The Moral Lesson of Hiroshima

On August 6, 1945 the American Air Force incinerated Hiroshima, Japan with an atomic bomb. On August 9 Nagasaki was obliterated. The fireballs killed some 175,000 people. They followed months of horror, when American airplanes firebombed civilians and reduced cities to rubble. Facing extermination, the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. The invasion of Japan was cancelled, and countless American lives were saved. The Japanese accepted military occupation, embraced a constitutional government, and renounced war permanently. The effects were so beneficent, so wide-ranging and so long-term, that the bombings must be ranked among the most moral acts ever committed.

The bombings have been called many things-but moral? The purpose of morality, wrote Ayn Rand, is not to suffer and die, but to prosper and live.

The answer begins with Japanese culture. World War II in the Pacific was launched by a nation that esteemed everything hostile to human life.

Japan's religious-political philosophy held the emperor as a god, subordinated the individual to the state, elevated ritual over rational thought, and adopted suicide as a path to honor. This was truly a Morality of Death. It had gripped Japanese society for three generations. Japan's war with Russia had ended in 1905 with a negotiated treaty, which left Japan's militaristic culture intact. The motivations for war were emboldened, and the next generation broke the treaty by attacking Manchuria in 1931 (which was not caused by the oil embargo of 1941).

It was after Japan attacked America that America waged war against Japan-a proper moral response to the violence Japan had initiated. Despite three and a half years of slaughter, surrender was not at hand in mid-1945. Over six million Japanese were still in Asia. Some 12,000 Americans had died on Okinawa alone. Many Japanese leaders hoped to kill enough Americans during an invasion to convince them that the cost was too high. A relentless "Die for the Emperor" propaganda campaign had motivated many Japanese civilians to fight to the death. Volunteers lined up for kamikaze "Divine Wind" suicide missions. Hope of victory kept the Japanese cause alive, until hopeless prostration before American air attacks made the abject renunciation of all war the only alternative to suicide. The Japanese had to choose between the morality of death, and the morality of life.

The bombings marked America's total victory over a militaristic culture that had murdered millions. To return an entire nation to morality, the Japanese had to be shown the literal meaning of the war they had waged against others. The abstraction "war," the propaganda of their leaders, their twisted samurai "honor," their desire to die for the emperor-all of it had to be given concrete form, and thrown in their faces. This is what firebombing Japanese cities accomplished. It showed the Japanese that "this"-point to burning buildings, screaming children scarred unmercifully, piles of corpses, the promise of starvation-"this is what you have done to others. Now it has come for you. Give it up, or die." This was the only way to show them the true nature of their philosophy, and to beat the truth of the defeat into them.

Yes, Japan was beaten in July of 1945-but had not surrendered. A defeat is a fact; an aggressor's ability to fight effectively is destroyed.

Surrender is a decision, by the political leadership and the dominant voices in the culture, to recognize the fact of defeat. Surrender is an admission of impotence, the collapse of all hope for victory, and the permanent renunciation of aggression. Such recognition of reality is the first step towards a return to morality. Under the shock of defeat, a stunned silence results. Military officers no longer plan for victory; women no longer bear children for the Reich; young boys no longer play samurai and dream of dying for the emperor-children no longer memorize sword verses from the Koran and pledge themselves to jihad.

To achieve this, the victor must be intransigent. He does not accept terms; he demands prostrate surrender, or death, for everyone if necessary.

Had the United States negotiated in 1945, Japanese troops would have returned to a homeland free of foreign control, met by civilians who had not confronted defeat, under the same leaders who had taken them to war. A negotiated peace would have failed to discredit the ideology of war, and would have left the motivations for the next war intact. We might have fought the Japanese Empire again, twenty years later. Fortunately, the Americans were in no mind to compromise.

President Truman demonstrated his willingness to bomb the Japanese out of existence if they did not surrender. The Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945 is stark: "The result of the futile and senseless German resistance to the might of the aroused free peoples of the world stands forth in awful clarity as an example to the people of Japan . . . Following are our terms.

We will not deviate from them. There are no alternatives. We shall brook no delay . . . We call upon the government of Japan to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all Japanese armed forces . . . The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction."

The method was brutally violent, as it had to be-because the war unleashed by Japan was brutally violent, and only a brutal action could demonstrate its nature. To have shielded Japanese citizens from the meaning of their own actions-the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March-would have been a massive act of dishonesty. It would have left the Japanese unable to reject military aggression the next time it was offered as an elixir of glory.

After the war, many returning Japanese troops were welcomed by their countrymen not as heroes, but with derision. The imperial cause was recognized as bankrupt, and the actions of its soldiers worthy of contempt.

Forced to confront the reality of what they had done, a sense of morality had returned to Japan.

There can be no higher moral action by a nation than to destroy an aggressive dictatorship, to permanently discredit the enemy's ideology, to stand guard while a replacement is crafted, and then to greet new friends on proper terms. Let those who today march for peace in Germany and Japan admit that their grandparents once marched as passionately for war, and that only total defeat could force them to re-think their place in the world and offer their children something better. Let them thank heaven-the United States-for the bomb.

Some did just that. Hisatsune Sakomizu, chief cabinet secretary of Japan, said after the war: "The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by Heaven for Japan to end the war." He wanted to look like a peaceful man-which became a sensible position only after the Americans had won.

Okura Kimmochi, president of the Technological Research Mobilization Office, wrote before the surrender: "I think it is better for our country to suffer a total defeat than to win total victory . . . in the case of Japan's total defeat, the armed forces would be abolished, but the Japanese people will rise to the occasion during the next several decades to reform themselves into a truly splendid people . . . the great humiliation [the bomb] is nothing but an admonition administered by Heaven to our country." But let him thank the American people-not heaven-for it was they who made the choice between the morality of life and the morality of death inescapable.

Americans should be immensely proud of the bomb. It ended a war that had enslaved a continent to a religious-military ideology of slavery and death.

For the Americans to do so while refusing to sacrifice their own troops to save the lives of enemy civilians was a sublimely moral action. This destroyed the foundations of the war, and allowed the Japanese to rebuild their culture along with their cities, as prosperous inhabitants of the earth. Were it true that total victory today creates new attackers tomorrow, we would now be fighting Japanese suicide bombers, while North Korea-where the American army did not impose its will-would be peaceful and prosperous. The facts are otherwise. The need for total victory over the morality of death has never been clearer.

I'm sure there were plenty of plans. I'm sure the U.S. had about a dozen different plans for invading France in 1944, too -- only one of which was actually executed.

As a resource-poor island nation that was culturally very different than the U.S., there would be no reason for the U.S. to occupy it after the war -- unless our explicit intent was to turn the place into a giant manufacturing center for electronics, machinery, autos, etc.

"Remember, they started the War to begin with."

Of course they did. Never said they didn't. Only asked the question "why is the instant evaporation of human beings considered more humane than shooting, shelling, or napalming them to death?". Because it was quicker? Because they can conveniently be reduced to the category of "the enemy" rather than "human being"? I don't understand the mentality that can categorize the instant death of many innocents (and many were) as somehow better than prolonging their agony if the end result is their eventual death anyway.

I'd like to say that every person incinerated at Dresden was a card-carrying Nazi willing to follow Hitler to the last breath, or that every Japanese at Hiroshima was willing to do likewise on behalf of the Emperor, but the fact is, I can't and so can no one else. For all we know, had rampant starvation and disease ovecome Japan, the military men would have been swept from power and a more human peace instituted.

"Oh yeah, I spent 13 months in Iraq NOT killing and destroying everything I saw because they were Muslim."

Fine. I spent a year there killing things (in an indirect fashion) without the word "Muslim" even entering the conversation. We were at war with a person (Saddam Hussein) and a memory (Poland of 1939. Hitler, et. al) then and no mention of "Islam" or "muslim" was made when the bombs were dropped.

Had either of us stayed there for any more appreciable length of time, we would probably have come into contact with thelocals on a much more intimate scale and therein is the weapon which defetas Islamofascism: human contact that causes people to realize that while they might have different ideas, they are basically all the same and have more in common then they realize.

How do you think Japan's death-obessed, martial culture was transformed after the war? It was by the direct contact with American democracy, democratic ideals, American culture and direct commerce/interchange between the Japanese and American people. The war and the bomb are the backdrop against which it all took place, but it is not the catalyst.

Of course, they would have agreed to a cease-fire, to enable them to build up their army and navy to resume the war later.

Regardless of what you may have read in Gullible's Travels, and I am quite sure you cannot be swayed by the facts, but what follows is the real situation at the time.

Page 510 of the paperback edition:

Meanwhile Hirohito’s generals, grimly preparing for the invasion, had not abandoned hope of saving their homeland. Although a few strategic islands had been lost, they told each other, most of their conquests, including the Chinese heartland, were firmly in their hands, and the bulk of their army was undefeated. Even now they could scarcely believe that any foe would have the audacity to attempt landings in Japan itself. Allied troops, they boasted, would face the fiercest resistance in history. Over ten thousand kamikaze planes were readied for “Ketsu-Go”, Operation Decision. Behind the beaches, enormous connecting underground caves had been stocked with caches of food and thousands of tons of ammunition. Manning the nation’s ground defenses were 2,350,000 regular soldiers, 250,000 garrison troops, and 32,000,000 civilian militiamen – a total of 34,600,000, more than the combined armies of the United States, Great Britain, and Nazi Germany. All males aged fifteen to sixty, and all females aged seventeen to forty-five, had been conscripted. Their weapons included ancient bronze cannon, muzzle-loading muskets, bamboo spears, and bows and arrows. Even little children had been trained to strap explosives around their waists, roll under tank treads, and blow themselves up. They were called “Sherman carpets”.

I'm not rewriting history at all. The facts are there for anyone who wants to see them, even if they haven't been available until relatively recently. You may have a different interpretation, but that doesn't make me wrong or an "Armchair President". And by the way, people have already lsitened, or are you too young to remember "the Nuclear Freeze" and the "No Nukes" movements which grew out of American use of atomic weapons and the stunned horror which was brought about by the spectre of atomic warfare?

Just because those movements were ultimately futile (and, fairly) tarred as "leftist claptrap" doesnn't mean they didn't raise important questions of morality.

The decision to drop the bomb was political. Always was, always will be.

In my youth, I subscribed to the thought of using a 'demonstration use' of the A-bomb.
Later I had a chance to speak with a neighbor lady, a war bride from Japan, and a petite classy individual.
Had a land invasion occurred, it would have been her assignment to throw petrol bombs on approaching soldiers.
The thought of this little woman hurting anyone is hilarious. She used to call me in to 'shoo away mousey'.

It was her belief that use of a nuclear bomb was so 'off the wall', it gave the leadership a chance to save face and surrender without further loss of life.

It was also her belief that a 'demonstration use' of a nuke would have had the opposite effect.
And thanks for the info about the military only surrender, I did not know that.

Wow, I give you three expert sources and now I'm gullible?

And what, pray, were the Japanese to build these new forces with? We're talking about a nation with no natural resources of it's own, a merchant marine which was sitting at the bottom of the ocean, financially bankrupt and at the mercy of the other Great Powers intent on keeping it from ever rising in that way again.

While there certainly were Japanese military figures willing to fight to the death in true Samurai fashion, there were an awful lot who didn't see the point in doing so. In fact, Japanese pre-war governments were chock full of former military men who became prime ministers, Chiefs of Staff and party leaders who did everything in their power to prevent war (ANY WAR) by all means possible. You assume that because those men had been ignored prior to the outbreak opf hostilities, they would have been ignored after those hostilities ceased. Hardly the case in a country which had been ruined and suffering to the extent that Japan was.

The bomb as a practical demonstration of power struck right at the heart of Oriental (and especially Japanese) concepts of warfare; once you have made an unanswerable show of force and superiority, your enemy should, logically, quit.

This is the logic behind the attack at Peark Harbor, Midway, sweeping the Royal Navy from the Indian Ocean, the lighting intial moves of the Pacific War in which the Allies lost almost all of their colonies and outposts: you see how superior we are? You should quit now.

Against any other culture, the logic of the Japanese rationale would be readily understood and accepted. Not so Western culture.

A negotiated end to conflict was ALWAYS the Japanese war aim, however, they never thought they would be on the short end.

Now we're on the same wave length.

( Really pitiful, Southern mothers didn't teach their chill'ns not to drink of out creeks where folks are going poo-poo in)

Only asked the question "why is the instant evaporation of human beings considered more humane than shooting, shelling, or napalming them to death?".

Not necessarily more humane to those who were killed, but to the nation as a whole.

The bombs shocked the Japanese into surrender. As a result, they were more able to begin rebuilding and we see the result of the US plan in the prosperity and friendship with Japan in the ensuing decades.

It was, of course, also more humane for Americans and the whole world to get the business finished once and for all. The surrender of the islands of Japan because of the bomb caused the Japanese out in the field to lay down their weapons as well. They would have gone on fighting until just about every Japanese soldier had died "heroically" which would have meant many more Amerian deaths.

Stronger weapons indeed can be more humane.

But the aim wasn't to conquer it for later use, but to end the threat. How would have the war ended if we didn't invade or bomb Japan? With the Russians entering the war, we could have easily lost Japan to the Iron Curtain.

Troops were already being staged for the invasion. Ships were being sent to build up the invasion fleet, and plans were being made. It wasn't a "what will we do if we have to invade Canada" type of thing, it was going to happen.

Even after the two atomic bombs, many in the Japanese army wanted to keep fighting. There was an attempted coup and a gun fight outside the Imperial Palace!

Japan ceased to be a threat to the U.S. long before August of 1945. Their inability to project force over long distances -- at least across the entire width of the Pacific Ocean -- pretty much ended at Midway.

With the Russians entering the war, we could have easily lost Japan to the Iron Curtain.

What difference would it have made to us, if this was an enemy nation we're talking about?

That mindset certainly didn't deter the U.S. from consigning all of Eastern Europe to five decades of misery behind the Iron Curtain, now did it?

"I've also speculated that the U.S. had no intention of invading Japan anyway"

If that's true, my grandfather sure wasn't let in on the secret. He and the men he served with were prepared to invade Japan, but were certain they would never see their families again. They were steeled for battle, but terrified that they were facing the end.

'Til the day he died, he hated anything that had to do with Japan.

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