Today is August 6, 2010–the 65th anniversary of the day we loosed the most horrific weapon in human history upon the civilians of Hiroshima. In honor of the sad anniversary, The Japan Times printed an article from a local doctor about the effects the bomb continues to have down to the present. It’s hard to believe, but there’s still 240,000 survivors living today and this doctor has treated plenty of them. Money quote:
Among the survivors, various types of malignant tumors developed over time because of their exposure to atomic radiation. The occurrence of leukemia started to increase three years after the bombing, thyroid gland cancer eight years after, breast and lung cancer 10 years after, and stomach and colon cancers 15 years after.
So far, it has been confirmed that a total of 13 different types of cancer have clearly increased among survivors. Recently, there have been cases of survivors contracting a second or third type of cancer. For example, one person who was exposed to radiation at a point 410 meters from ground zero at age 11 developed thyroid cancer at 43, bowel cancer at 62 and a brain tumor at 67.
And these people were civilians. Some of them weren’t even born yet, but were still able to soak up nuclear nasties in the womb. I understand that World War II was a tremendously destructive war and an orgy of death. It’s still hard to believe that we would drop such a destructive device on so many innocents. Granted, the atomic bombing was just the culmination of a war-long process of conventionally bombing civilian areas and attacking them with rockets, but it all looks wrong in hindsight. Rather than test a bomb off the coast of Japan and demonstrate our capabilities, we vaporized a bunch of innocent people and started time-delayed death-from-cancer fuses on a ton more.
Much as Einstein and a host of humanists and pacifists have wished ever since the bomb was used that we could make it go away, that genie isn’t going back in the bottle. The best we can do is aggressively pursue disarmament talks with the other nuclear powers. The current START proposal with Russia is at least a step in the right direction, but it leaves our nuclear arsenal far too large and encourages us to get rid of old nukes whilst replacing them with newer, more complex, deadlier ones. What we really need is a more successful repeat of Gorbachev and Reagan’s Reykjavik Summit, where we have since learned the two most powerful world leaders seriously discussed getting rid of all nukes.
Like the newest story of civilian deaths in Afghanistan tells us, we are doing fine at killing innocent people without nuclear weapons. Take the nuclear menace away from us before we have the opportunity to harm an entire civilian population again. In the meantime, I apologize to the people of Japan for what we did in 1945.
There is an interesting show recently on one of the History channels, detailing the various “D Days” on the Pacific invasions that have largely been ignored. It covers the kamikazes, the fanatic defenders on the various Pacific Islands which were retaken one-by-one, etc. It includes interviews with soldiers/sailors/Marines involved in training and planning for the invasion of the Japanese home islands which ultimately never occurred. The scale of that invasion and the forces involved would have dwarfed the Normandy invasion. The anticipated casualties, among the invasion forces, the civilian population, and the Japanese defense forces were mind-boggling.
Remember that it took TWO atomic bombs before the Japanese surrender. Perhaps nothing less than what occurred was necessary to bring the Japanese surrender. No telling how many lives were saved by Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bombs. Were the results sad and horrific? Yes. Was it a wrong decision? Not as simple as it might appear looking back from 2010.
Hey M:
what is this “I apologize to Japan”?
don’t you really want to say you empathise?
or you share concern for their wellbeing?
or you are saddened by the event and the long lasting result?
how do you feel about pearl harbor?
war creates lots of those hobsons choices.
we did good things and bad and we attacked and were attacked. the weapon of choice is not the issue it is that we were at war at all.
don’t apologize just convince our leaders to stop the warring.
maybe you can convince China to dismantle its new carrier buster it looks like a prescription for horrible outcomes.
Bo
Tom Paine,
I would’ve agreed with your comments entirely until rather recently. The war in the Pacific was a mess and there’s very little evidence to suggest Japan would’ve backed down easily. Plenty of soldiers would’ve killed each other and given the imprecise nature of war at that time, plenty of civilians would have died, too. You’re right.
It’s a hard choice to make even now in 2010, harder still in 1945. I just know that I wouldn’t have been able to drop the bomb. At least civilians killed in an invasion would have a chance to escape or surrender. Dropping the bomb took the choice away from them in an attempt to use their incinerated bodies as props in a struggle to convince the Japanese leadership to surrender.
I couldn’t live with that blood on my hands.
Bo,
Apologizing, empathizing, feeling concern and sadness–these are not mutually exclusive outcomes. I feel some part of all of them.
The fact that we were the victims of some horrific tragedies in the war does not give us the right to inflict tragedies of a similar magnitude on others. America is supposed to be a “city upon a hill,” a country that values human rights and peace like none had done before us. We should not lower ourselves to the level of our opponents. Right and wrong do not suddenly change because of the circumstances.
I will agree with you that convincing current leaders to end wars is much more important than issuing emotionally self-gratifying apologies two generations removed from any sense of immediacy. Time for me to reinvest my efforts in the left-right anti-war coalition!