An awful act in a just cause

SIXTY years ago today, humanity stole the thunder of the gods by instantaneously wiping life from the face of the earth in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

On August 6, 1945, a single US Air Force bomber unleashed an apocalypse on the people of Hiroshima. About 70,000 died quickly from the blast or fire or more slowly as their bodies rotted from burns and radiation sickness. Three days later Nagasaki was incinerated, with similar casualties. The two bombings completed the sufferings of World War II. But the introduction of atomic weapons did more than give humans the power to enact our own eradication on a scale that is still hard to comprehend. It generated an argument that rages still: whether the use of such extreme force was justified against a largely civilian population. It created a debate over how far any nation with access to the ultimate weapon of mass destruction can go in defending itself and how far any aggressor state, or individual in the age of terror, in possession of nuclear weapons should be appeased.

Certainly using the bomb saved far more lives - of troops on both sides and of Japanese civilians - than it took. While American strategic bombing had crippled Japanese industry, when the bomber Enola Gay flew high over Hiroshima on August 6 there were no signs that the Japanese people were ready to turn on their military masters. Despite the defeat in detail of their armies and the effective destruction of their fleets, Japan's military dictators expected the population to fight to the death against an invasion. Every indication available to Allied intelligence was that the order would be obeyed. To end the war in Asia, the US faced the prospect of fighting all the way to Tokyo at the cost of tens of thousands of American dead, and hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of mainly civilian Japanese casualties. Unless the US used the new atomic weapon.

But what has rightly obsessed humanity since August 1945 is the previously unimaginable capacity to kill that the two attacking aircraft unleashed. While the scale of the slaughter in Hiroshima did not dwarf the death and damage already imposed by Allied bombing raids that destroyed Hamburg, Dresden and Tokyo by fire, what set the destruction at an entirely new order of magnitude was the fact it was caused by a single aircraft carrying one bomb. All the postwar arguments against using the bomb were present in 1945. Japan was so close to defeat that the attack was unnecessary. The Japanese would be convinced to surrender if a bomb was exploded over Tokyo Bay.

Such arguments were judged wrong then and they are wrong now. The brutal reality was that the Japanese government was not convinced to give up easily. Any regime that cared at all for its people would have surrendered immediately after Hiroshima, but it took a second attack before Japan's rulers realised they were powerless to resist the new weapon. US president Harry S.Truman, in office for a bare three months since the death of Franklin D.Roosevelt, was an astute, morally courageous politician. He knew what he was doing in August 1945 when he authorised the attacks and on all the historical evidence he made a strategically sensible, morally defensible decision.

Nor should the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki be signalled out as some unique act of infamy. Our 13-part series on the conflict, which begins today in The Weekend Australian, demonstrates that the worst of the war was not the way it ended. To elevate the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki above all others on any monument to misery ignores the obvious. The entire conflict was so appalling it is beyond the understanding of those who did not suffer through it.

The horror of the only two atomic attacks to date was matched by the Holocaust, the insensate slaughter on the European Eastern Front and the death of more than 50 million civilians, soldiers, airmen and sailors, on every ocean and all continents. And in their moral impact the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki broke no new ground. From 1942 the Allied air forces in Europe had put cities to the torch, trying to burn or blow up Germany's civilian infrastructure and cripple the people's willingness to toil in the ruins. The same style of aerial offensive was used by the US, as soon as Japan's cities were in range.

But as nuclear weapons proliferated in the 45 years after the war, the military and moral sense of the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, compared with the equally awful but less lethal impact of other weapons, was quickly lost among arguments that used the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as metaphors for the nuclear stand-off between the US and the Soviet Union. Fearful people in the postwar democracies who thought the West could secure peace by bending to the will of the communist enemy said the US was wrong to have used the bomb in 1945, just as it was wrong to deploy strategic and tactical nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet Union from seeking to expand its empire in Europe. In the decades of mutually assured destruction, a willingness to fold in the face of Soviet bluff and bluster was understandable - but wrong. The Cold War was won, like World War II, when the democracies demonstrated they would not buckle to bullies.

Truman showed the way. His decision to use the bomb signalled the start of an era when citizens of democracies were forced to confront perhaps the ultimate moral question: what suffering will we inflict and suffer in defence of justice and freedom? His legacy has endured, and we should celebrate him for it. It is a question that we still need urgently to answer as we face the real, some suggest inevitable danger, that one day terrorists will use a nuclear weapon. There is no obvious answer as to how we can defeat or contain the terror threat. But the atrocities committed over a decade by al-Qa'ida and its evil ilk make it a debate we have to have. Do we seek to treat with terror, to appease Osama bin Laden and his confederates in the hope that if we feed the crocodile it may eat us last, or do we defy their awful ideas with all the accompanying risk of mass slaughter? Do we have the courage to do whatever it takes to defend our values and way of life against the latest murderous ideology?

The great generation that fought and won WWII was prepared to confront such a question, and answer it with a moral clarity not always apparent in the debate over disarmament and appeasement of the Soviets in the 50 years from 1945. Some critics have suggested the Allies' ultimatum at the 1943 Casablanca Conference, that only unconditional German surrender was acceptable, only encouraged the Nazi regime to fight on when defeat was inevitable. It is an argument that ignores how totalitarian regimes can compel the obedience of their subjects and it underestimates the endless energy of fanatics who would rather die, and kill all around them, than abandon their will to power.

The same circumstances applied in Asia. The Japanese military would not give up their power, or the authority of the emperor; they had to be beaten. In using atomic weapons Truman set the course followed by John F. Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis and Ronald Reagan when he made it plain to the Soviets that he would not flinch, even in the face of nuclear war. Truman truncated what could have been the worst campaign of WWII by using the bomb, just as Reagan, and especially Kennedy kept the Cold War peace in times of crisis.

It is easy for critics to point to the monstrous death toll on Truman's watch, in the same way Kennedy and Reagan were denounced for accepting the risk of a nuclear exchange. It is easy for faux realists to hold democracies to impossible moral standards when defending themselves against implacable enemies. It is easy for appeasers to blame the victim in the face of totalitarian aggression. But since the start of WWII there have been many occasions when the awful was the lesser of two evils and to act in defence of democracy was unavoidable. Truman had the courage to set a precedent that still applies.

The Japanese have about as good a case for victimhood with Haroshima and Nagasaki has the Nazis do when they whine about Dresden.

Considering that the Japanese slaughtered between 2 and 10 million Chinese civilians and killed more innocents in Nanking (200,000+) than BOTH atomic bombs combined, I'd say they got off lucky. http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/ww2stats.htm

SIXTY years ago today, humanity stole the thunder of the gods by instantaneously wiping life from the face of the earth in the Japanese city of Hiroshima...

The mistakes start early and continue on; the bozo who wrote this has a strong streak of stupidity coupled with a very weak grasp of history.

"...The mistakes start early and continue on; the bozo who wrote this has a strong streak of stupidity coupled with a very weak grasp of history..."

Did you by chance bother to read this article?

I think he's got a pretty good grasp of the situation.

It is easy for faux realists to hold democracies to impossible moral standards when defending themselves against implacable enemies.

The Democrats and the other leftists do this all the time in the war on terror. They seem to flaunt our own values in our faces when they sneeringly say we must not be like "them", we must hold ourselves to our own higher values. By that they usually are saying to let the terrorists off the hook as well as "See what your high and mighty values get you?" Sort of a get-back for our refusing to accept their moral equivalence.

I'd say a moderate grasp.

He talks about the 'horrors of war', mentioning everything but what the japanese contributed to the 'horrors of war' record.

Just once I'd in these columns I'd like to see mention of the rape of nanking, bataan, and the countless other atrocities committed by the japanese.

But no, every time hiroshima is mentioned, it's verboten to mention the evil behavior they engaged in.

"Certainly using the bomb saved far more lives - of troops on both sides and of Japanese civilians "

Historical fact constantly ignored by the Hate America First crowd. Cannot be repeated often enough.

The Japanese transportation network in 1945 primarily relied upon coastal shipping. Between the bombing and the sub attacks, the ability of the Japanese to feed themselves was collapsing. If we had applied the Hysteric Left's fixation on Economic Sanctions to 1945, MILLIONS of Japanese civilians would of died of starvation and disease. So when you hear the usual suspects from the Hysteric Left whining about the bomb, keep in mind THEIR solution would of resulted in one of the most barbaric acts of genocide in world history.

War is too serious and complex an issue to be left to the psuedo-intellectual posturing of the Hysteric Left

Just once I'd in these columns I'd like to see mention of the rape of nanking, bataan, and the countless other atrocities committed by the japanese.

Especially the "medical experiments" using POWS as guinea pigs to test out chemical and biological weapons. We continuously hear from the Hysteric Left how EVIL the Nazis were, funny how they seem so willing to give the Japanese a free pass on the SAME behavior.

You know, I find much of the Hysteric Left frankly racists. There seems to be this attitude in the Modern Left "Well, you cannot expect (insert minority group here) to act like civilized peoples. But those NAZIS! They were good White Europeans! How dare they act like..(insert derogatory racial epitaph here. Frankly, the more I observe the Hysteric Left in action, the more I come to agree with those Freepers who categories it as a mental illness

"The Democrats and the other leftists do this all the time in the war on terror. They seem to flaunt our own values in our faces when they sneeringly say we must not be like "them", we must hold ourselves to our own higher values. By that they usually are saying to let the terrorists off the hook as well as "See what your high and mighty values get you?" Sort of a get-back for our refusing to accept their moral equivalence."

I find much of the Hysteric Left attitudes frankly racist. There seems to be this attitude in the Modern Left "Well, you cannot expect (insert minority group here) to act like civilized peoples. But those NAZIS! They were good White Europeans! How dare they act like..(insert derogatory racial epitaph here." Frankly, the more I observe the Hysteric Left in action, the more I come to agree with those Freepers who categories Political Leftism as a mental illness

The mistakes start early and continue on; the bozo who wrote this has a strong streak of stupidity coupled with a very weak grasp of history.

Did you read the rest of the article, perchance? What are the mistakes "carried on"?

I will confess that the opening sentence put me quite on edge and I was ready to lash out too. I changed my mind upon reading it through.

I just returned from an early screening of "The Great Raid". Absolute great movie!!!!

Having read "Ghost Soldiers", I can say that they did as good a job of keeping the movie true to the reality of the story as is possible under the usual cinematic limitations.

Great use of historical footage, and not really any punches pulled on the brutality of the Japanese to both the American POW's and the Filipino population.

Anyway, when it was over, I remarked "That's why I'll never own a Japanese car".

The guy in the next aisle remarked "Well, I work on them for a living, and they're better cars than we make, even if we did teach them how to do it. Besides, we can't blame them now for what they did then".

I replied, "As long as I can remember my father and my uncle, and their friends (many of whom were at Bataan, and in the Japanese camps), I'll never own a Jap car, and always try to buy American even if it costs more".

Now, I understand that Japan is even helping us in Iraq and all, but that doesn't mean we should apologize for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We didn't win WWII by killing Japanese and German Soldiers. As harsh as it is, we won by killing large groups of their own people in their own homes, and destroying their industrial capabilities.

Who's asking the Japanese to apologize for the outright murders of several million civilians in China, Vietnam, Burma, the Philippines, etc....? Hmmm....I guess that means no-one.

But hey, maybe my perspective is a bit skewed since I was born and raised in Los Alamos, and worked at LANL for 15 years.

Casualty avoidance is often cited for dropping the atomic bombs. People extrapolate from 48,000 American and 230,000 Japanese losses at Okinawa to a half million American and millions of Japanese casualties for the mainland invasion. The estimate could have been vastly understated because Japan, at 374,000 mountainous square miles, mathematically enables over 500 defensive redoubts comparable to that general Ushijima used to inflict most Okinawa losses. The War Faction adopted the motto of “100 million Japanese deaths” in planning the final mainland battles. Besides kamikazes, redeployed Kwantung divisions, and bamboo spears for civilians, the allies faced biological warfare. Occupation searchers uncovered large stockpiles of viruses, spirochetes, and fungus spores throughout rural Japan. One delivery plan encouraged Japanese to infect themselves and then surrender.

I have not seen mentioned the critical role kokaitai played in surrender. Any prominent Japanese lived out this spiritual combination of Emperor, people, land, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. Hirohito decided in January 1944 to appoint a Peace Faction, but he and his advisors debated twenty months through continuous defeats and 1.3 million Japanese deaths before the bombs removed the “final battles” argument, allowing the War Faction to relent, Hirohito to assume his new roll, and no one to lose face. They remained within the fabric of Japanese of all eras who had sacrificed themselves for Emperor and Empire. Kokaitai is too compelling, oppressive and fulfilling for Westerners to imagine the agony of conscience these men confronted juxtaposed to meetings in a burning Tokyo.

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