Atomic Mythologies

[Brian D. McCary]

> From owner-pynchon-l at sfu.ca Sun Aug  6 04:23 CDT 1995
> X-Sender: godot at gonzo.wolfe.net
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Date: Sun, 6 Aug 1995 02:06:36 -0800
> 
> I'm interested in the mechanism behind this thing. What is it about
>From: godot at wolfe.net (Cal McInvale)

> Hiroshima (let's face it, you hear very little about Nagasaki) that is so
> horrible? Don't get me wrong: when I read about or see the pictures of
> people stumbling blindly from the flames, strips of flesh hanging from
> their bodies, I shudder with a deep fear & revulsion that must be horror.
> 
> But why pick Hiroshima as "the most horriblke act of war?" I'm curious.
> Let's toss this one around a bit, folks: I know of no brighter group of
> people on the Internet that the pynchon-l crowd, so let's get to the meat
> (tofu, for any vegetarians out there) of this one.

In an interview with (I believe) a survivor in the NYT Sunday, this exact
question was raised: why was this worse, morally or otherwise, than
the firebombing of Tokyo?  His answer was two part.  This was the first
one dropped, and it was only one bomb.  These seem like strange reasons
to me, but they certainly lie at the core of most of the arguements I
have heard on the subject.  The other answer tends to have to do with the
civilian nature of the population, which ignores that Dresden and Tokyo
were civilian areas, too.

I think the death by radiation/flesh stripped from limbs/clothing patterns
tattoed on skin phemonmenon associated w/ Hiroshima sound awful by themselves,
but are they worse than being burned alive in a firestorm, or being 
napalmed, or gassed, or eviscerated by shrapnel?  Or bleeding slowly to death
on a battlefield after loosing part of your leg?  Or being buried alive
under dirt and sand being bulldozed down on top of you?  Let's face it,
war is an ugly busniness...