Little Boy Blew Up Hiroshima 70 Years ago — and Most People Agree that No One Should Use Nukes again — Yet, We Keep Cultivating the Soils that Spawn the same Levels of Hatred and Inhumanity

© 2015 Peter Free

 

06 August 2015

 

 

Does anyone honest really think that Little Boy and Fat Man will not be doing their vicious dance again?

 

Today is the 70th anniversary of the American nuking of Hiroshima. Even by war’s standards for horror, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were appalling events.

 

The maddening thing is that this nuclear destruction was the logical expansion of the terror that came before.

 

Former Air Force Lt. Colonel Willam Astore makes this case implicitly, when he questions the contextual logic of those who argue with President Truman’s decision to use the nukes:

 

 

A longer war in the Pacific — if only a matter of weeks — would indeed have meant higher casualties among the Allies, since the Japanese were prepared to mount large-scale Kamikaze attacks.  Certainly, the Allies were unwilling to risk losing men when they had a bomb available that promised results.  The mentality seems to have been: We developed it.  We have it.  Let’s use it.  Anything to get this war over with as quickly as possible.

 

That mentality was not humane, but it was human.  Truman had a weapon that promised decisiveness, so he used it.  The attack on Hiroshima was basically business as usual, especially when you consider the earlier firebombing raids led by General Curtis LeMay.  Indeed, such “conventional” firebombing raids continued after Hiroshima and Nagasaki until the Japanese finally sent a clear signal of surrender.

 

© 2015 W J Astore, It Should Never Be Done Again: Hiroshima, 70 Years Later, The Contrary Perspective (05 August 2015)

 

You will notice that Astore focused on human nature and the nature of war.

 

Humans use whatever weapons come to hand. And war has a pronounced tendency to make everyone lose a sense of perspective.

 

 

Which means that . . .

 

As long as we continue to foment the armed conflicts that we do, we run the substantial risk of blowing hundreds of millions of people straight to Hell.

 

Though I sympathize with those who would limit the use of especially nasty weapons, they seem to overlook the more fundamental problem. To wit, our tendency to resort to deadly combat for nonexistent or silly reasons.

 

American policy from the Vietnam War on is proof enough of this proposition.

 

 

Take the Iran-nuke controversy

 

Nations with “Da Bomb” want to keep Iran from getting its own. Not for peace’s sake, but so that they can continue to do whatever they want, without substantial interference from armed “Persians”. Anybody governmentally influential who denies this is lying.

 

There is nothing especially magnanimous in the Great Powers’ pursuit of non-proliferation. But we self-deceptively think that we are all righteously motivated and Dem Guys are bad.

 

Note

 

“Dem Guys” is American spoken vernacular for “them guys”.

 

The term is usually used to refer to people whom we consider bad or morally beneath us. It highlights the human tendency to divide humanity into “us” and “them”. And further suggests our apparently ingrained impulse to think that the division itself justifies a shared predilection for combat.

 

I used “dem guys” to hint at the spiritual ignorance that accompanies this instinctive “us versus them” division.

 

Considering that the United States nuked Japan — long after Japan had declined beyond posing an existential threat to the American homeland — the “we’re the good guys” argument is difficult to make persuasively.

 

Indeed, in Iran’s shoes one could easily argue that the United States is the single biggest active threat to global peace — and, therefore, that Iran needs the bomb to protect itself from the Yankee Maniacs.

 

Perspective depends on whose undies we’re wearing.

 

Note

 

Undies is American slang for underwear.

 

 

I mention perspective because

 

By ignoring the fear and hatred that we Americans arouse in those whom we regularly depredate — allegedly extremist Muslims being this decade or two’s chosen flavor — we overlook the eventually nuke-tossing soil that we are so carelessly cultivating. Eventually, either:

 

 

(a) Dem Terrorist Guys will stuff a nuke IED down our throats and pull the pin,

 

or

 

(b) we will agitate ourselves into such a fear that we’ll hit them first with our own more sophisticated “Wrath of God” equivalent.

 

The common thread to both events is fear and loathing’s aggressive motivation.

 

 

Fear and loathing created nukes — and the same human condition is eventually going to use them again

 

Until we successfully attack the mindset that fosters imperialism, domination, oppression and slugging it out down to gnawed bone — Little Boy and Fat Man will be patiently waiting in the wings.

 

Their day is not close to done. In the non-proliferation endeavor, it is not really nuclear-armed North Korea that is the odd man out. It is the Big Boys’ self-indulging pretense that only they can protect the world from itself.

 

If you dispute this premise, consider how the United States probably plans to deal with the 1.4 billion person and military-economic powerhouse, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), down the road. You don’t think that using nukes is on our military planners minds?

 

The problem is not primarily nuclear weapons. It is our usually unplumbed human psyche. The idea that war is just, necessary or okay in “this instance” usually constitutes the prime evil.

 

Losing side Japan got nuke-blasted because it insisted on fighting effectively and vigorously against equally determined foes. Eventually, Americans got the upper technological hand and irradiated two cities, allegedly so as to avoid losing yet more lives.

 

Nothing is psychically different about human beings today. In war, you use what you need to, and you kill whomever gets in your way — and usually then some. For example:

 

 

Hans Bethe worked on the bomb during the Manhattan Project. A decent, humane, and thoughtful man, he nevertheless worked hard to create a weapon of mass destruction.

 

His words of reflection have always stayed with me.  They come in Jon Else’s powerful documentary, “The Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb.”

 

The first reaction we [scientists] had [after Hiroshima] was one of fulfillment.  Now it has been done.  The second reaction was one of shock and awe: What have we done?  What have we done.  The third reaction was it should never be done again.

 

© 2015 W J Astore, It Should Never Be Done Again: Hiroshima, 70 Years Later, The Contrary Perspective (05 August 2015) (paragraphs split)

 

Exactly. Just this time and then never again is our characteristically short-sighted mantra:

 

First, arguably decent people build the weapon.

 

Then we use it.

 

And only after we let it loose on the planet, do we contemplate the magnitude of the unholiness that we have just wrought.

 

By then, of course, it is too late.

 

 

The practical problem today

 

The world is changing. The United States is becoming comparatively less dominant. Past decades’ strategy of keeping Dem Guys at technological and military bay is losing out. Relatively soon a more equal blend of hegemons (great powers) is going to emerge.

 

If we are fortunate, the new balance will keep the lid on by preventing any one among its contributors from acting crazy.

 

If we are unfortunate, one of them — or somebody else — is going to tire of being dictated to and will wheel Little Boy and Fat Man’s progeny out for a trial run at creating the Havoc in which New Possibilities Loom.

 

 

The moral? — Underestimating humanity’s capacity for stupidity and callousness is a mistake

 

It is an easy error to make, when we forget to look down at our own soiled drawers (underwear).

 

The idea that Americans are pontificating to others about the evils of nukes is hypocritically ironic. That lack of insight in itself tills hatred’s soil.

 

In closing, I link readers to two exquisitely simple remembrances of Hiroshima:

 

 

Thom Patterson, A tricycle, a toddler and an atomic bomb, CNN (06 August 2015) (incorporating a series of child-drawn pictures of the destruction)

 

Bun Hashizume and CBBC Newsround, Hiroshima - A Survivor's Story, Children’s BBC via YouTube (04 August 2015) (a very short animation of Bun Hashizume’s survival story)

 

It is not initially necessary to eradicate fear and hatred. Simply seeing and following fright and loathing in oneself and others is enough.