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?