Sunday, November 20, 2016

Journal 8 Jessica Onate

When I first started listening to the podcast, I could not imagine how dropping atomic bombs could be justifiable. After listening, I could better understand the reasoning or "logic" behind dropping the bombs. I do not support these decisions, but I would have to be in their shoes to understand. One phrase that stood out to me was the part in Harry Truman's diary entry that talked about Japanese civilians being "acceptable collateral damage". It's so sad that human beings were considered the collateral damage of the bomb. The author of the podcast mentioned that that the fire raids in Japan during WW2 were killing a lot more people than the bombs, and that it was more "logical" to drop a bomb that would result in killing less people in total, and end the war sooner. This helped me understand why the bombs were dropped in the first place. I was very surprised about how much historical context the author used, and how detailed the podcast was. Overall, it was very interesting but very sad.
This picture shows a clock and a bomb being dropped. I cannot imagine the fear of not knowing how long war will continue to go on, and how many more people will continue to die.

2 comments:

  1. I actually mentioned you in my post, like I told you in person. The diary entry was something that struck my intention as well. Lives being belittled and just seen as a means to an end... horrific but kind of understandable as he was talking about his "logical insanity" explanation.

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  2. I completely agree that in this case, the collateral damage were innocent people. How could you drop a bomb knowing you were going to kill so many innocent people and in such a terrible way? But, Carlin said that during times of war, logical insanity took over. To a person not making life or death decisions, the decision seems so much harder. But, when you're in time of war, something so insane is also the only logical answer. Very interesting!

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