A Tribute on Hiroshima Day
The great historian E J Hobsbawm has rightly caalled the twentieth century an "age of extremes". The German Holocaust during the course of the World War and the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will for ever be seared in the momory of humankind as the most horrendous instances of mans' inhumanity ro fellow human beings. The moral evivalence between the two cannot be disputed because both were political decisions taken in order to achieve certain strategic and political goals during the course of the war. To this litany of horrors can be added,of course, the brutalities of Stalin and the Pol Pot genocide making the history of the 20th century a history of genocide. In fact the century began with the massacre of the bushmen by the Germans in Africa and the often forgotten Armenian Massacre carried out by Turkish Troops.
The American intellectuals are always uncomfortable over the issue of Hiroshimaa and Nagasdaki. Afterall the USA is the only country in the world to have used atomic weapons against civillian non combatants in History and Harry Truman's decision to use the boms will not ever be justified by right thinking people including quite a few conservatives who feel that it was an immoral and immproper decision.
An American historian Gar Aperovitz has come up with an excellent book on this decision. Entitled The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb this book is an indepth analysis of the factors both political and military that prompted the decision and on Hiroshim,a Day as we remember the Victims of the Atomic Bombing let us see whether that fateful decision was indeed justified.
One of the myths ardently propagated by the proponents of the decision to use the Atomic Boms is that the Japanese wopuld have otherwise faught on leading to several thousand casualities. This argument is essentiaslly a non sequter and like the case of the Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction rests soley on unbridled speculation and mmotivated inlelligence. The precurssor of the CIA, the Office of Strategic Services estimated a few thousand deaths in the evwent of an invasion of the mainland of Japan.
The most controversial feature of the decision to use the Atomic Bomb was the fact that the American Military establishment had advised against its use. In fact the Admiral of the Pacific Fleet Admiral Nimitz was vehement against its use and cautioned against the use of the weapon of mass destruction on a civillian target. The military brass of the American Army was also gaaist the use saying that the Atomic Bomb was developed only for use against Germany which was known to have had a nuclear research programme and even by the time the first test took place on July 16 1945 at Nevada the German Army had surrendered and the US Air Borne Division was in command over Berlin. So the justification for using the weapon was not there on the ground, so to speak.
The real reason seems to be to forestalll the possible Soviet moves in the Japanese Islands. At Postdam, the American leadership virtually begged Stalin to break his treaty with the Japanese and declare war. Stalin ever alert to ther possibllity that the Americans may be making him pull their chestnuts out of the fire wanted to make sure that any projected Soviet invasion of Japan would be to the advantage of the Russians and not the Americans. Once the America acquired the nuclead bombs, the pressure to stop the war before the Soviets came on tio the scene became acute and therefore the decision to use the nuclear boms not once but twice. In fact even before Hiroshima there were indications of a possible Japanese surrender and the US leadership knew this because the codes had been broken. Yet the Truman Adminiustration took the extreme decision to drop the bomb making the conscience of the American Nation for ever seared like the German conscience is by the guit of the Holocaust.