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WWII survivors want N-weapons banned

I don't know whether nuclear weapons should be banned but I do have to admit that weapons should NEVER be indiscriminately used on civilians. We as the US have a moral duty to be an example to the world to avoid loss of innocent lives. If we don't accept that responsibility, we are no better than the terrorists.

The fact is there never would have been an A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima if Japan hadn't started the war in the first place with their attack on Pearl Harbor. When will Japan apologize for Pearl Harbor? The US had to drop the bomb in order to finally put an end to the Japanese war machine, that refused to surrender any other way. In China alone, Japanese soldiers killed 10 to 30 million civilians.

the indiscriminate killing of civilians was an accepted tactic of both sides during WWII; don't get too sanctimonious. the concept of assured mutual annihilation during the cold war prevented a third world war, and would have been impossible without nukes.

I'd bet that the attitude of these American Fighting men were different back then than they are today. Today we are pushed around by other governments to the point that we look like whimps and it's really easy to say "Shame on us". The Japanese were supporting Hitler, Hello? I don't see the Japanese coming to Pearl Harbor and feeling bad for what they did.

The deliberate nuking of women and children of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was the darkest time in America history.
The taking of innocent lives (both crowded cities were not military targets) was perhaps the beginning of the end of the country as we knew it.
May God have mercy on those responsible for this horror.

Nuclear weapons are fearsome, and one can argue whether the bombings in Japan were justified or not. More people died from firebombings, but we don't discuss that. Simply put, the genie is out of the bottle and cannot be put back. The significant point is that despite their involvement in several wars since WWII, neither the US or any other nation that has possessed these weapons has used, or chose to use these weapons.

We can choose to unilaterally disarm ourselves, however, consider the alternatives carefully. If we were threatened by another nation/group with a nuclear weapon, and had no similar weapon or effective means of response, what would you have us do?

History provides some guidance. Poisonous gas was used extensively in WWI, and was a fearsome weapon of mass destruction. It wasn't militarily effective since there was little control over where it was dispersed, but it could kill fighters and civilians alike (kind of like large nukes).

Post-WWI, poisonous gas has not been used because of its possession by all combatants who feared the consequences of its use. In fact, it has only been used in one campaign, against a civilian population that had no effective response.

Pearl Harbor was strictly a military base.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not.
I don't think God turns His back on innocent women and children caught between warring political factions thinking because they are part of a country that needs to be punished.

There is always a monumental difference between The People of a country and those who are running the country.

It was anything but America's darkest hour! When you are up against a fanatical peoples who were trained from infancy to believe their current emperor was one of a succession of Gods that had led the Japanese peoples to nothing but victories for over 5,000 years, it took an A-bomb to blast them to 20th century realities. As one of the previous commentors mentioned, loss of OTHERS lives was nothing to the Japanese whose only concern was that the rank of the beheader be at least equal to or superior to that of the beheaded. In my opinion, far more on both sides would have died if there had been no A-bomb and the Allies had physically attacked the Japanese mainland.

Nukes are no different than any other tool of war and hopefully our scientists have developed them to the point where they can be fired from a howitzer and kept to battlefield uses. Further, our national leaders should have advised the Islamo hordes that if a nuke goes off in this nation, they can consider their sacred Mecca to be a concave sheet of glass. Properly used, nukes are a means of keeping the peace, not war.

to CA Andy -

by your logic, all nations should be given nukes in order to keep the peace. This is just as flawed as the notion that everyone should carry guns to protect themselves. We should be listening to Sherwood and Hiraoka. If Israel has nukes Iran obviously feels the need to have them as well - and so on. Don't look back to the days of Reagan - look to the future.

I think if not US bomb HIROSHIMA and NAGASAKI,JAPAN wouldnt leave INDONESIA so easily.Well,I am INDONESIAN.Beside story from my mom who experienced it by herself,I know from history about how cruel the JAPANESS soldiers were.Although its a horror to bomb innocent people in JAPAN,but in some way it also saved lots lives in other nation.I dont say that i am glad US drop the bomb on JAPAN,but i guess its their own cruelty over people of other nations that bring down fall to their own people and nation.I remember my mom told me how they were force to leave the house after being ordered to cook meal for all the soldiers.Yes,they suddenly came and ordered all my mom family to leave.So they left without knowing where to go.They just walked and try to find a place to stay.With her sis and bro still small,she herself was about 9yrs old,Life was really like hell.When there was a Japan flag everyone must stop and bow,otherwise they would arrest you.Sometimes they would put people they arrest inside the big basket and take them to a certain place and burn them alive.Without the bomb JAPAN wouldnt surrender and caused suffering everywhere.

The Japanese started the war by attacking the United States, without provocation and killing civilians. We ended it the only way we could and in the long run saved thousands of U.S. Soldiers. END OF STORY.

War is Hell!

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight all these years after, the moralists amongst us, most of whom were not yet born when the nukes were used, have no sense of the mood at that time. Most all of us loathe war, however, that war was not started by us, but the weapons developed by us sure contributed to the war's end. If the enemy would have developed the nukes first they certainly would have been used against us. If so the world would be a much different place. As a member of the Boomer generation, when I look at the graves of my relatives who died fighting a war this country did not start, and when I talk with my elder living relatives who remember well the mood at that time, I'm darned glad those weapons stopped the war. Unfortunately the nukes' use was ugly but fortunately their use was effective. To this day their use as both weapons and deterrents, like it or not, have benefitted us all.

War is Hell!

It is truly sad to read such viciousness spewing from some types on this subject.

The mass slaughter of women, children, old people, etc. who, like us, are powerless in political decisions and the use of weaponry on other human beings, as nothing more than "collateral damage" quite possibly could be a sign of the end being nearer than we first thought.

May God have mercy on anybody who supports the extermination of innocent people.

You're joking, right? UNICEF estimates that if the U.S. hadn't dropped the bombs, the war would have dragged on another 1 1/2 years and would have taken 3 times as many lives (on both sides) as the bombs did.

Civilian deaths have been an acceptable result of war throughout history up until about 20 years ago. War is a much more surgical deal today, at least for civilized, responsible countries. But thanks to this modern stipulation, asymetrical warfare is the norm for the U.S. When Al-Qaeda kills thousands of civilians in the WTC it's OK, but when the U.S. blows up a mosque in Afghanistan where terrorists have taken refuge, it's all over CNN and being condemned by the U.N.

Pearl Harbor was a military base.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima would be the same as leveling all the civilians of Salt Lake City and Provo. The U.S. was winning the war and did not need to exterminate all those innocent people.
The administration wanted to show the world the "superior weaponry" it had.
END OF STORY.

Yes, the Japanese attacked the U.S. without being provoked. Like the U.S. attacked Iraq without being provoked. That's not disputed. Sherwood and Hiraoka think nukes should be banned and they're right.

I have lived in Hiroshima. I have spoken with survivors, seen the scars, heard the stories, been to ground zero. None of the stories that I heard were hostile towards the US; those who told the stories realized it was war, with all its terrible consequences. I did hear antagonism, but it only came from those born after the end of the war.

Pearl Harbor was a military target, yes. What about all the Chinese cities with millions of residents the Japanese destroyed? Oh, but since some of our commenters choose to ignore the millions of Chinese civilians murdered by the Japanese, I can only surmise that they view those Chinese as less than human - shame on them! You also conveniently forget that the US and Philipino prisoners on Bataan were also non-combatants, but how many of them died because of the brutal treatment by the Japanese on the death-march?

Congratulations to Dick Sherwood, and Takashi Hiraoka for NOT keeping silent on this horrific time in our history!

Also congratulations to all those personnel in the educational system of Salt Lake City on the decision
to allow these fine men to speak to our children on the truth of this subject without any ridiculous and excessive flag-wagging that produces such horror as executing mass populations of women and children for any reason.

To those cold-blooded neocons who insist "might is right" I suggest they ask Mr. Sherwood if he TOO believes the murders of women and children is necessary in war and perfectly fine and dandy.

He will speak again on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Salt Lake Main Library auditorium.

Doesn't matter that dropping the atomic bombs saved millions of lives and shortened the war by several years (the Allies alone were expecting to suffer at least a million casualties in the invasion, one can only imagine how many Japanese would have died) the only thing they focus on is how icky atomic weapons are and how mean we were to use them.

I'm glad we ended the war by vaporizing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And so is my father, who by August 1945 had already survived three separate Japanese attacks on his ship and was preparing to support the invasion forces.

He might not have been so lucky the fourth time around.