I applaud the dedicated work of the many peace activists who have written for the Recorder regarding the 75th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; however, in some cases their knowledge of history is more than a little sketchy. For example, Patricia Hynes insists, “This would not have been dropped on white people.” In fact, the A-bomb was intended for Germany, but Germany surrendered before work on the bomb was completed. Many of the Jewish scientists who helped to develop it distanced themselves from the project after Germany surrendered. (Germany and Japan both had nuclear bomb programs.)
For a balanced look at the Pacific War and the development and deployment of the atom bomb, I recommend John Dower’s “War Without Mercy” and Peter Wyden’s “Day One: Before Hiroshima and After.” Neither author comes down in favor of nuking Japan, but they recreate the context in which it was done, the racism on both sides, the fanaticism of the Japanese militarists, and all of the really bad alternatives to dropping the bomb.
If, as one of the activists alleges, the bombings were the first salvo in the Cold War as well as the last in the Pacific War, wasn’t the fact that the U.S.S.R. did not have the opportunity to enter Japan a good thing? They did invade Manchuria and took over one million Japanese soldiers and civilians prisoner. Three hundred thousand never returned.
Would we wish that Japan had been divided as Korea and Germany were? As someone who lived in Japan for seven years and loves that country — I have attended the ceremonies in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki which are held on the day and at the exact time the bombs were dropped — the idea that it might have been divided is horrific.
(I also lived in West Germany for three years and know the toll that a communist East took and still takes on Germany. The neo-Nazis, the proto-fascist right in Germany comes mainly from the East, where a history of economic stagnation and autocratic rule has made such movements seem acceptable.)
In all that I have learned about the Pacific War, the most chilling for me is the fact that before they bombed Pearl Harbor, the Japanese knew full well that they had little to no chance of winning a war against America, and yet they did it anyway. Millions of people died in the war that followed, most of them Japanese, but also over 100,000 Americans, half in the last year when both sides understood that Japan’s defeat was certain.
Bad, reckless decisions lead to bad outcomes, which brings me to the present. How many people voted for Donald Trump to “shake things up,” knowing he was basically unfit to be president? How many didn’t vote at all or voted for a third party because they were too “pure” or too apathetic to vote for the only “fully functioning adult” in the race? And how could the U.S. Senate not have tossed him out when it had the chance, knowing he was unfit and corrupt?
These reckless, irresponsible and venal decisions have cost tens of thousands of innocent people their lives as Trump careens around aimlessly amid the current pandemic. As a cop once told my husband after a traffic stop, “Make better decisions!” This, ultimately, is the lesson of Hiroshima, and we ignore it at our peril.
Kathe Geist is a resident of Charlemont.