Original Child Bomb: What We Talk About When We Talk About The Bomb (Part 6)

Today is the 72nd anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki. This is the last post in the series. For now. The other posts can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. 

Nagasaki, August 1945

There are still so many issues to explore: how the collusion between science and big money (The Manhattan Project) created a legacy of how science is done to this day; the Dr. Strangelove-ian aestheticism that some feel toward the god-like power and extreme violence of these weapons; how the US government censored much of the information and imagery about the bombings from the US public and how that legacy of being treated as children has shaped how the US public sees itself in terms of each new war that has followed (as innocent children, willfully ignorant of atrocities committed in their name); and a look at nuclear weapons proliferation and the lack of interest on the part of any nuclear power to begin talking about disarmament.

Nagasaki Peace Park, 2017

Right now, today, the nuclear missile saber rattling is still going on between Kim Jong-Un and Donald Trump. Two narcissistic leaders, consumed with their own power; showing the world, through their reckless rhetoric, what deep insecurities they have about their manhood. It would be almost funny…but mostly sad…if you saw this threat and counter-threat going on in a bar…but we're talking about nuclear weapons. Too many lives are at stake. As I've said a few times in this series: NO ONE should have this kind of power. Not the US, not North Korea, not Russia, not China, or any other countries possessing a nuclear arsenal. No one is capable of handling it.

A Shadow Etched in Stone

Nagasaki, 1945

As I explored different aspects of the nuclear weapons debate, specifically taking a good, long look at the strategy of bombing civilians in general, the image of the shadow etched in stone on the steps of a bank in Hiroshima kept coming back to me. The shadow without body, an image of a person who is not there, anonymous, became etched deep into my mind, and, for a time, I couldn't shake it. It appeared in my mind's eye before sleep, and returned when I woke up. Who was that? Why were they waiting in front of the bank? Did they have money worries? What did they hear that morning before the blast? Birds? Trolleys?

Nagasaki, 1945

I began to see the image of the shadow on the stone steps as a symbol for all those who have ever died, or suffered terrible loss, from falling bombs - not just Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims - but all the dead everywhere. When bombs begin falling, civilians become shadows without bodies. No one considers all those bodies in their decision-making process. Which leads me to a conclusion about the nuclear bombing of the two Japanese cities in 1945: it is my belief that once war is declared and the fighting begins - a hideous and morally indefensible decision like that is bound to be made.

Shadow Poem

Mother & Child/Hiroshima, August 1945

During the weeks when I could not shake the image of the shadow in stone, a poem began to form. The subject matter called to mind the writing of Paul Celan - creating a balance between the desperate urge to give something so terrible a voice and the desire to remain silent as an appropriate form of reverence to the magnitude of the pain and loss suffered. I started reading Celan again. After I finished the poem, I realized that the last half of the last line is from one of Celan's later, more fragmentary poems. So, a gassho to Celan for helping me finish it.

  

Absence: Shadow

1.

What is always there

is what is not there.

2.

A lifted leg, deep in stone.

Running, deeper into stone.

3.

No tongue, can't say the word.

Take it, please take it, my word.

4.

Money worries. Morning heat.

The heart. A bird.

5.

No skin. No sense.

Take it, take it, my cheek against stone.

6.

At what temperature

does love burn?

7.

No lifted hand, gesturing for water.

Take it, please take it, drink from my mouth.

(for all the dead from falling bombs)

Hiroshima Peace March, 2017

 Other resources:

Nagasaki: life after nuclear war by Susan Southard

Nagasaki: the forgotten victim of nuclear terror (article about Southard's book)

Hiroshima by John Hersey

Hersey's New Yorker article about Hiroshima, 1946  

The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Arsenals of Folly, Dark Sun and Twilight of the Bombs, by Richard Rhodes

Empire & The Bomb: how the US uses nuclear weapons to dominate the world by Joseph Gerson

Willliam J. Perry on the Nuclear Threat - Truthdig

Peace crane offerings at the Children's Peace Memorial, Hiroshima

Organizations

ICAN: international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons: http://www.icanw.org/

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation: https://www.wagingpeace.org/

Nukewatch: https://nukewatch.org/  

Peace Action: http://www.peace-action.org/

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament: http://www.cnduk.org/

Transform Now Plowshares: https://transformnowplowshares.wordpress.com/

Original Child Bomb: What We Talk About When We Talk About The Bomb (Part 4)

This is a continuation of a short history of the decision to drop the bomb. The previous section, about the saturation bombing campaign as a precursor to dropping the atomic bomb, can be found below (part 3). 


The first part in the series can be found here (part 1). The second can be found here (part 2).

The Soviet Angle

The Soviet Union had promised to enter the Pacific War three months after victory in Europe. That would be mid-August. The Allies knew that the Japanese High Command feared this happening - since the Soviet army was only, by all calculations, ten days away from Tokyo.

Stalin

After the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima two days went by before the Japanese High Command convened. Despite the strange communiques to the command about the power of the bomb and its devastation, the command did not convene immediately to discuss surrender. What was another city destroyed to them? They were only interested in a surrender that maintained the imperial system. The saturation bombing had been going on for five months. The callousness that had been created by the massive bombing campaign, that had gone into the decision to drop the bomb, existed with the military on both sides. 

But then, on August 8, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. The High Command convened six hours after hearing this news. (Five Myths of Nuclear Weapons, Ward Wilson, 2013, p 31) "In a careful analysis of Japanese records between August 6 and August 17, the historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa found only two statements (out of twelve) referring to the impact of the bombs alone. The rest mentioned bombs and Soviet action or Soviet action alone." (Dower, 243) 

It is not that the bomb had NO EFFECT, it is that it was not the ONLY thing that ended the war. This is important - because the myth of the bomb being solely responsible for ending the war gave the US military free reign (for four decades) in creating and building a nuclear arsenal and using overwhelming air power in almost every conflict.

"Many other high-ranking Japanese, including the most militant diehards, regarded the Soviet attack as the true tipping point, sufficient in itself to prompt immediate surrender." (Dower, 242)

Red Army entering Berlin, 1945

It wasn't only the Japanese that feared the Soviet Union. The US had had a fearful eye on the Red Army as possibly the only threat to postwar world US hegemony since the middle of the war. General Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project, stated this in sworn testimony: "I think it's important to state…I think it is well known - that there was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this project (September 1942), any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy and that the project was conducted on that basis. I didn't go along with the attitude of the country as a whole that Russia was a gallant ally. I always had suspicions and the project was conducted on that basis. Of course, that was so reported to the President." (Dower, p 246; Atomic Energy Commission, In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer, p 173; Groves' memoir, Now It Can Be Told, p 132, 141)

It's a cliché now, but it's still true. The dropping of the atomic bombs were not the last shots fired in WWII, but the first shots fired in the Cold War. It was very much a show of force, not against Japan, but directed at Stalin. They also wanted the war to end before the Soviet Union made claims on Japanese territory. The US did not want to share occupation duties with the communists in Japan as they were forced to do in Europe.

The Angle of Partisan Politics

 Another angle that is less talked about is the angle of partisan politics. The Manhattan Project had cost over a trillion dollars. This is in terms of the economy of the 1940's. It's an astronomical sum. Many people around President Truman were worried that if the bomb was not used, the opposing party (The Republicans) could point at this seemingly useless boondoggle and cry "Foul! You wasted taxpayer's money in a time of war! For what?"

Byrnes, Cover of Time, September 1945

Also, there was the question of continued research. James F. Byrnes, Secretary of State at the time, and member of the Interim Committee said: "How would you get Congress to appropriate money for atomic energy research if you do not show results for the money which has been spent already?" (Dower, p 250)

So, "using the atomic bombs as flamboyantly as possible…complemented this agenda but also introduced one by helping to ensure broad support for a post-hostilities commitment to developing nuclear energy."(Dower, p 245)

(A side note: The Franck Report referred to this political consideration as a warning: "Congress and the American public will demand a return for their money.")

It is important to understand that these politicians allowed partisan politics to help make the decision to drop the bomb for them. Instead of thinking "shame, shame" (what's the point?), for me, one question arises: how can we leave the production and possible use of these weapons to partisan politics? Adding to that, another question: how can we leave the decisions on the use of something that can annihilate the world to any group of human beings? The power is too great, too frightening, for anyone to handle. Partisan politics and individual flaws versus hundreds of thousands of lives?

Aftermath and Culpability

So, we've gone over the same ground that historians have been plowing for the last seventy years, and found some of the same old truths: that a good part of the decision to drop the bomb was to end the war quickly (before the Soviets had a chance to invade), intimidating the Soviet Union, and preempting partisan political criticism at home.

What I find missing from the story is that the Japanese High Command were culpable in helping maintain the myth that the bomb was what made them capitulate. Many in the military and the government commented that the Soviet entry AND the use of the bombs were "in a sense, a gift from the gods "(Hirohito and the making of modern Japan, Herbert P. Bix, 2000, 509-10). By pointing out that they were overwhelmed, they could surrender unconditionally with their honor intact. And the American military could point to their statements about the power of the weapon to bear up the myth that the bomb was the decisive factor in ending the war.

Reliance on Overwhelming Force: 
Legacy of Death & Ashes

It is sad that the US military and the culture in general still relies on this outdated story of the bomb - as the triumph of overwhelming force - as the truth of how WWII ended. The many threads that led to the end provides a much more complicated picture (I didn't even begin to crack the surface). The US continues this strategy of overwhelming force to this day in conventional terms (saturation bombing, drones, shock and awe), along with the constant background threat of nuclear annihilation.

But how has the use of overwhelming force worked in the last seventy years? 

It has been estimated that 667,557 tons of bombs (including 32,557 tons of napalm) were dropped on Korea (The Korean War: a history, Bruce Cumings, Modern Library, 2010, p 159) Was the US victorious? No.

The estimate for bombs dropped on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos by US forces is somewhere around 7 million tons - 3 1/2 times the tonnage dropped in all of WWII (Micheal Clodfelter, Vietnam in Military Statistics: A History of the Indochina Wars, 1792—1991. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 1995, p. 225) (See also, List of Bombs dropped in the Vietnam War/Wikipedia) The US lost the war in Vietnam. 

And this, from Nick Turse, Senior Editor/Alternet, about bombs dropped over Iraq: "In 1991, the United States unleashed a bombing campaign of staggering proportions against Iraq: 120,000 sorties were launched and 265,000 bombs dropped. From then on, the missions never stopped. From 1991 to 2003, the U.S. and its allies conducted a low-level air war to enforce no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, while attacking Iraq’s air defenses and other targets. In February 2003, the U.S. would again conduct a blistering “shock and awe” campaign and, by mid-April, Iraq had been subjected to 41,000 sorties and 27,000 bombs dropped. The U.S. air war would continue on as, year after year, U.S. planes attacked targets, killing enemy fighters and civilians alike."  (Nick Turse/Alternet, November 14, 2011) Iraq is in chaos. No one won anything. 

The US is in its seventeenth year of fighting in Afghanistan. I could not find the statistics for tonnage of bombs dropped on Afghanistan during the US' seventeen year war there, but in 2016 alone, the Obama administration dropped at least 26,171 bombs. As of this writing, I have no idea what the "Trump strategy" will be - but these strategies are less about who sits behind the desk in the oval office and more about groupthink and habit in the Pentagon. So, we can probably expect more of the same.  

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Bombs:
Civilian Deaths

What I've failed to mention when citing all these statistics for bomb tonnage dropped is the grotesque and incalculable tragedy of civilian deaths. The estimated Korean civilian deaths in the Korean War is a staggering 2,730,000 (not all from falling bombs, obviously). The estimate for the Vietnam War is an equally horrifying two million. (Civilian Casualty Ratio/Wikipedia) Two million people! (For civilian dead in Iraq, see Iraq Body Count.) 

Can you process that in terms of your own culture, your own country? How have these staggering numbers, including the numbers for deaths with only one bomb (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) do in terms of numbing us to horrors suffered now, on a daily basis, in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Yemen, all over the world, simply because the numbers are smaller?

Hiroshima 

 We need to end this legacy of the use of overwhelming force. Who has benefited from this? The only answer I can come up with is - a few military careers and those corporations who produce the machinery of war.  

I end this long section with some wise words from an Afghan soldier: “We know from the past 40 years that bullets don’t stop war.” (The War America Can't Win: how the Taliban is regaining control in Afghanistan, The Guardian, August 3, 2017)

Next: 
Environmental Disaster, Economic Devastation & The New Nuclear Race (mini-nukes)

Hiroshima radiation burn victim

Research that asks questions about the role of the Bomb 
in ending the war:

Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire by Richard B. Frank

Japan in War and Peace (Selected Essays) by John W. Dower

Hirohito and the making of modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix

Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman and the Surrender of Japan by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Other Resources:

Cultures of War by John W. Dower

Five myths about Nuclear Weapons by Ward Wilson

The Violent American Century by John W. Dower

A History of Bombing by Sven Lindqvist 

The Deaths of Others: The fate of civilians in America's wars  
by John Tirman


Article from the NY Times (2012): 
Why do we ignore the civilians killed in American wars?

Original Child Bomb: What We Talk About When We Talk About The Bomb (Part 1)

Peace Vigil, Los Alamos, NM, August 6, 2015

We are coming up on the 72nd Anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6th and 9th). Which got me to thinking about two years ago, on the 70th anniversary, when Michaela and I went to the annual Sackcloth and Ashes vigil in Los Alamos (where the original bomb was designed and made, and continues to be a major laboratory complex for nuclear and conventional weapons manufacture), protesting against the continual existence of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (and all other laboratories and factories that include the vast nuclear-industrial complex), keeping a nonviolent witness for those that had suffered from the bombings, and, most importantly, through that witness imagining the possibility of a universal nuclear weapons ban.   

           

There was a rally at Ashley Pond, a park that rests on the physical site where the original bomb was made, and then we walked up Trinity Drive, towards the laboratory entrance. Most wore burlap, some covered themselves with ashes. We sat for an hour on the sidewalk in silence before heading back to the pond. Many cars drove by. Some honked in support. Some honked and yelled in disgust or anger. Some - mostly the young - looked confused, having no idea why we were there.  

           

Most of the cars that drove by were probably driven by those employed or related to those employed in some capacity by the Department of Defense. They work at the laboratory. They make a good living. There is a lot of money in weapons research. The county that contains Los Alamos is one of the richest counties in the United States. The county that houses the Santa Clara Pueblo in the valley below is the second poorest county in the nation. It's clear where our priorities lie.

           

While sitting on the sidewalk, I began to think about how little I knew about the decision- making process over the dropping of that first nuclear bomb. I have, for the most part, focused on the consequences of the bomb - and the economic and environmental devastation left in the wake of the nuclear-industrial complex. Since that vigil two years ago, I've read about the history of the making of the first nuclear bomb and the factors that went into using it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - and discovered how that history has had a direct influence on how the US views its nuclear arsenal today - and has helped shape conventional military strategy and thinking. I'll be posting some of that information in the next few posts.  

But first…

           

Hope?

A Global Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons

UN Treaty Negotiations, 2017

I want to start with a glimmer of hope. On July 7, 2017, a global treaty was approved to ban nuclear weapons. 122 nations in the UN endorsed this treaty (two thirds of the 192-member body). Within two years the treaty could have the 50-state ratifications it needs to become international law. To no one's surprise, all those nations who have nuclear weapons, and those that come under their protection or host weapons on their soil, boycotted the negotiations.

There was very little coverage of this event in the US media. So, here's a little more detail from a Guardian article:

“'It’s a prohibition in line with other prohibitions on weapons of mass destruction,' said Beatrice Fihn at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons in Geneva. 'We banned biological weapons 45 years ago, we banned chemical weapons 25 years ago, and today we are banning nuclear weapons.' Within two years the treaty could have the 50-state ratifications that it needs to enter into international law, she said.

"Previous UN treaties have been effective even when key nations have failed to sign up to them. The US did not sign up to the landmines treaty, but has completely aligned its landmines policy to comply nonetheless. 'These kinds of treaties have an impact that forces countries to change their behavior. It is not going to happen fast, but it does affect them,' Fihn said. 'We have seen on all other weapons that prohibition comes first, and then elimination. This is taking the first step towards elimination.'” (Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapons Approved, The Guardian, July 7, 2017)

It's a given that the nuclear powers would not sign this treaty - who wants to give up such power? - but the treaty is a step in the right direction. If only giving voice to the desire to eliminate the threat of nuclear annihilation. Especially now that nuclear weapons are back on the menu, what with all the nuclear saber rattling between North Korea and the US.

***

Next: A Poem by Tōge Sankichi,
activist, poet, survivor of the atomic bomb

***

(Original Child Bomb is a mistranslation of the Japanese term for the atom bomb, genshi bakudan. Genshi, which means "atom," contains root characters which, when rendered individually, can possibly mean "original" and "child." There is a Thomas Merton poem and a documentary of the same name. It was supposed for years that this was the literal translation of atom bomb because the Japanese saw it as the first of its kind. As far as I can tell, original child bomb was never used by the Japanese - and yet it seems to contain, in English - because of it's strange and innocent distance from the horrors of the explosion and its aftermath - a more appropriately ominous and terrifying feel than "atom bomb.")

The Hiroshima Panels & The Truth of War

The Hiroshima Panels

A little over twenty years ago, I sat in a Quaker Meeting House in a small town west of Des Moines, Iowa, looking at slides of several folding screens painted by the late artist couple, Iri and Toshi Maruki. The screens contain depictions of the horrific aftermath of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, and are known world-wide as The Hiroshima Panels. By the time I saw images of those screens, I had seen many photos of the devastation in books, but those screens were different. This was art. A horrific event transformed into art. 

Hiroshima Panels

          

What was shocking, what the photos had never revealed to me, was movement - the body writhing in pain. And that movement was extremely uncomfortable to witness. I can honestly say that that moment was the first time I really felt the horror of the atomic blast. Those bodies in agony were suddenly alive, in the process of dying. Instead of seeing those images in terms of the past, and so safely distant, I suddenly saw those people – their terror and pain – as something that was happening right in front of me.

It was not hard to come to the conclusion that this should not happen to anyone else, ever again.

It Saved Lives! & Willful Amnesia

Today is the 70^th Anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The official US version is a recycling of the same old message: The bomb bay doors opened, the bomb flew out, and the war ended. It saved lives on both sides, so move on. We are a culture that’s good at ‘moving on.’ Of course what we really mean by ‘moving on’ is ‘forgetting.’ In part, this willful forgetting is a refusal to look at the complexities and consequences of war itself.

The US military spent a lot of time and energy on keeping footage of the devastation from the US public in the decades after WWII (See Atomic Cover-up by Greg Mitchell ). In the sanctioned images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no Japanese victims ever appeared. And so it was not only easier to think about the bombings as just, but also to think about nuclear power and nuclear weapons as powerful and deadly, but good – because they were in the right hands.

Official Image

 

Censored Photo

Twenty years ago, there was controversy over the Smithsonian’s exhibit on the 50^th anniversary of the bombing. Along with the fuselage of the Enola Gay (the B-29 that dropped the first bomb), the Smithsonian staff wanted to include the Hiroshima Panels and some artifacts collected from the aftermath debris. Conservative and WWII veteran’s groups rose up in arms, saying that this inclusion would present the Japanese as victims. The exhibit was eventually scaled back and the story of the consequences of the bomb was dropped.

Weirdly enough, the story of the panels being displayed in the US has fared no better. Very few galleries have been willing to display them over the years. According to Yoshiko Hayakawa, who has  brought the Hiroshima Panels several times to the US, it has always been difficult to find a gallery or museum willing or able to display them. They were last shown here in 1995, in Minnesota. (Japanese art on atomic bombings exhibited in Washington, AP, June 12, 2015) 

How we see the bombings supports

how we see ourselves now

             

From my readings, it’s clear that there were many alternatives to dropping the bomb and none of them were pursued. According to Paul Ham (Hiroshima Nagasaki, St. Martin’s Press, 2011), when the decision was made to drop the bomb the planned invasion of the Japanese islands by US troops had already been called off as unfeasible and not needed to end the war.

So, how we tell the story of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki supports how we see ourselves now. To blindly accept the official version – or to ignore the whole thing – is to accept or ignore how we are currently conducting military actions around the world. To accept the official version is to accept (or be willfully ignorant of) the funneling of untold billions into research and development for unneeded weapons of mass destruction. 

It saved lives! This was also the line used by both the Bush and Obama administrations in relation to torture. It is constantly invoked now when anyone questions the various conflicts the US is engaged in around the world – Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Syria, South Sudan, The Congo, etc. (according to Washington Blog the US is currently engaged in military conflicts in 74 countries).

Our refusal to examine the motives and horrific consequences of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings is directly related to our refusal to discuss and question the countless hellfire missiles fired from drones throughout the Middle East and Africa today that murder hundreds of civilians. By reducing such a devastating event to a few simple phrases we shelter ourselves from the complex truth of the past – and so continue to shelter ourselves from the present.

 

The Hiroshima Panels & The Complex Truth

Detail of Crows

One of the Hiroshima Panels depicts the death of American prisoners of war in the bombing.  Another one portrays the plight of the Korean slaves in the aftermath. The one depicting Koreans is called Crows, a rendering of crows picking at the corpses of Koreans in black ink. The Japanese buried Korean bodies last, reflecting the discrimination that the enslaved Koreans faced even in death. 

The panels portrayed the Japanese as victims, yes, but also as victimizers. This is the truth of war. Forgetting the complexity of this tragedy means that we can continue to see war from only one side: meaning, all of ‘our’ actions are necessarily heroic and all actions on the ‘other side’ are necessarily evil. Note our current media and military influenced kindergarten language that labels victims of drone strikes as ‘the bad guys.’ It’s grotesquely simple. And it helps make the killing that much easier.

On the 70th Anniversary of the first atomic bombing, the panels have finally made it to Washington, DC. They are currently being shown in The American University Museum, located in the Katzen Arts Center at The American University.

Iri & Toshi Maruki

A great series dedicated to the 70^th Anniversary on the Al-Jazeera America site can be found here:  

Hiroshima Explored: 70th Anniversary

 

Other articles worth looking at:

Joseph Gershon - Our 70th Anniversary Homework

Christian Appy - America's Hiroshima & Nagasaki

Susan Southard - Under the Mushroom Cloud  

             

Hiroshima Today/70th Commemoration