Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki -
A Crime of War and against Humanity that must be acknowledged and rectified.
It’s not what people and
their governments do that counts, it’s what they do afterwards.
People, nations and
countries make mistakes and commit crimes and atrocities against fellow man.
Some of them eventually
recognize their wrongs, their sins, and repent. These countries and people have
a moral future
Others do not and sometimes
even revise history to justify their actions. Such nations then head toward an
eventual dead-end in history, moral and cultural development.
Yesterday, August 6, 2015
was the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
by the United States.
Three days later the U.S.
dropped another bomb on Nagasaki.
Japan and its military wrongfully attacked the United States surreptitiously at Pearl Harbor on
December 7, 1941, making Japan
the military aggressor.
Yet, all wars are started by
someone. Japan started the
war against the U.S. in a
“traditional” & “proper” way (if there is one) by attacking a legitimate
military target – the U.S. Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Surreptitious surprise
attacks are rightfully disdained – unlike an honorable duel between knights, no
warning is given before the aggressor pounces on its enemy like a predator
pounces on its prey – but from a cold-blooded military tactics point of view,
surprise attacks by a smaller enemy have been viewed as a legitimate means to
quickly disable a superior adversary, who, if were not for the sneak attack,
would surely beat back and defeat the smaller attacker.
So that’s what Japan, a lone wolf in comparison to the American
Grizzly, did at Pearl Harbor. It attacked a
bigger and superior adversary with the hopes of temporarily disabling it in the
hopes of achieving a military and political victory (with the help of its Axis
partners, Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy), perhaps through a negotiated
settlement that would have the U.S.
secede large swaths of the Pacific to Japan.
Japan took a chance as the wrongful military aggressor
against the United States
and it lost. The Japanese also committed horrific war crimes in countries that
they occupied, including mainland China,
the Philippines
and other places, including British, French, Portuguese and Dutch colonies.
The commission of such war
crimes and crimes against humanity deserved condemnation and proper punishment
– of those responsible, namely of the Japanese military commanders, officers
and enlisted men who committed such acts as well as punishment of the Japanese
political leadership who ordered them.
Nevertheless, the wrongful
conduct and crimes of the Japanese Imperial government and military cannot
justify the war crime committed against the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by
the U.S.
atomic bombing of these cities in August of 1945.
The Unites States military
and political establishment has always justified the bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki by claiming that these bombings were a military necessity needed to
force Japan’s surrender without the loss of hundreds of thousands (if not
millions!) of U.S. troops during the invasion of the Japanese mainland.
This is a lie, pure and
simple. By August 6, 1945, the U.S. Navy had blockaded the Japanese mainland
and pretty much destroyed the Japanese fleet. Moreover, Japan was cut of from sources of
petrochemical fuels (oil and coal) needed for its planes, ships, trucks and
other defensive pieces of machinery.
Had the U.S. kept up the naval blockade, bombing and
shelling of Japanese military and industrial targets – after Nazi Germany’s
surrender on May 8, 1945 the U.S.
certainly had the manpower to do it on it own even without the assistance of
the Soviet Union – Japan
would have surrendered within six months or a year at most.
Yet the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki was more that just cruel and deadly retribution against an enemy’s
civilian population – like the fire bombings of Tokyo and Dresden that killed
hundreds of thousands – it was a war crime of unparallel scope and intensity
that was committed not just to punish the Japanese people (who had no real say
in their Emperor’s decision to attack the U.S.) but also to test out a new
weapon of mass destruction.
Moreover, I believe that the
nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - incidentally, Japanese cities with
very high, if not the highest, percentages of Christian residents in Japan – were
conducted to (a) demonstrate to Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union America’s new
military might and ability to contain Soviet communism in Europe and elsewhere
and (b) force a quick surrender of Japan to minimize Soviet military and
territorial gains from Japan in the Far East.
Regardless of the
geopolitical and military arguments and reasons, the purposeful condemnation to
a horrible death of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s civilian
populations, including so many elderly, women and children – by immediate
incineration and eventual death from radiation burns, radiation sickness,
cancer, mutations and birth defects – is a war crime that deserves to be
recognized as such and properly condemned.
The maliciousness of this
war crime is exacerbated by the racism and dehumanization applied to the
Japanese by the U.S.
government, military and society. The Japanese were portrayed and treated as
sub-human, yellow, slant-eyed ape-like carnivorous creatures without a
conscience, and were treated as such. This influenced the mass incarceration of
Japanese Americans in internment camps, the mistreatment of Japanese prisoners
of war (including summary execution upon capture) and the fire-bombing and
nuclear bombing of Japanese cities.
No, Japanese war crimes do
not justify – and can never justify in war – the commission of similar
retaliatory crimes by the United States, the self-declared cradle and defender
of Democracy world-wide.
Two wrongs do not make a
right – we cannot fight evil with greater evil without becoming unwitting
servants of evil itself.
By bombing Hiroshima, a
mostly civilian target, and especially, by needlessly bombing Nagasaki only
three days later, the United States committed a war crime and a crime against
humanity. No subsequent advantages vis-a-vis against the Soviet
Union can ever justify the depth of this crime and the dangerous
precedent that it creates (while its not recognized as a war crime) in the use
of weapons of mass destruction against civilian populations to achieve military
and political ends.
There is only one moral way
out for the United States,
its government and population. We must acknowledge what happened as a crime of
war and against humanity (repent), make amends (reparations to the survivors
and their progeny) and make sure that we reject formally & legally the
first use (preemptive, as they usually justify) of nuclear weapons in war.
If we don’t acknowledge,
repent and make amends, then the likelihood that the Unites States will use
nuclear weapons first – with devastating and possible lethal consequences not
just for the participants of the nuclear conflict, but possibly with
species-ending consequences for all of humanity – will remain.
As Murphy’s Law holds, if it
can happen, then it will, eventually. Unfortunately, we as humanity cannot
afford that eventuality.
So with all that in mind,
the current Ukrainian civil war currently presents one of the greatest threats
to humankind, as escalation of the conflict could lead to “limited” nuclear war
if Russia
and NATO countries are sucked in.
As such, the best thing that
we can do to minimize the threat of nuclear war is to do everything possible to
make sure that this conflict is resolved through a political compromise, as
envisioned in the Minsk Accords.
But the above are merely the
opinions of the author, a man who was born in 1968 and whose closest approach
to the dangers of man-made radiation and war crimes was
(a) by contracting viral
meningitis after his immune system was shot by contamination from tritium and
phosphorus-32 in a pharmacology laboratory,
(c) watching the artillery
shelling and Aviation Strikes on Lugansk,
Ukraine by Ukrainian Armed Forces in June of 2014.
Let’s see what others
believe, feel and have written about what happened in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in
1945.
1. Eamonn McCann: Hiroshima was a crime against humanity
The Irish Times
“Strong evidence exists that
Japan
prepared to surrender before the bomb was dropped
The bombs reduced Hiroshima, population 350,000, and Nagasaki, 210,000, to smears of ash and
vaporised at least 200,000 civilians. Upwards of another 250,000 were to die
from radiation poisoning in later years.
In a radio broadcast within
hours of Hiroshima,
Truman told the nation: “We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and
completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have standing above ground
in any city. We shall destroy their docks, their factories and their
communications. Let there be no doubt.” (Docks, factories, communications. . .
People didn’t rate a mention.)
The US strategic bombing
survey, commissioned by Truman, compiled by a civilian team including John K
Galbraith and based on interviews with more than 400 US officers and on access
to the complete Japanese military logs, reported in July 1946: “Based on a
detailed investigation of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the
surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the survey’s opinion that . . .
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.”
The Soviet Union joined the
war in Asia two days after Hiroshima, a day
before Nagasaki, delivering in the nick of time
on a promise made by Stalin in Yalta
– and also with a view to qualifying as a combatant entitled to a share of the
spoils.
The US will
meanwhile have wanted to impress on the world and especially on Stalin that it
possessed weapons capable of reducing any rival to rubble.
Thus, there were
geopolitical reasons for killing everybody in the two Japanese cities that may
have been more persuasive with US leaders than urgency to end the war.
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
had no moral or military justification. It was a crime against humanity.”
2. At Hiroshima’s 70th Anniversary, Japan Again
Mourns Dawn of Atomic Age.
The New York Times
"History Lessons: How
Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History," published in 2004
and collected excerpts from textbooks in different parts of the world.
Here's a sample from Italy:
"There was no doubt that in very little time the Japanese, already at the
end of their tether, would have had to surrender ... What seems certain is that
the show of force, made indiscriminately at the expense of unarmed people,
increased the United States' weight in post-war tensions and decisions,
especially concerning the Soviet Union. It is probably therefore that Truman's
decision was inspired more by post-war prospects than by calculations on the
most convenient method to put an end to the conflict with Japan."
…
Kohei Oiwa, an 83-year-old
bombing survivor, sat silently through Mr. Abe’s remarks at the ceremony but
criticized him bluntly afterward. He condemned legislation now before
Parliament that would allow Japanese forces to fight overseas, in limited
situations, for the first time since the war. And he criticized as hypocritical
the government’s repeated pledges to help rid the world of nuclear weapons. Japan, he noted, accepts the protection of the United States,
its former enemy turned close ally, including the deterrent provided by the
American nuclear arsenal.
3. Hiroshima atomic bomb survivors visit Baltimore,
call for peace
The Baltimore
Sun
“Estimates of casualties of
the two bombings approach 250,000, most of them civilians. Japan announced its surrender Aug.
15, ending World War II. The number of casualties is difficult to ascertain
because it was not clear how many people were living in the cities during the
war, and people continued to die of bomb-related illnesses many years
afterward.
…
Seventy years ago, Goro
Matsuyama watched as his city was destroyed.
Matsuyama was 16 years old when the United
States dropped its first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He remembers feeling sad when Japan
surrendered at the end of the second World War. But his views have evolved.
"I am against war
itself," Matsuyama,
now 86, said Thursday through a translator. "If there is no war, there
will be no nuclear bombs. We should fight against war. That is the only way to
achieve peace."
In Tokyo, the U.S. Embassy warned that the
anniversary was "a traditional day of protests" against the embassy
and told American citizens to avoid demonstrations or other large gatherings.
But in Hiroshima, the scene was peaceful. Lanterns
floated in the river through Hiroshima
overnight, while survivors of the blast were preparing to read poems at the
memorial. A "Don't repeat the war" conference was held, and choirs
performed.”
4. Atomic bombings of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Debate over bombings.
The atomic bomb was more
than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon.
—Henry L. Stimson, 1947[259]
A shot along a river. There
is a bridge in the distance, and a ruined domed building in the middle
distance. People walk along the footpath that runs parallel to the river
Citizens of Hiroshima walk by the Hiroshima Peace
Memorial, the closest building to have survived the city's atomic bombing
The role of the bombings in Japan's surrender and the U.S.'s ethical
justification for them has been the subject of scholarly and popular debate for
decades. J. Samuel Walker wrote in an April 2005 overview of recent
historiography on the issue, "the controversy over the use of the bomb
seems certain to continue." He wrote that "The fundamental issue that
has divided scholars over a period of nearly four decades is whether the use of
the bomb was necessary to achieve victory in the war in the Pacific on terms
satisfactory to the United
States."[260]
Supporters of the bombings
generally assert that they caused the Japanese surrender, preventing casualties
on both sides during Operation Downfall. One figure of speech, "One
hundred million [subjects of the Japanese Empire] will die for the Emperor and
Nation,"[261] served as a unifying slogan, although that phrase was
intended as a figure of speech along the lines of the "ten thousand
years" phrase.[262] In Truman's 1955 Memoirs, "he states that the atomic
bomb probably saved half a million U.S. lives— anticipated casualties in an
Allied invasion of Japan planned for November. Stimson subsequently talked of
saving one million U.S.
casualties, and Churchill of saving one million American and half that number
of British lives."[263] Scholars have pointed out various alternatives
that could have ended the war without an invasion, but these alternatives could
have resulted in the deaths of many more Japanese.[264] Supporters also point
to an order given by the Japanese War Ministry on August 1, 1944, ordering the
execution of Allied prisoners of war when the POW camp was in the combat
zone.[265]
Those who oppose the
bombings cite a number of reasons for their view, among them: a belief that
atomic bombing is fundamentally immoral, that the bombings counted as war
crimes, that they were militarily unnecessary, that they constituted state
terrorism,[266] and that they involved racism against and the dehumanization of
the Japanese people. Another popular view among critics of the bombings,
originating with Gar Alperovitz in 1965 and becoming the default position in
Japanese school history textbooks, is the idea of atomic diplomacy: that the
United States used nuclear weapons in order to intimidate the Soviet Union in
the early stages of the Cold War.[267] The bombings were part of an already
fierce conventional bombing campaign. This, together with the sea blockade and
the collapse of Germany
(with its implications regarding redeployment), could also have led to a
Japanese surrender. At the time the United States
dropped its atomic bomb on Nagasaki on August 9,
1945, the Soviet Union launched a surprise attack with 1.6 million troops
against the Kwantung Army in Manchuria.
"The Soviet entry into the war", argued Japanese historian Tsuyoshi
Hasegawa, "played a much greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing
Japan to surrender because it dashed any hope that Japan could terminate the
war through Moscow's mediation".[268]"
