Buencamino does foreign and political affairs analysis for Action for Economic Reforms. This piece was published in the newspaper Today,18 August 2004, page 9.
The 59th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki passedquietly. Then American President Harry Truman committed one of thegreatest atrocities in human history—yet many accept that he did theright thing.
This might be a good time to correct that impression and cite theopinions of some top American leaders who strongly disagreed with whathe did.
Two days after the bombs were dropped, a disgusted Herbert Hoover wroteto the publisher of the Army and Navy Journal and said, “The use of theatomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children,revolts my soul.”
Admiral William D. Leahy, who served as Chief of Staff to both FranklinRoosevelt and Truman, shared Hoover’s revulsion. In his book, I WasThere, he wrote, “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarousweapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in ourwar against Japan. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, andwars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
Dwight Eisenhower told Newsweek magazine many years later that “TheJapanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit themwith that awful thing.”
And Brig Gen. Carter Clarke, the military intelligence officer whoprepared Truman’s briefs on intercepted Japanese cables describedTruman’s decision succintly, “…when we didn’t need to do it, and weknew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn’t needto do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.”
Yet, Harry S Truman dropped an atomic bomb onHiroshima and a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki. Some 100,000 civilians wereinstantly vaporized by those bombs, andin the days and years that followed, tens of thousands more would die from the effects of radiation.
Robert Oppenheimer, Scientific Director of Los Alamos, called on Trumanfive months after he resigned from his job in disgust. He toldTruman “Mr. President, I have blood on my hands.” Truman replied, “It’ll come out in the wash.”
Truman claimed he dropped the bombs in order to save American andJapanese lives. In August 1945, he issued a statement to the LosAlamos scientists saying, “This new weapon will result in savingthousands of American lives.” By 1959, Truman, realizing that the bloodwas not going to wash off so easily, expanded his claim from thousandsto “the dropping of the bombs saved millions of lives.”
There are many theories why Truman killed all those civilians. The mostpopular theory is best summed up by his closest policy advisers.Secretary of War Henry Stimson said , “American statesmen wereeager for their country to browbeat the Russians with the bomb heldrather ostentatiously on our hip.” Secretary of State James F.Byrnes. Byrnes said, “The demonstration of the bomb might impressRussia with America’s military might.” Stalin was making histhreatening moves in Europe and something had to be done to preventSoviet communism from becoming a real menace to Americancapitalism. In short, the bomb was dropped for demonstrationpurposes.
The lesson of Nagasaki and Hiroshima is, it’s not the act but the“rationale” behind the act. Presidents and statesmen who came afterTruman have taken the lesson to heart: that it is okay to kill as longas it’s for the American way.
Civilian targets are okay. Johnson bombed dikes and napalmed civiliantargets in Vietnam. Nixon did the same in the secret bombing ofCambodia. Clinton dropped cluster bombs on civilians in Serbia. Andeveryone by now is familiar with Bush’s bombing of Afghanistan and Iraq.
The killing of innocent civilians is not limited to bombings. Clinton’sSecretary of State, Madeline Albright, was asked by Leslie Stahl on theCBS show 60 Minutes, “We have heard that a half million children havedied [from the sanctions on Iraq]. I mean, that’s more children thandied in Hiroshima. And —and you know, is the price worth it?” And shereplied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price —we thinkthe price is worth it.”
The price. At the beginning of the American century, the pricewas 200,000 Filipino lives. During the “Cold War”, the price wasmillions of proxies so that Russia and the US wouldn’t have to shoot ateach other. In the “clash of civilizations”, the final tally is stillbeing determined.
The price, indeed. As always, it is the innocents who pay.
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