Hiroshima, Nagasake and How the End Doesn't Justify the Means (Part One)

This last week, the world commemorated (it certainly didn't celebrate) the 60th anniversary of the destruction of both Hiroshima and Nagasake by atomic bombs that helped usher in the end of World War II and that brought peace to the world after several years of bitter conflict.

Okay, let's stop there. Both conclusions are incorrect in my opinion.

First, there is a lot of speculation as to whether what took place on August 6 (Hiroshima) and August 9 (Nagasake) was really the impetus for Emperor Hirohito's decision to end the war. Most of his military leaders wanted to continue the war even after the bombs were dropped, decimating the two Japanese cities. Also, there is evidence that suggests that it was the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan August 9th, 1945 that persuaded the Japanese to surrender August 15th, not the Nagasake/Hiroshima devastation. The U.S. had already been dropping canisters of napalm onto Tokyo and other major Japanese cities, resulting in 100,000 to 200,000 deaths - roughly the same amount of deaths in the other two cities. In fact, it's precisely because Hiroshima and Nagasake were among the untouched cities that they were chosen (actually a different city than Nagasake was chosen, but because of cloud cover, they went on to Nagasake, lucky them) for destruction, because the destruction would be more evident on "virgin territories".

Secondly, we all know what happened after the end of World War II. The Soviet Union was found to be doing their own nuclear weapon testing. The fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties were periods of uncertainty and fear during which nuclear crisis after nuclear crisis was luckily averted. Even now, the fear is coming back (at least in my mind) because of North Korea and other developing countries who are claiming to be developing nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union has changed dramatically and we don't have much to fear from them, at least in a nuclear capacity. Those who have similar agendas as to what the Japanese had during World War II (the furthering of the empire took precedent over the lives of its citizens) are now the future of nuclear weapon crises. The detonation of the atomic bomb certainly has not brought peace.

It's interesting to research what the sentiments of American journalists and public were after World War II was over.

"Denunciations came from ideologically disparate sources. Commonweal, the liberal Roman Catholic magazine, found America's victory to be "defiled." The mainline Protestant journal Christian Century called Hiroshima and Nagasaki "America's atomic atrocity," asserting that "the United States has been morally defeated because she has been driven to use unconscionable methods of fighting." Even David Lawrence, the conservative editor of U.S. News, told his readers, "Surely we cannot be proud of what we have done. If we state our inner thoughts honestly, we are ashamed of it." In Time's cover story, James Agee was eloquent but circumspect: "The greatest and most terrible of wars ended, this week, in the echoes of an enormous event--an event so much more enormous that, relative to it, the war itself shrank to minor significance." Agee offered friends a markedly more brutal post-mortem, calling the bomb "the second worst thing to happen to the human race. The worst was Creation."

But Americans who condemned the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as immoral were a minority. Truman had the overwhelming support of the population, the polls soon showed. The bomb brought victory, and that was enough for most people. Truth to tell, many had vengeance in their hearts. "No tears of sympathy will be shed in America for the Japanese people," the Omaha World Herald predicted. "Had they possessed a comparable weapon at Pearl Harbor, would they have hesitated to use it?" As usual, the cartoonists cut closest to the quick. In an Atlanta Constitution cartoon, bodies flew every which way into the air above Hiroshima. "Land of the Rising Sons," said the caption. PM, a New York City tabloid, ran a cartoon panel that had nothing in it except a balloon containing the words "So sorry." A Fortune survey of attitudes toward the A-bomb found 22.7 percent agreeing that "we should have quickly used many more of them before Japan had a chance to surrender."" (From U.S. News and World Report, 07/31/95)

The question is: did the end justify the means? Because the war was stopped, preventing a possible invasion by U.S., English and Soviet forces of the Japanese islands, most likely creating an even bloodier mess of a war that had already claimed millions of lives, did that mean killing another hundred to two hundred thousand Japanese (mostly civilians) was a justifiable course of action?

And an even bigger question related to today's time: if it isn't justifiable back then, is it justifiable for the U.S. to play "Team America World Police" in places like Iraq, killing people in order to "win the war" on terrorism and evil (which I said in my best Austin Powers voice)? We'll look at that tomorrow.