The Lessons of Hiroshima We Need to Remember Today

John Nelson, in the San Francisco Chronicle (Ag. 6, 2004):

[John Nelson is an associate professor in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Francisco.]

As U.S. politicians debate the intelligence failures that preceded the Iraq invasion as well as the war in Afghanistan, they can take little comfort that history will judge these wars charitably. Today and Monday mark 59 years after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, and there is still no definitive historical judgment that this was the right thing to do.

Historians agree that Japanese military leaders surrendered because of, in the words of then-emperor Hirohito, a"new and most cruel bomb." But scholars, unlike war veterans, share less consensus about whether the bombs were necessary or the staggering losses of life justified. With Japan's major cities in ruins after months of devastating firebombs (more than 100,000 residents of Tokyo were killed over two days in March 1945), her once-powerful military battered with more than a million and a half deaths, and with the most basic daily provisions subject to rationing and shortages, it was only a matter of time before this defeated nation surrendered.

Legitimate questions persist whether the bombs were dropped to impress the Russians and halt their advances upon Japan's islands in the north. The decision may also have been colored by racism as well as by a desire to see the payoff of several years of top-secret scientific research.

Many of these issues surfaced again recently after the announcement of the death July 19 of Maj. Gen. Charles Sweeney, pilot for the mission that bombed Nagasaki. Some weeks after Japan's surrender in 1945, he visited both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Standing in the devastation of the latter city, he wrote later,"I took no pride or pleasure then, nor do I take any now, in the brutality of war, whether suffered by my people or those of another nation. Every life is precious. But I felt no remorse or guilt that I had bombed the city where I stood."

I was living in Nagasaki during the 40th anniversary of the bombing in 1985 and remember the city inviting Sweeney to participate in the commemorations as a gesture of goodwill, healing and forgiveness. Sweeney declined the offer, stating at the time that he had done nothing that needed to be forgiven and that if he had it to do all over again, he would.

These extraordinary declarations, and the tragic anniversary of destruction they reference, reveal three points about war as a policy designed to advance and secure American power. Whether we support, contest or feign indifference, we should never underestimate how war policy can be subverted, derailed or otherwise convoluted by unpredictable variables. The consequences of the allied bombing of the Japanese islands in 1945, culminating at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are still being played out in the geopolitics of the East Asian region.

Second, Sweeney's recent death reminds us that those charged with carrying out U.S. wars often believe what they are told about their purpose having greater value than the lives of those they injure or kill. For Sweeney to admit no remorse for the deaths of over 70,000 Japanese civilians does not vindicate his actions or the orders of his superiors. They indicate instead a shaky denial that governments are capable of staggering cruelty to human beings.

Finally, as we listen to presidential candidates advocate the need for a"strong America" led by a commander-in-chief not afraid to employ military might, we should understand this rhetoric for what it is: an emphasis on confrontation as a ploy for electoral support. Politicians who propose more military spending, more weapons and more of a bunker-mentality must look at the historical record and learn again that waging war as a matter of policy is not only a bankrupt idea but an inhuman design....