ZGram - 8/6/2002 - "Lessons of Hiroshima"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

August 6, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

The Holocaust the West gave to Japan:

[START]

Lessons of Hiroshima

Using nuclear bombs on Japan was a political, not military, decision

Kevin Black

IT HAS BEEN observed so often that truth is the first casualty of war 
that it is now a banal remark rather than an insightful critical 
comment. However, of greater consequence than the death of truth is 
the surrender of critical thinking.

Golden anniversaries of crucial events are often used to proclaim the 
lessons learned from the past. But if history was never truly 
understood because it was purposefully misrepresented, exactly what 
lessons have we learned?

Deeply entrenched and culturally significant historical 
misrepresentations are very difficult to dispel within the lifetime 
of those responsible for the event. Anniversaries of those events are 
occasions when critical thinking must occur. Received historical 
stories must be challenged and held up to thorough critical scrutiny.

Today is one such anniversary. Fifty-seven years ago the first of 
only two atomic bombs ever used in war was unleashed.

At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, 1945, a 22 kiloton A-bomb was dropped in the 
commercial heart of a then unknown city: Hiroshima. Fifty thousand 
people died in the first few moments of the surprise attack; within 
five years another 150,000 of the survivors were dead from injuries 
resulting from massive irradiation. A similar event happened three 
days later in Japan's only centre of Christianity: Nagasaki.

Aside from some resilient trees, a skeletal building or two, and some 
charred artefacts, these statistics and others (e.g., the heat of the 
bomb, the force of the blast) are the only objective historical 
remains in existence from those two days.

Conversely, the history we almost completely rely on to form our 
evaluations and understandings of the events of Hiroshima and 
Nagasaki are the subjective stories from both North America and Japan.

However, we have been consistently hampered in our understanding of 
these apocalyptic events for two reasons: The first is a result of 
our basic human inability to describe experiences that are so far 
beyond our everyday reality as to be inexplicable.

Even the hibakusha, or A-bomb survivors, experienced this difficulty.

The second reason for our near universal misunderstanding of the twin 
nuclear holocausts stems from an equally human, but more socially 
harmful motivation. We have been collectively blocked from a critical 
understanding of the A-bombings because of a lack of public criticism 
in the face of a powerful and purposeful historical misrepresentation 
that began with President Harry Truman in the years following 1945 
and is only ending now, albeit very slowly.

The ongoing declassification of U.S. government documents and 
officials' diaries have fairly recently revealed evidence that the 
history lessons that we were taught after the end of the Pacific War 
were false. To wit:

*

The Joint Chiefs of Staff and every other high military official, as 
well as all Truman's key advisers, save one, were against the use of 
the A-bombs against the Japanese. Many were particularly concerned 
about the impact to America's moral stature for using bombs that they 
considered barbaric, especially upon a nation that they knew was 
beaten. After all, the U.S. military had already gained complete 
domination of Japanese airspace and waterways. They were simply 
waiting for the terms of surrender to be formulated between the U.S. 
and Japanese governments.

*

Truman repeatedly delayed acceptance of the Japanese government's 
conditional surrender attempts until after both types of A-bomb had 
been used.

*

Truman's physical target for the A-bombs were the Japanese, but the 
political target was his ally, but ideological opposite, Joseph 
Stalin.

*

Hiroshima's city centre was targeted because its high population and 
building density would maximally display to the Soviets the killing 
and destructive power of America's new weapon.

*

The deciding factors for the Japanese government's capitulation were 
the entry of the Soviet Union into the Pacific War coupled with 
America's post-bombing acceptance of conditional surrender.

*

The story of a million American lives (and many more Japanese lives) 
saved by the A-bombs was a complete fabrication designed to eliminate 
public criticism of the president's decision.

Thus, the twin destructive forces of "Fat Man" and "Little Boy" were 
of political, but not military, utility. In other words, the nuclear 
holocausts were used for the purpose of "atomic diplomacy" with the 
Soviets rather than to bring a swift end to the war.

This is a completely different - yet more accurate and fully 
developed - story than the one that we have received for the previous 
50 years.

Since we know that truth is a casualty to war, we must understand 
that our public history lessons are sometimes false.

The lesson of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that we must all be vigilant 
regarding the official stories promoted by government leaders and 
officials, especially during and after times of war.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Black is a clinical psychologist who has lived and worked in Hiroshima.

=====

( Source:  
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1026143933601Aug. 
6, 01:00 EDT )