Do any of you know what yesterday was the anniversary of? It was the 54th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I've written many times about my feelings on the bombing of Japan. A couple of weeks ago, as my son and I made the long trek to Ozzfest we discussed atomic weapons from their use against the Japanese to what exactly is the difference between an 'atom bomb' and the newer hydrogen and neutron weapons (though I have absolutely no idea what train of thought lead us to that topic.)
I'm not a nuclear engineer. I've never worked in the labs that design or build these horrific devices. But I did grow up in the shadow of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation and I do owe my very existence to the bombing of Japan.
Huh? How could I claim that my existence is contingent upon the U.S. using strategic nuclear weapons against Japan? It's not because Hiroshima or Nagasaki specifically were targeted. But the war in Europe had just ended and troops were being re-deployed in preparation for a potential invasion of Japan and the many surrounding islands. A young Private Sherer was on a ship heading for the Pacific. Casualty estimates ranged from very optimistic 50,000 up to 1 MILLION American deaths should invasion become necessary. That's a wide range, but what is certain is that my father would have been in that first group and therefore, much more likely to die. But he told me of the day they announced over the ship's PA that we now had a bomb so tremendous that a single one could evaporate a city. The soldiers on the ship (completely ignorant of the size of the bombs) were saying "Give me some, I'll throw them instead of grenades at the damn Japs!"
War is ... (long pause) anything but glorious. It's dirty and from movies and my brother's and father's descriptions, something we should avoid. And our war with Japan had already drug on close to four years. The war was precipitated by a deadly, unprovoked attack on our homeland. And the nation was in no mood to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of American men to avoid the deaths of tens of thousands of our enemy (how could we? It's a cold-hearted bookkeeping. But the conclusion is irrefutable).
So we warned the enemy that we had a super weapon and would use it. These boasts are not uncommon during wartime and naturally, they were ignored. After all, the Japanese were not following a President, Prime-minister, or even King. They had an emperor. Literally, God-incarnate. The supreme being was alive and well and lived in Japan. How could they be defeated by mortal Americans?
And on our side of the Pacific, we had to worry about the fact that we had only been able to build three atomic bombs. One was detonated in New Mexico as a test. That left just "fat man" and "little boy". It would take some time before new ones could be built and U.S. soldiers were dying every day. So we bluffed. We didn't tell the Japanese that there were only two bombs left in our arsenal. We had to select a major target that would both hurt the Jap war-machine, but also send a wave of dread and despair across the islands. God or no-god, the country was about to be wiped off the face of the planet. Every man, woman and child. It's stomach turning just to write those words and the Japanese military didn't want to believe it could happen.
Then, at 8:15 AM on the 6th of August, it DID happen. Only it wasn't as "clean" as many people think. Sure, tens of thousands died very quickly. But many more were horribly injured and dying of a mysterious disease that had never been seen before (radiation poisoning). But it had to be a fluke, a mistake, something the godless western hordes could never do twice. And yet, three days later, a similar fate befell Nagasaki. By this time the enemy had full opportunity to verify the indiscriminately brutal events. Not only were 150,000 dead, more were dying. And even more frightening was the unspoken threat "What if the Americans had targeted Tokyo?" The death toll would have been in the millions, just from a single bomb. Surrender or be exterminated.
In my younger days this filled me with stupid, jingoistic glee. We won! We won! You stupid F***ers started the war and we ended it. Every single one of you is alive today because we LET YOU LIVE. If we had been as cold-blooded as the Japanese who attacked us, we would have just kept bombing.
But that's not who we are. That's not the sentiment of a nation made up of the same human beings as our "enemy." We were weary of a war that we didn't start and had to be dragged into. As a country, we believed that "right" was on our side and that we were "just" in our fight. But we also swore not to use gas-warfare or germ-warfare, which were the old limits of weapons of mass destruction (now referred to as "poorman's nukes"). And our leaders knew that these newfangled atom bombs were just more brutal forms of the old mustard gas. So I don't think we would have continued to bomb, even if we had more of the monsters available.
It wasn't necessary. No nation could withstand even the threat of atomic weapons. (it turned out to be an impotent threat afterall). But there it was. Two cities in ruin, with more dying sickening deaths everyday. The war was over. It ended at 8:15 AM over Hiroshima. The deaths in Nagasaki would have been unnecessary if the Japanese could only have brought themselves to believe their eyes.
And so, my father lived, and I was born (quite a while later). And, millions of Japanese children were NOT born. And today, we look back and (hopefully) learn something from this very dark epoch. We memorialize December 7th as the infamous day we were attacked. And the Japanese memorialize August 6th as the day they were.
One survivor, who's father and sister were killed that day was quoted as saying this: "In war, countries use every means to crush each other, so the bombing was probably inevitable. Japan would have probably used the bomb if it had developed one." Yes, that was our fear and part of our justification. Average people were spared the heartbreaking details of the suffering we caused. Our text books showed a sanitized version where the deaths were all clean and painless. The reality was much, much worse.
Bottom line?
Remember. Imagine yourself or your children in place of the "enemy." Be thankful. Learn from history.