Silly Thinking




	Silly Thinking with Jim Farris Home Get Email Updates Admin Password Remember Me 2011328 Curiosities served Share on Facebook				2003-08-06 7:54 PM Zinn on Hiroshima Previous Entry :: Next Entry Read/Post Comments (0) The bombing of Hiroshima remains sacred to the American Establishment and to a very large part of the population in this country. I learned that when, in 1995, I was invited to speak at the Chautauqua Institute in New York state. I chose Hiroshima as my subject, it being the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of the bomb. There were 2,000 people in that huge amphitheater and as I explained why Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unforgivable atrocities, perpetrated on a Japan ready to surrender, the audience was silent. Well, not quite. A number of people shouted angrily at me from their seats. Understandable. To question Hiroshima is to explode a precious myth which we all grow up with in this country--that America is different from the other imperial powers of the world, that other nations may commit unspeakable acts, but not ours. Further, to see it as a wanton act of gargantuan cruelty rather than as an unavoidable necessity ("to end the war, to save lives") would be to raise disturbing questions about the essential goodness of the "good war." Read/Post Comments (0) Previous Entry :: Next Entry Back to Top