Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings:

Bombing Of Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

On August 6, 1945, during World War II, an American B.29 Bomber dropped the world’s first deployed atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima in Japan. The explosion wiped out about ninety percent of the city and immediately killed 80,000 people. Not counting the people who later died of radiation exposure. If that wasn’t enough damage, three days later a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing around 40,000 people. This attack was in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The bomb in Hiroshima exploded at 8:15 on the morning of August 6, 1945. About an hour previously, the Japanese had a warning radar that had detected the approach of some American aircraft headed for the southern part of Japan. The alert had been given, and radio broadcasting stopped in many cities. The planes approached the coast at a very high altitude. At nearly 8:00 A.M., the radar operator in Hiroshima determined that the number of planes coming in was minuscule - probably not more than three, and the air raid alert was lifted. The standard radio broadcast warning was given to the people that it might be advisable to go to a shelter if B-29's were sighted, but no raid was expected. At 8:15 A.M., the bomb exploded. Hiroshima was destroyed taking many souls down with it.

Hiroshima, a manufacturing center of some 350,000 people located about 500 miles from Tokyo, was selected as the first target. After arriving at the U.S. base on the Pacific island of Tinian, the more than 9,000-pound uranium-235 bomb was loaded aboard a modified B-29 bomber christened Enola Gay (after the mother of its pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets). The plane dropped the bomb–known as “Little Boy”–by parachute at 8:15 in the morning, and it exploded 2,000 feet above Hiroshima in a blast equal to 12-15,000 tons of TNT, destroying five square miles of the city.

Hiroshima was the primary target of the first atomic bomb mission. The mission went smoothly in every respect. The weather was good, and the crew and equipment functioned perfectly. In every detail, the attack was carried out exactly as planned, and the bomb performed exactly as expected. 

The bombing of Nagasaki didn’t get executed as the first. On the American point of view, it didn’t go “as effective” as the bombing of Hiroshima. There were weather complications among others conditions that limited the success of this bombing. Nagasaki had been subjected to a large-scale bombing before the explosion of the atomic bomb there. On August 1st, 1945, some high explosive bombs were dropped on the city. A few of these bombs hit in the shipyards and dock areas in the southwest portion of the city. Several of the bombs hit the Mitsubishi Steel, and Arms Works and six bombs landed at the Nagasaki Medical School and Hospital, with three direct hits on buildings there. While the damage from these few bombs was relatively small, it created considerable concern in Nagasaki and some people; principally school children were evacuated to rural areas for safety, thus reducing the population in the city at the time of the atomic attack.

On the morning of August 9th, 1945, at about 7:50 A.M., Japanese time, an air raid alert was sounded in Nagasaki, but the "All clear" signal was given at 8:30. When only two B-29 super fortresses were sighted at 10:53 the Japanese apparently assumed that the planes were only on reconnaissance and no further alarm was given. A few moments later, at 11:00 o'clock, the observation B-29 dropped instruments attached to three parachutes and at 11:02 the other plane released the atomic bomb. The bomb exploded high over the industrial valley of Nagasaki, almost midway between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works, in the south, and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (Torpedo Works), in the north, the two principal targets of the city.

Researching this information impacted me significantly. I wanted to focus in on a survivor’s story that moved me. "Mr. Akihiro Takahashi was 14 years old when the bomb was dropped. He was standing in line with other students of his junior high school, waiting for the morning meeting 1.4 km away from the center. He was under medical treatment for about year and a half. And even today black nail grows at his finger tip, where a piece of glass was stuck.” It is crazy to me that everyday life was going on when this happened. It makes me think about what were to happen if I was a survivor, but my family had just been wiped off this earth in a blink of an eye. Mr. Akihiro Takahashi was a child. When the bomb hit, he described it as a tremendous heat that came over him. His whole body burned. He described the cold river he came upon was precious as treasure. He ran into a friend of his, Tokujiro Hatta, who’s feet were badly burnt and could barely walk. His feet had red muscle exposed from the burns. He had to crawl on his arms and knees or have Takahashi hold him up as they tried to find help. I believe it is so important to look at people’s stories so that we may be impacted by it and want to make a difference by not repeating history.

 Japan’s Emperor Hirohito announced his country’s unconditional surrender in World War II in a radio address on August 15, citing the devastating power of “a new and most cruel bomb.” The United States only joined the war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December of 1941. The United States viewed this bombing as a victory, but was it? Our country is responsible for the deaths of many innocent lives. Though Japan acted with violence first on our territory, it was not morally okay to kill thousands of innocent people. 

The United States justification for both atomic bombings in Japan was wanting to limit its own casualties by forcing Japan to surrender as quickly as possible and thus “protecting American civilians”. However, historians have also concluded that there were other motivations, as expected; At the Yalta-Conference in February 1945 the Soviet Union secretly agreed to join the war against Japan within three months of Germany's surrender, so the United States wanted to force Japan to surrender before the Soviet Union could enter the war to secure a stronger political position after the war. The U.S. wanted to use the weapon in war to measure its effectiveness.      

By the end of the war, most of Japan's major cities had been destroyed by U.S. air attacks. Hiroshima was still intact. The reasons Hiroshima was chosen as the target for the A-bombing are assumed to be the following. The size and the shape of the city was suited to the destructive power of the A-bombs. Because Hiroshima had not been bombed, ascertaining the effects of the A-bomb would be relatively easy. Hiroshima had a high concentration of troops, military facilities and military factories that had not yet been subject to significant damage. As far a Nagasaki, it only made it to the list after Kyoto was removed from being too much of an important cultural center. The initial target on August 9 was Kokura, but there was too much cloud cover for visual targeting, so the Bockscar moved on to the backup target, nearby Nagasaki, insisted.

Works Cited:

History.com Staff. "Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009. Web. 23 Feb. 2017

"Avalon Project - The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Avalon Project - The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

"Hiroshima & Nagasaki Remembered." Hiroshima and Nagasaki Remembered: The Story of Hiroshima. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

"Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament." The Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. N.p., n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

Class Summary Session 2/21

     Class was about the second half of the book When The Emperor Was Devine. We started the class with the reading accountability, and Hanna’s research on the Japanese population in Hawaii. We also looked into some photographs that were taken during the war time, however, not published until later. The photographs were about the life of the Japanese population during the war. The photos also showed life of Japanese people in america, after the war was over. Some images show that the Japanese population in america were already aware of what was soon about to happen to them, much so that some of them put signs out of their shops saying “we are american too.”    
     Later, we were separated into groups to talk about passages, symbols and images in the book. We were tracing imagery and symbolism present in the book. For example the beginning of the book, where we see that the woman names some things and leaves other out, as the women’s name. This starts to create questions in the readers minds, in a place of no understanding; this puts us in the perspective of the Japanese people at the time. The place of no understanding shows the reader that we know as much as she knows, which is intentional.Some of the passages we looked at were:

1. The opening of the novel, page 7-9. In this passage, the woman is packing the family’s belongings because they are leaving on the next day. The passage shows how their family was a exactly like a common american family, having common things, such as plates and bowls, pictures hanging on the wall. It shows very little they had from their background culture, for example, the chopsticks, and what the woman’s mother had sent to them on their wedding. That shows how little they had of their background culture, how american they were and despite this fact, they still had to go through all of the war processes for Japanese.

1. “When the war is over,” freedom, pages 112-114: This passage only emphasises that for them, that the war is not over. The discriminalization of the japanese is not over. People are telling them that they are not welcome, and the fear is still strong, much so that the mother makes her kids sleep in their best clothes. They are not free from psychological trauma, not free to live in their house safely. This passage is in the chapter narrated by “WE” (the buy and the girl), represents that they have to be united, that it is them against the world outside.

Some of the images we talked about are:

1. Trees: The trees show up may times throughout the novel, the family has trees at their home, that gives them shadow and comfort, which they are soon to lose. Trees also represent security and instability for the family. Stability fading as they are taken away. The trees as seen as a safe place to the loss. Finally, trees also have deep routs and take a long time to grow, which represents longevity, and stability again, staying in the same place over a long time.

1. Horses : Horses also appear many times throughout the book. For the boy (naive boy), horses represent freedom. In another way, horses symbolise life. Horses represent the death of the boy’s innocence when he realises that they eat horse’s meat. He recognizes that freedom is over.

Finally, in the last part of class, we talked bout the ending of the book, and we came up with several thoughts about it, including: 

1. A sense of conformity, in which the family had to conform itself with the situation of being judged in a sense by their own neighbors just because they were a Japanese family. 

1. It flips the thought of american readers of “this could be my family,” because despite it being a common family, it was still not an american family. Therefore, it could not be an american reader’s family, americans were the ones that did that to them

Reading Response #3: When the Emperor Was Divine

Critics have said of Julie Otsuka's novel that it is "spare" and "minimal," which means that she packs a lot of meaning into what might at first seem a simple story. For your response to the novel, I want you to choose one (or a couple of related) passages to read closely, unearthing the meaning that might not be obvious. Make an argument about how the passage you choose illuminates an important theme of the novel. Here are some possibilities:

• American identity
• Patriotism and loyalty
• Alien-ness
• The portrayal of enemies
• Community and belonging
• Varying meanings of home
• Secrecy

You are not limited to this list: feel free to identify another theme that seems important in the novel.

This response is due no later than class time on Tuesday, February 21. You will only have two more opportunities to write a Reading Response before Spring Break, so make sure you get at least two in before then.

Korematsu v. United States (1944)

323 U.S. 214, 65 S. Ct. 193

Facts:

In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 which authorized the curfews, evacuations, and relocation camps of American citizens and permanent aliens of Japanese descent. Toyosaburo (Fred) Korematsu, an American citizen born and raised in Oakland, California with grandparents from Japan, refused to adhere to the evacuation of his region on the west coast. In a district court, he was convicted of violating the exclusion order. He petitioned to the Supreme Court for a review of his case after a court of appeals held the conviction he received at the district court.

Legal Questions:

Do Congress and the Executive have the power to remove Japanese Americans from the west coast solely based on race?

Holding of the Court:

6-3 in favor of the government (defendant)

Legal Reasoning:

Under Exclusion Order #34, Korematsu legally had to leave. Although normally such an order would be a violation of discrimination, it was considered necessary for such a time. It was difficult to know who remained loyal to the Japanese Empire, and therefore the “whole” had to comply for the safety of the public. The Court claimed that war is a time of hardship, and therefore some must sacrifice for the security of the whole nation. Using its constitutionally delegated war powers, the government could decide what those conditions were.

Dissent:

The order is actually not in the interest of a citizen’s safety, but rather a punishment based on ancestry rather than evidence of disloyalty (Justice Roberts).

The order shows obvious discrimination that deprives the right to live and work where the citizens wish to do so (Justice Murphy).

His crime was being present in his home and having an ancestry that he could not control. This is not actually a crime but was made a crime by a series of military orders, which were based on assumptions. The only option out of this crime was to give himself up to a detention camp (Justice Jackson).

This case was largely controversial among civil libertarians at the time and historians remain horrified. Although the war time powers allow severe decisions critical for national security to be made quickly, the Executive overstepped its jurisdiction by condemning 120,000 innocent people to massive life changes and oppression based on race alone. The Thirteenth Amendment claims “slavery and involuntary servitude” shall not exist in the United States unless a crime has been committed (and there was no evidence to support that every single Japanese American had committed a crime against the United States). Also, the Fourteenth Amendment states that no citizen shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” (a fair trial).

The dissent is particularly interesting because they foreshadowed what would be brought to the table in 1983 when Korematsu proposed a writ of error coram nobis. Coram nobis allows a petitioner (in this case, Korematsu) to challenge his/her conviction after their sentence has been completed. The goals of this trial were to: overturn Korematsu’s conviction, vacate (or make legally void) the precedent of the Court that was made and used to enforce mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, correct public historical records and perception of the issue to reveal the facts of the exclusion and detention, and to vindicate the three men who were convicted during the “Wartime Cases”.

During the trial, attorneys Peter Irons and Aiko Yoshinaga-Herzig supplied evidence that the Department of Justice and War Department had “suppressed, altered, and destroyed” evidence during the 1944 trial in order to ensure a government victory. This evidence revealed: the covering up of intelligence reports proving loyalty by government prosecutors, the destruction of a General’s Final Report and its altered replacement, and that government attorneys had failed to inform the Supreme Court that allegations of espionage and sabotage by Japanese Americans were false yet used. The writ of coram nobis was granted and Korematsu’s conviction was cleared.

In 1988, the Civil Liberties Act was passed as an apology for the actions carried out without any evidence and motivated by “racial prejudice, wartime hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”. The Act proposed: to acknowledge the injustice of evacuation, relocation, and internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, to apologize on behalf of Americans, to provide funding for public education to inform about the injustice committed in attempt to prevent a repeat of events, to make restitution to those who were wrongfully involved, and to make future concerns of human rights violations in other nations more credible and sincere.

"Civil Liberties Act of 1988." Children of the Camps, PBS, 1999. Accessed 13 Feb.

2017.

Konkoly, Toni. "Korematsu v. United States (1944)." The Supreme Court, PBS, Dec.

2006. Accessed 13 Feb. 2017.

O’Brien, David M.Constitutional Law and Politics: Struggles for Power and

Governmental Accountability. 9th Ed., W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.

Susan Kiyomi Serrano and Dale Minami, Korematsu v. United States: A Constant

Caution in a Time of Crisis, 10 Asian Am. L.J. 37 (2003).

http://landmarkcases.org/en/landmark/cases/korematsu_v_united_states (image)