I very much agree with Alan at Biased BBC about Rupert Wingfield-Hayes's news report on the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, The 'sanitised narrative' of Hiroshima's atomic bombing.
Alan describes it as "possibly some of the worst and most sanctimonious, malevolent of BBC reporting you’ll ever see", and as "hand-wringing" driven by the BBC's "hatred of what it sees as the European/US, white dominance of history, its kneejerk cultural cringe and guilt-ridden fawning towards other races and cultures by its white reporters and a gleeful free for all from its ethnic reporters who take a great deal of pleasure in attacking the West and its values whether they have lived here all their lives or not like a school child being rude to their teacher".
With barely a mention of the years of relentless barbarity practised on the peoples of East Asia and allied prisoners of war by the Japanese imperial army, RW-H waxes morally indignant about the wickedness of the U.S.'s use of nuclear weapons.
The piece is so obviously one-sided, opinionated and tendentious that the BBC headline writer must have decided it was safer to put "sanitised narrative" in inverted commas, because that phrase isn't in inverted commas in the report itself. They are RW-H's own words:
Given his own lack of attention to the context of Japan's war-time atrocities in this piece, maybe it's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes whose narrative better deserves the epithet "sanitised".
Very much concur with Alan on this. Say, BBC, what first attracted you to Leftist historical revisionism on Hiroshima? I'd drop leaflets on the BBC if I thought it would make any difference, but it wouldn't.
ReplyDelete.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/truman-leaflets/
Let's not beat about the bush. What RWH wrote is a blatant lie.
ReplyDeleteIt was very one-sided. While no one would query the right of the Japanese to commemorate this awful event, one should also point out the huge reluctance of the Japanese to admit to their barbarous treatment of civilians and POWs in WW2 .
ReplyDeleteAnd this perspective has magically made its way throughout BBC broadcasting on the topic. Even though there's no such thing as editorial coordination and the BBC is too big and disorganized for it to be possible.
ReplyDeleteThe tens of thousands of children were not cruel to POW's that is a different issue. It is like saying the British were cruel to many countries connected to centuries of empirical dominance and cruelty but what has that got to do with the Coventry or London blitz? American and Dutch POW's died in the atomic bombings and god fearing men dropped hell in innocent civilians and an atomic comb does not care what creed or colour you are it is indiscriminate. Since Nagasaki America Russia UK and other super powers have detonated over 2050 nuclear weapons affecting their own nuclear vets who never a received any compensation dying horrific deaths. We have to take responsibility for nuclear weapons if we use them. Look at what we did in Maralinga Australia, the American destruction of the Marshall Islands that had over 65 nuclear tests in less than 12 years. The arguments are many including why we have 1% of the nuclear arsenal (UK) and still have enough nukes to wipe out all major cities in Europe. We have to think about consequences but the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not cruel to POW's and did not deserve such violent ends.
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