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August 06, 2005
Hiroshima: 60 years on
Sixty years ago today, the United States dropped the world's second atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (the first having been exploded in the New Mexico desert near Alamagordo). Approximately 115,000 people were killed instantly, and tens of thousands more died in the bomb's aftermath.
I don't hold the same views regarding Hiroshima as many of the leftward bloggers I've read in the last few days. Of course the incident is a grim and tragic reminder of the horrors of war; of the dangers we face in a world pervaded by nuclear weapons; of man's inhumanity to man. All of that's true. But I think it's either naive or unfair to try and look at a sixty year old incident through the moral prism of an age several generations beyond. It's not historically dishonest, but it's not completely kosher, either.
The facts of the case were these: the US and Japan were at war -- a war started by Japan with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. The entire world was at war, and it was one of the few times in history when those claiming that democracy and freedom themselves were at stake were not guilty of hyperbole. The Japanese people had been trained to resist to the last person. Ending the war without the bomb meant an invasion of Japan that might have cost one million American lives and many millions of Japanese lives.
Do those facts justify what happened at Hiroshima? Perhaps; perhaps not. I don't know. All I know is that for me to look upon those events from the perspective of a 2005 world view and trying to cast a moral judgement on it would be disingenuous. I wasn't there. I didn't sit in the White House having to choose between a horrific new instrument of war that would kill hundreds of thousands in mere seconds, and an invasion that would cost potentially 8 million lives before it was over and would scar and weaken the entire world for years to come. Had I been the one in the chair making that call, I would not have had a 40 year Cold War, a Cuban Missile Crisis in which the world narrowly averted annhialation, or the fear of terrorists using nuclear tactics on innocent civillians to reflect upon and use as the prism through which I considered that decision. All is not fair in love and war; there are rules. But to look back on that moment as a black mark on our conduct, for violating rules that had not yet been written? I'm not sure I can go that far.
Those on the US left who would call it a "war crime" seem unfortunately silent about the Bataan Death March, the commission of atrocities against the Chinese in Manchuria, or the ruthlessness and cruelty of Japanese POW camps. Those on the US right who would defend the decision as wholly justifiable under the conditions of war seem willfully ignorant of the images and films of the tremendous human suffering caused by the detonation of the bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Whatever the ultimate judgement that history and the Almighty may pass on the moment, only one thing remains incontrovertible: sixty years ago today, 115,000 people died, and the world forever became a much more frightening place. It's a sad and somber anniversary no matter which prism you look through.
Comments
Well said. I've worked for Japanese companies for the last six years. They estimate 240,000 lives were lost.
Posted by: Alan at August 7, 2005 01:22 PM
