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hmmhmm
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  The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story

The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story






62 years ago, on August 9th, 1945, the second of the only two atomic bombs (a plutonium bomb) ever used as instruments of aggressive war (against essentially defenseless civilian populations) was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, by an all-Christian bomb crew. The well-trained American soldiers were only "doing their job," and they did it efficiently.

It had been only 3 days since the first bomb, a uranium bomb, had decimated Hiroshima on August 6, with chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist military government and the Emperor had been searching for months for a way to an honorable end of the war which had exhausted the Japanese to virtually moribund status. (The only obstacle to surrender had been the Truman administration’s insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese regarded as a deity, would be removed from his figurehead position in Japan – an intolerable demand for the Japanese.)

The Russian army was advancing across Manchuria with the stated aim of entering the war against Japan on August 8, so there was an extra incentive to end the war quickly: the US military command did not want to divide any spoils or share power after Japan sued for peace.

The US bomber command had spared Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Kokura from the conventional bombing that had burned to the ground 60+ other major Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. One of the reasons for targeting relatively undamaged cities with these new weapons of mass destruction was scientific: to see what would happen to intact buildings – and their living inhabitants – when atomic weapons were exploded overhead.

Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress called Bock’s Car, took off from Tinian Island, with the prayers and blessings of its Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary target. (Its bomb was code-named "Fat Man," after Winston Churchill.)

The only field test of a nuclear weapon, blasphemously named "Trinity," had occurred just three weeks earlier, on July 16, 1945 at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The molten lavarock that resulted, still found at the site today, is called trinitite.

With instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock’s Car arrived at Kokura, which was clouded over. So after circling three times, looking for a break in the clouds, and using up a tremendous amount of valuable fuel in the process, it headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.

Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was it the site of the largest Christian church in the Orient, St. Mary’s Cathedral, but it also had the largest concentration of baptized Christians in all of Japan. It was the city where the legendary Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church in 1549, a Christian community which survived and prospered for several generations. However, soon after Xavier’s planting of Christianity in Japan, Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests began to be accurately perceived by the Japanese rulers as exploitive, and therefore the religion of the Europeans (Christianity) and their new Japanese converts became the target of brutal persecutions.

Within 60 years of the start of Xavier’s mission church, it was a capital crime to be a Christian. The Japanese Christians who refused to recant of their beliefs suffered ostracism, torture and even crucifixions similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity had been stamped out.

However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence, completely unknown to the government – which immediately started another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. And by 1917, with no help from the government, the Japanese Christian community built the massive St. Mary’s Cathedral, in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.

Now it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil, that St. Mary’s Cathedral was one of the landmarks that the Bock’s Car bombardier had been briefed on, and looking through his bomb site over Nagasaki that day, he identified the cathedral and ordered the drop.

At 11:02 am, Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a scorching, radioactive fireball. The persecuted, vibrant, faithful, surviving center of Japanese Christianity had become ground zero.

And what the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds. The entire worshipping community of Nagasaki was wiped out.

The above true (and unwelcome) story should stimulate discussion among those who claim to be disciples of Jesus. The Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group (the 1500-man Army Air Force group, whose only job was to successfully deliver the atomic bombs to their targets) was Father George Zabelka. Several decades after the war ended, he saw his grave theological error in religiously legitimating the mass slaughter that is modern land and air war. He finally recognized that the enemies of his nation were not the enemies of God, but rather children of God whom God loved, and whom the followers of Jesus are to also love. Father Zabelka’s conversion to Christian nonviolence led him to devote the remaining decades of his life speaking out against violence in all its forms, especially the violence of militarism. The Lutheran chaplain, William Downey, in his counseling of soldiers who had become troubled by their participation in making murder for the state, later denounced all killing, whether by a single bullet or by a weapon of mass destruction.......


by Gary G. Kohls[url=http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/kohls8.html]continue to read[/url]


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CHRISTIAN

 2008/9/11 15:33Profile
makrothumia1
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Joined: 2005/10/4
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 Re: The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story

Thank you for your courage in relating events unknown to many of us.

 2008/9/11 16:47Profile
Compton
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Joined: 2005/2/24
Posts: 2732


 Re:

Quote:
And what the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, American Christians did in 9 seconds. The entire worshipping community of Nagasaki was wiped out.



"American Christians" dropped the bomb on Nagasaki? That's a loaded statement that misrepresents the terrible and complex history that led up to that event. Apparently whenever the United States is involved in something horrible, it must be those American Christians who are behind it.

Edit: Contrary to fashionable political caricatures, most Americans are not war mongers. Furthermore, American Christians are not the bitter people clinging to guns and religion as they have been portrayed.

We mourned for Nagasaki too. And why post this on 9-11?


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Mike Compton

 2008/9/11 16:56Profile
HeartSong
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Joined: 2006/9/13
Posts: 3179


 Re:

Quote:
Apparently whenever the United States is involved in something horrible, it must be those American Christians who are behind it.



In America, God and country was once synonymous - we were blessed of God and claimed His Name - therefore all that we do, is done in His Name, whether we believe it or not.

That we would name the bomb "Trinity" says much - and causes my heart great sorrow . . .

 2008/9/11 17:19Profile
Compton
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Joined: 2005/2/24
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 Re:

Quote:
In America, God and country was once synonymous - we were blessed of God and claimed His Name - therefore all that we do, is done in His Name, whether we believe it or not.



Dear sister,

If I thought that was true, I would renounce America for the name and honor of our Lord. That would mean that anything the CIA does overseas without our knowledge, or some thug dictator running the courts in California without our consent represents the American Church?

America has and is becoming a completely secular state. This is an unproductive line of thought. Many of us are trying to repent, and distance ourselves from the sins of the state, but you guys keep dragging us back in.

I'm not sure exactly why.

MC


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Mike Compton

 2008/9/11 17:34Profile
HeartSong
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 Re:

We must see our sin before we can repent.

 2008/9/11 17:42Profile
Compton
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 Re:

Quote:
We must see our sin before we can repent.



Fair enough. What is the special sin of the American Christian that other Christians seem to be impervious to. I'm serious, because that seems to be the implication.

It there is a war, then it's the American involvement alone that is singled out. It it's materialism, then it's the American Materialism.

Do not other nations sin?

I say this, because brothers, I've known repentance, mourning, and even shame. But it doesn't matter, because at the end of the day, to people like the author of this article, I am an American Christian. That is all my fellow Christians from other nations know or care to know about me.

Know our sins before we can repent indeed. Our sins are daily headlines, while the sins of others nations are dirty secrets. The truth of the matter is that Christians from other nation won't let me repent. I will never be able to repent of Nagasaki or even slavery or any other national sin, because my brothers and sisters from other nations won't let me. They need someone to be worse then them, so they don't have to deal with their own participation in the sins of their own nations. If not, then why this divisive singling out of only one nation among hundreds?

Paul did not campaign against Rome. Peter did not preach against Caesar. I am only called to be separate from the world, not an active agent for any nations ruin.

We are called to mourn the darkness of the world, not just one nation over and over again.

MC


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Mike Compton

 2008/9/11 19:15Profile
ginnyrose
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 Re: The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story

This story once again proves how little we actually know about Japan.

I checked out the link you provided....I would encouraged all to read that....the writer makes some powerful points.

The writer asks: "And what can we Christians do, starting now, to prevent the next war and the next epidemic of combat-induced post traumatic stress disorder?" To this I would have to say nothing apart from a transformed heart will accomplish this. Jesus promised there will be wars and rumors of wars until he returns. There are a segment of peace churches who feel they can usher in the millennium by their protests against military actions by a civil government. But it has been proven to not work and in fact it has gotten worse, if anything.

Thanks for the post, Christian.

ginnyrose


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Sandra Miller

 2008/9/11 19:18Profile
narrowpath
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 Re: The Bombing of Nagasaki August 9, 1945: The Untold Story

This is a sad story, but mark what Jesus saitd in

Luke 13 1Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish."


I think it was Art Katz who said that the casualties of the nuclear bombs thrown on Japan were equal to the massacre in Nanking.

My own country Germany has been the instrument of the devil to kill 6 million Jews and millions of other people. The devil can do nothing without God's permission or God's withdrawal of protection.

We equally suffered the devastation of entire cities and and millions of our people died. In my wider family were both aggressors and victims. We were executors and receivers of judgement. I believe war is executed by satanic and angelic forces but still God is in complete control. War appears to be chaotic, but God knows every detail. His judgements are just, impartial, timed, precise, and proportionate. They are in proportion to man's sins or righteousness. God waits with his judgment until the sins of the people have piled up. The Israelites had to wait 430 years in their Egyptian slavery before they were commissioned to anihilate the Canaanites who practised the vilest forms of infanticide and perversion.

If WWII casualities and devastation is in proportion to the sins of the peoples and nation, what about us today?

Before WWII, abortion was not widely practised and it was illegal. Homosexuality, promiscuity, lewedness, frivolity, drug abuse was in outlawed and seen as a sin. In general, moral standards were higher than today in the affected nations.

If the depravity and sinfulness we saw at that time effected the death of 55 million people in the mid 20th century, then how about today? We did not have a war of such a scale for over 60 years.

Another factor that contributes to war is a church that lost its lampstand. She can no longer exercise a redemptive role in the world.
If she is not filled with the Spirit and does not convict the world, man have to die in their sins.

John 16:8
...Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. 8When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt[a] in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment: 9in regard to sin, because men do not believe in me; 10in regard to righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; 11and in regard to judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

Germany, who once was the breeding ground for the reformation had almost completely lost its witness. We even coined the higher bible criticism, an pseudo-theological school that tried to debunk God's truth. In 1911 the Holy Spirit was banned from churches in the "Berliner Declaration" signed by church leaders in an answer to the Asuza Street revival. WWI started 3 years later.

History should teach us a lesson. I am afraid that much greater judgement awaits us than that what our grandfathers or any generation has ever witnessed, it may be that soon we will see nothing less than the great tribulation. Counterfeit Christianity and false prophets pave the way for the antichrist. The end will come as perdicted and Christ will come back.

Let me end with a word of hope. Much has been given to us, much will be required of us.
Most of us can read. We can travel anywhere in the world and preach the gospel. We have all sorts of media at our disposal to evangelize.
Though few will find the way of truth, there is still a greeeaaat harvest to come in.
We have all the good books and testimonies to fire us on. We have wonderful resources here at SI. We can download some of the most excellent teachings spanning 2000 years of church history on the internet for free. The cloud of witnesses has never been as big as today.

Onwards Christian soldier, time is short

Ephesians 5:14
..."Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you."

narrowpath

 2008/9/11 20:22Profile
HeartSong
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Joined: 2006/9/13
Posts: 3179


 Re:

Compton said:

Quote:
What is the special sin of the American Christian that other Christians seem to be impervious to. . . . The truth of the matter is that Christians from other nation won't let me repent. . . . why this divisive singling out of only one nation among hundreds?


The problem is our American pride.

How can we be proud Americans, and at the same time be humble Christians? We continually speak as if we are the exception - that somehow we do not have to follow the rules. On one hand we claim that we are blessed while at the same time we trample upon the poor and innocent. We deserve the wrath that our Father is allowing to be poured upon this country.

Every time that we claim to be an American we embrace that which America does - better to claim that we are Christians and embrace all that He does.

 2008/9/11 20:32Profile





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