65 years ago today, the United States of America dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, directly killing 80,000 civilians and indirectly killing up to 60,000 more of the following years. It’s a moment that’s left an indelible scar on the psyche of the world, with the image of a mushroom cloud as a symbol of the utter destruction a single bomb is capable of wreaking. The bombing of Nagasaki three days later feels almost like an afterthought, a coda of death and destruction, while the firebombing of Tokyo achieved a similar amount of casualties, but over a longer period of time and is often largely forgotten by anyone outside of Japan.
It is easy to argue that in World War II, we were among the “good guys.” Hitler was undeniably a Very Bad Guy. The Japanese committed atrocities throughout Asia, the most heinous of which – Unit 731, the rape of Nanking, its use of “comfort” women – the government has yet to truly acknowledge, let alone specifically apologize for.
But this is not about the burdens that Japan still bears, or what Germany has done to wear its sackcloth and ashes publicly. This is not about the general slaughter of civilians that characterized World War II on all sides. Rather, this is about America, and our own atrocities.
We were one of the good guys. We fought back the Nazis. We were attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. We did not strike the first blow against them in this simplified view of history. But good people can sometimes do terrible things, and the good guys in a story can often commit acts just as bloody as the bad guys. And it is important to acknowledge that these bad things did happen, and that they were bad.
There can be endless debate about the justification for dropping the bomb, whether it ultimately saved lives or didn’t, whether it’s more justifiable because the Japanese were committing atrocities in Asia. All of these points are open for endless debate; the bomb dropped in the past, and we quite literally have no way of knowing for certain what might have happened if it hadn’t been dropped. The history is what the history is. The question is how we look at that history and understand it now, what lessons we gain from it.
In Japanese, I have heard the atomic bomb called pikadon (ピカドン), which is an onomatopoeia. Pika is the flash. Don is the explosion follows. As an expression, it’s fun to say, and it sounds almost innocent. I’ve seen it, and heard it spoken in Japanese anime and manga, and for a long time I didn’t know what it meant, until I took a modern Japanese literature class. My teacher gave us pages from Barefoot Gen to read, and showed us a clip from one of the animated movies. In the manga, Gen’s father doesn’t buy into the military propaganda saturating the country, and there’s a strong anti-government and anti-war theme. The depiction of Japanese civilians as not a monolithic group that unthinkingly supported the war and military hit me and many of my classmates hard.
Not long after, I got in an argument with someone on Amazon, over a review for the book Black Rain by Ibuse Masuji. The person I argued with had accused the book of being anti-American. Black Rain is a beautiful book, and a heartbreaking one; it is a gut-wrenching story about the survivors of Hiroshima and how the bomb continued to kill them, years and decades after it had been dropped. It takes no strong political positions and focuses on the simple fact that having an atomic bomb dropped on one’s city is horrible.
That the destruction and suffering caused by the bombs was horrible is a fact. Facts do not exist to make us feel good about our country and the decisions we’ve made in the past. They are what they are. To attack a fact because it makes one feel uncomfortable changes nothing. To scramble for justification, to try to diminish that fact smells a little too like cognitive dissonance for my liking.
I think it may be time to spend fewer words on debating if dropping the bomb can be considered the right decision, because that is a debate that will never find a satisfactory conclusion. It is instead rather time to admit that whatever the intended result, whatever the justification, the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed a lot of people and caused a lot of suffering. That civilians in Hiroshima suffered and died from the atomic bomb in no way diminishes the suffering of the civilians of Nanking as they were raped and murdered by Japanese soldiers, while likewise the pain and horror in Nanking in no way lessens the suffering felt in Hiroshima. These things all happened, and all of the suffering was real.
We can still count ourselves among the “good guys” in WWII and admit that the atomic bomb killed a lot of people and caused a lot of suffering, and that it would be better if it never happens again. And I think that it is, in fact, healthier for us to admit that not everything we’ve done in the past deserves a tickertape parade, that maybe we do have some things we should apologize for.
The idea that one’s country can do no wrong is a dangerous one indeed, and the very reason that I think it’s important to consider the destruction at Hiroshima, in Nagasaki, in Tokyo. Maybe we’re the good guy, though that point is sometimes open to debate. But we are no super hero.
6 replies on “65 years ago today”
Very nicely put. I get very tired of the bickering back and forth over “we had to,” and “moral outrage.” My position has moved to “it’s impossible and inappropriate for me to second guess the decision.” But I’m impressed by your approach of dropping questions of morality and martial imperative, and simply focusing on the fact that the victims were victims… regardless of whether they were “good” guys or “bad” guys. Kudos!
Thanks. :)
“…all of the suffering was real.”
Yes.
For your consideration, two data points:
1. A man I know was 18 in 1945. I asked him what he felt when he heard about the bombs. Bill said: “It was the greatest f’ing news I ever heard in my life.” I was a bit shocked, because Bill’s politics lean very far to the left. “What?” I said. “You thought it was great that all those people died in an instant?” He didn’t hesitate and looked me straight in the eye. “You bet, Mike. Because it meant I didn’t have to go over there and die to end the war. And none of my friends would, either.”
2. I met a woman who traveled to Peace Park for the 50th anniversary. In our discussion of what it was like, I eventually asked her what the most shocking thing she saw was. She said: “I don’t know that I saw anything shocking, but I do know none of the Japanese kids I talked to were aware their country had struck first against America.” “Are you kidding?” I asked. “Nope,” she said. “They just don’t teach it like that over there. Their history books acknowledge there was a war and that they lost it, but they don’t discuss how it all started.”
I agree with everyone that it is wise to avoid second-guessing what ought to have been done.
Japan’s got a lot of problems of its own when it comes to dealing with its “war memory,” so to speak. In the modern Japanese history class I took, one of the things we spent a lot of time talking about was Unit 731, and how it’s been pretty much swept under the rug since the end of the war. But that also doesn’t necessarily signify anything in regards to how the US should handle its own role, I think, though it does go to show we could be doing a lot worse.
The biggest concern with glossing over history is always that you may be doomed to repeat it. I think the simple fact of the human suffering tends to get lost in the bickering and second guessing, and even if you wipe all that debate away and present it as “this is something we had to do” it’s still very possible to acknowledge that it was a horrifying event that should never happen again.
I totally agree. My daughter has a book entitled “100 Scariest Things on the Planet” that talks about firestorms, traffic accidents and food poisoning, but doesn’t even mention nuclear war. For my money, that is the number one scariest thing our civilization has come up with, and glossing it over does nothing to decrease the possibility it will ever occur.