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Remembering the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Well..good evening folks!:cool:
I have just walked in looking like a drowned rat, hair sticking to my face in a most unflattering 'cap effect'.:eek: My trainers and jeans are covered in mud and I am soaked from the waist down. But..I feel so happy I dont care because I have just had a wonderful experience. I would like to share it with you too.
I have just returned from a lantern floating ceremony at Willen Lake, Milton Keynes to remember the victims of the Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A deeply moving and thought provoking experience I would not have missed. It is held every year and draws a large following from the local community , admittedly slightly fewer tonight due to torrential rain.:D
We huddled together barefoot , and dripping into the temple .Standing shoulder to shoulder in complete silence, captivated by each new speaker.
One speaker was a Jewish born Roman Catholic Priest .He had spent many years in the US Airforce, including a period where he was involved in the development of effective Nuclear bomb guidance systems. My understandin was that he was also trained as a fighter pilot.He talked alot about 'repentance', and the fact that the word comes from the Latin for 'rethink'. He said that over the years he has come to 'rethink' his own actions. He said that Buddhism had helped him to understand that right action can only come from right view. He spoke with dignity and gentle humour, in a way that almost belied the harshness of his subject matter. He also mixed up the noble truths which caused many a quiet chuckle among the audience!!!
Later we were handed lanterns and monks led a long procession down from the temple to the lakeside. The monks abandoning their sandals waded out into the lake and many of us followed suit postioning ourselves in a line to accept the lanterns people passed across. The lanterns were then set out to float across the lake, 200 lanterns in all. It was a truly wonderful moment which could not be diminished by the sea of umbrellas or the crackle of thunder. The sight of so many tiny flickers of light bobbing against the gray water brought a lump to my throat and it is a sight I will never forget.
Medusa
I have just walked in looking like a drowned rat, hair sticking to my face in a most unflattering 'cap effect'.:eek: My trainers and jeans are covered in mud and I am soaked from the waist down. But..I feel so happy I dont care because I have just had a wonderful experience. I would like to share it with you too.
I have just returned from a lantern floating ceremony at Willen Lake, Milton Keynes to remember the victims of the Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A deeply moving and thought provoking experience I would not have missed. It is held every year and draws a large following from the local community , admittedly slightly fewer tonight due to torrential rain.:D
We huddled together barefoot , and dripping into the temple .Standing shoulder to shoulder in complete silence, captivated by each new speaker.
One speaker was a Jewish born Roman Catholic Priest .He had spent many years in the US Airforce, including a period where he was involved in the development of effective Nuclear bomb guidance systems. My understandin was that he was also trained as a fighter pilot.He talked alot about 'repentance', and the fact that the word comes from the Latin for 'rethink'. He said that over the years he has come to 'rethink' his own actions. He said that Buddhism had helped him to understand that right action can only come from right view. He spoke with dignity and gentle humour, in a way that almost belied the harshness of his subject matter. He also mixed up the noble truths which caused many a quiet chuckle among the audience!!!
Later we were handed lanterns and monks led a long procession down from the temple to the lakeside. The monks abandoning their sandals waded out into the lake and many of us followed suit postioning ourselves in a line to accept the lanterns people passed across. The lanterns were then set out to float across the lake, 200 lanterns in all. It was a truly wonderful moment which could not be diminished by the sea of umbrellas or the crackle of thunder. The sight of so many tiny flickers of light bobbing against the gray water brought a lump to my throat and it is a sight I will never forget.
Medusa
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Comments
I look up at the stars sometimes and wonder why, if I'm such an insignificant transitory smudge in such a vast place, I make such a big deal out of stuff, when there are really huge things going on......
What a wonderful experience for you, Msmedusa....
A community gathering of like-minded people, spreading love, benevolence and unity.
It's what counts.
Thank you for posting......
It is good to understand the causes of war, so we can avoid it and try to end it.
:smilec:
I don't want to diminish from anybody's experience here. I'm not opposed to a remembrance day for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. But should we not have a Manchuria Day as well for what the Japanese Empire did there? Or a China Day for the scientific "experiments" done by Japanese soldiers on living humans just like in the Third Reich? Or perhaps a Korea Day for the butchering done there by the Imperial Army?
It's a tragedy what happened to the innocent victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But let's not forget that the evils being perpetrated in China, Manchuria, and Korea were stopped only because of those bombs. Thousands were being butchered in those countries every day that America waited to drop the bomb.
The fact is, the Japanese were only copying the rapacity and jingoism of the Western powers which dominated at the world at the time, because that seemed to be the only way to avoid China's fate. As one Japanese diplomat put it, "The Western powers taught the Japanese the game of poker but after acquiring most of the chips they declared the game immoral and took up contract bridge."
<sup>*</sup>How about a China day, for the Opium wars? How a non-West day, for the vast swaths of the world subject to Western imperialism?
As if that excuses the horrors of the Japanese Empire? British Imperialists looked like kittens compared to what Tojo and his thugs did.
That has nothing to do with what I said either. And it's a sorry excuse for butchering on an industrial scale done not to European imperialists, but fellow non-Imperial Asians. And it's no excuse for Mengala-like experimentation on live humans or the Rape of Nanking.
And I simply fail to see how British imperialism somehow pushed the Japanese to do Nazi-like experimentation on humans. Whatever the crimes of the British Empire, they never matched the barbarism of the Imperial Japanese.
I don't know what you are referencing about 'wiping out cultures.' Certainly not genocide or industrial slaughter.
the death toll during WWII was horrific and the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima ended it. It's not a good idea to try to second-guess history. None of us was there--including me and I'm older than dirt. The death toll in WWII was so high, if they had delayed the bombings by 2 weeks, the same number of people would have died as a result of their inaction. It was a Nagasaki/Hiroshima EVERY TWO WEEKS. It had to stop. As far as the Allies knew at the time, the Japanese were going to fight "to the last man." Even if they didn't do that, the death toll would have been in the millions, not 200,000.
the ceremony as described was sweet and wonderful. I would have suggested holding it for the 65 million who died in WWII and in hopes that such a horror never happens again. And that we, or anyone, is ever forced to again make such a horrible decision.
As far as that goes, the British did, indeed, wipe out cultures and did all kinds of horrible things during the 19th century, but then so did the US. But the idea that the Japanese wouldn't have been so bad if the British hadn't been so bad is utter nonsense.
Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower, General Douglas McArthur, Fleet Admiral William Leahy, and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz did not seem to agree.
Eisenhower: "In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives."
Nimitz: "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."
Leahy: "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 because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
I can't find a direct quote from McArthur, but I've read that he disagreed with the bombings.
WWII ended the colonial system, started by the Vatican and popularised by the British.
Personally, I think it is not best to take sides but see the evil escalation of the whole matter of colonialism.
Absolutely.
As a UK secondary school history teacher,part of the syllabus I taught was about slavery and the above pictures of slave ships remind me of that. Showing films related to the subject never ceased to bring sadness to my heart and tears to my eyes. Additionally historically there's the destruction of native cultures in South America and North America as well as atrocities elsewhere.
Similarly with the slaughter on all sides in WW2 - the bombing of Dresden by 'bomber Harris' included, as well as Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of course the extermination of Jews,gypsies etc. and other loss of life for the British and Americans.
Historically the western world has a great deal to answer for in terms of destroying other cultures and warmongering in general - and it still continues to the present day.
I can't say I've felt proud to be British looking back on the "British Empire" quite frankly.
There are also many positive aspects to western culture too, of course and naturally I'm always grateful for them.
Perhaps slowly we are all learning from our mistakes and goverments around the world might seek more peaceful means of resolving problems. I hope so.
May there be world peace and understanding between nations in 2010 and onwards -and may there be loving kindness towards all beings. great and small, seen and unseen.
.
Eisenhower's is from his book The White House Years, Leahy's quote come from his book, titled I Was There, and the source for the Nimitz is here.