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It appears that we will never rid the world of nuclear threats and fears of imminent disaster from some country deciding to keep up with the Joneses and have nuclear capability.

One of the most profound experiences I have had was to visit the memorial in Hiroshima, Japan. The feeling of absolute desolation and destruction still haunts the place. Of course, the Japanese were our enemies at the time, and they allegedly committed all sorts of atrocities against Australian and other soldiers. But I felt, when I visited Hiroshima, that none of this justified the absolute horror that was visited on that city and its inhabitants.

Here are a couple of images from the Memorial Park in Hiroshima. They were taken in colour, but were almost monochromatic anyway. I have done a B&W conversion with sepia tones, in the hope of accentuating the message. Click if you wish to see larger images.

thank you for sharing those images Trevor,

I agree that nuclear weapons are one of the most atrocious devices of war, but so is genocide, fire bombings, napalm, gas; any weapon that is indescrimenant of a target. Murder, rape and pillage have been their common credo for thousands of years; an aggresor within a war situation does no just want to kill an enemies soldiers, they want to obliterate an entire society. Thousands died due to those nuclear bombings but at the same time millions of innocent people died in the same conflict thanks to indescrimanant bombings, firestorms, concentration camps, starvation, exposure.... every death was probably just as ugly as the others.

The only thing that can reconcile what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is the fact that it did stop a war. Had the Germans and Japanese developed a nuclear weapon years ahead of the Americans and the British I have no doubt that as the aggressors in the conflict that they probably would have used it first on Britain or America. Imagine a nuclear Pearl Habour. It is common knowledge that the Germans were working on a heavy water plant to help in their nuclear program and had they devloped the bomb first the world might be a very different place.

My concern now is not so much for the Americans and the Russians who hold the bulk of the worlds nuclear arsenals; throughout the past 60 years they have maintained enough fortitude and intelligence to resist using them, no matter how desperate the conflict or situation. What concerns me now are the small radical groups who will do anything to increase a conflict, all for the sake of pushing a minority cause or religous ideal. While the super powers maintain a big stick there is a chance that we might be able to discourage smaller countries, the likes of North Korea and Iran, from developing thier own nuclear weapons.

The sad thing about nuclear weapons is that they have been invented and there is no turning back... we have to live with it.

Nice one Trevor - very poignant. To be picky, you cropped off the top of the tower in the first pic.

It's not only the Japanese who committed atrocities, to a greater extent all countries involved committed crimes against humanity with the amount of a deaths on both sides.

PiroStitch wrote:Nice one Trevor - very poignant. To be picky, you cropped off the top of the tower in the first pic.

I feel the same way, nice image for all that though. Would the second image have worked with the lower text in frame as well?

to a greater extent all countries involved committed crimes against humanity

You mean like the Treaty of Versailles? At some point we need to step back as a species and ask what we're fighting for... it's not as though there's any great shortage any more, and distribution is usually solved best by negotiation (I favour the "whoever cuts chooses last" solution to most disputes... I reckon it would work just about anywhere).[/quote]

PiroStitch wrote:Nice one Trevor - very poignant. To be picky, you cropped off the top of the tower in the first pic.

Yes, and it's really annoying. The original shot did not have a level horizon. so the decision became whether to straighten it and lose that portion of the image, or whether to keep a leaning building.

In the end, I decided that the leaning building was more of an irritant.

Sure, there are a lot of "what ifs" about WWII, and in particular, the "should they or shouldn't they" have used the atomic bomb question.

But, that's all in the past, and can't be changed. The only thing we can do about it now is to learn from it, and try to ensure that it never happens again.