http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090805_truthdig_classic_the_terror_america_wrought/
Truthdig Classic: The Terror America Wrought
Truthdig Classic: The Terror America Wrought
By Robert Scheer
Note: This column was originally published in August 2007.
During a week of mayhem in Iraq, in which terrorists have rightly been
condemned for targeting schoolchildren, it is sobering to recall that this
week is also the 62nd anniversary of a U.S. attack that deliberately took
the lives of thousands of children on their way to school in the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As noted in the Strategic Bombing Survey
conducted at President Harry Truman's request, when the bomb hit Hiroshima
on April 6, 1945, "nearly all the school children ... were at work in the
open," to be exploded, irradiated or incinerated in the perfect firestorm
that the planners back at the University of California-run Los Alamos lab
had envisioned for the bomb's maximum psychological impact.
The terror plot worked all too well, as Hiroshima's Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba
recalled this week: "That fateful summer, 8:15 a.m. The roar of a B-29
breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a
flash, an enormous blast-silence-hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls
watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred
blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails.
... Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their
bodies-Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the
dead."
Like most of the others killed by the two American bombs, neither the
children nor the adults had any role in Japan's decision to go to war, but
they were picked as the target instead of an isolated but fortified military
base whose antiaircraft fire posed a higher risk. The target preferred by
U.S. atomic scientists-a patch in the ocean or unpopulated terrain-was
rejected, because the effect of hundreds of thousands of civilians dying
would be all the more dramatic.
The victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were available soft targets, much like
the children playing in Iraq, suddenly caught in the crossfire of battles
waged beyond their control. In "White Light/Black Rain," a devastating HBO
documentary released this week, there is an interview with the sole survivor
of a Japanese elementary school of 620 students. The murder of the other
619, and the 370,000 overall deaths attributed to the bombings, 85 percent
of which were civilian deaths, has never compelled a widespread examination
of the "end justifies the means" morality of our own state-sanctioned acts
of terror. Indeed, the horrifying footage taken by Japanese and American
cameramen soon after the devastation, and shown in the HBO film, was long
kept secret by the U.S. government for fear that an informed American public
might question this nation's incipient nuclear arms race.
Just exactly what distinguishes the United States' use of the
ever-so-cutely-named "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" atomic bombs on cities in
Japan from the car bombs of Baghdad or the planes that smashed into the
World Trade Center? To even raise the question, as was found in one recent
university case, can be a career-ending move.
Of course, we had our justifications, as terrorists always do. Truman
defended his decision to drop the atomic bombs on civilians over the
objection of leading atomic scientists on the grounds that it was a
necessary military action to save lives by forcing a quick Japanese
surrender. He insisted on that imperative despite the objections of top
military figures, including Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who contended that the
war would end quickly without dropping the bomb.
The subsequent release of formerly secret documents makes a hash of Truman's
rationalization. His White House was fully informed that the Japanese were
on the verge of collapse, and their surrender was made all the more likely
by the Soviets' imminent entry into the fight.
At most, the Japanese were asking for the face-saving gesture of retaining
their emperor, and even that modest demand would likely have been abandoned
with the shift of massive numbers of Allied troops and firepower from the
battlefront of a defeated Germany to a confrontation with its deeply wounded
Asian ally. Instead, the U.S. played midwife to the birth of the nuclear
monster, the ultimate terrorist weapon that presents a continuing and
growing threat to the survival of human life on Earth.
This is a lesson to be pondered at a time when President Bush plays power
games with a nuclear-equipped Russia while coddling Pakistan, the main
proliferator of nuclear weapons to rogue regimes, and Congress authorizes an
expansion of the U.S. nuclear program to better fight the war on terror by
"improving" the ultimate weapon of terror, which the U.S. alone stands
guilty of using.
During a week of mayhem in Iraq, in which terrorists have rightly been
condemned for targeting schoolchildren, it is sobering to recall that this
week is also the 62nd anniversary of a U.S. attack that deliberately took
the lives of thousands of children on their way to school in the Japanese
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As noted in the Strategic Bombing Survey
conducted at President Harry Truman's request, when the bomb hit Hiroshima
on April 6, 1945, "nearly all the school children ... were at work in the
open," to be exploded, irradiated or incinerated in the perfect firestorm
that the planners back at the University of California-run Los Alamos lab
had envisioned for the bomb's maximum psychological impact.
The terror plot worked all too well, as Hiroshima's Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba
recalled this week: "That fateful summer, 8:15 a.m. The roar of a B-29
breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a
flash, an enormous blast-silence-hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls
watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred
blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails.
... Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their
bodies-Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the
dead."
Like most of the others killed by the two American bombs, neither the
children nor the adults had any role in Japan's decision to go to war, but
they were picked as the target instead of an isolated but fortified military
base whose antiaircraft fire posed a higher risk. The target preferred by
U.S. atomic scientists-a patch in the ocean or unpopulated terrain-was
rejected, because the effect of hundreds of thousands of civilians dying
would be all the more dramatic.
The victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were available soft targets, much like
the children playing in Iraq, suddenly caught in the crossfire of battles
waged beyond their control. In "White Light/Black Rain," a devastating HBO
documentary released this week, there is an interview with the sole survivor
of a Japanese elementary school of 620 students. The murder of the other
619, and the 370,000 overall deaths attributed to the bombings, 85 percent
of which were civilian deaths, has never compelled a widespread examination
of the "end justifies the means" morality of our own state-sanctioned acts
of terror. Indeed, the horrifying footage taken by Japanese and American
cameramen soon after the devastation, and shown in the HBO film, was long
kept secret by the U.S. government for fear that an informed American public
might question this nation's incipient nuclear arms race.
Just exactly what distinguishes the United States' use of the
ever-so-cutely-named "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" atomic bombs on cities in
Japan from the car bombs of Baghdad or the planes that smashed into the
World Trade Center? To even raise the question, as was found in one recent
university case, can be a career-ending move.
Of course, we had our justifications, as terrorists always do. Truman
defended his decision to drop the atomic bombs on civilians over the
objection of leading atomic scientists on the grounds that it was a
necessary military action to save lives by forcing a quick Japanese
surrender. He insisted on that imperative despite the objections of top
military figures, including Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, who contended that the
war would end quickly without dropping the bomb.
The subsequent release of formerly secret documents makes a hash of Truman's
rationalization. His White House was fully informed that the Japanese were
on the verge of collapse, and their surrender was made all the more likely
by the Soviets' imminent entry into the fight.
At most, the Japanese were asking for the face-saving gesture of retaining
their emperor, and even that modest demand would likely have been abandoned
with the shift of massive numbers of Allied troops and firepower from the
battlefront of a defeated Germany to a confrontation with its deeply wounded
Asian ally. Instead, the U.S. played midwife to the birth of the nuclear
monster, the ultimate terrorist weapon that presents a continuing and
growing threat to the survival of human life on Earth.
This is a lesson to be pondered at a time when President Bush plays power
games with a nuclear-equipped Russia while coddling Pakistan, the main
proliferator of nuclear weapons to rogue regimes, and Congress authorizes an
expansion of the U.S. nuclear program to better fight the war on terror by
"improving" the ultimate weapon of terror, which the U.S. alone stands
guilty of using.
***
"NEVER AGAIN"
On August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the atomic bom on Hiroshima, Japan. 200,000 civilians were killed, injured or disappeared. On August 9, 1945 another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, killing and injuring over 100,000 civilians. Estimates are that within five years of the bombings twice as many civilains died. THIS MUST NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN!
Attend the:
2009 Hiroshima - Nagasaki CommemorationSUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 20093:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Meet at Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple
505 East 3rd St for a brief service
followed by a Mindful Walk to L.A. City Hall
(bring an umbrella for visual effect)
- speakers include ICUJP President Steve Rohde,
Professor Reza Aslan,congressional candidate Marcy Winograd, Arin Ghosh,and others to be announced -
In additon to being a commemoration event, this event is intended to educate and mobilize the public for nuclear disarmament. Nuclear weapons remain as the greatest threat to humanity. Billions of dollars are wasted each year on nuclear weapons programs. Billions that could be used for healthcare, education and green jobs. Disarmament Now!Sponsored by the Los Angeles Area Nuclear Disarmament Coalition and endorsed by Interfaith Communities United for Justice and PeaceParticipating LAANDC organizations: Global Voices for Justice * Institute for Genetic Medicine Art Gallery * Interfaith Communities United for Justice and Peace * LA Fellowship of Reconciliation * LA Jews for Peace * Long Beach First Congregational Church * Nuclear Age Peace Foundation * Physicians for Social Responsibility - LA * Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Ethics * Unity-and-Diversity World Council * South Coast Interfaith Council * Southern California Federation of Scientists * Student Physicians for Social Responsibility * USC College Democrats * Westside Progressives * for more info about the Coalition see http://laandc.org
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