Well, so do we all, but the Japanese in particular.
Shizuyo Sutou (2018): Low-dose radiation from A-bombs elongated lifespan and reduced cancer mortality relative to un-irradiated individuals
The US National Academy of Sciences (NAS) presented the linear no-threshold hypothesis (LNT) in 1956, which indicates that the lowest doses of ionizing radiation are hazardous in proportion to the dose. This spurious hypothesis was not based on solid data. NAS put forward the BEIR VII report in 2006 as evidence supporting LNT. The study described in the report used data of the Life Span Study (LSS) of A-bomb survivors. Estimation of exposure doses was based on initial radiation (5%) and neglected residual radiation (10%), leading to underestimation of the doses. Residual radiation mainly consisted of fallout that poured down onto the ground along with black rain. The black-rain-affected areas were wide. Not only A-bomb survivors but also not-in-the-city control subjects (NIC) must have been exposed to residual radiation to a greater or lesser degree. Use of NIC as negative controls constitutes a major failure in analyses of LSS. Another failure of LSS is its neglect of radiation adaptive responses which include low-dose stimulation of DNA damage repair, removal of aberrant cells via stimulated apoptosis, and elimination of cancer cells via stimulated anticancer immunity. LSS never incorporates consideration of this possibility. When LSS data of longevity are examined, a clear J-shaped dose-response, a hallmark of radiation hormesis, is apparent. Both A-bomb survivors and NIC showed longer than average lifespans. Average solid cancer death ratios of both A-bomb survivors and NIC were lower than the average for Japanese people, which is consistent with the occurrence of radiation adaptive responses (the bases for radiation hormesis), essentially invalidating the LNT model. Nevertheless, LNT has served as the basis of radiation regulation policy. If it were not for LNT, tremendous human, social, and economic losses would not have occurred in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant accident. For many reasons, LNT must be revised or abolished, with changes based not on policy but on science.
The average lifespan of A-Bomb survivors is expected to be over 88 years, relative to the Japanese average of 84 years.
Cancer mortality rates have been found to be consistently lower amongst A-Bomb survivors than the national average.
| Reporters | Year | Survey period | No. hibakusha or [NICa] | No. cancer deaths (%) | % Japanese average cancer deaths |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preston et al. [48] | 2007 | 1958–1998 105,427 | 17,448 (16.6) | 21.4 (1958–1998) | 21.4 (1958–1998) |
| [25,4273,994 | (15.7)] | ||||
| Ozasa et al. [69] | 2012 | 1958–200 | 86,611 | 10,929 (12.6) | 22.3 (1958–2003) |
| [26,529 | NAb] | ||||
| Grant et al. [70] | 2017 | 1958–2009 | 80,205 | 17,316 (21.5) | 23.3 (1958–2009) |
| [25,239 | 5222 (20.6)] |
Nuking Japan was a very good thing, not least for the Japanese themselves. It saved hundreds of thousands, of not millions, of American, Soviet, Chinese, and Japanese lives.
However, it would be ironic if the theoretical net total could be adjusted even further downwards by incorporating fewer subsequent deaths from cancer, etc. in the affected groups.
Couldn’t it be survivorship bias? At least part of it. Radiation is good for some, harmful for others. Those for whom it was harmful died in the immediate aftermath, while the rest now live longer.
Ukraine apparently decided to become a meme. Also to confirm the worst Russian fears and so spur the Russian leadership into action.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-18/ukraine-unveils-irreversible-commitment-join-eunato-its-constitution
Bold moves taken by Ukraine’s leadership to further distance itself from its historic ‘Big Brother’, that compliment the separation of the Ukrainian church from the Russian one. Project Ukraine never really stood a chance to survive within Putin’s ‘Ruskij Mir’ project, with Ukrainian language and culture always being denigrated and relegated to a second class status by the Moscow centrists. The Russians have only themselves to blame for this further erosion of relations with Ukraine, as evidenced by the last 5 years of supporting insurgents in Donbas. Oh, did I forger to mention the big Crimean ripoff?t’s too bad that Yanukovych started the disintegration of relations by prepping his people for European integration for a couple of years before his abrupt about face. Well, at least he is spending his retirement years in comfort and recently stated that he feels no restrictions in his ability to travel around.
No, the Soviet declaration of war on Japan and swift victory in Manchuria (in which over 10,000 Russians gave their lives), saved hundreds of thousands of American lives.
It’s a bit strange to witness a Russian nationalist so determined to justify American war crimes and deny Russia the credit it deserves for its decisive role in the end of the Pacific War.
It was a combination of both factors.
These are called sovoks.
I think it’s really difficult to find out why the Japanese gave up the war. The evidence doesn’t seem to be very firm either way.
The Japanese knew that Hiroshima was bombed with an atom bomb and weren’t impressed. Japan surrendered only after the Soviets steamrolled the Kwantung army. The bombing of Nagasaki was most likely a convenient excuse for the Japs to not lose face. The Soviet Union indubitably played the bigger role in the surrender.
I wonder if it did anything to germline cells, and if it affected later generations.
Big oil trying to foment antinuclear sentiment seems pretty plausible. The Saudis definitely tried to encourage the anti-fracking movement, as well as try to destroy the nascent industry by pumping.
The percentage of Japanese who say they would fight for their country seems to be only 11%. I’m beginning to doubt the wisdom of the idea that losing the war was good for them. But maybe, this is only signaling and not true sentiment. I have often found the Japanese to be amazingly nationalistic, in a way that I wish all Europeans would emulate.
The Japanese had known the USA was willing and able to destroy their cities since May 1945, when more people died in the firebombing of Tokyo, than died at Nagasaki. It didn’t make much difference to the Japanese if it took the USA an instant to kill 100,000, or several hours. North Korea lost 20% of its population to the USA’s conventional bombing- proportionately 50 times what Japan lost to the atom bombings- and didn’t surrender. The atom bombings were impressive as stunts, but didn’t fundamentally change the strategic situation confronting the Japanese. The Soviet entry into the war against them did.
given that the Americans had already destroyed almost every large city with conventional bombs, that the military had largely migrated to the countryside and rural settlements, I do get the argument that the Japs didn’t feel so concerned. And we have some records of officials to back it up.
Given the dispersion of targets, the Americans demonstrating they have a very large and powerful bomb was kind of ‘meh’, at this point it wasn’t really an improvement over the flexibility offered by conventional bombing run with much smaller bombs given where the targets were now. Of course, the effects of radiation weren’t well known then, so knowledge of this and long-term contamination would have changed their view pretty fast imo
There’s a rather large difference between wrecking devastation using hundreds of bombers, some of which could be shot down, and could only occur in intervals of several days at best due to logistical limitations, and wrecking devastation using a single bomb delivered by a single bomber.
Furthermore, while two nukes would not make a major difference in the grand scheme of things, several dozens certainly would have. But the Japanese had no cause to believe that the Americans would have just three bombs ready for use in August. Indeed, they had good cause to believe the opposite, thanks to a captured American airman who lied to them that the US had 100 nukes ready to go.
Ignoring the impact of the Soviet declaration of war and invasion of Manchuria is bad history. But so is the opposite reaction – acting as if nukes had no effect on the Japanese Cabinet.
Stalin had no shortage of opportunities to push Japan into a negotiated settlement. He unnecessarily prolonged the war to regain Sakhalin and to divide Japan North-South as Korea was.
And lets not forget thanks to the traitorous espionage in the Manhattan Project that he knew full well of what was going on.
Unnecessarily for whom?
For the USSR, and even for Russians, the war with Japan turned out optimally.
I am not going to defend the Japanese here. They initiated war with the US. I say that despite the political tensions and disputes over oil, etc. And though I can certainly appreciate the advocacy of that it was the Russian Manchurian campaign that was cause for surrender, there are several issues that are on their face hard to accept.
that the Japanese treated the destruction by atomic warfare, with a yawn —
https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki/
while the above record suggests that the manchurian campaign was in consideration, it’s fair to say that Japan knew the war was over before either city was bombed. And the only issue in their resistance concerned the terms and to who the surrender would take place.
But dropping the atomic bombs — was most likely the over riding factor in speeding the surrender process, in which all but one demand was dropped.
I think this covers several topics:
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ukraine-crisis-eu/ukraine-pitches-for-more-eu-aid-for-south-east-as-elections-near-idUKKCN1Q717Z
Japan got half of Sakhalin at the negotiating table in 1905, Stalin could have gotten it back the same way.
For whom?
The US of course. The ROC wins the civil war without USSR intervention.
If the Americans wanted to kill millions of Japanese with air power alone, they could have done it, with or without atom bombs. And they could probably have done it faster with conventional bombs until maybe early 1947, by which point Japan would probably be under Soviet occupation anyway.
I question whether the Japanese considered the word of some airman to be very reliable, given both his obvious motive to lie, and the implausibility of such a low-ranking individual even having such knowledge. And if the USA really had 100, or even just several dozens of bombs, why would it not just say so? And why use its demonstration bombs so sparingly, rather than say, nuking multiple military targets along with Hiroshima, to prove they weren’t in very short supply? Also, the Japanese had their own nuclear physicists, who would not have been unfamiliar with the concept of fission bombs, and hence would have had some idea of how likely it was that the USA was already capable of mass-producing them.
Certainly they had some effect, but the question is whether they were decisive. To claim that that the nukings were good for Japan, is to state with confidence that the Japanese would not have surrendered without them. But it seems to me, the very best case that can be made for the atom bombings, is that their necessity is uncertain (making them morally a war crime, since there should be a very heavy presumption against the deliberate mass murder of noncombatant women and children).
Will everyone need to get a home X-ray machine, or do we need to start doing all our urban renewal with A-bombs? Or would H-bombs be better, and have a wider, more salubrious effect? Was Krushchev on to something with Czar Bomba, after all?
Maybe, we should lob a few dummy warheads at Russia, to save the expense that the NIH and HUD would require, without giving the Russians the same benefit.
Lack of willingness to fight when your country has been turned into a vassal of another is an example of nationalistic sentiment, not the opposite.
there is a third and under-acknowledged driver of the japanese surrender: the total naval blockade of the home islands. extensive submarine warfare crippled japans ability to arm and feed itself well before then, and was far more influential on the juntas decision making than any and all aerial bombardment.
there is a strong argument to be made that the psychological impact of nuclear weapons was far greater than their raw power. but both japan and the united states had good reasons for assigning the atom bombings an outsized role in events
The life span of Holocaust survivors is also longer than those who did not survive Holocaust. But to be serious what about the life span of the actual Holocaust survivors, i.e., the ones who were close to the real action as opposed to the ones who lived during the Holocaust in the safety of Switzerland or America?
US had put Japan under a blockade. The Japanese Imperial army broke the blockade in their attack on Pearl Harbour. Ron Paul was going around saying that putting a country under a blockade is an act of war. He was advised to go silent as that would put American diplomatic history over the last one hundred years into notoriety.
The fact that low doses of radiation may have no adverse health consequences probably means that millions or billions of dollars spent on radon mitigation have been largely a waste of money. Radon is probably a genuine hazard if you’re a uranium miner; an ordinary householder with “elevated” radon levels, not so much.
People keep getting this wrong. The US, British, and Dutch placed a joint embargo on scrap metal and oil going to Japan after the Japanese invasion of French IndoChina.
An embargo and blockade are different things. An embargo is a trade cessation between two or more parties. It’s akin to not letting a particular person on your property. People are often confused by this because the American Pozz Imperium uses its hegemonic power to abuse its vassals into joining its embargos against countries such as Iran because it no longer recognizes the principle of neutrality. Kind of like the Napoleonic continental system was deployed against Great Britain to try and choke its trade with Europe. In the case of Japan, it was only three nations involved, unfortunately for the Japanese those three were basically producing almost all of Japan’s petroleum even though it could still trade with the rest of the world. A blockade is an act of war because it involves military force. It causes trade cessation by physically denying access of all other parties to trade. This is akin to fencing off your neighbor’s property and not letting anyone in or out.
So there is a difference here, even though US actions have blurred the lines by abusing the role of the dollar in the international financial system to basically mount defacto blockades by criminalizing trade by neutral third parties.
Nuking Japan was a war crime.
It basically said to humanity that dropping a weapon on a civilian population could be morally justified under certain circumstances.
It made something so obviously criminal and psychopathic reasonable.
No virtue signaling here.
I think this act, along with the fire bombing of Dresden, reveals the depravity at the heart of the human soul.
That we are capable of such horrors is truly frightening.
Those atom bomb survivors just will not die. It’s a standard thing on Japanese television on the anniveraries of the bombings and other occasions to have reports about these guys, who are all past retirement age and spend their time travelling from school to school giving talks about the horrors of war. None of the students think to ask them,”Why the hell are you still alive? My grandparents were born after the war and they’re all dead!” Holocaust survivors seem to have less of this ageless vampire thing going. So I half believe this study.
Karlin is neither Russian, nor nationalist, nor Russian nationalist.
He’s just another neoliberal globalist paid-for shill. He sounds novel to your euromerican ears, but really his spiel is exactly the same as that of hundreds of other Soros and American State Department goons is Russia.
However, the embargo, if it involves all possible sources of a vital commodity, is really a little bit more complex issue than simply “fencing off your property and not letting anyone in and out.” I don’t know the exact legal expression, but normally there is a right of free passage if a property cannot be accessed through any other way. Or fencing off your privately owned island while survivors from a shipwreck are trying to access it is basically murder.
Most people understand that a coordinated action by three powers to block the access of a fourth one to a vital commodity is akin to a blockade, and is thus a valid casus belli.
That said, the Japanese did a lot to bring this upon themselves. They were playing a game they lost. So, who cares.
Do you have comparative evidence for Three Mile island and for Chernobyl?
I was thinking about longtime pilots and astronauts.
Aw, that’s a nice opinion, Antony.
Hopefully Russia will get to taste several nukes in the upcoming years, and you can reap the benefits personally. For your own good, of course! 🙂
Well, Bikini Atoll underwent sustained nuclear and thermonuclear bombardment, and is doing amazing today. Corals are endangered world over, except in the Bikini, they grow like crazy over there, and so does the rest of the ecosystem.
People noticed in 2008.
https://www.livescience.com/2438-bikini-atoll-corals-recovering-atomic-blast.html
By 2017, scientists were still “surprised”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/15/quite-odd-coral-and-fish-thrive-on-bikini-atoll-70-years-after-nuclear-tests
And today, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook is on the case to unlock the secrets of immortality and become an irradiated ghoul.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/04/chan-zuckerberg-biohub-14-million-coral-reef-human-biome.html
Fallout Universe may be more real than we realize.
I can’t wait for Canada to submit its application for European Union membership.
Japan’s strategic situation at the end of July, 1945 (before either of the A-bombs or the Soviet DoW):
• IJN sunk
• Merchant marine sunk
• Home islands under complete air and naval blockade
• Import tonnage down by three-quarters (food down nine-tenths)
• Industrial production in free-fall
• Japanese cities routinely raided at will by Allied air and naval power (including battleship bombardment)
• Malnutrition and disease emerging in the civilian population
• Industrial production in free-fall
• American troops in occupation of two islands of Japan proper
• Germany surrendered
• Japanese forces driven out of Burma, Burma Road reopened
• Successful Chinese offensives seized Hunan and Guangxi
• Allied forces preparing to invade Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu
North Korea’s strategic picture in the Korean War, despite the carnage unleashed by American bombing, was much better owing to a stable front, the direct involvement of the PLA, and support from the USSR.
Japan was pissing into the wind.
Operation August Storm was masterfully executed, but it seems the main impact of the Soviet Declaration of War was to end Japanese hopes that the Soviet Union would aid in brokering a peace between Japan and the Allies. In this the Soviet declaration of war perhaps was decisive. Pity the Emperor never recorded his own thoughts.
That said, one must ask what the likely outcome would have been had the USSR not declared war. Obviously, Japan was done for. It was only a matter of time.
I think you need to look more into that. Stalin promised Roosevelt that he would enter the war against Japan within three months of the end of the war in Europe. It was also a desperate land grab. Stalin would have loved to have taken Japan rather than let the US have full control. Certain Japanese factions were also petrified of being conquered by Russia.
August Storm was launched in between the two drops if I am not mistaken.
This is what I am curious about as well. I mean, is it not possible that the weakest Japanese in the nuked areas simply died off as a result of these nukings–with only the strongest Japanese in the nuked areas surviving for a long time?
the commenter is correct…
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2014/08/22/commentary/japan-commentary/how-wwii-could-have-ended/
btw, thank you america:
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/fact-navy-secretly-handed-over-150-warships-russia-invasion-japan-32602