Friday, July 31, 2015
Our 70th Anniversary Homework:
Confronting the Myths and Learning the Lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Joseph Gerson
In March of 1946, eight months after the atomic bomb was
dropped, the city of Hiroshima stood in ruins. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Seventy years ago, two nuclear weapons targeted against
cities which met the criteria of having “densely packed workers’ homes,”
killed more than 200,000 people in the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. In the years that have followed, many more have suffered and died
from cancers, radiation disease, genetic damage and other fallout from the atom
bombings.
The myths that the A-bombings were necessary to end the war
against Japan and that they saved the lives of half a million US troops remain
widely believed. The myths serve as the ideological foundation for continuing
U.S. preparations for nuclear war, which in turn has served as the primary
driver of nuclear weapons proliferation and the creation of deterrent nuclear
arsenals
It is no accident that this wartime propaganda took on a life of
its own. Japanese and other journalists’ film footage and photos of the
devastation wrought by the A-bombs taken within days of the A-bombings, were
seized by U.S. Occupation forces and were locked away in Pentagon vaults for
more than two decades. In 1995, the Smithsonian Museum’s initially excellent
50th anniversary exhibition was censored beyond recognition to prevent people
from seeing what the A-bombs inflicted on human beings. Also removed were the
facts that U.S. Secretary of War Stimson had advised Truman that Japan’s
surrender “could be arranged on terms acceptable to the United States” without
the atom bombings. (That arrangement was later deemed acceptable – even
necessary – by U.S. military occupation authorities.) Indeed, before it
was sterilized, the exhibit included quotations from senior US wartime military
leaders including Admiral Leahy and General (later President) Eisenhower who
thought, “It wasn’t necessary to hit [Japanese] with that awful thing.”
Scholars now know that numerous factors contributed to Truman’s
decision to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki and their civilian populations.
These include Truman’s political calculations as he looked to the 1948
presidential election, vengeance, racism, institutional inertia, and the
callousness that came with already having burned more than sixty Japanese
cities to the ground.
But, as General Leslie Groves, the commander of the Manhattan
Project, told senior scientist Joseph Rotblat, the bombs came to be designed
for the Soviet Union. The determinative reasons for the A-bombings were to
bring the war to an immediate end so that the US could avoid sharing influence
with the USSR in Northern China, Manchuria and Korea and to intimidate Stalin
and other Soviet leaders by demonstrating the apocalyptic power of nuclear
weapons and Washington’s willingness to use them – even against civilians.
Little Boy and Fat Man, as the bombs were named, announced the beginning of the
Cold War.
Americans also continue to suffer from the misconception that
nuclear weapons have not been used since the Nagasaki A-bombing on August 9,
1945. In fact, the US, and to a lesser degree the other nuclear powers, have
repeatedly used their nuclear arsenals. Long ago, Daniel Ellsberg, a senior
Pentagon nuclear war planner for Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon,
explained that the US has repeatedly used nuclear weapons “in the way that you
use a gun when you point it at someone’s head in a confrontation….whether or
not you pull the trigger...[and] You’re also using it when you have it on your
hip ostentatiously.” During wars and international crises, the US has
prepared and/or threatened to initiate nuclear war on at least thirty occasions
- at least 15 times during the Korean and Vietnam Wars and crises with China,
and at least 10 times to reinforce US Middle East hegemony. And
each of the other eight nuclear powers has made such threats or preparations at
least once.
Eric Schlosser, author of Command and
Control, reported last December to the International
Conference on the Consequences of Nuclear Weapons, attended by representatives
of 158 governments that luck, not state policies and regulations, best explains
why humanity has survived nuclear blackmail, reckless dependence on deterrence,
miscalculations and nuclear accidents.
Still more sobering are the recent scientific studies
demonstrating that even a “small” exchange of 50-100 nuclear weapons targeted
against cities would result in fires, smoke that would cause global cooling,
and up to two billion deaths from famine.
All of which lead to a series of existential questions: As we
race against time to save our civilizations from the impending ravages of
climate change, why are our governments preparing to inflict nuclear
annihilation? Why do we tolerate the continued deployment and stockpiling
of nearly 16,000 nuclear weapons, 90% of them in U.S. and Russian arsenals?
Why have the P-5 nuclear powers (US, Russia, Britain, France and China)
refused to implement their 45 year-old Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)
obligation to begin negotiations for the complete elimination of their nuclear
arsenals? And why did the US condemn this past spring’s NPT Review Conference
to failure by refusing to honor its long-standing commitment to co-convene a
conference to lay the foundations for a nuclear weapons and weapons of mass
destruction-free zone in the Middle East?
There are high costs to denying history and reality. In a worst
case scenario, the failure of the US and the other nuclear powers to heed the
warning of A-bomb survivors that human beings and nuclear weapons cannot
coexist is the end to life on earth as we know it.
The majority of the world’s governments are not in similar denial.
The NPT Review Conference’s one achievement was the commitment of the
vast majority of the world’s governments the Humanitarian Pledge. Initiated by
Austria, 113 governments pledged “to cooperate with all relevant stakeholders,
states, international organizations, the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement,
parliamentarians and civil society, in efforts to stigmatize, prohibit and
eliminate nuclear weapons in light of their unacceptable humanitarian
consequences and associated risks.” The gulf between the non-nuclear weapons
states and the nuclear powers has widened, and in time the former may use their
economic, political and other power in the struggle to secure humanity’s
future.
On August 6, many in Japan will appreciate the silent presence
of U.S. Ambassador Caroline Kennedy at Hiroshima’s official 70th anniversary
commemoration, but there will be no apology. And, even as we celebrate and work
for the implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran, the sorry truth is
that the US is now on track to spend one trillion dollars to “modernize” its
nuclear arsenal and delivery systems, with the other nuclear powers following
the U.S. lead. And, despite his pledge in Prague, President Obama has retired
fewer nuclear weapons that any other US post-Cold War President.
As the US-Russian confrontation, marked by implicit and explicit
nuclear threats remids us, we are living on borrowed time. Seventy
years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki A-bombings, human survival still hanging
in the balance. Midst the carnival of the 2016 presidential election, let us
insist that those who seek to rule us and the world finally learn the lessons
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Never again to anyone! No more Hiroshimas! No
More Nagasakis! No more nuclear weapons!
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
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An early atomic bomb detonation in Nevada desert. (photo: Getty)
BALTIMORE
HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI COMMEMORATIONS
For the
31st year, the Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration Committee will remember the
atomic bombings of Japan on August 6 & 9, 1945, which killed more than
200,000 people. It has been 70 years since these awful events occurred.
Other organizations involved in the commemorations are Baltimore Quaker Peace
and Justice Committee of Homewood and Stony Run Meetings, Chesapeake Physicians
for Social Responsibility, Crabshell Alliance and Pledge of
Resistance-Baltimore.
HIROSHIMA COMMEMORATION on Thursday, August 6, 2015
at 33rd & N. Charles Streets
5:30
PM Demonstrate
against Johns Hopkins University’s weapons contracts, including research on
killer drones, commemorate the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and remember
Fukushima, Japan.
6:30
PM March
to the Bufano Sculpture Garden on John Hopkins University Homewood
campus. Hiroshima Hibakusha guests, Mr. Goro Matsuyana, and Ms.
Takako Chiba, will elaborate on their experiences with the atomic bombing. Ms.
Yukie Ikebe will guide the Heartful Chorus, which will sing a cappella.
8
PM Enjoy
dinner at Niwana Restaurant, 3 E. 33rd Street, with our Japanese
guests.
NAGASAKI
COMMEMORATION on Sunday, August 9, 2015 at Homewood Friends Meeting, 3107 N.
Charles Street
6
PM Savor
a potluck dinner with members of the peace and justice community.
7 PM The death of
Freddie Gray ignited a movement to seek positive social change. Speaking
on this issue will be Ralph Moore, a civil rights icon who once said “Economic
justice is the one [issue] I’ve focused on most over the years. Various issues
spill out from that; it’s been housing, it’s been hunger, it’s been education,
it’s been jobs and it’s been anti-war.”
After
Ralph’s address, there will be a Q & A. Then participants can share
through verse, poetry or song how to cure the ill of poverty in Baltimore. The
suggestions will be sent to the mayor and the City Council.
HIROSHIMA-NAGASAKI COMMEMORATION
COMMITTEE, 325 East 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218 Ph: 410-366-1637 Email:
mobuszewski [at] verizon.net Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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