American to Recast Hiroshima’s Message
Peace activist Steven Leeper, the first foreigner to head the memorial foundation, wants to add substance to the emotional plea.
HIROSHIMA, JAPAN - Dig down below the 3 feet of topsoil that was dumped atop the ruins of central Hiroshima to make a memorial Peace Park and you’ll still turn up bones, remains of Japanese civilians incinerated when an American B-29 bomber dropped an atomic fireball over this spot one August morning in 1945.
The Peace Park is a graveyard, the most visible scar of Japan’s disastrous imperial war and ground zero of its postwar, anti-nuclear conscience. 
Remarkably, Hiroshima is now entrusting stewardship of this symbol of its annihilation to a citizen from the country that dropped the bomb: Steven Leeper, an American peace activist recruited to reinvigorate a local peace movement that critics say has failed to sufficiently push the power of Hiroshima’s anti-nuclear message to a global audience.
“Hiroshima feels an urgent need to have more connection to the world,” says Leeper, 59, who spent long stretches in Japan as a child and an adult. He says his mandate from Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba is to find a way to turn Hiroshima’s misfortune as the original victim of nuclear war into more than just a sentimental force for peace.
“There is a view among some that Hiroshima’s message is all emotion and lacks substance,” says Leeper, who in April became the first foreigner to run the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, which oversees the museums and memorials. “Right now, Hiroshima tells you the obvious: that the atomic bomb was a terrible thing, that nuclear war should never happen again, that we should live in a peaceful world.
“But it doesn’t tell you how to accumulate the political power to vote the warmongers out of office, or how we can stop ourselves from killing each other. If we are going to graduate from a war culture to a peace culture, we’re going to have to be a little more hardheaded on how we go about it.”
Leeper’s appointment comes as the generational clock is already forcing Hiroshima’s peace foundation to question standing assumptions. The museum has relied upon hibakusha - those who survived the bombing or who came into contact with its radiation afterward - to act as guides to the daily stream of visiting school groups. But any hibakusha who were old enough to have more than childhood memories of the bombing are now in their late 70s or 80s; only two dozen or so are still healthy enough to tell stories that bring that terrible day alive. Their witness may be digitally preserved in the museum’s archives, but the human connection to the bombing is about to disappear.
There is also awareness that Hiroshima’s peace memorials face competition to attract field-tripping students, who make up a quarter of the 1.2 million annual visitors. A few years ago, an advisory committee charged with suggesting ways to stop the slide in school excursions noted that the major complaint of visiting schools was the lack of any nearby amusement park for fun once the A-bomb tour was done.
Though school visits remain down, Leeper says overall attendance has recovered in the last two years, and he is hardly about to cater to amusing diversions. “You will not see a waterslide,” he says, grimacing.
But he still has an ambitious agenda of reform. The museum will try to raise its voice in the nuclear proliferation debate by sending an exhibit of the Hiroshima story to two locations in each of the 50 U.S. states ahead of next year’s presidential election. And in Hiroshima, Leeper wants a complete overhaul of the park museum’s displays.
The substantive challenge, he says, is to address whether Hiroshima can get beyond its current focus on eulogizing Japan’s suffering in a war it bears responsibility for starting.
Only about a tenth of the museum’s visitors come from outside Japan; Leeper says he has met Koreans in Hiroshima who “resent that this place does not talk about how bad the Japanese occupiers were in Korea and China.” Those who suffered at Japan’s hands can become furious, Leeper says, “at what they see as the Japanese getting away with looking like they were the only victims.”
Leeper wants to create a committee ranging from defenders of Japan’s pacifist Constitution to Japanese nationalists, as well as Chinese, Korean and American voices, aimed at arriving at a common narrative of the world’s first atomic bombing. If such widely disparate views can come together, he says, Hiroshima will have showcased the peaceful conflict resolution it has always advocated.
The desire to spearhead a more forceful peace crusade is something Leeper shares with his friend Akiba, a three-term mayor and energetic peace campaigner who is well aware that the anti-nuclear movement’s good intentions are not matched by influence in the corridors of power.
The two men met when Leeper and his wife, Elizabeth Baldwin, were running a translation business in Hiroshima in the 1980s, and grew closer as Leeper became drawn into the city’s peace movement.
When the American couple moved to Atlanta in 2001, Akiba hired Leeper to lobby at the United Nations on behalf of Mayors for Peace, a group of city leaders from around the world that the Hiroshima mayor wanted to become a lobby with political teeth.
Then in April, with the Hiroshima foundation casting for a new chief executive, Akiba did the backroom schmoozing to pave the way to bring in his American friend. The argument was that Hiroshima needed someone who spoke English, who would be as comfortable espousing a nonproliferation message in New York, Tel Aviv or Tehran as in Tokyo.
There has been no local backlash against the decision - so far, at least.
“Steven speaks Japanese and has been doing peace activism for a long time, so there is no criticism against him just because he is an American,” says Katsutoshi Kajikawa of the Hiroshima branch of the Japan Congress Against A- and H- Bombs.
“It is highly symbolic that the mayor of Hiroshima has chosen an American,” Leeper says. “It proves that what Mayor Akiba has been saying all along is true: that Hiroshima does not seek revenge, that it does not hold a grudge.”
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times
It was American liberals who decided to “reverse course” and support the fascist elements of Japan to crush democrats after WWII. Now, that has resulted in a society where school students on field trips to ground zero just gotta have an amusement park or else they won’t go.
But hooray, a single American translator shall change all that! How about the Ameican government pay reparations to social democractic organizations such as the Japanese teacher’s union, Nikkyoso, for all the damage their policies created during the Cold War.
jobson—-I think you are missing the point. The message is about “nuclear” proliferation and the destruction which it can and seemingly, will inevitably cause.
We murdered innocent civilians because of what their government was doing but we cannot understand why our innocent civilians were murdered on 9/11/01. The US glvernment claims that we now must continnue to murder innocent civilians because of what their leaders are doing, or might consider doing, or whatever.
I pray for wisdom from our leaders.
I agree with Judy June. The majority of American public was convinced during WWII that the Japanese people were complicit in the crimes of their army, just as much of Islam believes Americans are complicit in our army’s exploits. In both cases there’s a certain element of truth to this, but I stop far short of Ward Churchill’s “Little Eichmann” charge. The paradox is that governed people are not guilty of the crimes of their rogue governments. BUT, it is always their duty to at least try to correct them.
Stop reproducing more resource consumers who will stress the planet and create condition of strife and war. Stop praying for wise leaders to a god that doesn’t exist.
We can work for the election of wiser leaders, but the last time I checked most of the democrat front runners are beating their chests to be tough alpha males or females in the international scene. Repugs are worse. I haven’t heard too many talking about ridding the world of nuclear weapons which is the course we need to be on. Thank goodness there are people who do work for peace even though it be a tough sell and tougher to accomplish.
This whole thing seems suspicious.
Pay careful attention to the language. This person only advocates “nonproliferation”. This, of course, means stopping other countries from getting the Bomb, while granting exclsive right to it ourselves. The correct operative word here, Mr. Leeper, is DISARMAMENT.
And, frankly, the articles remark about Japan’s “responsibility for starting” the Pacific war comes uncomfortably close a justification for the use of the bombs, and cannot lead to a reconciliation.
There are lots of “Departments of Peace Studies” in our universities, and the “United States Institute of Peace” funded by Congress*. The latter one is famous for firing it’s fellows who opposed the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and iraq in 2003. They spend most of their time writing papers justifying existing US foreign policy.
These mainstream professional peace experts are about as far from true peace activism as the the MSM is from Commondreams.
*here
http://www.usip.org/
Browse some of their papers - you will be shocked…
If you ever get a chance to hear any of the hibakusha talk, do so. Its a powerful and moving experience to talk to people who’ve lived through a nuclear attack. And as the article points out, the opportunities to do so are running out.
If you need an excellent understanding of the US and Japan and the rest of the region after wwii, read Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback. It wasn’t what I expected from the title when I grabbed it post 9-11, but its outstanding book on the history of US actions in the region from a scholar who knows the region well.
I do like the general focus of his ideas. That the key is to talk about how to develop the political power to make sure this never happens again. We do need to talk about disarmament instead of ‘non-proliferation’.
But the real power of the Hiroshima message should be that this was such a horrible event that it should never happen again. Given the current neocon thinking of “what good are nuclear weapons if we can’t use them”, and their trend towards “usable nuclear weapons”, this would seem to be an important message to get out. Plain and simple, nuclear weapons can never be used again.
Given that the idiots are still hinting they might be used against Iran, that’s a rather important message to get out these days.
Nagasaki is always forgotten in these discussions and it really is the greater attrocity than Hiroshima.
After the very bloody conquest of Okinawa (whose native population was not even Japanese) Americans were looking forward to several more years of bloody block by block , city by city occupation of Japan with commensurate casualties on both sides (reliably estimated in the millions).
Hiroshima definately showed the Japanese that the US could out-kill them with comparative ease. Nagasaki, on the other hand, was for the purpose of impressing Uncle Joe Stalin to prove to him that the US had bad enough weapons to also take on the Soviets.
The Nagasaki drop one week later was totally pointless and unnecessary.
My late mother always said that it was NOT necessary to bomb Hiroshima, that the Japanese had already lost the war, and knew it, and were readying to surrender.
She was, as time went on, also a believer that our government KNEW ABOUT AND LET Japan bomb Pearl Harbor. She said she’d heard it many a time, and initially disbelieved it, but in her latter years, felt it might be so.
Mind you, she was all for HELPING Europe, and DEFEATING Hitler. She ALWAYS said, “War is horrible, but in THIS case it HAD to be done.”
But she was against excess, manipulation, and control.
So, as we look at all of these issue today, including the one on this page, can we honestly say that anything is different, as in “better”? NO. If anything, everything is WORSE now, when it comes to deception.
Nuclear proliferation is a serious issue, but none of them can be trusted to comply - a sad reality.
Lastly, on betrayal - mother was quick to tell me how we built concentration camps RIGHT HERE, and LOCKED UP the LAWFUL AMERICAN JAPANESE CITIZENS here, JUST because they WERE Japanese. They had done, she said, nothing. We caused them to lose their businesses, homes, all their earthly possessions, as we ripped them out of their lives. She granted that the concentration camps here were “better” (by far) than in Germany, “…but they were concentration camps, none the less,” she said, with barbed wire fences.
If we did that then, what is our fate now?
We should also (open mindedly) consider these facts: Japan attacked us, we were not at war with Japan, Italy or Germany. Two days after the Japenese attacked us at pearl Harbor, Hitler declared war on the United States.
Both Germany and Japan were attempting to develop atomic weapons for use against America and innocent Americans. Near the war’s end, the Japenese were producing hundreds of small rocket powered aircraft for use as suicide bomers against our fleets of ships. They very well may have stopped any invasion of their county and they may have garnered enough time to develop atomic bombs. Had they done so, you can bet your butt they would hve used them against us, including innocent civilians. President Truman was aware of these things.
Truman had a choice, he chose to use THE BOMB, believing rightly, it’s use would end the war. The genie was already out of the bottle when he became our President.
Had we been sucessful in invading the Japenese Islands, we would surely have had millions of casulties and the Japenese many more. We would have been fighting on their soil, against a fanatically determined populance who had proven surrender was not an option.
Using the second atomic weapon may have been unjustified and it may have been dropped to evaluate the difference of the weapponry; one bomb used plutonium for the core, the other enriched uranium. It is a fact however, that Japan did not immediately surrender after the use of the first one.
I personally did not believe the use of the second bomb was totally justifiable and now firmly believe that the use of any is even thinkable. Now the world has them, thousands of them, and I’m certain we will eventually see them used once again, perhaps against us.
Perhaps it’s God’s plan, understand he works in strange and mysterious ways, could be why some idiots believe God put GWB in the White House. It is truely sad that we have to even consider writing about such things as this, when there is so much that could be done in fields of health, peace for all, the enviroment and many other areas of good for all mankind.
“A gorvernment of the people, by the people, for the people”
All citizens of a democracy are complicit in the crimes of that government. Only in dictatorships are “the people” off the hook.
PS..the Hiroshima bomb would have had an even better effect of ending the war if dropped on a Military target instead of defensless women, children, and old people.
There is considerable body of evidence that an invasion of Japan would never have been necessary, as by the spring of 1945, Japan was fully willing to sue for peace on virtually the same terms as were ultimately accepted - but through the Russians, not the US.
The US, as usual was afraid that peace would break out before they got a chance to use the bombs, so the Potsdam declaration was specifically worded as to leave the status of Emperor ambiguous, and delay a reply.
Generals Douglas MacArthur and Curtis LeMay both said on numerous occasions that they believed the bombings on civilian targets were completely unnecessary.
Military targets? Ground zero at Nagasaki was a Catholic Cathedral.
Here is one interpretation of the events:
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
Wow are the 20 20 hindsight crowd out there now!!!!!!!!!!
How about we stop committing atrocities and torture here and now rather than smugly nitpicking the decisions of guys like Harry Truman?
Truman was not perfect, however he was not the president of the ONLY world power like Bu$h the inferior. We could have lost WW2 very easily.
Bu$h took a terrorist act and snatched absurd defeat from a world wide triumph. Terrorism was on the ropes as a tactic after 9/11. Now it is more popular than ever in more parts of the world.
shakker,
Understanding Bush requires that one understand that he is just one of a long line of American imperialists.
The US was never at risk of losing WW2. The Japanese has no intention of taking over the US. Neither did Hitler, whose realm would have not lasted long even if he has conquered Europe. Remember the the US imperialist claim on Hawaii and the other pacific islands was as dubious as the Japanese imperialist claim to it.
We already live under a dictatorship. It is presently in the interest of the ruling class to allow us the illusion of freedom. When that is no longer the case nobody will notice the difference.
I can’t believe that the fear I felt throughout my childhood and young adulthood–and it’s cause, nuclear annihilation–has strengthened to its fullness again. I am fighting depression every day, but I’m not giving up. There is no such thing as limited nuclear capacity. There is no such thing as “bunker-busters,” as if those bombs won’t affect anything else. We have slipped onto the road to madness, and we need to find our way back. Otherwise, our attempts to protect the environment, eliminate poverty, reject racism and sexism, and derail corporate control of our world won’t matter very much. By the way, if Christ does come back and sees remnants of radical Christian right who survived in their little bunkers, I really believe he or she will shake the dust off his or her sandals as a response to their hypocrisy. All their efforts to bring about the “endtimes” will be for naught. Christ might start speaking to other surviving species (the cockroaches?) instead.
PJD You write: Japan had no intention of taking over the US. That may be so, they certainly DID INTEND,, to take over Manchuria, China, the Phillipines, Burma and all the other many countries and Islands in South East Asia, do so and then rule them in the most brutal, inhuman manner immaginable. The Japenese became a nice, humble, courteous, decect and a most productive poulance “AFTER” they were defeated.
In spite of our effective fire bombings of their cities, We COULD have lost the war and we COULD have been on the recieving end of atomic weapons. It has been well proven that massive bombing alone does not win any war. The Japenese people were well prepared to defend their mountainous land, (to the last person.)
Surrender? Some of their dignitaries did vainly attempt to discuss the issue with other countries, but the far rightests, who really firmly controlled the Japenese military would never have allowed it to happen. They would have even put their emperor in a place of solitary confinement and they did plan to do just that.
Generals Eisenhour, LeMay and other high ranking military hated the use of the atomic bomb. They hated Truman too, he ruined it all. It was not the way the generals had been trained to wage war. IT WASN’T NOBLE.
Later, Eisenhour, Lemay and others, insured that using Atomic weapony would be acceptable; read the history of the Strategic Air Commmand, LeMay’s baby.
It is so easy to be a Monday morning quarterback. Arguing that the use of the atomic bomb to end the war with Japan is fruitless. It was used, it was awful, it was a damn shame it ever happened and in spite of many critical opinions, when it was used, the war ended.
The war ended, one we did not start. While England was being bombed, France, Poland, and other good countries enslaved by Hitler’s regime. While Hitler was insuring that all Jews would be eradicated, while China was being overthrown, their innocent populations murdered, tortured, imprisoned and raped the American public sat back, adamently against getting into those wars in Europe and the Far East. We’d had enough of war after World War One and our very own civil war.
Therefore, I believe President Roosevelt may have been quite pleased when Japan attacked us, he MAY have even been aware of the coming attack and allowed it. For one thing, the war was good for the economy. Ain’t that a shame if so. I’m ramblin again, time to shut up.
Poet said: The Nagasaki drop one week later was totally pointless and unnecessary.
And while we’re at it, let us not forget the firebombing of Japan’s cities and towns, as well. The US destruction of Japan’s non-military targets through this method is largely unknown to most Americans. For a devastatingly powerful anti-war message, see Miyazaki’s animated work, “Grave of the Firelflies.”
The Japanese, The Allies, and the Nazis were all monsters in one way or another. War is ugly and evil regardless of how you look at it. The powerful start wars and sit back to watch innocents die.
I know that many people call WW2 “The Good War”, and I had a grandfather who fought in it, but was one holocaust necessary to stop another?
Hiroshima has allowed the nation of japan to play the victim. They were the aggressors in China long before they bombed pearl harbour, after that they invaded more of the far east and behaved atrociously to the civilian population they had conquered. They started the war and Harry Truman’s decision to drop the bomb finished it, they sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. The japanese government has never apologized to or compensatated the victims of its atrocities, their history books play up their role as victims. Until they do the right thing about their misdeeds Japan to me is a pariah nation and unworthy of much respect. The Chinese are flexing their economic muscles and have long memories so japan’s chickens may come home to roost sooner than they wished for. I think Leeper is a dupe who innocently will allow japan to continue to play the innocent victim.
Hiroshima is a wonderful tourist attraction for now. Japan is quite happy about playing the victim and people like Dafoe get to a chance to do some self serving moralizing while conveniently ignoring the long history of US slaughter in the Americas and Southeast Asia and now in Iraq.
I’m sure if Bush drops an atom bomb on Iran, there is already a long line of apologists, people like Leiberman, waiting to give orations in his defense. It is indefensible, and the world must disarm now to prevent such horror from coming back to us.
http://www.dreamingearth.net
While Japanese prime minister, Mr. Abe and Japan’s reactionary faction have been contemplating arming Japan with nuclear weapons, Hiroshima City Mayor Akiba, an MIT graduate made a wise decision to choose Mr. Leeper to run the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. Mr. Leeper is going to be Mr. Akiba’s great ally in his struggle for the abolition of nuclear weapons.
Kalia: Exactly what is it that Dafoe wrote that was incorrect? The unbelieveable attrocities the Japenese military committed while conducting their wars is well documented and they never have made any attempt to apologize for any of it.
As far as nice tourist attractions go, I prefer the Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor and wonder if the Chinese have any in the cities the Japenese so brutally destroyed?
Malthus2 said
“Stop praying for wise leaders to a god that doesn’t exist.”
For an challenging if somewhat flowery account of what happens when you combine an excellent scientific mind and first hand experience of the Nagasaki bomb with praying to a God who does exist I suggest you read
A Song For Nagasaki, by Paul Glynn.
http://www.amazon.com/Song-Nagasaki-Paul-Glynn/dp/0802804764/ref=sr_1_1/105-2003728-7885259?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1181657369&sr=8-1
I am fully aware of the horrible atrocities the Japanese comitted during their too-late attempt at western-style imperialism.
But conciliation must come from the penitent people thenselves, it can’t be forced. as US citizens, we only can control our own behavior, and if we are concilitory, conciliation is more likely to come from others.
But we need to cultivate our own gardens first.
Not to get off topic, but I don’t think that this really is; what about Bu$h promoting nuclear power in his state of the union address? Don’t you think that by justifying nuclear energy at all, it keeps the door open for justifying nuclear weapons? Nuclear is just bad all around. The toxic waste alone should be enough for rational people to know not to use it. It only serves greed - not the world or any living thing in it. The powers that be say that it’s safe, and that we need it, but aren’t these the same folks that bought out car-patents, and refused to develop safe, alternative fuels? But good people are doing it, are developing safer alternatives, without, and in spite of, the powers that be. The consumer becomes the producer, and the owners of the industrial complex shudder.
Great discussion people. Thanks, I learned a lot!
P.S.And I do believe that there is a God, and it is that God is who has given human beings a conscience, and the free-will to choose to follow it, and do the right thing, or not… unfortunately.
The article mentions including all types of people to reach a “common narrative” about the history of Hiroshima. It mentions including Japanese nationalists. As a person who lived and worked as a foreigner in Japan, who has had a lifelong commitment to the ideals of peace, who has talked with people from all over Asia about their views of history, and who has been physically injured by rightwing nationalistic “bosozoku” thugs on the streets of Osaka, I have to question the wisdom of this inclusivity. I do not have anything against Japanese national pride, but the word “nationalist” in Japan is often a euphanism for the kind of extreme rightwing insider-class politicians, criminals, and businessmen who hold an outsized and decidedly anti-democratic share of government power, the kind that continue to visit the Yasukuni shrine and incite hatred between Asians. This will have dire consequences for the future. Without getting too deep into the philosphy debate, history is written by the victors which in this case was the ruling classes of industrial Japan, but history SHOULD BE written as rationallly and exhaustively as possible. It makes no sense to commemorate one side of an event. The nationalists should be included in the discussion of the Hiroshima memorial, but their politics must be excluded as the politics of Neo-Nazis is excluded by law in Germany.
What no one seems to remember is that in March of 1945, 1000 B-29s overflew Tokyo, dropping firebombs, and destroyed 20 square miles of the city, killing upwards of 125,000. War is violent, people. It is even more violent if you start it and then lose, especially after things like the Rape of Nanking, Bataan, the death camps, and on and on. The Germans ought to say a prayer of thanks that they surrendered before the bomb was ready, otherwise it would have landed on Berlin.
robin mauro: Right on. Many are unaware that plutonium is just one of several poisonious by-products produced when enriched uranium is used for fuel in a nuclear power plant. Plutonium is the most deadly poison known to exist in the universe and is deadly for at least 25,000 years. There is no known way to destroy it. If administered equally, a single cupfull is enough to kill five billion people. If a tiny speck of plutonium, smaller than a grain of pollen enters your body by eating, drinking or inhling, you will die.
The average sized nuclear power plant produces about two hundred pounds of plutonium every year, with over 2,000 such plants in operation in the world, the total yearly ammount of plutonium produced is more than frightening. There is no way to safely store it; over time, it destroys the containers it is stored in. Therefore, our astute leaders plan to hide it underground. (Out of sight, out of mind.) The out of mind words are appropiate.
I seem to recall some gifted scientists once stated, that if we were to detonate just twenty of our largest hydrogen bombs in the Earth’s atmosphere, the plutonium released would eventually kill every living thing on the planet. Even if it only killed off the pytoplankton in our oceans, the end result would be another Mars, an silent, obiting globe of rocks and dirt.
So, nuke Iran? Unbelieveable! That man who spoke at the chuch implied that it may not be long before an air strike of some nature is conducted against Iran.
It is a shame that we should have to dwell on such subjects, write about it or even think about it. We desperately need solar, wind and thermal power; the big boys should be able to figure out how to make a nice profit from those clean and free sources.
POWERSLAVE,
Words have power. The words you wrote above are exactly the sort of arrogant, swaggering, ugly-American, self-reghteous rhetoric that elicits hatred toward Americans around the world. And, hatred is exactly what we are trying to stop.
Kalia perhaps you might read the late Iris Chang’s book “The Rape of Nanking” to get some idea of the atrocities Japan committed before they took on the US. The topic was Hiroshima, you write an article about the atrocities committed by the US and then we can see whether i am a self serving moralizer. You judge too quickly. I have known some of the WW II victims of Japanese honour and have not forgotten.
My real name is actually Kem Patrick. Ahhh, PJD you have forced me into a delima. I agree with what you wrote this day at 5:23, however, I also agree with the writings of POWERSLAVE and Dafoe. It may be because there are usually two sides to a story and both sides have justifiable merit.
Pehaps we could agree that the United States entered the fray of World War 11 against our will. There is no question that both Germany and Japan’s leaders were hell bent on ruling the world and then treat their foes in a very nasty, inhumane manner. That is most difficult to disagree with, to any who have any common sense.
The United States used Atomic Weaponry. Albert Einstien was aware that there were German scientists who were working on making atomic weapons and urged President Rosevelt to take that information into account.
Most people in the world are unaware that when Germany surrendered, a German submarine surfaced, surrendered and sailed into a port on the east coast of America. Included in the boat’s cargo, were several pounds of enriched uranium, which was to have been delivered to Japan.
President Truman was aware of this, but had no knowledge if it was a first shipment, or perhaps just one of several. Had the Japenese been able to advance in the process as far as we had with the Manhatten Project, were they ready to test an atomic bomb?
As it turned out, they were not, we were. What to do? Truman gave the go ahead for using the weapon for many fair and practical reasons. For one, Japan was on the ropes, but they still had hundreds of fighter sized aircraft hidden in caves, ready for suicide attacks against our ships. Many of those were rocket powered, able to exceed 500MPH. Our ships anti-aircraft guns could not track them. Had we not used the bomb and instead invaded the homelands of Japan, our naval forces would have been liteally wiped out, along with the landing forces. The number of deaths and disabling injuries eventually would likely have been 1,000 times or more that of Hiroshema and Nagasaki.
Was Japan actually prepared to surrender on our just terms in early 1945, or were they just attempting to stall for time? We will likely never know the truth of that. We do know our surrender terms were very fair, especialy so considering the circumstances. It was most fortunate for the Japenese, that they didn’t surrender to Russia. Had they, we would have likely ended up with a North and South Japan and Tokyo divided in two sectors, like Korea and Berlin all over again.
So, I tend to agree with your thoughts and writing, and I still tend to agree with the others. Wishy washy? I don’t think so, just wish it never happened; but it did happen and we did not initiate it. Mixed emotions and thoughts are not always wrong. Having to make difficult, hard decisions and not doing so, is. A very interesting day, is it not?
Since WW2 the world has had an unwritten compact against the use of nuclear weapons. If any such weapon, whether a tactical or bunker buster type, to be used even once, nuclear weapons would then enter the list of USABLE weapons. Bush is a madman for considering making nuclear weapons approachable as weapons. Once one is used, we had all best worry for real because it will not be long before they are used again. What was the evil that WW2 unleashed? One must wonder at the despicable evil of the holocaust and the inhumanity of the Japanese in china. Yet here we are, with many of that generation still living, and nuclear weapons become more real daily…again. Something is haunting us. Some evil we allowed ourselves to embrace has never really left our souls taht we can consider such destruction as if we were sane. Kissinger once said in the event of a nuclear confrontation (he actually was speaking of a first strike on our part) that 100 million deaths in the USA was an acceptable figure. Is that sane? We are a species which could sterilize the world with radiation. If by chance we are (earth life) the only life in the universe, we are sadly able to remove ALL life from the universe by our own hands. Something haunts us. We don’t mind killing and that may be what kills us all. Call it a mindset.
Ms. Smith,
Well, one thing for sure, back when I used to discuss this issue at length back in the 1970’s into the 1980’s, the belief among the the majority of people I talked to was the that the bombings were unnecessary. Today, even in a relatively “progressive” forum like this one, most think the bombing was necessary.
And, even the TV caricature Archie Bunker never talked like powerslave’s 3:50 PM message. Such, cruel, heartless language (over events and adversaries of 65 years past!) Tell me a whole lot more about USAn attitudes today than than the events in history.
The facts of the summer of 1947 haven’t changed but USAn attitudes even among purported “progressives” sure have - and not for the better.
PJD, what were the events of summer 1947 that we need to remember?
The US use of nuclear weapons in 1945 were essential for the Japanese surrender. There is lots of research available including primary sources on the net. Worth researching for yourself if you don’t believe that it was the right choice given the information available at the time. In fact members of the Japanese surrender delegation *thanked* their US counterparts for using the bombs because that allowed the Emperor to over-ride the generals that controlled the government and sue for peace. Without them, the generals (Army in particular, not Navy) would have continued to resist and would have done so to the last civilian life if they could have.
The loss of life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was horrendous, but it was not more than the firebombings would have been if the war had continued.
As for Hiroshima not being militarily significant, at the time of its bombing, Hiroshima was a city of some industrial and military significance. A number of military camps were located nearby, including the headquarters of the Fifth Division and Field Marshal Shunroku Hata’s 2nd General Army Headquarters, which commanded the defense of all of southern Japan. Hiroshima was a minor supply and logistics base for the Japanese military. The city was a communications center, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops. (from Wikipedia)
As for Nagasaki being a civilian target, the city of Nagasaki had been one of the largest sea ports in southern Japan and was of great wartime importance because of its wide-ranging industrial activity, including the production of ordnance, ships, military equipment, and other war materials. The actual bomb detonated directly between the Mitsubishi Arms Steel Works and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works (Torpedo Works). Both military targets. (from Wikipedia)
PJD, you didn’t like Powerslave’s comment:
“Such, cruel, heartless language (over events and adversaries of 65 years past!) Tell me a whole lot more about USAn attitudes today than than the events in history.”
Are you saying that starting a war by a surprise attack during breakfast, then invading China, Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China, Siam, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, India, the Philippines, Alaska, Indonesia, Timor, French Polynesia, and New Guinea and then bombing Oregon, India, and Australia and shelling California then killing hundreds of thousands of Chinese in Nanking, then experimenting with bubonic plague on prisoners and with “plague bombs” on areas of China that to THIS DAY have incidences of bubonic plague… are you saying that with all of that, the US should have waited for the Japanese to simply cease hostilities? I don’t get that logic and can sure state that I don’t want to live in that world or for my children to live in it. Peace is the goal, but sometimes it costs a lot of lives.
PJD: Perhaps you should consider studying some more history; you obviously are intelligent, thoutful and sincere, but not rational about this issue, at least not in my and others minds. Try to see there is another side. None of us wants another war and an atomic war is unthikable for any rational, sane person with a lick of common sense. Sadly, there are some currently in power in several countries who are crazy. Nuff said on my part, Kem Patrick
To discuss the nature of atrocities is an academic exercise. Atrocity is atrocity and whitewash is whitewash. When innocent people die en mass it is an atrocity. May be most people watching war on HD color TV might not consider “shock and awe” or the ten year illegal enforcement of the “no fly zone” an atrocity but it is an atrocity perpetrated on the innocent. But of course our atrocities are morally superior than theirs.
To Evelyn Smith, even in this day and age there is always someone who is hellbent on ruling the world in the name of enlightenment.
Well, so much for nuff said on my part. Kalia, well said.
Hate to kick a dead horse, but there are some other pertinant things which pertain to this issue that have occurred, things that most people in this world are totally unaware of. And due to the likely limited number of people who may read our letters, most never will know.
The USAF Strategic Air command, was devised by General Curtis E. LeMay to prevent another world war, in particular an atomic war. SAC’s motto was, Peace Is Our Profession. The thought was noble, but it was a true contradiction of terms.
It worked, we and Russia never did start a nuclear war. Butttt, we came within ten minutes of doing so and within ten minutes of destroying all life on our little world.
This is what transpired: On the final day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, SAC’s alert bombers flew in mass, fuly armed with nuclear bombs. That never occurred prior to, nor after that day. I know two B-52 pilots who flew that day. At their war room briefing prior to their scheduled takeoff time, they were advised that they would be hitting their targets. WOW! When over their refueling zone near Spain, the huge number of radio calls coming in from other bombers were “mind boggling”, acording to those two men. The Russian ship which was steaming towards Cuba finally stopped, turned around and went home, so did our fleets of SAC bombers. President Kennedy had apparently won the war of nerves that day.
Meanwhile, a Captain of a Russian nuclear sub, equipped with ballistic missiles, had been ordered to launch his missiles at a specific time, (UNLESS) he received orders not to launch them. When that specific time came for him to fire his atomic warheads, he had lost radio contact with his superiors. What did he do, what should he have done? He stewed, waited for ten minutes past his ordered launch time and then surfaced to gain radio contact. He recieved orders to stand down and to return to base.
Had he fired his missiles, our bombers would have hit their targets and our world would have ended. At least it would have ended as we know it and the resulting floating plutonium would have ended all life on Earth within months.
That is just how close we came, we and the entire human, animal and plant populations of this planet. (Ten minutes.) Fiction? Nope, it happened and we all owe everything to an unknown Captain of a Russian sub.
I believe that that man was one in a multi-million, most if not all, military officers of ANY country would have folowed their orders.
Based upon that close call, I personally am of the opinion, that someday, we will have a nuclear war. In spite of all the so named safeguards, in spite of treaties and agreements, we humans almost did it. I probably should say, President Kennedy and Kruchev ALMOST did it and I feel it was mainly because of PRIDE.
And now, we have men in power in many nations who may do it because of fear, pride, stupidity, ignorance and or, an insane lust for power.
What to do about it? Damned if I know. Cheers, Kem Patrick
In times when the US was in a less belligerant mood, there was considerable disagreement that the bombings were necessary.
To repeat, here is one interpretation of the events:
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v16/v16n3p-4_Weber.html
And, I repeat, this discussion is not about the Japanese, their atrocities are not the ones we had ant say about - we only have a say about our own ones.
Japan was defeated, there were no more atrocities left to commit that the bombs could have prevented, Japan was besieged and in a few more months it would have been over.
But what is the greater atrocity? Killing a quarter million enemy to end the war, or letting them live, and, as a DIRECT CONSEQUENCE, extending the war and possibly causing millions of needless deaths.
Seperately, how is Hiroshima a greater tragedy/atrocity than Hamburg or Dresden or Tokyo?
Powerslave, what you are saying is what the US government wanted and still wants the US citizens to believe. The two atomic bombs were not necessary to end the war. Japan was already defeated months before. Its military capability was exhausted after years of killing innocent people in Asia and Pacific and did not allow the country to continue to fight. Moreover, please remember that it’s not OK to nuke living beings for whatever reasons.
Ah, excuse me. But, you are saying, it is quite alright to use incendiary bombs and incinerate them? Me, I would rather be vaporized; it is probably less painful.
IF, as you say, the Japanese were defeated, can you explain WHY a group of military officers tried to stage a coup on August 12, 1945, AFTER both bombs, and prevent the emperor from giving his surrender speech?
Every day that that war continued, Americans, Australians and other allies died. The Japanese started it, were guilty of horrible atrocities, and even if the atom bombs, and the quarter million Japanese dead they entailed saved ONE American or allied life, they were worth it. The moral of this story is, do not start an aggressive racially based war against the USA, if you do, do not commit every war crime in the book, and if you do that, make darn sure you do not lose, because the consequences are horrible.
I am sorry, but I have no sympathy for the Japanese, as I have zero sympathy for the incinerated of Dresden. Act like savages, die like savages…
Poet: “The Nagasaki drop one week later was totally pointless and unnecessary.”
Yup, Stalin being no idiot, was completely unfazed by atomic threats - knowing that you may drop as many bombs from the skies as you like, but victory is achieved with boots on the ground. Pity so many in power still think you can win wars by air power alone.
COMarc: Agreed. Chalmers Johnson’s “Blowback” is a ‘must’ read. It also tells the truth about the hollowing out of the US economy by those in charge of US foreign policy. And there are those who still blame the outsourcing of US labour to the far east on the antics of bolshy unions… Sheesh.
escritora - You wrote that Japan was defeated months before the bombs were dropped. You are incorrect because you are using a standard of defeat that is rational by our Western standards. Japan did not share that world view and was willing to fight to the last man.
* They proved that on Iwo Jima where of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers, 20,703 died and 216 were taken captive. The rest were never found or accounted for, dead in their tunnels and caves.
* They proved that on Saipan where of 31,000 soldiers, 24,000 were killed 5,000 committed suicide and only 921 were taken prisoner AND 22,000 civilians, including their children,
committed suicide.
* They proved that on Okinawa where of 100,000 Japanese troops stationed there, 66,000 were dead or missing, 17,000 were wounded and unable to fight, 7,455 were captured, AND 140,000 civilians were killed.
At war’s end, Japan had over 30,000 aircraft readied or due for completion ear marked for kamakazi attacks on US troops and transports, they had civil defense organizations training with bamboo spears composed of girls age 10 and up. What do you think the attrocity would have been for some GI to have to shoot a 10 year old girl that was going to try to kill him with a stick?
There is even evidence that Japan had completed a nuclear weapon and tested it in Korea but that the results were a “fizzle” where the warhead did not detonate correctly. We know that the Germans had shipped them enriched Uranium via u-boat.
You have a conviction that war is wrong and that nuclear weapons are wrong, but you do not have any conception of what a war like WWII was like. You bemoan the loss of 140,000 people at Hiroshima when that was a lot like any other battle and that there were going to be a lot more battles before Japan surrendered if we were going to be there “boots on the ground”
>>Moreover, please remember that it’s not OK to nuke living beings for whatever reasons.
Samski - “”The Nagasaki drop one week later was totally pointless and unnecessary.”"
“Yup, Stalin being no idiot, was completely unfazed by atomic threats”
He was totally fazed by nuclear weapons and changed his entire strategy based on the events in Japan. The Cold War did not requre boots on the ground because occupation of the enemy was not the goal, destruction of their military and economy WAS the goal and that CAN be done with nuclear weapons alone. Airpower without nuclear weapons is not a real long term threat to any enemy if there are not troops on the ground to back it up. Proved that in Germany where industrial development peaked AFTER them most intense strategic bombing of the war. Only thing that defeated Germany were soldiers there on the ground.
goose:
In the context of WWII, which was still ongoing at the time of Hiroshima, Stalin was totally unfazed by atomic threats. With over 20 million Soviet citizens dead during the fight with Germany, I hardly think Stalin was worried about losing a city or two to nukes. He also knew that the Allies had only built two bombs.
After the war, I’d agree with goose. Stalin stole nuclear secrets from US/UK and helped start the cold war - peace being kept not with airpower nor grounded boots but with the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction.
Dear Powerslave, you said “I am sorry, but I have no sympathy for the Japanese, as I have zero sympathy for the incinerated of Dresden. Act like savages, die like savages…”.
And herin lies the problem, no sympathy; clumping a whole nation of people together, and discounting every one of their lives. It is stereotyping, and it’s hate, and hate only leads to more hate. Where else could it possibly lead? Where are the honorable negotiators, who will find solutions which are fair to all sides? And, you say, some people do not care about fairness, so we must fight? I know for sure, if we do not at least try to do, and to be, the higher values which we so easily proclaim, then we become what we hate. No matter what someone else has done, we must still look at ourselves, and take responsibility for our own actions. We must still hold to the values which we so easily espouse. Two wrongs never make a right. When we cease to look at ourselves, we become what we hate. Nothing good can ever come from it. And when you see a baby with his or her arms blown off, can you then say “I have no sympathy for the Japanese”? Does a baby have a color? Does a child have a nation?
In the U.S. we claim that every life has a value, and we claim that “they don’t value life.”
But do we? Do we value life?