Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire In Hiroshima, Pope Francis denounces atomic bombs as 'immoral'

This smarmy article tries to rip your heart out:

https://www.france24.com/en/2019112...omic-weapons-nagasaki-nuclear-bomb-japan

Pope Francis traveled to Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Sunday to demand that world powers renounce their nuclear arsenals, declaring the use and possession of atomic bombs an “immoral” crime and a dangerous waste.

Standing before survivors of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings, Francis denounced the steady erosion of arms control agreements and rejected the Cold War-era doctrine of deterrence that had been sanctioned by the Catholic Church for nearly three decades.

In the rain of Nagasaki and the silent darkness of Hiroshima, he urged political leaders to accept that true peace and international security cannot be built in a climate of distrust, but rather solidarity.

“The use of atomic energy for purposes of war is immoral,” the pope declared during a nighttime prayer at Hiroshima’s peace memorial. He added off-the-cuff, “As is the possession of atomic weapons.”

“We will be judged for this,” he warned.

Francis visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the first full day of a three-day trip to Japan aimed at emphasizing his call for a global ban on atomic weapons. Nagasaki was the perfect place to begin, the birthplace of Christianity in Japan where he could honor innocents killed in war as well as Christian missionaries and martyrs killed for their faith.

The mood there was somber, darkened by the downpour that drenched the terraced fields, the rice paddies and the hundreds of Japanese who came out in plastic raincoats to witness the second pope to pay his respects after St. John Paul II in 1981.

The scene was equally as restrained in Hiroshima, where a brief round of applause when Francis arrived punctured an otherwise quiet night. After a gong signaled a moment of silence and Francis lit a candle of peace, two survivors offered their testimony about the “demonic” atom bomb.

“No one in this world can imagine such a scene of hell,” said Yoshiko Kajimoto, who was 14 at the time and was working in a factory 2.3 kilometers (1.4 miles) north of ground zero when the blue light of the bomb tore through the windows, collapsing the building on top of her.

Standing solemnly before Francis, she described what she saw along the evacuation route:

“There were more and more people coming by. Their bodies were so burned and totally red. Their faces swollen to double size, their lips hanging loose, with both hands held out with burnt skin hanging from them. They no longer looked human.”

Kajimoto had two-thirds of her stomach removed in 1999 because of cancer, and now suffers from leukemia. “I work hard to bear witness that we must not use such demonic atomic bombs again, nor let anyone in the world endure such suffering,” she said.

“Do we still need nuclear even after you see all of this?” she asked. “Each one of us can only do so much.”

Her testimony clearly had an impact on Francis, whose own emotional reaction to images of the Nagasaki aftermath prompted him last year to print up thousands of pocket-sized copies of a photograph of a young Nagasaki boy carrying his dead brother on his back that was taken by
American military photographer Joe O’Donnel.

Francis had the words “The fruit of war” printed on the image, and a poster-sized copy was on display in Nagasaki, where Francis met with the photographer’s son, Tyge, an invited guest.

He is wrong. The majority of scholars agree that the bombs saved millions of lives. My father, a US Marine in WWII, probably would not have survived an invasion of mainland Japan.

The idea of a pope lecturing on morality is ridiculous to the point of hilarity.

And Pearl Harbor was a bingo game I guess....

What he said. The old goat was probably looking for little boys while there.

The bomb has kept the commies from rolling over more borders.

that is so right on ...I have to give it a +1......bob

Too bad he wasn't there in 1945.

we need to now drop a few more A Bombs

the pope does not represent god....the pope does not speak for god.....god doesn't speak to the pope anymore than he speaks to me..


the things the popes have turned a blind eye to......makes anything they have to say...meaningless...…


if god picked popes to speak and represent him....he made a pretty poor choice...…..bob

My dad was in the P I and I am glad he came home alive.

The rape of Nanking, and the Bataan death march were immoral.

Curtis Lemay made some of the hardest decisions ever made when he determined upon low level fire bombing.
They dropped warning leaflets telling them to flee.
Our Hands were fairly clean.
The Japs were godless savages.

See, it works out because the Japs are Shinto.

In war, the victors write the history. I would agree that many sickening and brutal atrocities were committed by the Japanese.

Quoting President Truman,

In a radio broadcast on the night of August 9, 1945, hours after the U.S. dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan, President Harry S. Truman linked the use of the bomb to the treatment by the Japanese of American prisoners of war: “Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.” In a letter two days later, Truman wrote, “nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am, but I was greatly disturbed by the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war.”

Pope, what a joke. Pope Pius VII made deals with the devil (Hitler’s Nazi Party) in return for no looting of the Vatican. Prior to end of WWII he helped Nazi war criminals escape to South America. That would include Josef Mengele among other notorious monsters. So much for the Pope’s lectures, he should hang his head in shame and shut his mouth regarding that era and time.

Suppose Truman had not authorzied the bomb. Suppose the war had then lasted only a year more, with 100,000 more American deaths.

What do you suppose the reaction would have been when it was found out that Truman had caused 100,000 Americans to die because he "pulled his punches' in the war?

But don't ask me. Ask the crew of the USS Arizona. That ship is still on active duty. You see, you cannot decommission a US Navy ship while it has a full crew on board.

And ask this pope how many millions died because a previous pope refused to ask his followers to oppose Hitler.

Somehow I doubt that those who fought at Okinawa would share his opinion.

What a silly old twat this pope is. He sounds more like an American college professor than the spiritual leader of a religion.

The Catholics should put him out to pasture like they did that last one, the one who looked like the Emperor on Star Wars.

What about population explosions?.

"Pope Francis traveled to Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Sunday to demand that world powers renounce their nuclear arsenals, declaring the use and possession of atomic bombs an “immoral” crime and a dangerous waste. "

Looks like the only people who took notice are those looking to cheap shot the Catholic church.

(A religious figure not in favor of nuclear holocaust, imagine that!)

Absolutely, my grandfather was also an island hopping combat Marine who very often expressed the huge casualties we would have taken trying to storm Japan. Even as a lifelong devout Ukrainian Catholic church member, i know he wouldnt have agreed with the pope on this one

Perhaps it is time to take a close look at the core motives of the German "boar in the vineyard"?

.......... Right on. One of my late uncles was a young marine in the Pacific theater. He was there less than a year before the Japanese surrender. Had we invaded the Japanese mainland I'm sure he would have been among those doing it. Harry Truman saved a lot of American lives and I'm sure his decision took into account all of the Japanese atrocities that they inflicted on anyone and everyone that wasn't on their side. We would have lost one hell of a lot of our troops invading Japan.