“We had no choice…”
I recently swung through Oak Ridge, TN where my mom was born and I spent much time at my grandparent’s home growing up. I went to see their graves, then rolled around town a bit, letting the possibility of old memories have their chance to wash over me. True, it was Sunday, but the town was beyond sleepy - the charm as I once knew it gone. The inevitability of this is due to many factors, but my focus here now moves to a poster I saw in a closed pharmacy window. Secret City - The Oak Ridge Story. For any who don’t know, Oak Ridge is where the atomic bomb was developed. This town, in the foothills of the Smokey mts. was not on any map until shortly before my mom was born. Machine gun turrets on the two ends of town, the only way in or out, served as the checkpoints where the govt. could regulate/search anyone coming or going, preserving secrecy for the Manhattan Project. They are still there, but not very dramatic any more. Be sure to watch the film trailer provided in the link to better relate to the following.
I personally am often amazed at how willing the average American is to accept nuclear (then only atomic) weapons to be a viable option in the realm of conflict resolution. There is a ‘might makes right’ mentality that seems to gloss over what I see as the reality involved in the use of such weapons. Hawks, and those who would allow themselves to fall under the sway of hawk mentality unquestioned, will attempt to point out that our duel uber-bombing of Japan was inevitable, as Hirohito would never have surrendered. I could buy this line of thinking more if America had been on it’s last legs, that is, Washington D.C. in a state similar to London after years of Nazi bombing. I’m sure the “we had no choice” line is a great comfort to the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki half a century later. Check out the doc Fog of War for insite into things as they stood at the time, from the hawk perspective - how stubborn those little buggers were; and from the dove - glossed over evidence of the effects of napalm carpet bombing on cities made largely out of wood, even before we felt like we had to up the ante. I do recognize - the bushido code does not allow surrender…atomic weapons will definitely force a culture to re-evaluate their commitment to the bushido code. But I’m gonna seriously question your idea of “winner”, just as I would theirs. A hawk is a hawk is a lunatic.
“Patriots” and “Zionists” will certainly write me off as a bleeding heart, counter-productive, peacenik, defeatist - if not worse, and I further admit an uncanny preoccupation with Japanese culture. But I’m not only crying cultural mea culpa here. I’m thinking very specifically about attitudes involved in current world conflict, pointing out factors that helped get us where we are today, in terms of the ‘war on terror’. I will always view the use of weapons of mass destruction as unacceptable and unjustified.
Hey tough guy, go ahead and try to solve your termite problem with dynamite. But don’t be surprised when the house suddenly isn’t worth shit…
You’re right, this is another part of our history which is difficult to reconcile, we are the only nation in history to use atomic weapons, but…
But by 1945 the War in the Pacific had become a mutual slaughter anyway. Hundreds of thousands would’ve died in a US land invasion of Japan. There is the paradoxical idea that dropping the bomb actually reduced the eventual number of dead.
I’ve obviously heard this argument before and I’m not buying it.
Firstly, I will confess, I may be under the sway of false presumptions about the effects of lingering radiation, both at the source where the weapons are created and at the point they are used (http://www.rerf.or.jp/general/qa_e/qa12.html). But remember, the examples of these two atomic weapons can be considered prototypes in comparison to the nature of such weapons today.
Secondly, I would argue, that actual loss of life and general human stress and misery during the period refered to as ‘the cold war’ can directly be tied to America’s premature use of atomic weaponry. How exactly do you tally such figures? There is a general inability to recognize causality: the way we chose to deal with one conflict directly relates to the coming conflict. So be it, but don’t forget this when you go handing out labels like ‘winner’ and ‘loser’.
Thirdly, “humanity” is not measured in a greater or lesser number of corpses. A decades long blockade and isolation of Japan, in combination with support of an internal movement to help evacute relative innocents (after all, who was actually killed in the atomic bombings?) would have been absurdly expensive and taxing on our resources, and yet in the big picture…
I would argue that the existence of ‘Deadenders’ does not justify the continual uping of the ante. Stamina may be an under-recognized quality in the American conception of ’strength’. There are consequences for every route taken.
Fourthly, The United States of America was founded on some of the most noble of ideals in human history, ideals that are possibly unattainable. It is not a rejection of these ideals to anaylize and admit examples of where we have failed miserably - attempt to learn from the mistakes.
Fifthly, in the big picture of ‘human experience and the horror of war’ I would argue that the modern people of America have no idea what suffering is. We have upheld a tradition of overt over-reaction to the point that we have never allowed our citizenry to truely suffer. Yes, “they started it” in the Pacific theatre, but ‘we ended it’ is a disingenuos bookend to this situation.
Very well said. Of course the more you start to analyze warfare, the more it seems like simple human sacrifice in the absence of rational or ‘enlightened’ discourse.