[1841] in peace2
Movie Night this FRIDAY to Commemorate Nagasaki
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brice C Smith)
Thu Aug 8 12:43:59 2002
Message-Id: <200208081643.MAA10362@buzzword-bingo.mit.edu>
To: peace-announce@MIT.EDU, greens-announce@MIT.EDU, save-discuss@MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 08 Aug 2002 12:43:47 -0400
From: Brice C Smith <elrond@MIT.EDU>
What : Screenings of "Atomic Cafe" and "Dr. Strangelove"
When : Friday August 9 (the 57th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki)
7:00 pm
Where : Room 4-231
This Friday (August 9) marks the 57th anniversary of the second
"greatest" single act of terrorism in human history, namely the
dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki instantly killing more than
73,000 people and sentencing countless more to death, disease, and
birth defects (the "greatest" act of course being the bombing of
Hiroshima, see below)*. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must never
be forgotten especially today when our almost elected President pushes
though a program sending us spiraling dangerously towards nuclear
catastrophe (this policy includes pushing through billions for a new
production facility to make plutonium cores for the next generation of
nuclear weapons including the proposed ground penetrating battlefield
weapons, signing an unenforceable treaty that will allow thousands of
warheads to be warehoused instead of destroyed, preparing the Nevada
Test Sight for resumed full-scale nuclear testing, openly declaring his
willingness to use nuclear weapons against Russia, China, Syria, Iran,
Iraq, Libya, and North Korea, and pulling the US out of the 1972 ABM
treaty so he can push ahead with plans for a missile shield that can
not possibly work but will most likely succeed in prompting a new arms
race, just to name a few of the highlights.)
The madness of the nuclear age is clearly alive and well. In order to
commemorate the anniversary of this terrible day and to remind
ourselves that we must continue the fight to wrestle control of this
apocalyptic force from experts, politicians, and soldiers please come
this Friday August 9 at 7:00 pm to Room 4-231 to watch two of the most
important anti-nuclear films ever made "Atomic Cafe" and "Dr.
Strangelove : Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb"
(descriptions at the bottom of this email). If we do not change our
country's path, we may soon see the firebreak that has held since that
day in 1945 breached. If that happens there is no telling where it
would end, but the memory of the hundreds of thousands of people killed
and injured in Japan provide a haunting reminder of what it might be
like.
* For anyone who still believes the use of the atomic bombs in Japan
was necessary to end the war, or saved the US from having to invade
please read this. I have decided to include only quotations from those
who were there and who influenced the decisions. There is no revision,
only recollection.
It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing...
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
During his [Secretary of War Stimson's] recitation of the relevant
facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced
to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan
was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely
unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should
avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment, I
thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and
Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The
Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender
- Admiral William Leahy, then Chief of Staff to the President
It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by
the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first bomb fell...
- Winston Churchill
Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been
dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no
invasion had been planned or contemplated.
- U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, "Japan's Struggle to End the War"
(submitted July 1, 1946)
It was agreed that psychological factors in the target selection were
of great importance. Two aspects of this are (1) obtaining the greatest
psychological effect against Japan and (2) making the initial use
sufficiently spectacular for the importance of the weapon to be
internationally recognized when publicity on it is released.
- Minutes of the second meeting of the Target Committee, Los
Alamos, May 10-11, 1945
Review of "Atomic Cafe"
The atomic bomb changed the world forever, and this wonderful film
shows how Americans expressed wonder over atomic weapons and then
suffered from the pervasive fear that America would be on the receiving
end of a Soviet nuclear attack. Atomic Cafe is a brilliant compilation
of archival film clips beginning with the first atomic bomb detonation
in the New Mexico desert. The footage, much of it produced as
government propaganda, follows the story of the bomb through the two
atomic attacks on Japan that ended World War II to the bomb's central
role in the cold war. Shown along with the famous "duck and cover"
Civil Defense films are lesser-known clips, many of which possess a
bizarre black humor when seen today... Bellicose congressmen are shown
advocating a freewheeling policy of nuclear strikes against China
during the Korean War, suburban families are shown enjoying the
comforts of their bomb shelters, and footage of a boy trying to bicycle
to a bomb shelter in a "bomb survival suit" his father designed is
priceless. Atomic Cafe is at once clever and poignant, a canny and
offbeat look at a significant period in American history.
- Robert J. McNamara
Review of "Dr. Strangelove"
Arguably the greatest black comedy ever made, Stanley Kubrick's cold
war classic is the ultimate satire of the nuclear age. Dr. Strangelove
is a perfect spoof of political and military insanity, beginning when
General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden), a maniacal warrior obsessed
with "the purity of precious bodily fluids," mounts his singular
campaign against Communism by ordering a squadron of B-52 bombers to
attack the Soviet Union. The Soviets counter the threat with a so-
called "Doomsday Device," and the world hangs in the balance while the
U.S. president (Peter Sellers) engages in hilarious hot-line
negotiations with his Soviet counterpart. Sellers also plays a British
military attachi and the mad bomb-maker Dr. Strangelove; George C.
Scott is outrageously frantic as General Buck Turgidson, whose
presidential advice consists mainly of panic and statistics about
"acceptable losses." With dialogue ("You can't fight here! This is the
war room!") and images (Slim Pickens's character riding the bomb to
oblivion) that have become a part of our cultural vocabulary, Kubrick's
film regularly appears on critics' lists of the all-time best.
- Jeff Shannon
----
Generally speaking things have gone about as far as they can possibly go when
things have got about as bad as they can reasonably get
- Tom Stoppard
