The Lesson of Hiroshima for the U.S. Presidential Election
by Guest Contributor atlasien, originally posted at APA for Progress
Note from atlasien: “Update: since writing this post, my recommendation has changed due to this news story. It’s now crystal clear which candidate is best on the issue.”
Earlier this year, I had the privilege of hearing a presentation by a Hiroshima survivor. Here’s his story as I remember it.
Mr. Teramoto was ten years old when the atom bomb hit Hiroshima. One second he was leaning over a desk to write a postcard to a friend; the next second he was on his back amid the rubble of his former house. An aunt pulled him out. His face was covered in blood. He begged her to stop and rescue his mother too, but she was too focused on getting him to safety. She slung him across her back and ran away.
That was the last he ever saw his mother. He found out later that she had dragged herself out and made it to the bank of the river. She died within days and her body was cremated where it lay, next to so many others.
Sheltering by another bank, Mr. Teramoto remembers seeing the river filled with corpses. They floated up and down with the tide, the same ones over and over again. He showed us photos and also drawings representing these scenes.
(Art by KIHARA Toshiko, Hiroshima survivor)
Due to his position when the bomb hit, and the fact that he managed to escape exposure to contaminated water, Mr. Teramoto is still a vigorous and healthy man. He draws on this energy to educate people about what happened in Hiroshima. He’s been giving talks like this for decades. I imagine that survivor’s guilt is something he struggles and negotiates with constantly. He’s chosen to relive those events over and over again so that others can grow to understand the lesson of Hiroshima.
The basic lesson is simple. This must never happen again. Whether the bombing was “justified” is of secondary relevance. Here in the U.S. discussions of Hiroshima and Nagasaki can get bogged down in that debate. As a Japanese-American, I feel the issue very deeply. Many Japanese-Americans fought bravely against Japan’s government, a military dictatorship that poisoned other countries and their own people as well. But I also believe racism was an integral part of the decision to drop not one but two atomic bombs on Japanese soil.
But the primary matter of importance is what the past of Hiroshima symbolizes for our common global future. This is the idea that Mr. Teramoto wants to spread all over the world.
The events of Hiroshima are receding. The cold war era is over. In my lifetime, there will eventually be no more survivors traveling the world and giving presentations. But there will still be insane numbers of nuclear weapons and the potential for a future conflagration.
Mr. Teramoto’s colleague, the head of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, put forth a terrifying scenario. Further destabilization in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Increased anti-American activity in the mountainous border region. Militaristic American government. The solution? Perhaps just one targeted atomic bomb. Maybe some villages will be caught in the way…
The current idiotic regime has substantially withdrawn from nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament agreements, citing, of course, the increased security risks of a “post 9/11 world”. John McCain is even more likely to use nuclear weapons, judging by his strong tendency towards loathsome paranoid jingoism. Either Clinton or Obama would be a massive improvement and would likely get us back on the path to honoring our nuclear treaties.
Personally, I’m an Obama supporter, and I believe he will be better on this issue. While it’s difficult to detangle candidate’s position statements to find an unequivocal answer to a relatively simple question, several factors convinced me. During one debate, Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates whether U.S. security concerns trumped humanitarian concerns. Clinton responded that yes, they did. Obama gave what I considered the correct answer; the two concerns cannot be separated. Also, Clinton’s vote in favor of the Iraq War showed me that in a crisis, she might go by current popular opinion instead of the long-term best interests of the world. Obama has specifically stated that he will not consider using a nuclear weapon to destroy a terrorist training camp. Clinton’s answers on nuclear nonproliferation have also been much more equivocal and vague than Obama’s answers.
Anyone who is concerned by this issue (and I think “anyone” should really mean “everyone in the world”) should do their own research and act on it. Here’s a relatively neutral link to start off with.
I was profoundly affected by Mr. Teramoto’s talk. I hope I’ve been able to pass on to readers even a small portion of the urgency and gravity of his mission. This must never happen again.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of 
lori wrote:
This must never happen again.
Amen. Alas, we humans don’t have a very good track record of restraint; when we have the power to destroy others at our finger tips, it’s hard to hold back. Particularly when those ‘others’ have been dehumanized by racism, etc.
FYI, The Rolling Stone blog noted the irony that the new photos of Hiroshima came out the same week that Clinton vowed to “obliterate” Iran.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 7:02 am ¶
Paul wrote:
It was less an issue of racism and more an issue of deterrence. Truamn et al. used the second bomb to intimidate the Soviets and to show them that we might have a multitude of such weapons. They knew the Cold War was coming and began laying the groundwork as the Second World War was ending.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 8:01 am ¶
gatamala wrote:
Lori beat me to it.
“Obliterate” - to remove utterly from recognition or memory; to remove from existence; detstroy utterly all trace, indication or significance of
The context in which she used this word is ironic to say the least….
Instead of chest puffing bluster, I want a commander in chief who actually thinks about what he/she is saying. Not just in terms of how it will play in West Virginia.
You don’t need nukes to destroy a training camp.
If HRC feels that she needs to discuss national security in terms of annhilation in order to offset any negative reaction to her gender, then perhaps she needs to stay the hell away from the White House.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 8:08 am ¶
Celeste wrote:
Yeah, when I heard her say that I was stunned. Obliterate….really, it’s like that. So she won’t talk to Iran but she’ll obliterate them? Does that apply to all countries equally or just predominantly brown ones? If someone asked her the reverse of that question (What if Israel dropped nublear bombs on Iran, for preemptive self defense perhaps) I doubt that she’d say that she’d obliterate Israel. It just seems like there’s underlyign racism there. If she had followed up her remark by saying that she’d obliterate any country that launched a nuclear attack on a neighbor I would have felt better. It just makes her sound crazy/bloodthirsty. However, the statement as it stands seems to say to non-Israeli residents of the middle east that she (and by extension, we) wouldn’t think much at all about wiping them alllll out if their leaders made a decision like that. That’s a warm fuzzy. Kinda reminds me of black people and cops.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 9:27 am ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:
Note to HRC:
Though I’m a Obama supporter myself, I say do you and continue on the campaign trail. But what you need to do is:
1) Cut the saber-rattling.
2) Take off your cowboy boots.
3) Stop sprattlin’.*
It hasn’t worked for Dubya, and it’s not working for you. Please….
*Sprattlin’: walking like you own the town, like the second-in-command cowboys in those Western flicks.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 10:36 am ¶
The Cruel Secretary wrote:
@ atlasien–where are my manners? Friend, an amazing, thought-provoking post. Love it!
Co-sign with lori, gatamala, and Celeste.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 2:09 pm ¶
macon d wrote:
Paul wrote:
“It was less an issue of racism and more an issue of deterrence. Truamn et al. used the second bomb to intimidate the Soviets and to show them that we might have a multitude of such weapons.”
I really wonder about that. The man who made the final decision to destroy two Japanese cities, Harry Truman, was the same man who wrote the following in a letter to his future wife, Bess:
“I think one man is as good as another, so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman. My uncle Will says that the Lord made a white man of dust, a nigger from mud, then threw up what was left and it came down a Chinaman. he does hate Chinese and Japs. So do I. It is race prejudice I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion that negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia, and white men in Europe and America.”
(from Ronald Takaki’s Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Bomb)
Posted 13 May 2008 at 2:23 pm ¶
NancyP wrote:
One of the most moving animated features, not to mention any movie, is “Grave of the Fireflies”, about two child survivors of the immediate bombing. Just devastating.
See. It.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 3:03 pm ¶
macon d wrote:
That sounds like a must-see Nancy, thank you.
I also recommend the excellent graphic novel series, Barefoot Gen: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima
http://www.amazon.com/Barefoot-Gen-One-Cartoon-Hiroshima/dp/0867196025/ref=pd_bbs_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1210715921&sr=1-2
Posted 13 May 2008 at 5:00 pm ¶
thesciencegirl wrote:
When I was in 8th grade or so, I suddenly became aware of human rights violations that occur in the world. It started with 2 things: reading the Diary of Anne Frank (which began a lifelong interest in Holocaust memoirs) and learning about the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in history class. I wrote a terrible, but heartfelt poem about it called “Why did we die?” It really was terrible. But anyway, it didn’t occur to me at the time that race may have played a role. But I was outraged at the lack of value placed on those Japanese lives. And it’s sad to me that so many different events in history inspire people to say “never again” but does anyone connect the dots to realize that the SAME THING is happening over and over again? Certain groups of people are held deemed sub-human, and those people are systematically persecuted or wiped out. Hiroshima. WWII-era internment camps. The Holocaust. The Native American boarding schools mentioned on the blog today. The genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda and Darfur. When do people and nations actually start believing the words “never again” ??? To hear politicians talk about obliterating nations… that frankly gives me chills.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 5:27 pm ¶
lunanoire wrote:
The Peace Museum in Hiroshima has unforgettably greusome photos of the aftermath. Some descendants of survivors still face a stigma in Japan. It would be hopeful to think “never again,” but human nature is too unpredictable.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 6:37 pm ¶
Paul wrote:
Just because Truman was a bigot does not mean that each and every decision he made was motivated solely by bigotry. He integrated the Armed Forces. That decision was spurned on by pragmatism rather than bigotry, so was the Hiroshima bombing.
Posted 13 May 2008 at 6:42 pm ¶
victoria wrote:
The decision not have been motivated solely by bigotry, but Japanese lives were seen as expendable - why is that?
Posted 13 May 2008 at 11:58 pm ¶
Gus J wrote:
Why is it so hard to accept that we saw their lives as less valuable than ours? Hasn’t everyone seen the anti-Japanese propaganda of the time?
During WWII, Roosevelt signed executive order 9066, which targeted American residents of “foreign enemy ancestry”, including Japanese, German, and Italian. So why were those of Japanese descent the most widely affected?
California Attorney General Earl Warren: “When we are dealing with the Caucasian race we have methods that will test the loyalty of them. But when we deal with the Japanese, we are on an entirely different field.”
But you can keep on downplaying racism as a factor in political/military conflicts if it makes you feel better.
Posted 14 May 2008 at 1:27 am ¶
pachino wrote:
To me, it’s sort of horrifying whenever the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are described as pragmatic, and I even agree with that description to some extent. But whenever I hear that argument, it seems so galling, because I, as an American, would never accept that sort of argument had it been say, Seattle and San Francisco. I can’t imagine the outrage I would feel, if I were also Japanese by nationality and not just by ethnicity, by the implication that the bombs were justified. These were civilian targets, with military value yes, but ultimately civilian targets.
I intellectually understand the reasons these actions were taken, I just can’t accept any attempt to justify the bombings as pragmatic, or necessary. Saying that this was necessary is a way of saying that we don’t need to be horrified by the bombs. That they were needed, and that they were for the greater good. These were horrifying events. We should be horrified by them. When we forget the horror of these events- thats why the “never again” lesson never seems to fully stick.
Even if I accept the pragmatism argument, I’ll never believe that race did not play a factor in the decision to drop the bombs. The Japanese had been “other”-ized so much that their lack of perceived humanity must have made the decision easier to make.
And just because I get a little OCD about Studio Ghibli, I have to point out that [i]Grave of the Fireflies[/i] is about survivors of the firebombing of Kobe. Still devastating. I first saw it in Japanese, without subtitles, and I was still bawling. Listen to Nancy- see it.
Posted 14 May 2008 at 1:32 am ¶
Sewere wrote:
@ Atlasien, thanks for writing this. The story cut right to the gut.
@ Paul,
Re-read what you wrote (the one I bolded) and tell us again how race wasn’t a factor in freely deciding to use one group of people as the punch line for a geo-political statement?
Posted 14 May 2008 at 2:30 am ¶
jvansteppes wrote:
1. This post next to the one about residential schools is appropriate considering that the uranium used to build the very bombs that were dropped was actually mined by Aboriginal people in the Canadian north, a population left with the legacy of cancer and the horrible discovery that they had been exploited for the purpose of making those bombs. [For stories on this google Andrew Nikiforuk.]
2. Paul, Truman might not have planned to drop those bombs explicitly to kill Japanese people for the crime of being Japanese but the fact that the Allied nations considered their POC opponents to be subhuman played a significant role in that decision. Why deny this?
Posted 14 May 2008 at 3:55 am ¶
Celeste wrote:
Whoa…..he really wrote that? I have to read that book. I heard that the reason the second bomb was dropped was that Japan refused to surrrender after the 1st one. I don’t the buy incinerating more people just to show off to the Soviets, at least I sure hope that wasn’t the reason.
Posted 14 May 2008 at 6:47 am ¶
Paul wrote:
Maybe because the Japanese saw Chinese, Korean, and other Asian lives as expendable. Let’s not make the Japanese out to be the vicitims in WWII> The embarked on an agressive war of annihilation against other Asian peoples. Check out their actions in Nanking, “comfort women”, and their treatment of Southeast Asians. The Japanese followed the same racist philosophy as the Germans during the War, yet we have not forced them to make amends or even a sincere apology for their behavior. Why is that?
Posted 14 May 2008 at 7:29 am ¶
Celeste wrote:
Oh, I definetly agree that the Japanese did some totally foul/amoral things and were being really racist to other asians. However, if the US nuked them twice because of our racism in devaluing non-white lives then that’s not okay either. Perhaps getting nuked twice makes kind of blurs their status as aggressors into one of being vicitms, too. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t apologize but how does it make the US look to nuke them and then tell them to apologize for their war crimes….
Posted 14 May 2008 at 7:55 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
How many Koreans and Filipinos did the ten-year-old Mr. Teramoto rape and kill? How many did his mother rape and kill?
The argument about justification is never going to get resolved, and I don’t really care about it and haven’t for a while. Whatever the reasons, purely pragmatic, purely racist, purely noble-minded (and more likely a complex mixture of all three)… it happened, and it shouldn’t happen again.
Posted 14 May 2008 at 8:47 am ¶
Paul wrote:
Bombing civilian targets is not a war crime. That’s the difference between the US use of atomic weapons and the Japanese atrocities against other Asian peoples.
How many comentators here blame anti-Teutonic propaganda and language for the firebombing of Dresden?
Posted 14 May 2008 at 8:55 am ¶
bdsista wrote:
You can see the pictures on this link
They are very graphic and disturbing.
Let’s be real, all the groups involved engaged in racist activity. The Americans for demonizing and dehumanizing the Japanese in order to justify bombing them. The Japanese for seeing other Asians as inferior and still have not apologized or paid reparations to the Korean comfort women whose lives were destroyed. As well as the atrocities in Nanking, Bataan and other areas in the Pacific theatre.
But it shocks me to see the horror resulting from nuclear warfare. That is why we all must work to end racism and build community, so we all can respect each other differences and learn to live interdependently.
Posted 14 May 2008 at 9:03 am ¶
Celeste wrote:
I 2nd what bdsista wrote.
Posted 14 May 2008 at 10:22 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
>Bombing civilian targets is not a war crime. That’s the difference between the US use of atomic weapons and the Japanese atrocities against other Asian peoples.
Nice strawman. Noone is saying that the Japanese were innocent pacifists before and during WWII. But neither were the Allies always on the side of the angels. Welcome to Non-Jingoistic War History 101.
There are bombs and then there are ATOMIC BOMBS, which in the case of WWII had never been used before, and the US scientists did NOT have empirical evidence about the extent of damage, the long term nature and effects of the radiation, and the level of devastation. Hell, if they had, maybe they would have given better protection to people working with radioactive material, including the women painting radium on dials (and Native miners cited by jvansteppes above). But they did have a fairly good idea. Historical distance and first-person narratives from those involved at the time in the decision point to multiple factors, which included a desire to SHOW OFF the fact that the US had achieved nuclear capability first, not only to Germany (pretty much defeated at that point), but to the Soviets (our allies-in-name-only).
Atomic weapons are not comparable to any other type of weapon, which is why they have not been used since.
>How many comentators here blame anti-Teutonic propaganda and language for the firebombing of Dresden?
I’ve been to the NOLA WWII museum - the propaganda used on US posters was DRASTICALLY different when portraying German enemies (because of course, German was/ is one of the larger ethnic white groups in the US) and portraying Japanese enemies. We’re talking ape-like features and carrying off white women type of artwork. Go ahead, find me something where Germans were portrayed that way. I’ll wait.
Posted 14 May 2008 at 10:55 am ¶
allheavens wrote:
Before the U.S. dropped the bombs in Japan nearly 50 to 90 percent of the population had been killed by conventional firebombings in 67 cities. Actually the Tokyo firebombing campaigns killed more civilians than the nuclear bombs.
So was the dropping of two nuclear devices actually necessary? Why did so many civilians have to die?
One reason is because 100 percent of the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were unfortunately “co-located” with Japanese military and industrial targets.
In a nutshell this is what nuclear weapons do: They indiscriminately blast, burn, and irradiate with a speed and finality that are almost incomprehensible.
Here is some other explanations as to why the bombs were dropped in Japan: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_the_US_drop_the_atomic_bombs_on_Japan
Robert McNamara asked this question in “The Fog of War”: “Was there a rule then to say that you shouldn’t bomb, shouldn’t kill, shouldn’t burn to death one hundred thousand civilians in a single night?”
My question today would be: “Is there a rule now? And what rules of morality come to play in war?”
We has a global community HAVE to come to terms with is this appalling void between the rules of war and morality.
Posted 14 May 2008 at 2:25 pm ¶
dramelyrique wrote:
Please remember that the victims of the fire bombing and atomic bombs also included Korean and Chinese people, many who were forced laborers and others who voluntarily chose to immigrate. We’re talking tens of thousands.
And while the Japanese government and military commited horrible atrocities against many people, you cannot hold all Japanese responsible for their crimes. What of the children killed or injured during the bombings? What about the people who didn’t support the government’s policies? What about the Japanese comfort women who, like many other Asian and Dutch women, were also forced or tricked into “servicing” Japanese soldiers during the war and American soldiers after? What about the Japanese Americans interned in the US, several who even chose to fight for the country that punished them for being of Japanese descent? Were they not victims, too?
What is racist is blaming and punishing a whole ethnicity for the actions of their government, of a few. And why didn’t anyone ever advocate the fireboming and atomic bombing of other imperialist countries, either?
(Thank you so much allheavens for pointing out the firebombing because very few people seem to realize how much damage had already been done even before the first atomic bomb was dropped.)
Posted 14 May 2008 at 10:59 pm ¶
Paul wrote:
You asked for German as animals, you get Germans as animals.
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/39.1/images/frese_fig03a.jpg
BTW I know this’ from WWI, but I pressed for time and this makes the point just as well.
Posted 15 May 2008 at 7:32 am ¶
Paul wrote:
llheavens,
50 to 90% of the Japanese population was killed in firebombing and A-boming? Can you give us some reputable source on that one.
Posted 15 May 2008 at 7:35 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
>BTW I know this’ from WWI, but I pressed for time and this makes the point just as well.
No, Paul, it doesn’t make the point the SAME WAY.
In WWI, it was primarily a tale of European-descent factions against each other, started by the assassination of a European ruler. I’m not saying that non-Europeans weren’t involved, but none could be identified as the primary enemy.
In WWII, as far as the US was concerned, there were two main fronts - European and Pacific, and the ads for those 2 groups were not the same.
This is one of the ones that is at the NOLA museum: http://bss.sfsu.edu/internment/posterenemy.html
And here’s one that not only is anti-Roosevelt, but shows the 2 leaders of Germany and Japan SIDE BY SIDE. Guess what? They’re not portrayed to the same level of exaggeration of features, and only 1 looks true to life and human. Guess which one?
http://bss.sfsu.edu/internment/postertojohitler.html
Posted 15 May 2008 at 8:02 am ¶
Celeste wrote:
That 1 st poster was really repellent. There’s always been such a huge problem with naked white women being carried off by asian men with bug eyes…not really. Why do so many war posters have naked women? Is that really that much of a motivator?
Posted 15 May 2008 at 1:11 pm ¶
jvansteppes wrote:
Last time I checked German Americans weren’t rounded up and imprisoned during the war Paul. I’m just sayin…
Posted 16 May 2008 at 3:37 am ¶
Marty wrote:
Yes , German and Italian Americans were rounded up on the East Coast not all but a lot search the Internet there was big groups from NY and NJ . and the reason the Japanese were targeted more than any other was for there own safety and there was millions of Italians and Germans there wasn’t a huge number of Japanese remember NAZI Germany or Italy Never attacked the US . Also when the Japanese soldiers where sent to the southern states to train they were treated as white men not required to ride the back of the bus they could dine in the non-colored sections
Posted 17 May 2008 at 7:25 am ¶
atlasien wrote:
(rolls up sleeves) I refuse to get into justifications of the bombing of Hiroshima, as I stated pretty clearly in the original post… but the the Japanese-American internment is another matter. I see we have one of Michelle Malkin’s gibbering acolytes here.
First of all, German and Italian NATIONALS were detained. The difference was that AMERICAN CITIZENS of Japanese descent, born and raised in America, were also detained.
I will agree that the root reason was not racism. However, it was a process that could not have been carried through without extremely virulent racism that encouraged an erasure of the line between Japanese and Japanese-Americans. The root reason was greed. There was no “for their own good” involved, that line is complete bullshit and has been debunked too many times to cite. Japanese-Americans were rounded up and sent to concentration camps because their politically powerful neighbors wanted their land and their businesses. The federal government could easily have stood up to these local interests, but choose not to.
JAs in Hawaii weren’t interned. And the reason is simple: there were so many, that if they had been, the island economy would collapse. JAs in the East Coast weren’t interned. The reason is simple: there were too few of them to bother, and they didn’t have lots of property. JAs on the West Coast were interned and the reason is simple… pure greed. They had lots of small farms and grocery stores. White people thought they deserved that property more, so they created an excuse to take it.
Posted 17 May 2008 at 8:30 am ¶