Happy Birthday Fat Boy

Today marks the anniversary of Fat Boy's visit to Nagasaki. Every year both Hiroshima and Nagasaki hold ceremonies to remember those killed and injured - an event way before my time (and hopefully how they killed and maimed thousands in their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor). While the debate continues even now whether the use of nuclear weapons were needed or not, the final truth is in the words of the Emperor of Japan, Hirohito - who while signing the declaration of surrender on the USS Missouri stated that his surrender was the result of the two atomic bombs.

Since then Japan has been a pacifist nation - shunning involvement in wars and proliferation of atomic weapons. This is changing in light of the psychos in North Korea and the growing fanaticism of the violent Islamic "religion".

But North Korea's recent fireworks - seven missiles test-launched early last month - have illuminated a different Japan. In its desire to become a "normal" country and counter potential attacks from countries such as North Korea, Japan is rapidly changing its constitution, its principles and its military capabilities.

Some Japanese politicians have even broached the taboo subject of Japan acquiring its own nuclear arsenal, much to the horror of a generation that absorbed the "never again" lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Even pacifists want to survive. Albert Einstein was a socialist (although he preferred to live in a capitalist country) and a pacifist. However, with the threat of Germany's hatred of Jews and the potential of the Germans to develop an atomic weapon first, he was directly instrumental in kick-starting the USA's development of a useful atomic weapon.

There is a time to use such weapons and a time to show restraint. This can only be accomplished when such weapons are in possession of powers that are responsible - and definitely not in the hands of blood-thirsty Muslims and North Koreans.

Oh, if only someone with brains like Albert Einstein were alive today.