Tag: Hiroshima

Should Obama Visit Hiroshima?

At the upcoming G-7 meeting in Japan, President Obama will have a chance to pay his respects to the Hiroshima victims of the first U.S. nuclear bomb, but he’ll get criticized by political enemies, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

Christianity and the Nagasaki Crime

Two of warfare’s great crimes were inflicted when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians and in the bitterest of ironies wiping out Nagasaki’s Christian community which had survived long-term Japanese…

Confronting a Very Dark Chapter

This week marks the 70th anniversary of a very dark chapter of human history, the U.S. incineration of tens of thousands of Japanese civilians by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a war crime that has been rationalized in…

Nuclear War’s Unlearned Lessons

The upcoming 70th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a fitting moment for the world to contemplate the dangers from the continuation of nuclear arsenals and the cavalier attitude that many countries take toward geopolitical crises,…

Oliver Stone’s Hard Look at US History

Many American historians, like their counterparts in journalism,  fail the democratic process that they are supposed to serve. Both groups tend to put a positive spin on even the nastiest actions of the U.S. government, a process that Oliver Stone challenges…

How to Curb the Doomsday Club

On Aug. 6, 1945, the world changed. Though war had plagued humankind for millennia, the U.S. atomic bomb on Hiroshima showed how all life might end, a threat that remains as nuclear-armed states keep their arsenals, thus creating incentives for…

How America Became an Empire

Exclusive: Director Oliver Stone and historian Peter Kuznick offer a major reexamination of modern American history in “The Untold History of the United States,” which has many strengths amid a few shortcomings, writes Jim DiEugenio in this first of a two-part…

Hiroshima and Historical Truth

On the 50th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, historians at the Smithsonian tried to present a truthful accounting of that U.S. decision-making but were stopped by right-wing politicians led by then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich who insisted on…

A Dark American Turning Point

The carnage inflicted on Japan on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, 1945, marked a dark turning point in American history. Having achieved victory over Nazism in Europe and the strategic defeat of fascist Japan, the United States took the unprecedented…