U.S. Sends Envoy to Hiroshima for First Time

I've been to the Hiroshima Peace Museum

Very sobering place.  Contrary to the right-wing spin, the whole first half of the exhibit is about Imperial Japan and their aggression--for which it should also apologize.

Some years back the Enola Gay went to the Smithsonian.  The display was originally to acknowledge that there was controversy around whether the bomb should have been used--at the time and since.  Seems fair enough, being a fact and all.

Rightwingers screamed, the Smithsonian backed down.

The US also has some issues with dealing fairly with historical events.

WW2 was a tragic event, and the War in the Pacific was horrific and very deadly.   I think we had to fight it and I am not second guessing Truman's difficult decision, but history should be told as fairly as possible.  Japan was the aggressor and it needs to be clear on that.  Similarly, the US should be able to acknowledge that the use of this weapon was controversial, then and remains so now.  To whitewash that is also a historical transgression.

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." JR Oppenheimer "Father of the Bomb" quoting the Bhagavad Gita on the occasion of the Trinity Test, NM

 

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by: Teeter @ Fri Aug 06, 2010 at 21:04:04 PM UTC

Some Voices from the Past

~~~DWIGHT EISENHOWER
"...in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...the Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent.

"During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

"...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

~~~ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)
"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

"The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

~~~HERBERT HOOVER
On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: "I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."

quoted from Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635.

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs."

- quoted by Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

Hoover biographer Richard Norton Smith has written: "Use of the bomb had besmirched America's reputation, he [Hoover] told friends. It ought to have been described in graphic terms before being flung out into the sky over Japan."

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 349-350.

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351.

~~~GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR
MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled. He knew that the Japanese would never renounce their emperor, and that without him an orderly transition to peace would be impossible anyhow, because his people would never submit to Allied occupation unless he ordered it. Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

~~~BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE
(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)
"...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs."

Quoted in Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.

More Here:

http://www.doug-long.com/quote...

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. "

John Kenneth Galbraith

1906

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by: Mike Collins @ Fri Aug 06, 2010 at 21:18:47 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I am not a "rightwinger."

And though I have been known to scream, my reaction to the proposed Enola Gay exhibit you mention was more of righteous anger.

Neither was Dr,  I. Michael Heyman, appointed Smithsonian Secretary to make it intelligent.  I became friendly with him after that- though I knew him before and had been to his house in Berkeley.

Use of the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was and remains controversial. Winning, however, was not.

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by: MADCO @ Sat Aug 07, 2010 at 03:58:32 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

It would have been good/mature of us to acknowledge the controversy.

Of course we needed to win the war.  The island battles that led up to what would have been the invasion of Japan were horrific.

As far as atrocities--setting aside these bombings--There are probably a few things that the US has yet to apologize for as well.

'As long as the grass grows and the water runs...'

 

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by: Teeter @ Sat Aug 07, 2010 at 12:23:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

For what it's worth,

.
I don't think the Japanese have apologized for Nanking, which killed more than Hiroshima + Nagasaki + Tokyo.
I don't think they apologized for "comfort women," which touched almost every Korean family.  

We need a civilized way to deal with such things, or we could always turn into Taliban vs. Northern Alliance.
.

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by: Barron X @ Sat Aug 07, 2010 at 06:13:11 AM UTC

Apologize?

I really don't know.  I for one don't value the apologies of governments.  And, words can't redress the unredressable.

I am one who believes that in war there are no winners, that everyone loses.

So, mark me as undecided.  (Kind of suits my unaffiliated, always more questions than answers, unable to ever make up his f**king mind about anything persona.)

I do recommend however, if you have never seen it, get a copy of the documentary White Light/Black Rain:  The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  2007

After watching this powerful movie, you will never be able to listen to someone mouth the awful statement -- "I think that we should bomb [insert some hated country] back into the stone age" -- without wanting to vigorously object.  That, in my opinion, will make you a better person.

Don't believe everything you think.

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by: Diogenesdemar @ Sat Aug 07, 2010 at 06:56:12 AM UTC

Nice comment

"The graveyards of the world are filled with indispensable men."
- Charles deGaulle

"It's hard to balance on a woman's head."  - sxp151

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by: State Line @ Sat Aug 07, 2010 at 12:16:51 PM UTC

[ Parent ]