Hiroshima Day

70 Years And Counting (Towards What, I don't Know)

This time of year always gets a little hairy with Hiroshima Day and Nagasaki Day and VJ day all coming within days of another. It gives you a sense how hurried the end of WWII was, back in 1945. Still, I try to shut out the commentary on what it means today because frankly, it's been 70years. I don't know how to break it to people, but 70years is history. It should be awarded some more objectivity than rehashed propaganda, but of course that's not what we get.

I was driving over to my parents place and on Drive with Richard Glover was Geraldine Doogue and Lisa Wilkinson. Richard Glover - a witty bastard any day of the week, respect - asked with a serious tone, whether dropping the bomb was worth it. Geraldine Doogue's answer gave me the shits. Essentially, she quoted some historian who wanted to know why we talk about the dead of Hiroshima more than the 25million victims of the Japanese military aggression; and the fact the Japanese were willing to fight to the death justified dropping the bomb, so doing so saved lives; and this makes it justifiable. Lisa Wilkinson thought that the point of wars was being a bigger bastard than the other guy, and so America was willing to be the biggest baddest bastard and that explained the bomb.

Central to this construction is this ongoing myth that the two bombs brought about the Unconditional Surrender of Japan. I say myth because I've read a fair deal of the meetings held by the Five Ministers in front of the Emperor. The Imperial Conferences were an abbreviated briefing of the Emperor to short circuit the need to have cabinet meetings followed by reports to the Imperial Palace. Obviously it evolved out of the necessity because the war situation changed so quickly and so often it was easier to have the Emperor in the room to rubber stamp decisions. It also meant the Emperor had to sit and listen to the ministers ague.

The five Ministers at the Imperial Conferences were the Prime Minister, the Army Minister, the Navy Minister, the Finance Minister and the Foreign Minister. By early August 1945, these meetings were fairly desultory. Kantaro Suzuki was the Prime Minister, a retired Admiral, who was charged by the Emperor Hirohito to bring the war to an "honourable end". Those thing are pretty hard to get when you're getting spanked, but nonetheless, that was his job.

There are transcripts and reports of these meetings. The Navy Minister was Mitsumasa Yonai, an admiral who was later exonerated at the Tokyo Trials; and the Army minister was Korechika Anami, who argued the line that the people of Japan were willing to die to the man, and so the only honourable end to the war was where everybody died for the Emperor. You can imagine how the Emperor might have felt about that, waiting to rubber stamp that horrible decision.

On the morning of the 6th of August 1945, they were having yet another one of these meetings. There is an interruption where it is reported that a new bomb has been dropped on Hiroshima and devastated the city with one blast. And it barely registers with the Five Ministers. I've read that passage at least four or five times and it is indiscernible that this new - earth shattering even - information affected the discussion. The sticking point in all of these meetings in August was what "subject to" meant in the Potsdam Declaration that demanded the unconditional surrender.

If the Allies meant "subject to" in general, then sure, that is what a surrender is; but if they meant "subject to"  as in the Emperor was going to be turned into a personal slave of Douglas MacArthur, then every Japanese person ought to die fighting to prevent such an outcome. Yes, it's weird, but this is what happens when things get lost in translation. So these grown men argued in front of the Emperor interminably while the cities were burnt by carpet bombings. And they kept arguing right on for another 4days like this, past not only the Hiroshima bombing but the Nagasaki bombing as well.

They were holding out hope that either Sweden or the USSR would step in as neutrals to broker a peace. Unbelievable as it sounds, that was the project being pursued by the Foreign Ministry in the first part of 1945. This scenario fell apart when the USSR advanced troops into Manchuria, breaking its Non-Aggression Pact with Japan on the 10th August. This was the news that changed the meetings.

There's a lot that could be said about Stalin, the USSR and its role in World War II, but I'll leave that for the serious historians writing about it. If there is one thing that is irrevocably clear is that Stalin's betrayal closed the books on Japan's war. by the 11th, the Japanese leaders made the executive decision to surrender to the Americans in the hope that Japan won't be overrun by communism (this too is a very big topic which I won't go into). Hirohito rubber-stamped that one quickly according to the Kido Diaries.

The point of all this is that it most definitely wasn't the two Atomic blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively that prompted the surrender of Japan. And without that bit of justification, it is impossible to argue that dropping the two atomic bombs "saved lives". Yet the myth lives on because it is harder to live with the awful likelihood that the two atomic bombs were dropped on civilian population centres for nothing but absolutely gratuitous effect. I'm sure this is why Geraldine Doogue wants to hold tightly to the myth that the two atomic bombs were meaningful in history, that they saved lives by stopping the war. Uh, sorry, but no. It just ain't true.

In a perfect world, I would want the two bombs to be meaningful in a positive way. That they are not meaningful in the way that people want it to assuage their moral egos, does not take anything away significance from the event in history.  What I will say is this; it's been 70years since. I'm willing to let it slide into history. I ask not for tears to be shed for the civilians who copped it sweet, nor for revenge or retaining the grievances. I just want us to move past the bullshit propaganda that seeks to cast the bombings in a positive light. If you really want to come to terms with the events, that's the price.

No Nuance, No Peace

All of which is to say it really got my goat. What was said by Geraldine Doogue, was deeply offensive. If you can justify civilian casualties to end the war because that saves lives, you may as well make no distinctions as to who gets killed in a war and why. It's so Orwellian it's not funny.

Let's say for the moment you can justify bombing civilians because it ends wars (Doogue's argument, not mine). That would mean we would be free to bomb as many people as long as what came after the bombing was peaceful. We wouldn't have a leg to stand on in arguing against the Hanoi bombings by Richard Nixon, which of course was as unjust as they come, but all Nixon wanted to do was end the war once and for all. The Nazis bombed London, and that would be justifiable because they too were trying to end the war (by winning the Battle of Britain). We wouldn't be able to complain about collateral damage and civilian deaths resulting from Drone strikes, or the carpet bombing of Iraq using B-52s during 'Shock & Awe'.

And if you're allowed to bomb civilians to death - because it would end the war sooner to do so - then surely killing them en masse on the ground should be fine as well. Things like the 1995 Srebrenica massacre would not be war crimes, they would just attempts to bring the end of the war closer.

It's war. There is no "alright" kind of position to take on the state-sponsored violence that is war. If Geraldine Doogue wants to justify the state-sponsored violence carried out in her favour, then she's going to have to deal with arguments that justify state-sponsored violence carried out against her side. That means she has to support the case that the Nazis were right in wiping out civilian populations the Eastern Front, or that Russian pogroms were good; or that the Killing Fields of Cambodia were somehow good because they brought about peace in Cambodia.
Clearly it's an unenlightened position to hold.

The joke of course is that Doogue probably believes some of these examples are War Crimes. In which case she's essentially arguing War Crimes are justifiable if they take place in her favour, but not at any other time. It's this kind of exceptionalism that makes me sick to the gut talking about Word War II.