Hiroshima Day 2010 in Iowa

“Nuclear weapons are bad for human beings and other living creatures. We should never again detonate such a weapon.”

From the Mississippi River to the Missouri, groups in Iowa are noting that today is the 65th anniversary of the explosion of a nuclear weapon on Hiroshima, Japan. Some call these groups “peace groups” but they are more like “common sense groups” as even the New York Times recently noted, “Two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States and Russia still have more than 20,000 nuclear weapons. That is absurd.”

President Harry Truman, who made the decision to attack Japan with nuclear weapons, said in his memoir Year of Decisions, “I had set up a committee of top men and had asked them to study with great care the implications the new weapon might have for us…”

“It was their recommendation that the bomb be used against the enemy as soon as it could be done. They recommended further that it should be used without specific warning and against a target that would clearly show its devastating strength. I had realized, of course, that an atomic bomb explosion would inflict damage and casualties beyond imagination. On the other hand, the scientific advisers of the committee reports, 'We can propose no technical demonstration likely to bring an end to the war; we see no acceptable alternative to direct military use.' …it had to be used against a military target.”

“The final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me. Let there be no mistake about it. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used. The top military advisers to the President recommended its use, and when I talked to Churchill he unhesitatingly told me that he favored the use of the atomic bomb if it might aid to end the war.”

The rest is history.

According to the United Stated Department of Energy, the effects of the immediate blast in Hiroshima (a city with a civilian population of 300,000 and 43,000 soldiers at the time) killed 70,000 people.  The total number of deaths caused by the blast and its after effects totaled more than 200,000 people within the first 5 years after the bombing.

Nuclear weapons are bad for human beings and other living creatures. We should never again detonate such a weapon.

~Paul Deaton is a native Iowan living in rural Johnson County and weekend
editor of Blog for Iowa. E-mail Paul Deaton

Iowa Hiroshima Day Observances:

Sisters of Saint Francis of Clinton, Iowa

Siouxland Peace Coalition

Catholic Peace Ministry, American Friends Service Committee, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Methodist Federation for Social Action, Des Moines Ecumenical Committee for Peace, STARPAC, The United Nations Association of Iowa, Iowa Peace Network, Des Moines Area Sisters of Humility

Omaha and Des Moines Catholic Workers