Saturday, May 14, 2011

Japan, the Atomic Bomb, and Nuclear Power, Freedom Riders

Freedom Riders

 

FREEDOM RIDERS is the powerful harrowing and ultimately inspirational story of six months in 1961 that changed America forever. From May until November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives--and many endured savage beatings and imprisonment--for simply traveling together on buses and trains as they journeyed through the Deep South.

Deliberately violating Jim Crow laws, the Freedom Riders met with bitter racism and mob violence along the way, sorely testing their belief in nonviolent activism. Premiers on PBS May 16, 2011. (Monday)

 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/watch

2:16

 

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Hi. Here is a piece which is engaging and revelatory, sometimes shocking.

It clarifies an important history, still alive and sick.  It’s one to save  -Ed

From: BillTottenWeblog
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2011 4:58 AM
To: epearlag@earthlink.net
Subject: [R-G] [] Japan, the Atomic Bomb,and Nuclear Power (2 of 2)

 

Part Two - Japan's nuclear history in perspective: Eisenhower and atoms

for war and peace

 

by Peter Kuznick and Yuki Tanaka

 

In this two part article Yuki Tanaka and Peter Kuznick explore the

relationship between the atomic bombing of Japan and that nation's embrace

of nuclear power, a relationship that may be entering a new phase with the

March 11th earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima.

 

It is tragic that Japan, the most fiercely antinuclear country on the

planet, with its Peace Constitution, three non-nuclear principles, and

commitment to nuclear disarmament, is being hit with the most dangerous

and prolonged nuclear crisis in the past quarter-century - one whose

damage might still exceed that of Chernobyl 25 years ago. But Japan's

antinuclearism has always rested upon a Faustian bargain, marked by

dependence on the United States, which has been the most unabashedly

pro-nuclear country on the planet for the past 66 years. It is in the

strange relationship between these two oddly matched allies that the roots

and meaning of the Fukushima crisis lay buried.

 

Japan embarked on its nuclear energy program during the presidency of

Dwight Eisenhower, a man now best remembered, ironically, for warning

about the rise of the very military-industrial complex he did so much to

create. Eisenhower is also the only US president to have criticized the

atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fearing the bombings would

destroy the prospects for friendly post-war relations with Russia, at one

point he advocated international control of atomic energy and turning the

existing US stockpile over to the United Nations for destruction.

 

Yet by the time he took office in 1953, Eisenhower's views on nuclear

weapons had changed. Not wanting to see the United States "choke itself to

death piling up military expenditures" and assuming that any war with the

Soviet Union would quickly turn nuclear, he shifted emphasis from costly

conventional military capabilities to massive nuclear retaliation by a

fortified Strategic Air Command. Whereas President Harry Truman had

considered nuclear arms to be weapons of last resort, Eisenhower's "New

Look" made them the foundation of US defense strategy.

 

Just like a bullet? On occasion, Eisenhower spoke almost cavalierly about

using nuclear weapons. In 1955, he told a reporter:

 

    Yes of course they would be used. In any combat where these things can

be used on strictly military targets and for strictly military purposes, I

see no reason why they shouldn't be used just exactly as you would use a

bullet or anything else.

 

When Eisenhower suggested to Winston Churchill's emissary Jock Colville

that "there was no distinction between 'conventional' weapons and atomic

weapons: all weapons in due course become conventional", Colville

recalled, horrified, "I could hardly believe my ears".

 

Eisenhower began transferring control of the atomic stockpile from the

Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) to the military. Europeans were terrified

that the United States would start a nuclear war, which Eisenhower

threatened to do over Korea, over the Suez Canal, and twice over the

Taiwan Strait islands of Quemoy and Matsu. European allies begged

Eisenhower to show restraint.

 

Public revulsion at the normalization of nuclear war threatened to derail

the Eisenhower administration's plans. The minutes of a March 1953 meeting

of the National Security Council (NSC) stated:

    ... the President and Secretary [John Foster] Dulles were in complete

agreement that somehow or other the tabu [sic] which surrounds the use of

atomic weapons would have to be destroyed. While Secretary Dulles admitted

that in the present state of world opinion we could not use an A-bomb, we

should make every effort now to dissipate this feeling.

 

Atoms for Peace buried in radioactive ash

 

Eisenhower decided that the best way to destroy that taboo was to shift

the focus from military uses of nuclear energy to socially beneficial

applications. Stefan Possony, Defense Department consultant to the

Psychological Strategy Board, had argued: "the atomic bomb will be

accepted far more readily if at the same time atomic energy is being used

for constructive ends" (page 156). On December 8 1953, Eisenhower

delivered his "Atoms for Peace" speech at the United Nations. He promised

that the United States would devote "its entire heart and mind to find the

way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man shall not be dedicated to

his death, but consecrated to his life". He pledged to spread the benefits

of peaceful atomic power at home and abroad.

 

But the subsequent March 1954 Bravo test almost derailed those plans.

Fallout from the US hydrogen-bomb test contaminated 236 Marshall Islanders

and 23 Japanese fisherman aboard the Daigo Fukuryu Maru ("Lucky Dragon

Number Five"), which was 85 miles away from the detonation and outside the

designated danger zone. A panic ensued when irradiated tuna was sold in

Japanese cities and eaten by scores of people.

 

Bravo test at Bikini

 

The international community was appalled by the bomb test. Belgian

diplomat Paul-Henri Spaak warned, "If something is not done to revive the

idea of the President's speech - the idea that America wants to use atomic

energy for peaceful purposes - America is going to be synonymous in Europe

with barbarism and horror". Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru

declared that US leaders were "dangerous self-centered lunatics" who would

"blow up any people or country who came in the way of their policy".

 

Eisenhower told the NSC in May 1954, "Everybody seems to think that we are

skunks, saber-rattlers, and warmongers". Dulles complained, "Comparisons

are now being made between ours and Hitler's military machine".

 

Criticism was fiercest in Japan. In Tokyo's Suginami ward, housewives

began circulating petitions to ban hydrogen bombs. The movement caught on

across the country. By the next year, an astounding 32 million people, or

one-third of Japan's population, had signed petitions against hydrogen

bombs.

 

Long-suppressed rage over the 1945 atomic bombings, squelched by US

occupation authorities' total ban on discussion of the bombings, had

finally erupted. The Operations Coordinating Board of the NSC recommended

that the United States contain the damage by waging a "vigorous offensive

on the non-war uses of atomic energy" and even offer to build Japan an

experimental nuclear reactor. AEC Commissioner Thomas Murray concurred,

proclaiming, "Now, while the memory of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain so

vivid, construction of such a power plant in a country like Japan would be

a dramatic and Christian gesture which could lift all of us far above the

recollection of the carnage of those cities".

 

Selling the peaceful atom in Japan. The Washington Post applauded Murray's

idea as a way to divert the mind of man from his present obsession with the

armaments race ... Many Americans are now aware ... that the dropping of

the atomic bombs on Japan was not necessary ... How better to make a

contribution to amends than by offering Japan the means for the peaceful

utilization of atomic energy. How better, indeed, to dispel the impression

in Asia that the United States regards Orientals merely as nuclear cannon

fodder!

 

Murray and Representative Sidney Yates (Democrat of Illinois) suggested

locating the first electricity-producing nuclear power plant in Hiroshima.

In early 1955, Yates introduced legislation to build a 60,000-kilowatt

generating plant there that would "make the atom an instrument for

kilowatts rather than killing". By June, the United States and Japan had

signed an agreement to work together on research and development of atomic

energy.

 

But selling this idea to the Japanese people would not be so easy. When

the US Embassy, US Information Service (USIS), and CIA launched their

vigorous campaign to promote nuclear energy in Japan, they turned to

Shoriki Matsutaro, the father of Japanese baseball, who ran the Yomiuri

Shimbun newspaper and the Nippon Television Network. After two years'

imprisonment as a Class-A war criminal, Shoriki had been released without

trial; his virulent anti-communism helped redeem him in American eyes (see

Tetsuo Arima, "Shoriki's Campaign to Promote Nuclear Power in Japan and

CIA Psychological Warfare", unpublished paper presented at Tokyo

University of Economics, November 25 2006). Shoriki's newspaper agreed to

co-sponsor the much-hyped US exhibit welcoming the atom back to Japan on

November 1 1955 with a Shinto purification ceremony in Tokyo. The US

ambassador read a message from Eisenhower declaring the exhibit "a symbol

of our countries' mutual determination that the great power of the atom

shall henceforward be dedicated to the arts of peace".

 

After six weeks in Tokyo, the exhibit traveled to Hiroshima and six other

cities. It highlighted the peaceful applications of nuclear energy for

generating electricity, treating cancer, preserving food, controlling

insects, and advancing scientific research. Military applications were

scrupulously avoided. The nuclear future looked safe, abundant, exciting,

and peaceful. The turnout exceeded expectations. In Kyoto, the USIS

reported, 155,000 people braved snow and rain to attend (page 176).

 

The steady spate of films, lectures, and articles proved enormously

successful. Officials reported, "The change in opinion on atomic energy

from 1954 to 1955 was spectacular ... atom hysteria was almost eliminated

and by the beginning of 1956, Japanese opinion was brought to popular

acceptance of the peaceful uses of atomic energy" (page 179).

 

Such exultation proved premature. Antinuclear organizing by left-wing

political parties and trade unions resonated with the public. An April

1956 USIS survey found that sixty percent of Japanese believed nuclear

energy would prove "more of a curse than a boon to mankind" and only 25

percent thought the United States was "making sincere efforts" at nuclear

disarmament. The Mainichi Newspaper blasted the campaign: "First, baptism

with radioactive rain, then a surge of shrewd commercialism in the guise

of 'atoms for peace' from abroad". The newspaper called on the Japanese

people to "calmly scrutinize what is behind the atomic energy race now

being staged by the 'white hands' in Japan".

 

But intensified USIS activities over the coming years began to bear fruit.

A classified report on the US propaganda campaign showed that in 1956,

seventy percent of Japanese equated "atom" with "harmful", but by 1958,

the number had dropped to thirty percent. Wanting their country to be a

modern scientific-industrial power and knowing Japan lacked energy

resources, the public allowed itself to be convinced that nuclear power

was safe and clean. It had forgotten the lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

In 1954, the Japanese government began funding a nuclear research program.

In December 1955, it passed the Atomic Energy Basic Law, establishing the

Japan Atomic Energy Commission (JAEC). Shoriki became minister of state

for atomic energy and first chair of the JAEC. Japan purchased its first

commercial reactor from Britain but quickly switched to US-designed light

water reactors. By mid-1957, the government had contracted to buy twenty

additional reactors.

 

In the United States, the AEC aggressively marketed nuclear power as a

magic elixir that would power vehicles, feed the hungry, light the cities,

heal the sick, and excavate the planet. Eisenhower unveiled plans for an

atomic-powered merchant ship and an atomic airplane. In July 1955, the

United States generated its first commercial nuclear power. In October

1956, Eisenhower informed the United Nations that the United States had

agreements with 37 nations to build atomic reactors and was negotiating

with fourteen more.

 

By 1958, the United States was becoming almost giddy with the prospect of

planetary excavation under the AEC's Project Plowshare, which proposed to

use peaceful nuclear blasts to build harbors, free inaccessible oil

deposits, create huge underground reservoirs, and construct a bigger and

better Panama Canal. Some wanted to alter weather patterns by exploding a

twenty-megaton bomb alongside the eye of a hurricane. One Weather Bureau

scientist proposed a plan to accelerate melting of the polar icecaps by

detonating ten-megaton bombs. Only Eisenhower's reluctance to unilaterally

break a Soviet-initiated nuclear test moratorium halted this sheer folly.

 

Still, Project Plowshare achieved its goals. Lewis Strauss, chairman of

the AEC, admitted that Plowshare was intended to "highlight the peaceful

applications of nuclear explosive devices and thereby create a climate of

world opinion that is more favorable to weapons development and tests".

 

Atoms for Peace masks nuclear weapons buildup. Under the cover of the

peaceful atom, Eisenhower pursued the most rapid and reckless nuclear

escalation in history. The US arsenal went from a little more than 1,000

nuclear weapons when he took office to approximately 22,000 when he left.

But even that figure is misleading. Procurements authorized by Eisenhower

continued into the 1960s, making him responsible for the levels reached

during the Kennedy administration - more than 30,000 nuclear weapons. In

terms of pure megatonnage, the United States amassed the equivalent of

1,360,000 Hiroshima bombs in 1961.

 

Few know that Eisenhower had delegated to theater commanders and other

specified commanders the authority to launch a nuclear attack if they

believed it mandated by circumstances and were out of communication with

the president or if the president had been incapacitated. With

Eisenhower's approval, some of these theater commanders had in turn

delegated similar authority to lower commanders (I am grateful to Dan

Ellsberg for this information). And given the fact that there were then no

locks on nuclear weapons, many more people had the actual power, if not

the authority, to launch a nuclear attack, including pilots, squadron

leaders, base commanders, and carrier commanders.

 

In 1960, Eisenhower approved the first Single Integrated Operational Plan,

which stipulated deploying US strategic nuclear forces in a simultaneous

strike against the Sino-Soviet bloc within the first 24 hours of a war.

The Joint Chiefs were subsequently asked to estimate the death toll from

such an attack. The numbers were shocking: 325 million dead in the Soviet

Union and China, another 100 million in Eastern Europe, 100 million from

fallout in Western Europe, and up to another 100 million from fallout in

countries bordering the Soviet Union - more than 600 million in total.

 

The price of denial

 

While Americans were preparing for nuclear annihilation, the Japanese were

living in their own form of denial. From its shaky beginnings in the

1950s, the Japanese nuclear power industry flourished in the 1960s and

1970s and continued to grow thereafter. Prior to the tsunami-precipitated

Fukushima accident last month, Japan had 54 functioning nuclear power

reactors that generated thirty percent of its electricity; some projected

it would not be long before Japan reached fifty percent. But the terrible

nuclear catastrophe in Fukushima has forced the Japanese to deal for a

third time with the nightmarish side of the nuclear age and the fact that

their nuclear program was born not only in the fantasy of clean, safe

power, but also in the willful forgetting of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and

the buildup of the US nuclear arsenal.

 

A reckoning with Japan's nuclear legacy is now taking place. Hopefully,

the Japanese will move forward from this tragedy to set a path toward both

green energy and repudiation of deterrence under the US nuclear umbrella,

much as they blazed a path with their Peace Constitution and

antinuclearism following the horrors of World War Two.

 

_____

 

Peter Kuznick wrote this article for The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists

(April 13 2011).

 

Peter Kuznick is associate professor of history at American University and

director of the Nuclear Studies Institute. Kuznick founded the Committee

for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy and

co-founded the Nuclear Education Project. He is the author of Beyond the

Laboratory: Scientists as Political Activists in 1930s America (1987),

co-editor of Rethinking Cold War Culture (2001), and co-author of

Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and

American Perspectives (2010). Currently, he is co-authoring a twelve-part

documentary film series and book with Oliver Stone titled The Forgotten

History of the United States, which is scheduled to air on Showtime in

November.

 

Recommended citation: Yuki Tanaka and Peter Kuznick, Japan, the Atomic

Bomb, and the "Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Power", The Asia-Pacific Journal

Volume 9, Issue 18 Number 1 (May 02 2011).

 

http://www.japanfocus.org/articles/print_article/3521

 

 

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