefore it is still inoffensive.”
I think someone might read into this that I’m saying, “That highschool should abandon it’s logo.” I’m not. I’m saying that listening to how people are affected by things and sharing how they affect us is a way forward, while debating the rightness of a decision made in war time before anyone involved in the current problem was born is a way to dismiss people and increase conflict.
Unpopular opinion, but there was a war. We won, they lost. To the victor go the spoils, and a small part of that means there’s going to be celebrations of that victory memorialized, occasionally in somewhat-graphic terms. Par for the course, nothing to see here except the professionally perpetually-offended people doing their thing. I hope the school keeps the mascot, maybe hire some vets to paint it on a bigger surface.
But there’s no question this particular mascot is depicting “nukes used as weapons” rather than “clean dependable energy,” since
A nuclear power plant doesn’t produce a mushroom cloud unless something went very, very wrong
They literally call themselves the “Bombers,” which in this context clearly means “people who drop nuclear bombs on other people”
Thus far there have been exactly two instances of people dropping nuclear weapons on other people, both in Japan. So it’s not a question of what this mascot represents so much as a matter of how people feel about the events it represents.
Unpopular opinion is unpopular for a reason. I think the Union was on the right side of the Civil War, but I still think it would be poor taste for an Ohio High School to adopt a mascot representing Sherman’s March.
Except I’ve repeatedly stated what I believe to be the case, that for decades the mushroom cloud hasn’t symbolized or represented either of the bombings, but rather the plutonium plant, its past contribution to national security during the Cold War, and its importance to the community.
Of course it’s understandable that the young woman would interpret the mascot as she did. And it’s sad the high school students had such a simplistic view, and for the most part couldn’t articulate a clear description of what the mascot represents beyond “Our school’s cool.”
I believe the Japanese student has misjudged the mascot to be a glorification of incinerating 226k mostly civilians in the two bombings, instead of simply the school’s mascot. Additionally, while most of the dead were civilians, the cities were full of war industry, and therefore a valid target. She also misstates that her city of Fukuoka was the prime target, but was saved by cloud cover. This is incorrect. Fukuoka was never a target. The primary target was Kokura, which was covered by clouds, leading to Nagasaki being bombed.
Of course the bombing of these two cities is regrettable, and it would have been far preferable to have ended the war without further deaths and casualties. Unfortunately a valid alternative wasn’t seen by the Allies.
Hey, the Vietnamese (and the Afghans) are more than welcome to celebrate their ousting of our nascent Imperialism period. I personally have no problem with it.
