Posted on 04/12/2016 3:49:05 PM PDT by Kaslin
When John Kerry toured the Hiroshima Peace Memorial and Museum this week before meeting foreign ministers at the G-7 Summit, Reuters reports that he had witnessed “haunting displays [of] photographs of badly burned victims, the tattered and stained clothes they wore and statues depicting them with flesh melting from their limbs.”
“It is a stunning display. It is a gut-wrenching display,” explained Kerry. “It is a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries … to create and pursue a world free from nuclear weapons.”
Iran exempted, of course.
But, really, is this the lesson of Hiroshima? That those in public life have an obligation to do away with nuclear weapons? A lot of people might argue that existence of those weapons have saved lives from broader world conflicts and conventional warfare. That includes ending the Second World War sooner.
Yesterday, The Washington Post dutifully reported that, “In Hiroshima, Kerry won’t apologize for atomic bombs dropped on Japan.” Technically, he didn’t. What we witnessed was one of the administration’s inverted non-apology apologies.
Barack Obama will also travel to Japan next month for the G-7. There’s a lot of speculation he will visit Hiroshima and offer some sort of apology. (If we’re to believe WikiLeaks, U.S. officials have been toying with the idea of having Obama say sorry for Hiroshima for a while now. And it comports well with his history.)
It would not be a great leap for Obama. Having a high-ranking American official visit the museum already lends credence to the Japanese notion that the U.S. bombing was gratuitous. On top of this, Kerry blames “nuclear weapons” — rather than Japan’s fanaticism and nihilism — for Hiroshima. So we’re on our way.
If the Obama administration is intent on historical score-keeping there’s plenty to talk about. Japan aligned itself with one of the great murderers of the 20th century (though it needed no help initiating genocide) and launched numerous invasions and a war that cost the U.S. hundreds of thousands of lives and billions in treasure, both fighting Japan and helping it create a stable, liberal state after the war.
It’s not like the Japanese have ever truly apologized for the butchery, mass rape, destruction, and aggression that made Hiroshima a reality. Has any Japanese foreign or prime minister strolled through the gut-wrenching exhibit about the Nanking massacre? The first time any Japanese official apologized for the Bataan Death March was 2009 — and then only an ambassador.
Of course, revisiting Japan’s 70-year-old offenses at a G-7 Summit would be ridiculous and counterproductive. As is the compunction of Obama’s officials to “acknowledge” or apologize for the alleged sins and moral deficiencies of the U.S. every time they get on an international flight — a grating habit since 2009.
After all, Kerry could have said that Hiroshima was “a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries to stop extremist regimes like Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.” Or he might have said Hiroshima was “a reminder of the depth of the obligation every one of us in public life carries to ensure that we are well prepared for the next force that threatens peace.”
Instead our motto the past eight years has been, “Strength Through Moral Equivalence.”
In Strasbourg, France, President Obama, who would later fail to show up in Paris with the rest of the free world’s leaders to make a statement about Islamism, said, “there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” towards Europe. This same president pays respect to the contemptible Saudi Arabian monarch while being dismissive — even derisive — of the only liberal nation in the Middle East, talks to the Muslim world about American colonialism as if it were a real thing.
American officials can acknowledge the catastrophe of war and the destructive capability of nuclear weapons — even in the context of World War II warfare, the instantaneous carnage of the atom bomb was especially horrifying — without visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial or apologizing. Surely those in the fire-bombings of Dresden (or even Tokyo, for that matter) saw thousands of badly burned victims, in tattered clothes with skin melting from their limbs. It’s going to be a long apology tour if we take this route.
Now, it’s a shame evil regimes start world wars that other nations are forced to win. But without the use of atomic weapons, World War II would likely have been prolonged. I realize historians debate how many Americans would have been saved, but at the very least, Truman’s intention was not to murder civilians indiscriminately, but to end the war in the Pacific.
Most reasonable people, even those who believe a war is wrong, mishandled, or fought poorly, can probably concede that since the start of the 20th century, the U.S. does not enter into conflict with an intent to steal oil or exact revenge on civilians or to drop atom bombs for kicks. We’re far more inclined to fight wars to try to create democracies or spread freedom — however misguided and botched those efforts are sometimes. And post-war Japan is proof that Americans, unlike most other places around the world, don’t really hold grudges. So, though we are imperfect, we are not equally culpable. Not even close.
Nice summation of ww2 in the Pacific.
The way they mishandle the GWOT there will be no need of an “American apology tour”....
...because there will likely no longer be an America.
We were damn lucky that Hirohito wasn’t offed before he made his broadcast.
I think there were many like us, who had their fathers and otherwise wouldn’t have. My Dad was in an advanced Gunnery school at Quantico, I think, in early 1945 - my mother and I were with him but at 5 years old, I never understood where I was. It was preparation for the invasion and I do know my mother didn’t expect him to survive it. But after VJ Day he came home. He lived to 77, but he was 33 on VJ Day.
Excuse me for “butting in”; I seldom see anyone with a like moment of history.
Bump! Yes, let us thank God.
Term limits bump, oh yeah. 4-6 years is plenty.
Now that the generation that fought WW II is about gone these creatures that luxuriate in their self-created moralities have way too much prominence. However, each year in August I have several letters I send to papers about dropping the bombs and a 2,000 word essay I post to Free Republic. I think this article deserves mention of the Japanese cultural imperative that made dropping the atomic bombs obligatory.
Japanese Intransigence Provoked the Atomic Bombs
The Kokutai principle was critical to surrender. Any influential Japanese lived within a spiritual fabric of Emperor, citizen, land, Bushido, ancestral spirits, government, and Shinto religion. In subjection to this spiritual and political authority, commoners forfeited individuality for a collective soul defining Japan. As soldiers or civilian militia they awaited the Empire’s ruling oligarchy decrees. With such national unity committed to waging total war, the atomic bombs were no longer indiscriminate or disproportional.
By January 1944 Emperor Hirohito foresaw the probability of defeat and appointed a Peace Faction. However, he and his government conducted political kabuki through twenty months of continuous defeats, fire bombings of over 60 cities, looming starvation, and 1.3 million additional Japanese deaths.
At impasse the two atomic bombs allowed Hirohito, the Son of Heaven, to speak the Voice of the Crane in the sweltering, underground bunker. The bombs were regarded as a dramatic force of nature; equivalent to an earthquake or typhoon against which human arguments collapsed. Only submission to such a catastrophe could be proportional to the disgrace of surrender following 2,600 years of martial invincibility.
Only Hirohito could submit, because he held the heaven created Imperial throne. He would bear the unbearable, conclude the war, and transform the nation. The War Faction could now relent and no one would lose face. All remained within the fabric of Japanese from all eras who had sacrificed for Emperor and Empire. Only then did Japan contact Swiss and Swedish foreign offices to commence the torturous negotiations leading to actual surrender.
Partial bibliography:
Hell to Pay, D. M. Giangreco
Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, David Bergamni
Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring, Gordon Prange
The Secret Surrender, Allen Dulles
Hirohito, Edward Behr
A quote by film director Akira Kurosawa illustrates the transformation of that generation of Japanese people, who before were resigned to the slogan “Honorable Death of a Hundred Million”.
“When I walked the same route back to my home (after the Emperor’s broadcast), the scene was entirely different. The people in the shopping street were bustling about with cheerful faces as if preparing for a festival the next day. If the Emperor had made such a call (to follow the above slogan) those people would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self-sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. We were accustomed to this teaching and had never thought to question it….In wartime we were like deaf-mutes.”
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“Honorable Death of a Hundred Million”.
Yup. Everybody knew this and was dreading a Normandy-like assault.
The A-bomb saved millions of lives.
Kerry should commit hari-kari.
I have worked with Japanese, lived with them, learned to speak a bit of their language, and admire many things about them. I half jokingly tell people that the three main East Asian ethnicities can be compared with three classes of Star Trek aliens. The Japanese are Vulcans (except when they’re drunk), the Chinese are Ferengi, and Koreans are Klingons. All three have ways of thinking (”kangai katawa” in Japanese) that are very different from ours. But the Japanese are so different that they almost qualify as a separate species of human. And what’s worse, they know it.
Japanese when they are drunk. I served on a ship homeported in Japan and had to LOL when you mentioned that.
When my little brother married a Taiwanese woman, my Dad apologized to her for bombing her country.
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