Unreleased photos of Hiroshima

And I was taught in school that I should be proud of this as an American. Well I'm not.

Our children are being taught today to be proud of what we are doing in Iraq. Wait till the pictures are shown from Iraq. People will be shocked. Maybe? People will feel shame? I doubt it! Pride has done away with shame. It’s the new America. No accountability, no shame, just pride!

Modern television and movies have desensitized us. I don’t know if Americans will ever feel shame for what we have done, because television leads people to think it’s okay. It’s just another movie?

We are programmed for pride, not shame!

I hope CURRENT is brave enough to play these photos on tv. People must see this.
I feel it is better for people to be disturbed by the truth rather than pacified by the media's version of the truth.
Let the Deprogramming begin!

the a-bomb being dropped was pretty cold.most likely the war would have been over in a couple weeks.

Had the A-bomb not been dropped, it's likely that millions more would have died than did.
But even so, I've been to Hiroshima, and when you're standing there, it's really difficult to not be overcome by the gravity of what happened there.

America's all worried about other countries trying to get nuclear weapons, maybe the reason they feel they need them is because they've seen what we've done with a couple of ours.

This sort of thing used to disgust us - now it's accepted. My Republican friend doesn't even flinch about the loss of Iraqi lives. Instead, he refocuses the issue to dispute the number of dead - rather than whether they should be dead or not, the injustice of it.

I was never taught to be proud, just that it was a tough choice that saved lives of US troops.

I very much doubt that the Japanese would've surrended in a couple of weeks when they had been fighting for every inch. It is a shame that all those people had to die for their leaders.

The author of the book that these images came from has this to say "Atomic Tragedy offers a unique perspective on one of the most important events of the twentieth century.

As secretary of war during World War II, Henry L. Stimson (1867–1950) oversaw the American nuclear weapons program. In a book about how an experienced, principled man faltered when confronted by the tremendous challenge posed by the intersection of war, diplomacy, and technology,

Sean L. Malloy examines Stimson's struggle to reconcile his responsibility for “the most terrible weapon ever known in human history” with his long-standing convictions about war and morality.

Ultimately, Stimson's story is one of failure; despite his beliefs, Stimson reluctantly acquiesced in the use of the atomic bomb against heavily populated Japanese cities in August 1945.

This is the first biography of Stimson to benefit from extensive use of papers relating to the Manhattan Project; Malloy has also uncovered evidence illustrating the origins of Stimson's commitment to eliminating or refining the conduct of war against civilians, information that makes clear the agony of Stimson's dilemma."

After all this time it's unfair to compare it to Iraq when the attitudes are completely different, and the people who are making the decisions now radically changed.

i doubt that america would have dropped the a-bomb on the japanese if they would have looked like us.in the past america has a tendency to view different cultures as savage. what better answer than to wipe a whole culture off the face of the earth.

I am not sure that Americans should feel shame for what we were forced to do in August 1945. From the start of the conflict you had Japan attacking perl harbor. In the end the men in charge did what they had to do to stop WW2, millions of more lives would have been lost if we were forced to land in japan, it would have been a brutal struggle that would have devestated both Japan and American lives, many many lives were saved by dropping the bombs. Not just American lives were saved but innocent Japanese lives who would have been killed unneccesarily in the collateral damage of warfare carrying on in their close proximity.

In world war 2 we did have something to lose, we had an enemey that wanted to control the pacific, and would have tried to take over the world if they could have.

In the end, the Japanese threatened our freedoms and our way of life. I doubt that the leaders who commanded WW2 wanted to commite genocide on the Janpanees just becuase they could have with these bombs.

I hope no one takes this the wrong way, I am not happy that we had to drop bombs that in a flash, that were able do destroy a whole city, but at the time there was an enemy the likes that most of us have not seen in our life times.

Did anybody read the nature of the comments following the photos? They totally epitomise whats wrong with the world and why, unfortunately, we will probably never have world peace.

The US was in no way forced to nuke innocent civilians. Not only was this a horrific act of terrorism by the United States, it was militarily unnecessary.

"The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." -Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

"The use of [the atomic bombs] at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." -Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman.

we had to drop two bombs. one wasn't enough. even after that, there were military commanders in japan that invaded the emperors palace to keep him from transmiting the unconditional surrender. they wanted to continue the war. those bombs saved lives on both sides

Even though it was an horrible thing, Those bombs saved a lot more lives than it took away.

Im proud to be an american for sure because we have the right to bitch about how "crappy" it is.

this was just a bad time what a hard choice it would have to be either kill innocent people or send in troop to have them slaughterd...I do not envoy president Truman...we do not fully understand what was happing at that time or the scope of death that was present everyday...this picture sums the whole war up in one frame

The claim that those two bombs saved a lot more lives than they took away is pure conjecture and wishful thinking - there is absolutely no way of knowing how many lives were saved, if any at all.

If you go and look at the events of WWII then you'll see what I mean. Its true we'll never really know though.

Oh please, all this is so easy to look back on and put moral judgement on these acts. The fact of the matter is that Iraq and the Pacific theatre can't even be compared. Yes, we've been in Iraq for 5 years and it is a tragedy, but all loss of life is a tragedy. Almost the entire world was at war for six years with MILLIONS of casualties. Whether things could have been done diplomatically is almost irrelevant as those bombs DID end the war for better or worse.

These photos really make you look at the bombing in a whole new light.

No war waged by man has ever been justified, just conveyed convincingly enough to gain support. They had no reason to bomb Hiroshima or Nagasaki other than to test the effectiveness of the two bombs and effects on nuclear bombs on a city-wide area.

Nobody forced America to drop atomic weapons. the firebombing of Tokyo and several other cities had already decimated Japan. America just wanted to test the technology and flex its muscles to ward off any future competitors. The "we were forced to" argument just doesn't fly.

"No war waged by man has ever been justified"

better to ignore people like Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Genghis Khan? should we turn away from Darfur?

Thanks, kaffkaesque, great find. I've known about this for over ten years, but I didn't have any links.