This story put knots in my stomach.
When I read the original headline from the BBC, I thought it would be a positive story about someone who stood up in history to save an entire city from mass destruction.
The headline read The Man who Saved Kyoto from the Atomic Bomb.
I have no problems with the way the BBC reported this story. Skeptical me just thought they missed the boat with the headline.
The BBC reports that toward the end of World War II, Kyoto was on the list of cities where the U.S. would drop the atomic bomb.
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U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson removed it from the list over the objections of the military.
He argued the city was too important culturally and was not a military target. This was the same man behind the incarceration of Japanese Americans into the “camps.”
Some say his real reason for sparing Kyoto is that he honeymooned there. The BBC tells the story of another man thought by some to be the “real hero” who saved Kyoto.
Frankly, its hard for me to see either man as a hero.
Instead of Kyoto, the United States bombed Nagasaki which was not on the original target list.
An estimated 39,000 – 80,000 people were killed. Half died immediately while the rest suffered lingering deaths.
So it’s hard for me to think of anyone as a hero in this. A real hero would have found a way not to drop the bomb altogether.
re: The would-be hero who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb: A real hero COULD NOT avoid dropping the atomic bombs. You FAIL to note that the two atomic blasts DID NOT end the war. Instead the Japanese gave up because the Russians put the nail in the coffin and CAPTURED the most Japanese soldiers in WWII… Japan created a HUGE labrynth of bunkers INSIDE Mt Fuji that are still there today. Without question Japan was PREPARING for a FULL SCALE invasion and was willing to take huge losses and implement CHEMICAL and BIOLOGICAL weapons of MASS DESTRUCTION… HIROSHIMA had a POISON GAS factory there….. In Nagasaki MANY NON-JAPANESE slaves died, but STILL the JAPANESE PEOPLE still REFUSE to allow ANY memorial or even consideration for these NON-JAPANESE atomic bomb VICTIMS…. In many ways the Japanese PEOPLE are GUILTY of white washing their history…..