How do you visualize 200,000 dying people?

You know there was a war going on, right? You've heard of World War II, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bataan death march? Do you have a recipe that will redeem the lives of Americans tortured and killed in the Philippines? Do they make nice lunches for the Korean comfort women the Japanese used as sex slaves? The people who fought for their lives may understand war a little better than you do.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/charlesjscanlon/sets/72157627319622890

and meditate Barefoot Gen
and the rest

"You stand at the site of humankind's first use of nuclear weapons, and you can't come up with any way to understand it."

Why such a distortion of the truth? The bomb was dropped as a way of ending a horrible war started by the Japanese. Without the bomb many more lives of the Allies would have been lost due to continued fighting of the dug-in Japanese soldiers. I lost enough of my relatives due to trying to subdue the Japanese war machine intent on world domination at any cost. The terrible atrocities of the Japanese army are also not mentioned in your article. How many Japanese civilians would have been killed if the Allies had invaded Japan? The bombs ended a war that if prolonged would have cost many more lives.

On another front, Catholics in America are paying heavily through court decisions in favor of the victims of pedophile priests. The Vatican and the pedophile protecting bishops are the ones that should be punished but the Catholics in the pews are suffering through massive financial losses because they aided and abetted by not demanding change in our beloved church. The Japanese of the nuclear bomb blast cities aided and abetted the Japanese war machine and they suffered for their actions.

Howard

An aid to understanding is to reflect on what happened during the 1200 nights and days that came before the one on which you are focused. On the way home, visit the islands and high seas where the war was fought. The horror becomes no less but the meaning of what you looked at may become clear.

When I first read Pedro Arrupe's account of his experience - he was in Japan in WW II as novice master, I think - the confusion, their not knowing what had happened or what to do - the reading stunned me and moved me and I felt as if I were on the brink of nothing. It is a day to pray in sorrow.

I read that by early August 1945, the Japanese were hoping for a conditional surrender, whereby the would be able to keep the Emperor, give up their occupied possesions, such as Korea and Manchuria, and possibly avoid an Allied occupation. They hoped that the Soviets, who had been neutral with Japan would act as brokers of a conditional peace, but of course, the Soviets were not interested in helping the Japanese negotiate peace, and the sheer ferocity of the Pacific War, made any sort of conditional peace very unlikely.

The two atomic bombs shocked the Japanese, along with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria into surrendering. The atomic bomb was a horrible weapon and I suppose the use of it at Hiroshima could be debated either way. Using the second bomb on Nagasaki three days later is perhaps more questionable, given that we had just obliterated Hiroshima.

May no one ever use nuclear weapons again, as they are horrific, almost Satanic in their power to destroy and kill innocent civilians. In fact, we should avoid future wars whenever possible. War is not option 1 on a PowerPoint presentation: it is death and destruction and rarely do wars end the way the people who started them originally thought. you would think our leadership would have learned their lesson from Vietnam, but apparently not.

I neither condemn nor condone the decision that was made. If I could be transported back to the time and place and had the responsibility of decision, knowing what I know now I suspect my decisions and actions would be different.

But this is hindsight.

War is a tragedy and a waste. That is true if one life is lost or a million. When two nation fight to the death, either country will use what ever means that are available to destroy the other. In modern warfare there is no front lines and innocent combatants. All are targets for each side. Calling it a sin is to wring hands and do nothing.

Positive steps are finding ways to avoid the fatal confrontation. What prompts this is that there are no winners in nuclear war. The weapons will continue to exist and will not be used unless one side uses them in desperation or somehow ignores the widespread destruction that would occur. We need to hear more about "Nuclear Winter". Carl Sagan probably did more for sanity on this subject than anyone who moralized the issue.

Atrocities in war happen because war is sin. As a general rule, we "say" a soldier cannot excuse his behavior by saying, "I was only following orders." Can we excuse a people when they say, "We were only following our leaders?"
We will never come to some medium point in either accepting or rejecting the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I found myself in a Tevyve quandary: they are both right.
War is a complex of sins. It is its own energy source, its own rationale, it's own justifications. The bombing of Hiroshima was wrong. The attack on Pearl Harbor was wrong. The fire bombing on Dresden was wrong. The bombing of Britain was wrong. It was all wrong. War is wrong. Does it then come to degrees of wrongness and what some of us conclude is more wrong than not? And who makes those conclusions? The victors? If Japan had won the war, would they have looked on Pearl Harbor as wrong?
I feel deeply with Mr. McElwee. Yet, in this sinful world with sinful countries and leaders, singling out certain acts of sinfulness requires a judgement beyond my mere ability to read hearts and minds.