[Mb-civic] The Myths of Hiroshima

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

The Myths of Hiroshima
LA Times Op-Ed
August 5, 2005

By Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, KAI BIRD and MARTIN J. SHERWIN are
coauthors of "American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert
Oppenheimer," published earlier this year by Knopf.


SIXTY YEARS ago tomorrow, an atomic bomb was dropped without warning on
the center of the Japanese city of Hiroshima. One hundred and forty
thousand people were killed, more than 95% of them women and children and
other noncombatants. At least half of the victims died of radiation
poisoning over the next few months. Three days after Hiroshima was
obliterated, the city of Nagasaki suffered a similar fate.

The magnitude of death was enormous, but on Aug. 14, 1945 - just five days
after the Nagasaki bombing - Radio Tokyo announced that the Japanese
emperor had accepted the U.S. terms for surrender. To many Americans at
the time, and still for many today, it seemed clear that the bomb had
ended the war, even "saving" a million lives that might have been lost if
the U.S. had been required to invade mainland Japan.


This powerful narrative took root quickly and is now deeply embedded in
our historical sense of who we are as a nation. A decade ago, on the 50th
anniversary, this narrative was reinforced in an exhibit at the
Smithsonian Institution on the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the first
bomb. The exhibit, which had been the subject of a bruising political
battle, presented nearly 4 million Americans with an officially sanctioned
view of the atomic bombings that again portrayed them as a necessary act
in a just war.

But although patriotically correct, the exhibit and the narrative on which
it was based were historically inaccurate. For one thing, the Smithsonian
downplayed the casualties, saying only that the bombs "caused many tens of
thousands of deaths" and that Hiroshima was "a definite military target."

Americans were also told that use of the bombs "led to the immediate
surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the
Japanese home islands." But it's not that straightforward. As Tsuyoshi
Hasegawa has shown definitively in his new book, "Racing the Enemy" - and
many other historians have long argued - it was the Soviet Union's entry
into the Pacific war on Aug. 8, two days after the Hiroshima bombing, that
provided the final "shock" that led to Japan's capitulation.

The Enola Gay exhibit also repeated such outright lies as the assertion
that "special leaflets were dropped on Japanese cities" warning civilians
to evacuate. The fact is that atomic bomb warning leaflets were dropped on
Japanese cities, but only after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been destroyed.

The hard truth is that the atomic bombings were unnecessary. A million
lives were not saved. Indeed, McGeorge Bundy, the man who first
popularized this figure, later confessed that he had pulled it out of thin
air in order to justify the bombings in a 1947 Harper's magazine essay he
had ghostwritten for Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson.

The bomb was dropped, as J. Robert Oppenheimer, scientific director of the
Manhattan Project, said in November 1945, on "an essentially defeated
enemy." President Truman and his closest advisor, Secretary of State James
Byrnes, quite plainly used it primarily to prevent the Soviets from
sharing in the occupation of Japan. And they used it on Aug. 6 even though
they had agreed among themselves as they returned home from the Potsdam
Conference on Aug. 3 that the Japanese were looking for peace.

These unpleasant historical facts were censored from the 1995 Smithsonian
exhibit, an action that should trouble every American. When a government
substitutes an officially sanctioned view for publicly debated history,
democracy is diminished.

Today, in the post-9/11 era, it is critically important that the U.S. face
the truth about the atomic bomb. For one thing, the myths surrounding
Hiroshima have made it possible for our defense establishment to argue
that atomic bombs are legitimate weapons that belong in a democracy's
arsenal. But if, as Oppenheimer said, "they are weapons of aggression, of
surprise and of terror," how can a democracy rely on such weapons?

Oppenheimer understood very soon after Hiroshima that these weapons would
ultimately threaten our very survival.

Presciently, he even warned us against what is now our worst national
nightmare - and Osama bin Laden's frequently voiced dream - an atomic
suitcase bomb smuggled into an American city: "Of course it could be
done," Oppenheimer told a Senate committee, "and people could destroy New
York."

Ironically, Hiroshima's myths are now motivating our enemies to attack us
with the very weapon we invented. Bin Laden repeatedly refers to Hiroshima
in his rambling speeches. It was, he believes, the atomic bombings that
shocked the Japanese imperial government into an early surrender - and, he
says, he is planning an atomic attack on the U.S. that will similarly
shock us into retreating from the Mideast.

Finally, Hiroshima's myths have gradually given rise to an American
unilateralism born of atomic arrogance.

Oppenheimer warned against this "sleazy sense of omnipotence." He observed
that "if you approach the problem and say, 'We know what is right and we
would like to use the atomic bomb to persuade you to agree with us,' then
you are in a very weak position and you will not succeed.. You will find
yourselves attempting by force of arms to prevent a disaster."


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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
   ---   George Orwell


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