Hiroshima clips 2

Clip 1

The clip opens noting the European war is over, but the war against Japan was still going on.

Bombing Japanese cities.

The film says the US then faced the prospect of invading Japan itself, with the propect of 1,000,000 casualties.

A simulation of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Apparently it took 45 seconds before the bomb exploded.

The clip contains short interviews with survivors of Hiroshima.

The Nagasaki bomb is prepared.

The bomb is loaded. In the background, Truman is making a speech to the Japanese, telling the people to leave industrial cities.

The Nagasaki explosion.

The movie notes the second bomb was actually scheduled for Kokura, but since it was too cloudy, the plane had to go to a secondary target, which was Nagasaki.

More than 50,000 people were killed. The bomb was released in a way that caused it to miss its aiming point.

The clip then goes on to talk about radiation sickness. Apparently the American scientists did not anticipate the scale of the problem.

Another clip

An extremely short clip with no narration. Only around twenty seconds long. Also no sound.

Former secretary of Defense Robert McNamara questions the use of the atomic bomb on Japan.

Apparently he was involved in the debriefing of the crews that were involved in the firebombing of Tokyo.

The aftermath of the firebombing, not the atomic bombing. (The atomic bombs counted for only around 3% of the destruction that Japan underwent during World War II; most of the rest was due to the firebombing.)

He questions whether it was right or not to kill 100,000 plus people in one night by firebombing or any other way in order to win a war.

McNamara questions why it was necessary to use the atomic bomb when the firebombing was so effective. 59% of Yokohama was destroyed, and Yokohama was roughly the size of Cleveland.

51% of Tokyo was destroyed (Tokyo was about the size of New York City).

99% of Toyama was destroyed (about the size of Chattanooga).

40% of Nagoya was destroyed (about the size of Los Angeles.)

35.1% of Osaka was destroyed (about the size of Chicago).

City after city are shown, too fast to screen cap them.

McNamara discusses the ethics of using the atomic bomb and the failure of rules of war. He said “what makes something immoral if you lose, but not if you win?”



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