Talk:Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki/Archive 24

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POV

For me it is clear, that all this article has a biased view on the american perspective, with the latent message to exculpate such acts. Kindly improve neutrality of this article.

• There is no chapter for casualties and humanitarian consequences;
• The point of view of the Japanese side is not at all mentioned compared to the American side;
• The Nagasaki chapter starts with a sentence from Truman, exculpating him, the man that ordered to lunch the bombs;
• Compared to other Wikipedia articles, the media doesn't focus on the humanitarian consequences, just mainly buildings and infrastructure. João Pimentel Ferreira 12:17, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Note that Truman did not "order" the bombings; rather, he chose not to interfere with the ongoing program. Binksternet (talk) 13:01, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

Do you think the quote adds anything useful? We can delete it. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:03, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I am not sure what is meant by "The point of view of the Japanese side is not at all mentioned compared to the American side". Each of the sections in background contains a paragraph from the Japanese point of view. The Hiroshima chapter opens with a whole section on "Hiroshima during World War II" detailing the defenders' dispositions, and the two concluding sections are all from the Japanese POV. The Nagasaki part follows the same format. And there are two chapters on "Post-attack casualties" and "Hibakusha" which cover the casualties and humanitarian consequences. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:03, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

The article is very much from the US perspective. It's even more strongly from a military perspective – it's a very good article about the detail of the bombings as a military operation, with a few bits about casualties tagged on at the end. The article could be renamed "US military atomic bombing operations in World War 2" or similar, then have the casualties bit cut to a summary paragraph and put forward again for FA, as an exemplary piece of military history writing. The uniqueness of the use of atomic weapons, however, means that either this article or a new, broader one needs to encompass far more of the human and cultural impact of the two events. I look at this article now and see "Result: Allied victory" in the infobox and find it distasteful at best. Re-title and reform it so that it's just about a military operation and that sort of thing would be appropriate. As the central article on events that killed about 200,000 and re-shaped the world, it's currently inappropriately militaristic and, yes, US-centric. EddieHugh (talk) 23:56, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

I totally agree, this article has mainly a military POV from the american side, and it's structurally similar to so many articles regarding different battles of WW2, the info-chart being an example. If it would be renamed to something more appropriate like the suggestions you provided it would fit its purpose, though as a broad article for the events that changed mankind history, in the sense that it was the first and the only time that nuclear weaponry was used against civilians, this article doesn't fit at all such broad scope. João Pimentel Ferreira 20:31, 28 November 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)

If you would like to have the article changed, please post a list of reliable references you would like to use to do so. Unless it's from a reliable source, we aren't going to change anything in this article because of the controversy surrounding it. If you don't have any reliable sources to contribute, and you merely want to change it because of "feelings" or some other nebulous, original research reason, you're not going to get anywhere. So then, what reliable sources do you have that can be used to improve this article? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:42, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

You've largely missed the point. The bias in the article cannot be addressed just by adding a bit more information. The problem is that the article is a) based on a US perspective almost throughout and b) written largely for a military history audience. An example is having a Debate over bombings section right at the end, as if to suggest that these are alternative (non-US) perspectives to those given great prominence in the Background section. Throughout, the balance of detail between US/military and Japan/civilian is enormously in favour of the former. Tackling the problems requires a fundamental rewrite or a new article. There needs to be (a lot) more on how the events changed Japan and how they are still relevant there – cultural, economic, psychological, attitudes to war & to atomic weapons, etc, etc. More on these things for the rest of the world, too. In general, more Japanese, civilian and world voices. If you'd like a few sources to get an idea of what's required, scan through the titles here. If you'd like some further pointers on what makes this article biased, compare the section headings with those at September 11 attacks (Economic, Cultural, Government policies, Rebuilding, Memorials...). EddieHugh (talk) 23:32, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

I haven't missed anything. This article is at least (if not more) controversial as the 9/11 article, and therefore any changes that anyone wishes to make must come with reliable sources to back them up. I never said it would only require "adding a bit more information." I only said that any changes must be backed by reliable sources. Please go read what I wrote again if you can't see that. I agree this article can be improved and expanded to cover more in-depth information (and possibly even be split into more than one article since it's already quite large). Any such changes must be accompanied by one or more reliable sources, though. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 23:48, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Any edit on any article requires a reliable source! I think that the best solution is to split, as you mention. Most of what's in this article currently could be split into a new article on the military aspects of the bombing (rationale, planning, execution, etc.). Then the remainder, as the more general article, could be expanded, of course from reliable sources (finding them for any of the topics mentioned will not be difficult). EddieHugh (talk) 01:18, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

You;re welcome to start a discussion for a split. Just be very clear on what you want to keep in the article and what you want to move out. If there is nothing from this article you want in the new one, just create a new article. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 01:52, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

I second User:Nihonjoe's points. This article should remain factual with little to no opinions featuring and thus focused on the military campaign and its results, to that end and engaging with the opinion on casualties and humanitarian effects. We do have video of survivors with burns in this article, If memory serves me I added a few vids to this article. Moreover we do have a discussion on the claim of widespread birth defects in the Hibakusha, so what else, specifically, would you like to see? The Hiroshima maidens? Or perhaps now that I'm thinking about it, the article really could do with more ink being put into a discussion on the numbers with acute radiation syndrome and their movement to that Island off the coast of Hiroshima city for treatment. Essentially creating/failing at the medical management of acute radiation syndrome in the impoverished conditions. I don't think anyone here will object to that, or you adding that material?

As EddieHugh wrote, the problem of this article, in my opinion, is mainly structural. The neutrality of one article has few to do with reliable sources. Do not confuse neutrality, in the sense that both parties POVs are balanced, with credibility, in the sense that what is written is true. This article is credible, but not neutral. Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia, not a military history manual, and an Encyclopedia by default has a Universal POV.João Pimentel Ferreira 01:23, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

However I don't see the "US POV" you claim. The article does somewhat cover the Japanese perspective, in saying that however I would like more material to be written about the revolt of the Japanese generals against Emperor Hirohito. I think we'd all agree, that the article really does leave out that dimension to the affair - how they blocked surrender after Hiroshima and nearly succeeding in blocking it after Nagasaki too. Boundarylayer (talk) 23:27, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Don't you see the bias? João Pimentel Ferreira 01:23, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Ok, you bring up 9/11 again. Similar murderous atrocities, perpetrated without warning, such as the close to home - Dublin and Monaghan bombings - conducted under the direction of the British military, do not gain a military infobox. I therefore personally think it is a false equivalence you are thus attempting to draw by bringing up these obvious examples of murderous intent, 9/11, and the atomic bombings. As Japan and the US formally declared war against each other, everyone and their dog knew that a world war was ongoing with militarily significant targets in the cross-hairs, 66 cities were firebombed in Japan in total in 1945, all occurring before Hiroshima & Nagasaki and an effort was made to directly leaflet/warn the inhabitants prior to the attack. Now, by stark contrast, the 9/11 hijackers showed no humanity or even feigned having a conscience to send out a warning to the inhabitants, they showed no adherence to the rule of law etc. Therefore they weren't just a misguided "military" in my opinion but a cabal of murderous psychopaths. You do know the difference right?

I don't know if you were a major contributor to this article, but I see bias in so many phrases you just wrote right here. The leaflet or the warfare issues, as many might consider that warning by leaflets or the fact that both nations were at war, do not morally exculpate the usage of atomic weaponry upon civilians; or even the sources you provided referring that some Japanese agreed with the bombing because it terminated the war. Again, you make confusions between neutrality and credibility. This article is credible, not neutral. And it was a lack of neutrality that I raised. Kindly read again my above comments as I'm trying to have a constructive contribution. For me the issue is solved by simply changing the title to (as suggested by EddieHugh) US military atomic bombing operations in World War 2, and creating a new one named Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with a universal POV. João Pimentel Ferreira 16:59, 1 December 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)

Secondly, I think Japanese survivors and scholars can speak for themselves and they don't need you putting words into their mouths. For example, although I'm not advocating we include their opinions in the article, presently we do have Sumiteru Taniguchi in the article yet we have no mention to the even more affected Masako Tachibana who wrote reaction to the flash. Her voice and opinions, along with those who share the same sentiment - that the bombings were justified and she is "glad they dropped the bombs" as it stopped the war, are cogent and well reasoned opinions that are never given the same standing as the likes of Taniguchi. So if you indeed wish to create an article to give voice to the Japanese survivors, then you must include the Japanese perspective and not just what you think is the japanese perspective - which no doubt is the loud but actually small number that push the "not justified"/disarmament agenda. If you truly wish to make your article neutral and to give voice to all the Hibakusha, without bias. I'd be your no.1 supporter. I look forward to reading your proposed article.

References

Boundarylayer (talk) 02:44, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

The broad comparison with the Sep 11 article is that the Sep 11 article is very much focused on the US, which was, in that set of incidents, the attacked, while this Atomic bombing article is very much focused on the US, which was, in this set of incidents, the attacker. Of course, this is the English Wikipedia, so it's likely that sources and editing will lead articles to presenting more of an anglophone (meaning US in these cases) perspective, but the bias in this article is clear from the comparison. EddieHugh (talk) 13:40, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Yeah...to move on from your obsession with 9/11, an event that is US focused merely because most factual documents relating to the event were prepared by US intelligence agencies and their media, and thus it is natural that it is US focused. It has nothing to do with Attacker/Attacked as you insinuate as far as I can see, merely who has produced the best, most unbiased documents on the event. You do get that right? If say the French had produced better coverage and investigations than the US, the no.1 source for the 9/11 article would be French, I don't think we're biased in that regard, are we?

In any case, moving on, do you have anything specifically that you wish to add to this article? I've mentioned the following so far.

• A few lines on why the Emperor and Generals decided to continue the war despite losing aerial supremacy and 64 of their cities being wiped out prior to H&N = Japanese perspective.
• The "civilian" preparations for the invasion, there are pics of women drilling with sharpened bamboo poles in my collection, I think it was taken in Hiroshima if memory serves me. The Kids who were put to work in munitions factories. I have pics of this too, from Nagasaki.
• The Generals revolt against Hirohito and developments in his cabinet between Aug 6 to Aug 9th should be further expanded upon in this article. Along with at least a few lines on:
• Survivor accounts of the 2 cities,
• Post-attack medical treatment and "radiation sickness" leading up to at least the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission arriving in 1946.
• Reconstruction of the cities, as they quickly re-establishing the tram lines and telephone lines for example. = Japanese perspective.
• The discrimination that many Japanese treated the Hibakusha with. = Japanese perspective.

Are we all on the same page here?

Boundarylayer (talk) 17:25, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think that the article needs a very big change to satisfy the concerns voiced here. We can add a few paragraphs about injuries and deaths, and we can describe the Japanese perspective.

What may be a surprise to João Pimentel Ferreira is that the firebombing campaign by the US killed more people and caused more damage than the two atomic bombs. What was significant in the two atomic bombs was not the numbers of injured but the introduction of a very much larger scale which heralded the age of Mutual assured destruction(MAD). From this point forward, nations could not start a major war without risking annihilation. The Japanese cities were the demonstration of this chilling development in warfare. In my opinion, we ought to emphasize further the fact that Germany, Japan, Great Britain, the US and the USSR were all racing to develop the atomic bomb, and that soon the hydrogen "super" bomb was going to be a reality. The first two bombs were a thousandth the strength of what the physicists knew was possible. Mutual assured destruction was underway. Binksternet (talk) 01:45, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

The physicists did not know that the hydrogen bomb was possible in 1945, or for some years after. Despite two years of work, Teller's F-1 (Super) Group at Los Alamos was no closer to a workable design than when they started. Five more years would pass before Teller and Ulam came up with a workable design. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:05, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm reading Richard Rhodes' Dark Sun right now, and I just finished his earlier The Making of the Atomic Bomb. Both books describe how Teller was busy working out the calculations for the hydrogen bomb before Fat Man and Little Boy were dropped. Earlier in September 1941, the idea of a two-stage super bomb (fission reaction starts a fusion reaction) was described by Fermi to Teller. Before that, in May 1941, Tokutaro Hagiwara, a physicist at the University of Kyoto, said that a fission reaction of U²³⁵ "has a great possibility of becoming useful as the initiating matter for a quantity of hydrogen."

The idea of mutual deterrence... Rhodes writes that by February 1940, "it was already clear" to Frisch and Peierls "that nuclear weapons would be weapons of mass destruction against which the only apparent defense would be the deterrent effect of mutual possession." In 1943, Bohr predicted a nuclear arms race to genocide and through 1944 and '45 was (unsuccessfully) advocating for an international control group to both share and limit nuclear arms, rather than any one power using the bomb in war. Bohr had learned in 1943 at Los Alamos about the two-stage thermonuclear bomb. Bohr wrote that this weapon which was conceived as a tool of major war would instead halt all major war, because of the threat of mutual destruction. Binksternet (talk) 16:42, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Dark Sun isn't as good as The Making of the Atomic Bomb; in many places it reads like offcuts from the latter. Teller's F-1 Group could have been the inspiration for the group in the TV series Manhattan. I have written about it in the section of the Project Y article. If they couldn't figure out how to get the Super to work, it wasn't for lack of brain power; Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Emil Konopinski, Maria Goeppert, Jane Roberg, Nick Metropolis and Stan Ulam, to name but few, toiled away on it. But no matter how much they refined their models, they kept indicating that it wouldn't work. Bohr would be instrumental in persuding scientists to work on it. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:17, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

This side discussion is interesting, I was not aware that it was still ongoing.

To me what Binksternet hinted at is that we should definitely say a line or two that, with the 2 atomic bombings, finally Bomber Harris' vision of doing a bombing raid so destructive that the shock and-awe would force the Axis into surrender, had come about. Prior to the atomic bombings, Curtis LeMay and others with Harris' ethos had tried their best to shock Japan into surrender by burning 66 odd cities down to the ground, but the Japanese resolve never relented. You have to ask yourself, what is strategic bombing but also a "weapon of mass destruction"? Harris for example would go throughout WWII saying ok maybe the bombing of Hamburg would shock them into surrender then when that didn't work, he said, alright that didn't do it what about bombing of Dresden?...nope they're still fighting. Alright what about the bombing of Tokyo? Nope they're not putting down their weapons...alright how about Hiroshima? Nope...Nagasaki? Sort of, with a little help from your friends. The release of energy from a new exotic origin combined with those mushroom clouds creating an ominous towering biblical-esque dimension to strategic bombing began to have the desired psychological impact, an impact that had really been the fundamental aim from the beginning. In other words, "Finally dimitri I think we might've hit on something here!"

Hawkeye7 & Binksternet, Bohr had learnt of the Fermi-Teller Fusion boosting concept he did not learn of a 2-stage, physically separated device, that difference is pretty important. Secondly, the Von Neumann and Klaus Fuchs patent in 1946 contained the essence of 2-separated-stages in which compression-ignition occurred in the latter. The Ulam-Teller design is only a refinement of that patent. While the "classical super" design/that is otherwise known as "the try and light a linear candle of fusion fuel design" would not turn out to be possible, at least not with the comparative meagre energies that could be supplied from a fission primary, due to the auger electron cooling effect in the fusion fuel. Everyone and their dog knew the Fermi-Teller fusion boosting design and its logical outgrowth, Teller's Layer Cake/"Alarm Clock" design would work. If a bigger team had been available everyone and their dog at Los Alamos would've seen the value that lay within the Von Neumann-Fuchs patent. Instead it took until 1949 and Operation Greenhouse to finally make both a reality. Therefore, from my reading Hawkeye7, Teller was indeed 100% correct to say that a bigger team would've accelerated things, but that team crucially would have to not just go about with the same tunnel vision of focusing solely on the Classical Super design. If the Manhattan project approach of "lets try all of the above" had continued, then the 10 megaton Ivy Mike test definitely would've occurred in the 1940s and not 1951.

((Side note:On deterrence. Binksternet, along with what I've touched on above, the threat of "mutual assured destruction" indeed already existed, even prior to WWII, have a read of Strategic bombing for example, it's fairly well covered dating back to the 1920s. The problem is, MAD wasn't codified into any real clear policy expression for years and then fell out of favor in the 60s, replaced with the less strangelovian - flexible response. Moreover, "MAD" really depends on if you can actually convince your adversary that "assured destruction" would come about. Japan was already "assured destruction" via conventional weapons yet Hirohito and the military thought bizarrely that they'd be alright and a better surrender deal could be haggled-out. Why they thought this is bizarre, as for all they knew, the Allies could've just kept conventionally bombing them into yet further ashes and besieged the island into starvation. They were assured destruction even prior to H&N but just didn't care/were blind perhaps. Another example is Mao Zedong, who said that he was more than alright with the thought of losing a few hundred million Chinese: to paraphrase - "for we shall rebuild and in no-time, our population will be back to normal". So despite it being troubling to try and get inside the mind of a psychopath, I really don't think it's really the destruction that deters them, it's the prospect of being put into a rapidly weakened state of unknown severity and then losing influence, power, etc. Psychopaths love power and hate surprises so they're not going to do anything to jeopardize their plans and hobble their attainment of yet more power. The ambiguity of flexible response is more of an effective deterrent than MAD as the response has the ability to surprise them. - "Maybe the adversaries response will be proportional, maybe it won't. Will I press forward to find out?" In any case, I'd just like to end by saying that I think Looking Glass is certainly the most prescient name for all this, whomever named it was a genius! Also the namer beat Stanley Kubrick/Dr. Strangelove to the punch, by first noting the absolute surrealist nature of all this thinking about On Escalation before he did.))

Boundarylayer (talk) 02:42, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with your first 3 sentences completely Binksternet and while we should indeed discuss how nuclear weapons changed everyones preception of strategic bombing in a hypothetical WWIII, MAD however was a much later concept and total annihilation is dubious despite Hirohito's propaganda on the matter in his surrrender speech. For example, Japanese and European cities already lay in a state that has been calculated with equivalent megattonage(EMT) as the same blast destruction that would occur from the 1000 cities being hit with a megaton bomb each(EMT calculations are very revealing). The only real thing that changed when nuclear weapons burst on the scene, was the creation of US hegemony on Nuclear Diplomacy, the speed at which a city could be destroyed and the fallout hazard.

It took me a while to really grasp that as the media we're all exposed to have done a good job misleading us, but if you keep reading into nuclear matters conventional weapons were and still are, far more devisive in actual pitched mobile warfare than having nuclear weapons. A good place to see it first hand is, Project Vista - the US attempt at trying to figure out a way to offset Stalin's conventional weapon superiority in Europe with nuclear weapons. The true "military value" of nuclear weapons is primarily in shock and awe and area denial/radiological warfare. This was known even in 1945, lest we forget, that Operation Downfall-the invasion of Japan- was still greenlit, as no one was sure that the Japanese would be sufficiently shocked and awed by the 2 bombs. The Japanese were after all, pretty used to the concept of cities burning down to the ground overnight by conventional means, in 1945. Thankfully however the 2 bomb campaign, a psychological warfare campaign more than anything, was successful. Hirohito was able to point at the "new weapon" to give him an easy "out" to save face and push for surrender. P.S. Hawkeye7 is 100% correct along with the fact that most nuclear weapons in the "megaton era" were and continue to be actually in the kiloton range. e.g the W68 & W76, this is a reality most people don't seem to know but its a state of affairs that exists for the very same fact that we could all go around and build huge mother of all bombs based on chemistry but nine times out of ten, smaller bombs, such as cluster bombing a target, is a better fit for the glove. Moreover, dropping a megaton or 10 megaton weapon on Hiroshima or Nagasaki wouldn't have changed much either, when you can only destroy a city once, using a far more energetic bomb, doesn't change things all that much. Apart from of course, getting a taller more ominous looking mushroom cloud, which is always a plus for creating the shock-awe factor. However such a megaton range cloud did actually form over Hiroshima from the pyrocumulus that accompanied the firestorm. A firestorm that did actually release "1000 times" the energy of Little Boy. It is curious why this picture isn't in the article? It is in the public domain. I'll upload it, I have a better copy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/science/hiroshima-atomic-bomb-mushroom-cloud.html?_r=0

Boundarylayer (talk) 19:56, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

This section is about the balance of the article and NPOV, in particular related to a strong US and military focus. The comments have drifted towards an exemplification of the problem, as they've become about the characteristics and military uses of various bombs. I look forward to seeing some of the proposed edits to adjust the balance, but think it's likely that a split into military and general articles will still be preferable once they're done. EddieHugh (talk) 21:14, 3 December 2016 (UTC)

EddieHugh The conversation did drift because I think we had all thought we had settled the issues. I presented a list of my own personal concerns of where the article needs expansion and Binksternet made the suggestion that we overlooked about how the article should also touch on the new "heralding" of an age of warfare that the bombings signify. If you wish Eddie to take a look at the edit history of the article, I have twice tagged things that are totally irrelevant - like some reporter getting the planes tail number wrong and some bull about a football player...I mean who cares about that? Hawkeye7 Put that stuff in other articles dedicated to the planes or put it in the articles dedicated to the personnel who flew on those planes, don't put it here. It's just trivial fluff and not at all notable.

Secondly, since the tag of POV on the article I have just continued to edit the page as I always have, bit-by-bit. I've added material on the rate of microcephaly in survivors, discussed burn scar contracture, fleshed out Yōsuke Yamahata being sent to Nagasaki by the imperial military to conduct a propaganda picture campaign on 10 Aug. I've added material on the black rain that fell on some survivors, an event that was totally absent prior to my addition and if you take a look at the talk page of that black rain article, you'll see the specific radioactive fallout research I've dug up on one dimension of that phenomenon, while black rain is common after firestorms and not really notable, radioactive black rain, how radioactive it was, where it fell and who might've been affected by it, is.

I've also corrected 1 picture that someone had uploaded and was blatantly wrong, made the article more worldly by adding 2 photos and added considerable discussion to one of these more famous hiroshima photos, due to its long and prominent connection with hiroshima and as it's the best photo of the firestorm that has been positively identified by me, it is a picture that tells the story of what it was like on the ground in Hiroshima. Furthermore, I've also linked the dubious but popular notion of nuclear winter to this same picture that I've uploaded and thus bringing the article into a more "present day" concern. This photo, lest you need reminding was even misidentified by the Hiroshima Peace Museum. So you can can sit there and grumble about POV but you're not really contributing nor have you engaged in the list of areas we need to expand upon. Here it is again if you missed it, and by all means, add to it with your own specific suggestions, Binksternet has.

• A few lines on why the Emperor and Generals decided to continue the war despite losing aerial supremacy and 64 of their cities being wiped out prior to H&N = Japanese perspective. Their plan to use the down the road(24km) fleet of midget submarines stationed at Kure Naval Arsenal to repel the US led invasion.
• The "civilian" preparations for the invasion, there are pics of women drilling with sharpened bamboo poles in my collection, I think it was taken in Hiroshima if memory serves me. Also there are pics of the kids who were forced to work in munitions factories. I have pics of this too, from Nagasaki. There is also at least 1 survivor who's name escapes me now but he recounts that he was saved by the bomb because a Japanese soldier was beating him to death/throwing him up against a wall, at the moment of the detonation.
• The Generals revolt against Hirohito and developments in his cabinet between Aug 6 to Aug 21th should be further expanded upon in this article, the generals almost succeeded in the coup to wrestle power away from the "soft" emperor. Along with at least a few lines on:
• More survivor accounts from the 2 cities, a nice unbiased randomly selected cross section would do well. Have some words from survivors situated at different distances: the first could be someone at around 500 meters away, another about 1 km away and another at 2 km. In that vein, we really should deal with the common observation amongst survivors of many more seriously injured temporary survivors having extreme "bulging eyes" and "melted eyes" issues. The first issue is a result of the drop in pressure that follows the postive phase of the blast inducing an expansion in Intraocular pressure both inside the eye and behind it and the latter "melted eye" issue is actually caused, not by heat, but by penetration of the vitreous humour, a common Blast-related ocular trauma - if you bust an eyeball it will certainly look like the eye is "melting". Other curious parts of many witness accounts is for example, none of the accounts I have read ever say that the flash burns hurt, they all say that they didn't feel any pain initially. I find this curious as not all the burns are full depth so my own hypothesis is that the surge of adrenaline and general panic of what was going on around them, took their mind off the pain for a few minutes. Although I would naturally like to find medical references that discusses this phenomenon.
• Post-attack medical effects and treatment espccially on "radiation sickness", at least leading up to the arrival of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission in 1946. - ARS/radiation sickness is an area where the article is definitely lacking. There was also local fallout in the black rain and some of it did indeed fall on survivors, despite what many sources state to the contrary - that there was no fallout. No one was exposed to any appreciable fallout at Nagasaki though, so the sources are right there.

This exposure to fallout at Hiroshima has the potential to be very important as presently the Radiation Effects Research Foundation's data that are largely responsible for the Linear no-threshold model of radiation induced cancer; is based solely on people in H&N being exposed to prompt radiation only. They have not factored in fallout exposure the last time I checked with them, due to the uncertainty of exposure, as they may rightly point out that not all the black rain was radioactive.

Moreover there is still an ongoing debate in health physics about how much prompt radiation was actually emitted by Little Boy, and while maybe this material might be better suited on the devices dedicated page, in 1962 the bare-reactor-experiment/BREN Tower was built along with a mock-up of a Japanese town. All this attempt at re-enactment was done with the expressed aim of simulating the radiation emitted by Little Boy but it has since emerged that the testing method employed was faulty and the quantity of chlorine-37 inside the concrete around the hypocenter in Hiroshima does not match at all with BREN results, Cl-37 is a neutron activation product.

In summary, while the Fat Man design was used countless times in nuclear testing after Nagasaki and its radiation spectrum is well described, the radiation spectrum from the once-off Little Boy bomb has turned into a vexing problem, without that knowledge any attempts at Radiation dose reconstruction for survivors is seriously questionable. One can not say with any degree of certainty that Akiko Takahura received x-Sieverts of prompt radiation, for example. So we can't say how much her chance of contracting cancer has increased from being at Hiroshima. On the other hand, dose-reconstruction for Nagasaki survivors, has much more confidence surrounding it.

I would like for us to present some literature on radiation dose reconstruction for the survivors and how the exposure of such a large cohort of people, has informed the medical science on so many areas of prompt radiation exposure. They are the prime area of study in so many diverse areas, and may they always be the only source of such data.

• Reconstruction of the cities - they quickly re-establishing the tram lines and telephone lines for example. Touch on survivor malnutrition in japan as a whole due to the post-war environment and the article could also do with a line on how the city and medical officials collected the dead and buried them in unmarked mass graves that are routinely stumbled upon by people in Hiroshima to this day.
• The discrimination that many Japanese treated the Hibakusha with.

Boundarylayer (talk) 02:01, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your edits. I didn't miss your list the first time. I won't restate my suggestions; most of them are above, in this edit, but bullet point each if that might help. EddieHugh (talk) 13:59, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

• I can add the survivor account material, but I don't have anything on the rebuilding of the cities. Any suggested references? Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:43, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
  • I found the book Rebuilding Urban Japan After 1945 to have been very useful in the Air raids on Japan article, though I'm not sure how detailed its coverage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is. Nick-D (talk) 06:38, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
    • Great find Nick-D, let us know if you find anything. I also think it wise for us to include the geiger counter readings at the ground zeroes, that I can imagine, were made upon the arrival of the ABCC. Hawkeye7, you're going to take a stab at the unbiased randomly selected cross section of survivors at regularly spaced intervals? That's encouraging! I'm looking forward to reading that! I'll continue researching the "Black Rain" at Hiroshima, I'll amass the material I find over on its dedicated talk page before editing that page and then coming here to write a summary on radiation doses received and where the heaviest rain-out occurred. I don't want to leave Nagasaki out though, so will see if I can find specific dose-reconstructions for people there. Boundarylayer (talk) 08:47, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

• Regarding fallout, the displays and information at the peace museum in Hiroshima specifically state there was very little fallout due to the height above the ground when the bomb exploded. If it had exploded on (or really close to) the ground, it would have thrown up a lot of dust and created a crater. IIRC, the bomb exploded approximately 1500 ft above the ground, so the pressure wave from the explosion would have pushed most of the dust down rather than lifting it up and causing it to become fallout. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 23:12, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

That's only half true Nihonjoe and while it is 100% correct that it could've been much-much worse. You're right both airbursts at ~500 m height did not mix the soil with the bomb debris, making it much heavier and having it rapidly fallout. However this is only half the story. It stops short of being all encompassing as it assumes only the bomb debris was radioactive, when the city itself was made slightly radioactive by neutron activation, the city then burnt down and then those activated isotopes, washed out in the Black Rain (novel). While no appreciable bomb debris/fission product-fallout occurred, neutron activation-fallout did fall-out with some of the black rain. Have a look at the medical literature I'm beginning to amass on the black rain talk page, if you're skeptical. This pathway to exposure to radiation is by no means of trivial import, as some survivors had their hair fall out when - if you just compute their prompt radiation exposure - they didn't receive nearly enough Sieverts to cause that to happen. This discrepancy is explained in part by the exposure to the radioactive black rain. Also I remember reading a LANL or LLNL white paper on the finding of a hot spot of radiation some distance away from Hiroshima. Worth trying to find again.

Boundarylayer (talk) 23:10, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

It's all true. You're trying to call something that isn't fallout "fallout". Yes, there were other sources of radiation than the very miniscule amount of fallout, but they aren't (and never have been) considered "fallout". You're welcome to include additional material, but make sure you use the terminology correctly so people don't get the wrong ideas. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 23:52, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

Fall-out needn't be bomb debris, fallout can be anything appreciably radioactive that falls-out of the sky. Why does the radioactive substance produced need to be inside the bomb for you to personally deem it as worthy of being called "fallout"? For example Carbon-14 is generated in the air by every airburst nuclear detonation. If, in the exceedingly unlikely event, that a massive hot spot of C-14 were to fall on someones house during a rainstorm, would you refrain from calling it fallout? I don't think so. Secondly, don't worry I'm not in the business of exaggeration, and if you convince me I'll definitely drop the intent to use the word "fallout", I'm not wedded to it or anything. As I think we can both agree there has been enough exaggeration relating to H&N already. I just want to have the facts conveyed and nothing more, as doing anything else, is to disrespect all those involved.

Boundarylayer (talk) 03:07, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I never said that "the radioactive substance produced need to be inside the bomb for [me] to personally deem it as worthy of being called 'fallout'". Please don't try to put words in my mouth (or exaggerate them), regardless of why you are doing it. If you have solid, reliable sources, you are welcome to add them to the article. So far, all I'm seeing from you is a bunch of bloviating over the article not being fair, or neutral, or whatever it is you're complaining about. What I'm not seeing is presentation of sources to back up the changes you want to make. Please, present some. I don't think anyone here is against making the article more comprehensive, so if you have something, post it up here. Otherwise, you're just wasting everyone's time (just take a look at the wall of text this section has become). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 08:56, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Note that POV problems described in detail have yet to be dealt with, so I restored the tag. Any further suggestions / attempts to deal with the problems? EddieHugh (talk) 10:51, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

This discussion has been dormant for a month, your complaints are vague, and you are not offering any solutions or - better still - jumping in and having a go at the article. Instead you are edit warring to include a NPOV tag in a very high profile A-class standard article while demanding that someone else change the article on your behalf. In fact you have never even edited the article [1]. As such, there's no reason to maintain this tag as your complaints are not actionable and you are doing nothing whatsoever to resolve them. Nick-D (talk) 11:03, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

I haven't demanded that someone else change it for me; I've stated some of its shortcomings and stated some of the changes required to make it better for everyone. There are numerous specific problems listed on this talk page. If you mean that the suggestions are "vague" because they are not of the kind 'change X in sentence Y to Z', then you're right... but the problems are much greater than that. As I've said before, either a total rewrite or a split is advisable. The former would be pounced on, I believe, as it would involve removing much of the military material, which should be retained in Wikipedia. Splitting off the military aspects to a new, specific page would allow that to move on from A class, I believe, and keeping this title as the more general overview of the whole subject would allow a better balance of the all the facets (military and non-military) of the topic to be attained. I can start a more formal split procedure if you wish. Just removing the POV tag when it hasn't been dealt with doesn't help. EddieHugh (talk) 18:54, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Demanding that the article be totally re-written when it has passed GA and A-class quality assessments is not a viable position, especially as you are not making any specific suggestions for how it could be improved or doing anything at all to improve the article. This simply is not an actionable comment. Likewise, it's not clear how or why the article would be split. The atomic bombings, like the other bombings of World War II, were military operations. These attacks must be among the best-known and most important military operations ever conducted. Nick-D (talk) 23:00, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

I haven't demanded anything; I've pointed out that the article leans strongly towards a US- and military perspective. They were military operations, as you say, but they were a lot more than that. They are among the best known not because they were military attacks but because of the nature and effects of the weapon and the impact of that reality and knowledge on the world. By treating the topic largely as a piece of military history, to be described as any other, these broader aspects are bypassed. Imagine American Civil War with a bit of background, a description of the war, then a list of references, with little mention of its enduring characteristics. Think of it as something to think about, not a demand. EddieHugh (talk) 18:42, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

POV (cont.)

Thank you for your constructive contributions. Nonetheless, I'd like to see, if possible, a comprehensive chapter for the Aftermath.

• Number of casualties and in which time period (other bombings might have killed more, but over a more long period);
• Contrary to typical bombs that act converting a stone or brick buliding into rubble, or wood or flammable buildings into fire, how did the atomic destruction work? Which surface temperatures and which gradient around the centre? What happens to the human body even if you're not inside a bulding or close to one (the typical technique civilians used to escape from conventional bombings)?
• Health effects on the local population on the short and long term (epidemy of cancer, genetical problems in childs, newborns, etc.);
• Environmental effects (water, rivers, nature, etc.);
• Percentage of the city bulidings that was destroyed;
• Memorials in Japan;
• Cultural and social views, "fears" and impacts after that, regarding the usage of atomic power and also atomic energy;
• POVs from so many intelectuals around the world, that morally criticized US for being the first nation to use atomic power against civilians;
• Movies or books about the event on a humanitarian perspective (strangely for example there are no "action" films about the event, such as so many films about the american campaign in Europe);

Again, do not focus strictly on the military perspective. Be Universal, like an Encyclopedia must be. Thank you. João Pimentel Ferreira 15:09, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

There are action films about the event: The Beginning or the End (1946), Above and Beyond (1952), Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb (1980) and USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (2016). Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:26, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your list, finally! I agree with points: 1,2,3(although we largely already have most of what's in your 3rd point in the article, though we are, as noted, absent the short term effects) and as for point 4(there wasn't much in the way of environmental effects apart from the black rain, although there might be some worth in listing the first flowers to spring after the bombings and the trees that died and survived). While we have your fifth point - precentage of buildings destroyed already I think. No.6 about the memorials...hmm I disagree we have mention to the museums already. On to No.7 I agree you're onto something there and there are references on that, a line or two about how the world's introduction to nuclear energy via the bombings has impacted on the popular view of nuclear energy. For example, imagine if the world was introduced to gasoline via a massive napalm sortie burning down Tokyo, would we really look upon gasoline as innocuously as we do now? "Good evening I wish to buy 4 liters of napalm derivative for my car, thank you." As for No.8 We already have an article on that, it's the debate on article. No.9 and Hawkeye7 has came in there like a legend to list them all for you.

To go in more detail, beginning with your No.1. Personally I too would like to see more on the casualties and in what time-frames they occurred. While such an endeavor will be fraught with massive error bars, I think it worthwhile to at least convey to readers what literature there is on it.

On your Second point, I also agree. You're looking for the thermal flash light fluence at various distances, is is routinely given in the, at first odd looking, unit of cal/cm^2. However you can't say what "temperature" something was without knowing both its color and its distance. As graphically depicted by the lady in the chequered Kimono that is featured in the article. Suffice it to say, the dark fabric got a lot hotter than the white. and yes this is why many survivors had frizzled hair(black hair is very common in Japan). However although some survivor accounts include such things as their clothes bursting into flames this was not a death sentence as it was mostly cotton etc and not napalm on their skin. Hawkeye7 has taken up the task of listing the experiences of survivors at various distances. I think what you're really looking for however is info on the effects of those much closer to the bombs? Such as the infamous person(man) who was sitting on the steps of the Bank of Japan and who's outline was ablated into the surface of the granite. Neither this person, nor anyone for that matter got "vaporized" by the heat of the thermal flash, despite what the dubious BBC documentary "Hiroshima" depicts. I've also written about this in my Duck and Cover article if you wish to take a more introductory and image-heavy approach? In that article I used the photo of the ablated outline of a leaf on a utility pole in Hiroshima to serve as a less graphic example.

Extended content

In this regard if we are to go down this road, we'll need considerable guidance in presenting the medical facts in the article without coming off as (A) uncaring/unsensitive and (B) finding references that actually detail this, as we can do as I've done 1. compute the effects, 2. reference later testing and 3. link to the equations derived from these later tests but unfortunately I've never seen a document that goes step by step such as "this is what it would be like if you were standing at 100m,200m,300m etc". Not that we should be dissuaded by the difficulty of the task, as people do need the facts of what it is like to be hit by this weapon and all weapons, so that with the facts everyone will come to see just how uncompassionate killing always is. Presently, there really is a problem in society that considers killing with knives, chemical explosives, fire, bullets etc as somehow all kosher but killing with nuclear weapons is not. However such views are rather absurd if you think about them. People might say there is more suffering, but is that true? I've never seen it corroborated. Especially when you wonder about how many amputees are there in the world due to chemical explosives? & especially when you consider the nuclear detonation happens and then it's essentially over, you don't have the possibility of looking out your window and seeing bombers stream thousands of chemical explosives on top of your town and you're frozen in place, you don't know which way to run to safety, left, right, straight? Which way is safe? On a scale of 1 to 10 which one is more terrifying to a person in a city? We are a very curious culture aren't we, killing this way is ok but that way? What are you some kind of "monster"? Though I am compelled to agree with your point for inclusion of this detailed weapons effects material, I just wonder if we'd be re-enforcing this double-standard. For example, on the bombing of Dresden article, no such detailed information on what it is like to die in that more ferocious fire is discussed and neither is such information to be found in any campaign that involves conventional weapon on wikipedia, it is all absent. When if you think about it, why isn't there such treatment? Are those deaths no less gruesome? Due to the 1 notable presistent myth that people were "vaporized" by the heat. We do need to give at least have a few lines on how that didn't happen. Particularly on that infamous person sitting on the steps of the bank of Japan. The BBC film "Hiroshima" depicts that person "vaporizing", however what actually happens is rapid skin ablation, I actually have such a scar from working with a fresnel lens and concentrating the sun, the French military also use a solar furnace as an analog to approximate the effects of thermal flash on their equipment and the US use Aluminium+liquid Oxygen detonations in a blast chamber(Though now I'm wondering if I am making the effects too pedestrian, is what makes nuclear weapons so thankfully forbidden in everyones eyes is the mystery? If we strip that mystery away, will people be more likely to think they're not so bad?). A thin layer of skin smokes and you're severely charred...then the blast wave hit the person in under a second and what happens after that is essentially the same as getting hit by any blast. It's not pretty, but a fast way to go if you had to "pick one" for some reason. I can point you towards the equations etc used to determine this if you wish? I refrained from actually throwing the numbers up here as then you'd all think I'm crazy for having spent the time calculating this.

Boundarylayer (talk) 05:44, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with the introduction of some points you evoked and thank you for your comments. But as repeatedly said, the question is not about suffering or casualties per se. Kindly do not constantly misunderstand that point. It's about creating a totally new mass destructive weapon that performed a huge technological step onto the "efficiency" of killing people and destroying infrastructure. Many more Russian civilians died due to German military actions than Jews in the WW2, and nonetheless, in my view correctly, all the cultural and social historical aftermath mainly focused on the mass-murder technology the Nazis used to increase the efficiency of the elimination of Jews. USA did exactly the same in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. João Pimentel Ferreira 22:18, 13 December 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)

I think it is really you who are under the misunderstanding, nuclear weapons are not really more "efficient" at killing or destroying infrastructure. Carpet bombing is far cheaper to do, more efficient per TNT megatonnage equivalent etc and has the dubious "record" of producing the most lethal air-raid in human history with the bombing of Tokyo. Only on the very narrow E=mc^2 front, are nuclear weapons more efficient. After that point you make you go on to give another of your opinions "in my view". Your view however is totally skewed as you are comparing apples to oranges. The murder of civilians who are caged in a concentration camp, is orders of magnitude more immoral than the killing of civilians/factory workers stationed in cities which produce weapons aimed at you and yours. There is no equivalence in what you are comparing. Your argument's fallacy is that of: False equivalence.

Boundarylayer (talk) 13:19, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

You say carpet bombing is more efficient, and though you need many more airplanes and personnel to perform such bombings. In Rotterdam where carpet bombing was performed, around 800 civilians died, which compares to hundreds of thousands of casualties performed by a single bomb in either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. It is a difference of many orders of magnitude per bomb. It’s not a fallacy, if one had a single bullet that caused the death of the same number of people killed by fire weapons in the world, the one that used such bullet would be immoral and metaphorically a monster. You, who implicitly considered that there is no difference per se in the method of killing people, because, as you said, one might not morally say there is any kosher method of doing it, now consider that killing people by bombing them is more kosher and moral than gassing them in concentration camps. That is a fallacy. João Pimentel Ferreira 15:55, 3 January 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)

No one was insta-vaporized

It is pretty hard to prove a negative but I have found a somewhat reliable source(WP:RS) that explicitly states that no one was vaporized by the bombs in either city. Most of this myth originates with the Japanese photographs of human ‘shadows’ left behind on road surfaces, and the myth also features strongly in the, expectedly shoddy, BBC documentary Hiroshima and even finds its way into the "professionally" veneered Atomic Heritage website. With the following exercpt. ".15 seconds: The superheated air above the ground glows. A woman sitting on steps on the bank of the Ota river, a half a mile away from ground zero, instantly vaporizes." Yet despite the glaringly obvious fact that for these ‘shadows’ to even exist, the people who made them would've had to have blocked the thermal radiation without insta-vaporizing, which although not complete, pretty well debunks the notion from first principles, right off the bat.

Here is the source that uses other structures to prove the point, SHADOWS AND LIES

In saying that, it is important to bear in mind that just because no one was insta-vaporized, the later city fires did however "vaporize"(though it is usually called incinerate in this context) vast numbers of bodies, in the typical fashion that was observed in other comparable city fires, as noted in the Hamburg and Dresden fires etc.

Boundarylayer (talk) 19:45, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

POV concern No.4.Environmental effects & recovery in Hiroshima

Eucalypt at the site of Hiroshima Castle, 740 m from hypocenter. The tree survived the atomic bombing, while the castle was destroyed. Such trees are called Hibakujumoku locally.

Here's some info for the article. Perhaps to be truncated and summarized more briefly at a future date. 8 August. Dr. Harold Jacobson, a Manhattan Project physicist at Los Alamos, infamously claimed to the Washington Post that Hiroshima will be uninhabitable for 75 years. In Japan, several newspapers, including the August 23 edition of the Mainichi Shimbun, similarly reported that Hiroshima would be barren for seven decades.

References

What actally transpired -

8 August (Day 3): Tracks cleared and trains to Hiroshima resumed.

9 August (Day 4): Street trolley bus (electric tram) lines return to service.

All the following can be found in "Robert Jungk's Children of the Ashes' book' (Heinemann, London, 1961): which carefully investigated the history of the recovery in Hiroshima by interviewing the people involved and collecting first hand reports.

On 31 August 1945: 'the first locally produced and locally printed post-war edition of the Chugoku Shimbun newspaper was on sale in the streets of Hiroshima ... the staff state:'Our darkroom was an air-raid shelter dug into the hillside [which survived of course]', one of the editors remembers, 'but our [newspaper] type had to be cast in the open air, under the sunny sky.'

On 7 September 1945, the Chugoku Shimbun reported that Hiroshima had a population estimated to be 130,000.

On 10 September 1945, electricity was reconnected to some parts of Hiroshima: 'huts made of planks quickly knocked together ... already had electric light.'

On 5 November 1945, the Chugoku Shimbun reported that - despite inertia and delays due to 'the rigidity of bureaucratic procedure' which was hindering the recovery rate - a lot of progress was being made:

On November 15, Housing. 'The building of houses is to be systematically begun'...

'Tramways. At present, ten trams are in commission on the main route, eight on the Miyajima route and five muncipal buses. These twenty-three vehicles must cater for an average of 42,000 persons daily.'

'one morning in April 1946, the Vice-Mayor [of Hiroshima] gazed for a long time. For what met his eyes was a sight he had scarcely hoped ever to see again ... The blackness of the branches was dappled with the brilliant white of cherry buds opening into blossom.' It is not at first apparent, so here is my explanatory side note for this perhaps odd quote. - There is an obsession with Cherry blossoms in Japan, a long and big cultural fawning over them. The sight of the normal and typical re-emergence of cherry buds in this, the next spring time, not only signified that Hiroshima was going to escape the doomsdaying at the time that the city would be some kind of desolate wasteland, but the blossoms would've had morale boosting effect on the populace due to that cultural obsession with said, Cherry Blossoms. They already knew that the city would be alright after a few weeks and the oleander started to bloom again.

Some 70% of the destroyed buildings of Hiroshima had been reconstructed by mid-1949. (Ref.: Research Department, Hiroshima Municipal Office, as cited in Hiroshima, Hiroshima Publishing, 1949. Other recovery data are given in U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effects of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Washington, D.C., 1946, p. 8.)"

"In the absence of city or federal investment, most of the early reconstruction in Hiroshima was done by private citizens acting on their own initiative." The city government in the 1960s then decided to clear all the houses in the northern portion of Nakajima, formerly a bustling commercial district, for a tourist attraction, the "Peace Memorial park". "Relocated citizens were given similar sized plots in other areas. However, free space for them was difficult to find in the city, and the new plots were often less desirable than their old ones." So in sum, many people who rebuilt their homes after the bomb blast and subsequent fires were then forced out and their home was bulldozed to the ground by the Japanese government, to make way for their "peace parks". Their homes were destroyed twice by the bomb, in a way. This fact should definitely be in an article, either here or the Hiroshima peace parks. Boundarylayer (talk) 20:50, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Jacobson had his 15 minutes of fame in 1945 [2] but I did not find enough information about him to warrant an article. His claims didn't get much traction even then. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:57, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Note that POV problems described in detail have yet to be dealt with, so I restored the tag. Any further suggestions / attempts to deal with the problems? EddieHugh (talk) 10:52, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

There are other issues still at debate discussed down on the talk page, so the POV question was not yet solved. I resotered it. João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 13:41, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

POV (cont.)

The user Hawkeye7 is taking a trolling attitude in this article thinking that such article belongs to him, just because he made major contributions, blocking the article to any change to which he politically disagrees, and evoking to debate and consensus any minor change, even if within the appropriate chapter and covered by reliable sources. For years I contribute to WP and I have never seen this. As such, I evoke again the lack of neutrality of the present article for the several reasons mentioned above, to which I will not need to repeat, such motives having not being resolved since a consensus was not found, considering also that Hawkeye7 removed the POV tag without any found consensus. Dear Hawkeye7, the article is neither yours nor mine, it belongs to the community. I have a totally clean record within WP with no known conflicts, though on this issue I start an edition war if necessary. Thank you for your understanding. (I'm signing with four tildes) João Pimentel Ferreira 19:33, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Another example: the only passage on the whole text, where the expression weapons of mass destruction (is it, isn't it? Or do I need a reliable source?) appears, is when a Japanese physicist warns their government that the US will use them, but the Japanese government simply ignored such (latent and implicit humanitarian) "warning". João Pimentel Ferreira 19:53, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Personally attacking other editors, especially ones with an excellent track record such as Hawkeye, is going to get you nowhere except blocked. Your edits are being reverted due to concerns with their content, and you need to convince other editors of their merit rather than attack other people. Nick-D (talk) 07:38, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

You're also free to check my record, after thousands of contributions to WP, in several languages, and I've never been blocked nor had any issues. João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 13:55, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I restored the POV tag. Kindly do not removed as other POV issue arose, see under this talk page. Take also take into account WP:DISENGAGE João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 13:50, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree, the page is highly militarized, as if it glorifies the bombings. It's not neutral. Fortunatestars (talk) 01:08, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

POV (cont.2)

@Hawkeye7, stop reverting other people's contributions, just because you disagree with them. This article is not yours, but as any article, from the community.The fact that there is already an article for the moral debate, does not forbid anyone from adding relevant passages to the respective chapter, related to the moral debate. (I'm signing my message with four tildes, but there is a bug in wiki). João Pimentel Ferreira 19:37, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Nor is it yours. You need to make a case for your proposed change on the talk page, and obtain consensus for it. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:12, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Just a note that I reverted to the previous version before seeing that discussion was taking place but, though that may have altered my edit summary, the revert should stand until or unless consensus is reached to implement the proposed changes. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 22:07, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

The original text was deliberately set to be as brief as possible. Let's look at the working, with the proposed change in italics:

The ethical justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day, mainly not due to the number of deaths per se; as other bombings such as on Tokyo have killed more people; but due to the use of a new military mass-destruction technological overstep for killing people and destroying infrastructure.

I will concede that "mainly" is a WP:WEASEL-word, but the statement is not true. The debate is far more wide-ranging and complex than that. Many people did not accept that the numbers killed was not an issue, that other bombings justified these ones, or that the introduction of a new technology was important. There are many, many other aspects to the debate. I contend therefore, that this does not reflect the facts contained in the article, but merely your own POV. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:48, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Note that "moral" and "ethical" do not mean the same thing. The former refers to society at large; the latter, in this context, only applies to military people. Maybe "ethical" should be deleted, as the debate goes beyond morals and ethics. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:52, 26 February 2017 (UTC)>

You're trolling all the changes to which you do not politically agree. You simply removed my sentence instead of improving it, violating WP:Try_to_fix_problems. So be it. I perfectly know that moral and ethics are not the same, but you should also know, that ethics goes far beyound the military issues, thus it is appropriate to mention it here. Let's then try to be civil and find consensus. What about now?

The ethical justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day, due to the number of casualties provoked by the bombings, though other bombings such as on Tokyo have killed more people; but also due to the use of a new military mass-destruction technological overstep for killing people and destroying infrastructure.

João Pimentel Ferreira 12:05, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

All we agree on is The justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day. The Debate over bombings section covers many points, but neither of yours are among them. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:20, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Thus POV again, and kindly do not delete it without consensus, according to WP:POVD. João Pimentel Ferreira 19:16, 28 February 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)

Hawkeye7, kindly read Ethics#Defining_ethics. João Pimentel Ferreira 19:55, 28 February 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joao.pimentel.ferreira (talk • contribs)

The neutrality of the article is not disputed. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:11, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

As someone who isn't very vested in this article (I made some minor change or changes quite a while ago and so it's in my watchlist), here's my uninformed opinion on this. When we throw a "mainly because", there should be something backing that. Looking at the lead section for the debate article doesn't show any mention on the ethical use because of the number of people killed. The last sentence in the lead section states:

Those who oppose the bombings argue it was militarily unnecessary, inherently immoral, a war crime, or a form of state terrorism.

It surely goes into further detail in the article, but I don't feel a need to dig through it now. If the number of people killed was the main reason the justification is being debated, it would likely state it in the lead section. Since it is missing from there, it seems unlikely that it is the main reason. In fact, one of the reasons in the lead section for the support of what happened was actually to save a large number of lives from the planned invasions of Japan that would take place in the coming months.

I feel that the "mainly because" portion should just be removed and have it simply state that the ethical justification is still debated. That's simple and no one can complain of any POV. If we wanted to go more in depth, I feel it should at least contain similar points that are covered in the lead section of the debate article. --Bassmadrigal (talk) 00:32, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Is it not clear for any neutral mind, that one of the main ethical issues here, is not the number of deaths per se, but the usage of weapons of mass destruction against civil population? Do we all agree that a nuclear weapon is a Weapon of mass destruction? If so, do we agree, or not, that using weapons of mass destruction upon civilians rises an ethical issue? If so, as I'm trying to have since the beginning a constructive approach, do you accept this passage?

The ethical justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day, due to the number of casualties provoked by the bombings, though other bombings such as on Tokyo have killed more people; but also due to the use of weapons of mass destruction against civil population.

I remind that according to the article of Weapon of mass destruction, such weapon is a nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological or other weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans or cause great damage to human-made structures (e.g. buildings), natural structures (e.g. mountains), or the biosphere.João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 14:01, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

But none of that is listed in the lead section of Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and it's not in the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki#Debate over bombings section of this article either). That means it is not seen as a major point in the actual article discussing the debate over the bombings. Per the debate article, it states 7 reasons (and one "sub-reason") for general opposition:

1. Militarily unnecessary
2. Bombings as war crimes
3. State terrorism
4. Fundamentally immoral
   1. Continuation of previous behavior
5. Japanese nuclear weapon program
6. Nagasaki bombing unnecessary
7. Dehumanization

If you don't use these points, then it would seem like WP:OR. "Weapons of mass destruction" isn't even used in the article and after a quick glance, it doesn't seem like they mention the number of deaths as a reason for opposition either. Unless it can be backed in the actual article, I don't think it should be included. --Bassmadrigal (talk) 19:07, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

What about now?

The ethical justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day, due to several reasons including the number of casualties provoked by the bombings or the alleged militarily unnecessary, though other bombings such as on Tokyo have killed more people; but also due to the usage of weapons of mass destruction upon civil population.

Does it solve the question of WP:OR? João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 13:36, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

The second reference is an editorial by Greg Mitchell. It has multiple issues. Firstly, I can't find the part(s) which support your paragraph. Second, it's focus is a scathing criticism of Judith Miller, not a proper treatment of the ethics of nuclear weapons. Third, Greg Mitchell's bone fides as a reliable source seem to be limited to writing a single book on the subject, he doesn't appear to be a historian or academic in a relevant subject. (Hohum ^@) 15:20, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

The first reference is a lazy link to a google search for words in a book. Which page supports your paragraph? (Hohum ^@) 15:23, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

The third reference appears to be a transcript of a speech given by Jennifer Allen Simons. What makes her a reliable source on the ethics of nuclear weapons? (Hohum ^@) 15:28, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

The fourth reference is from http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org - What makes this a reliable source? Also, the credits of that article say "New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards." - this most likely causes a WP:CIRCULAR issue.

I am beginning to suspect you googled hiroshima and ethics, and then dumped four of the results here in a hope one would stick. That is not the way to provide proper references, and will not help your credibility as an editor. (Hohum ^@) 15:34, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

If this sentence is linking directly to an article that discusses the debate about the bombings, shouldn't the points we're trying to make exist in that article. Sourcing this specific sentence (especially using questionable sources) when the information doesn't exist in the actual article discussing the debate seems incorrect. I'm not familiar enough with wikipedia's policies on the matter, but I imagine it would not align with them. --Bassmadrigal (talk) 18:38, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

You demanded me to provide you sources for a truism, thus, yes, I just provide you the first four links I found in Google. Would you really like me to provide you a source that clearly says that the usage of WMD upon civilians raises ethical issues? Why the first book is not good if you have a book with 552 pages respecting WP:SOURCE whose title is "Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction"? Which passage of the book do you exactly want me to seek? Thank you. João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 21:13, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

I never demanded anything, and I didn't demand "sources". I said that any points that are brought up in a sentence talking about the debate and is also linked to an article about said debate should contain information that can be easily found in that article. Doesn't that make sense? If we have an article on the debate of using the weapons, shouldn't the information in a sentence that links to that article contain information found in that article? Not some completely new information that is nowhere to be found in said article?

I'm not opposed to that information being included as I haven't really researched the matter, but I don't think we should be including information on that debate that can't be found in the debate article itself. Maybe it'd be worth getting a consensus on the debate talk page on whether that information should be added to that article, especially if they consider it a truism.

Me using the term "questionable sources" was based on Hohum's reply, not me looking into the references specifically.

My replies in this are based on me having no stake in this article. It's not my baby and I'm fine watching it progress through my watchlist. Rather, my replies are from an outsiders perspective who has not done any in-depth research in the subject (I got into a Manhattan Project kick after watching the TV show and wanted to read up more on it and started down the rabbit hole of linked articles). Thus, I don't know all the reasons this is debated beyond what I see in the article. That is why I feel this sentence should reflect the information in the article. It has nothing to do with the validity of your proposed changes, just that those "facts" aren't found anywhere in the article discussing the debate over using the weapons. Hopefully I've clarified that enough. --Bassmadrigal (talk) 22:17, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Do we really need the other article to include such evident truism, so that it can be included here? Do we need sources for a truism? Even if we needed, I gave you as a source, a book with 552 pages that respects WP:SOURCE whose title is "Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction", which mentions several times Hiroshima? What do you need more to accept such sentence? If you want to convert WP in the digital leaflet of US post-truth historical propaganda, feel free, I'm out of WP as contributor, I quit. And I definitely, as a reader will stick to physics and math, as we based ourselves there on facts and not on patriotic ideals, and above all we do not make cherry picking (this article is cherry picking based from start to end), and I will give zero credibility to any article referring to US History or anything connected to US. You're a bunch of History re-writers, not better than Stalin's scripters. João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 09:01, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

You state it is a truism, but why wouldn't that "obvious" point be explicitly made in the debate article? I'm not trying to rewrite history or push my own agenda here. What you state as a truism, I don't know that to be true (I don't know it to be false either). Is the issue that they used WMDs against a civilian population that much bigger of a deal than using firebombings against civilians that you yourself state killed more people? I honestly don't know. Why is the WMD moniker such a big deal when it wasn't as deadly as the other bombings? I'm not saying it isn't as big of a deal, but I don't know enough on the matter to make an accurate assessment.

Try taking your feelings out of this and think of it from a neutral, uninformed perspective. Why are you against having something that you feel is so obvious being included in the article debating the bombings? Why is it so important to have it in just this sentence and nowhere else? I'm nobody on WP, but I still feel if you think this is such an obvious conclusion, it should be easy to include it on the debate article, which would then make much more sense to be included in this sentence.

And you're willing to completely stop reading US History articles just because this one sentence hasn't been adjusted to your liking? This one sentence about the debate of the bombings, which is an infinitesimally small portion of this article, completely invalidates the rest of the article? And the rest of the US History articles? Talk about WP:MOLEHILL. --Bassmadrigal (talk) 14:13, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

This is not a matter of accepting truisms. It is about how articles have to be written. MOS:LEAD requires that the lead section briefly summarises the most important points covered in an article. It doesn't need references, because they are supplied in the article below. As noted, the "Debate over bombings" section lists seven points. Given the size of the section vis a vis the article, a single sentence is most appropriate. That being the case, the best sentence would be:

The ethical justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day.

The omission of the concluding clause is justified by the fact that it is not mentioned in the "Debate over bombings" section. The section refers to casualties only in the context of the invasion of Japan and its alternatives. Nor does the section mention weapons of mass destruction (although chemical and biological weapons is briefly mentioned elsewhere in the article), or the introduction of a new technology, neither of which are considered an issue in the "Debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki". Do we have consensus for this change? Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:53, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

That's basically what I suggested above. I think it is the best option considering what is in this article and the debate article. --Bassmadrigal (talk) 03:29, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I like the slimmer version suggested above: "The justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day." However, if there is more support for "The ethical justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day," then that's okay with me. None of the "mainly" addition satisfied WP:LEAD as it brought up points not covered in this or the debate article. Binksternet (talk) 04:38, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

"The justification for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is still debated to this day" also sounds good to me given that the military necessity of the attacks is also debated. Nick-D (talk) 07:28, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

 Done Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:41, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

FUCK YOU ALL. And continue the great job! Uncle Sam would be very proud of your cherry picking. With the best regards. João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 09:30, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Your comment has shown that you are a POV-pusher with an agenda and that you have not brought a serious case for your claims. --1990'sguy (talk) 17:17, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

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Incorrect Citation

Hello, I'm new at this, but I'm looking through the book that is the 241 Gordin book citation, and I did a Ctrl+F looking for the quote on this wiki article, and it is nowhere in the book cited. This is kind of a big deal, right? Hellopomelo (talk) 16:54, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Resolved

Yes, it is. I have checked the book, and it isn't there. So I have removed the material. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:27, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

It's true that Gordin did not put the now-deleted material into his book. But the quote about the Japanese being called "a nameless mass of vermin" may be found in a number of sources from before Wikipedia existed, for instance Edmund Russell's War and Nature[3] and John Dower's Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World.[4] Somebody who is not falsely misrepresenting sources might be able to rewrite the paragraph from actual sources. Binksternet (talk) 03:25, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

I've added other sources, including one of those. The "annihilationist and exterminationalist rhetoric" bit I don't see, although other words to the same effect wouldn't be hard to find. EddieHugh (talk) 18:08, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Media

The media of this article is another example of US historical hygienization. We don't see piled corpses nor carbonized children, merely airplanes, memorandos, pictures of military men, and some rubble or air photos. Now, compare with the media of The Holocaust. Is this article neutral? Obviously not! João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 20:54, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

There is a graphic image of an injured child in the "Events on the ground" section, and video footage of injured survivors in the "Post-attack casualties" section. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:38, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Considering the event and the horror on the ground, most obviously insufficient. No, I don't want to agonize nor shock the readers, but WP should be coherent. Check the media of The Holocaust. João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 17:35, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Good article?

"Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been listed as one of the Warfare good articles". Really? With so many POV issues! Hugh 145.64.134.242 (talk) 12:02, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Yes, which you obviously know since you quoted the notice. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 15:22, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Casualties

This is a true anecdote. In a huge article, the casualties is merely a tiny chaper. And all the sources given, are from the US side. US bombs the cities and then provides information on casualties! Is this neutral? João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 21:05, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't take more than a paragraph per bomb to total up the casualties. Or do you want agonized descriptions of the horror of the bomb effects? I don't think that's appropriate for the encyclopedia.

Well, this article is agonizing and it's popular in WP. João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 17:23, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

All of the authors who calculate casualties have looked at Japanese numbers, taken from civilian police and fire department estimates. So all the US sources have factored in the Japanese numbers, or have quoted them directly, without change. Binksternet (talk) 01:06, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Or it is provided direct Japanese or independent sources, without the evident bias from the party that dropped the bombs, or there is a huge POV issue on this topic. João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 17:23, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

I have to agree here, I'm just your average reader but in the subchapter for "casualties" I would have at least expected some numbers or context to the figures given in the infobox at the top. Also "See also: Epidemiology data for low-linear energy transfer radiation" right above that, why? 87.166.150.3 (talk) 23:00, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

The casualties in the attacks are detailed in the sections above. That section is purely about post-attack casualties. Renamed the section. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:18, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Weapons of mass destruction

I will not touch this article, because it would be like shaking a wasps' nest. The political agenda of these "patriotic scripters" is undoubtedly obvious (for the newcomers, check the "hidden" archive of debate). Though, as I want to be constructive within WP and I still can't stand the POV of this "historical article", I wonder how such a comprehensive leaflet, never mentions weapons of mass destruction. Oh yes, I almost forgot, I need sources, reliable and trustworthy, referring explicitly and unambiguously that an atomic bomb is a weapon of mass destruction. João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 22:20, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Is this not obvious? Most people know what an atomic bomb is, the third sentence of the lead notes that the two bombs killed "at least 129,000 people", and the third para of the lead expands on this. The article then describes the effects of the bombs in detail. I don't think that many readers are as stupid as you seem to think they are. Nick-D (talk) 22:43, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

In that case, why don't you use the term? Why do you soften the article? If you do not want to use it, as obvious you say it is, you're not being neutral and you're putting a political patriotic agenda within the article. If you read in the archive the old debate, you'll see that all your "patriotic colleagues" don't find it so obvious, and they removed all my sentences which used such term, because I "had no reliable sources". They don't like truisms. João Pimentel Ferreira (talk) 20:35, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

@Joao.pimentel.ferreira and Nick-D: Perhaps because the expression was barely in use at the time, and because its use would add nothing of value to the article. --Thnidu (talk) 02:39, 10 August 2017 (UTC)