Hiroshima
Just out of college, my uncle worked at Livermore making detonators for their atomic bomb project. I admired my uncle, which is one reason why my first job out of college was also at the Livermore lab. I wasn't working on physical weapons, but I was proud to work at the Lab.
In America, the common view of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima 64 years ago today was that it was unfortunate but necessary. Japan had proven its commitment to fighting not just bloody but hopeless battles like the one on Iwo Jima where only 216 out of 18,500 Japanese soldiers surrendered were captured. Kamikaze attacks had horrified Americans and taken a serious toll on our forces. The Japanese were training a volunteer fighting corps, drafted into service regardless of age or sex to defend their island against US Marines with bamboo spears rather than surrender. Children were being drilled to run under American tanks with land mines, blowing themselves up along with the tank. Japanese who criticized the futility of this action were singled out for the front lines. Something remarkable had to have been done to force a surrender and spare their lives.
Then I started coming to Japan where I made new friends. In 2006 and 2008 I went to Hiroshima where the history is understood somewhat differently. Many now claim that the Volunteer Fighting Corps had been not a serious military effort, but a propaganda campaign to inspire Japanese citizens. America had been working on the Manhattan Project in competition with the German nuclear project, but the European war ended before the bombs were ready to use against Hitler and we needed to find something to do with them. At Trinity they'd seen what the bomb could do in an empty desert - now they needed to see what it would do against a city. Some Japanese cities had been spared conventional bombing to keep them pristine for test sites. Hiroshima was selected because of excellent visibility that day - not just for the bombardier, but for the observer planes to record the bomb's detonation and effects. The citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not just collateral damage, they were test subjects. Little Boy was a gun-type design dropped on Hiroshima while Fat Man an implosion device dropped on Nagasaki so that the designs and their effects could be compared. Japanese commenters on the Big Picture yesterday called the bombing state-sponsored terrorism and equated it with the 9/11 attacks.
It is all too easy for me to see both sides of this. On one hand it's easy to see how an American military, already bleeding from a costly Pacific campaign, could take Japanese resolve, the Kamizake, and the Volunteer Fighting Corps propaganda seriously. I can see how, as long as you're going to drop atomic fire on people, you might as well take pictures to study it. And of course everyone was doing it. World War 2 was a war where terrible tests were performed on military prisoners (and non-prisoners) in both theaters and on all sides.
But I also have a hard time dismissing the Japanese view. The Geneva Conventions require that its parties minimize collateral damage to noncombatants, but Hiroshima was selected because it had "an urban area at least three miles in diameter". The decision to keep it free from conventional bombs could have lured more civilians there. Hiroshima and Nagasaki's body counts of 140,000 and 80,000 respectively are more or less on par with the body counts of the 88,000-124,000 killed in the conventional and equally horrifying firebombing of Tokyo and other cities. And since terrorism is in the eye of the beholder I can't really dismiss or get comfortable with the accusation that America directed violence at civilian as well as military targets to terrorize the Japanese population into capitulating to American demands. The bombing "worked", but at what marginal cost? Could the surrender have been forced a less terrible way? Could we have tried a bloody land invasion, found that it didn't work, then dropped the bomb? I don't know.
With enough historical perspective, asking who was right in the bombing of Hiroshima seems like asking who was right in the Battle of Hastings. A bunch of humans chose to do what seemed to them like a good idea for complex reasons that are understandable but not necessarily correct, and our lives today continue to be effected by their decision's consequences.
In America, the common view of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima 64 years ago today was that it was unfortunate but necessary. Japan had proven its commitment to fighting not just bloody but hopeless battles like the one on Iwo Jima where only 216 out of 18,500 Japanese soldiers surrendered were captured. Kamikaze attacks had horrified Americans and taken a serious toll on our forces. The Japanese were training a volunteer fighting corps, drafted into service regardless of age or sex to defend their island against US Marines with bamboo spears rather than surrender. Children were being drilled to run under American tanks with land mines, blowing themselves up along with the tank. Japanese who criticized the futility of this action were singled out for the front lines. Something remarkable had to have been done to force a surrender and spare their lives.
Then I started coming to Japan where I made new friends. In 2006 and 2008 I went to Hiroshima where the history is understood somewhat differently. Many now claim that the Volunteer Fighting Corps had been not a serious military effort, but a propaganda campaign to inspire Japanese citizens. America had been working on the Manhattan Project in competition with the German nuclear project, but the European war ended before the bombs were ready to use against Hitler and we needed to find something to do with them. At Trinity they'd seen what the bomb could do in an empty desert - now they needed to see what it would do against a city. Some Japanese cities had been spared conventional bombing to keep them pristine for test sites. Hiroshima was selected because of excellent visibility that day - not just for the bombardier, but for the observer planes to record the bomb's detonation and effects. The citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not just collateral damage, they were test subjects. Little Boy was a gun-type design dropped on Hiroshima while Fat Man an implosion device dropped on Nagasaki so that the designs and their effects could be compared. Japanese commenters on the Big Picture yesterday called the bombing state-sponsored terrorism and equated it with the 9/11 attacks.
It is all too easy for me to see both sides of this. On one hand it's easy to see how an American military, already bleeding from a costly Pacific campaign, could take Japanese resolve, the Kamizake, and the Volunteer Fighting Corps propaganda seriously. I can see how, as long as you're going to drop atomic fire on people, you might as well take pictures to study it. And of course everyone was doing it. World War 2 was a war where terrible tests were performed on military prisoners (and non-prisoners) in both theaters and on all sides.
But I also have a hard time dismissing the Japanese view. The Geneva Conventions require that its parties minimize collateral damage to noncombatants, but Hiroshima was selected because it had "an urban area at least three miles in diameter". The decision to keep it free from conventional bombs could have lured more civilians there. Hiroshima and Nagasaki's body counts of 140,000 and 80,000 respectively are more or less on par with the body counts of the 88,000-124,000 killed in the conventional and equally horrifying firebombing of Tokyo and other cities. And since terrorism is in the eye of the beholder I can't really dismiss or get comfortable with the accusation that America directed violence at civilian as well as military targets to terrorize the Japanese population into capitulating to American demands. The bombing "worked", but at what marginal cost? Could the surrender have been forced a less terrible way? Could we have tried a bloody land invasion, found that it didn't work, then dropped the bomb? I don't know.
With enough historical perspective, asking who was right in the bombing of Hiroshima seems like asking who was right in the Battle of Hastings. A bunch of humans chose to do what seemed to them like a good idea for complex reasons that are understandable but not necessarily correct, and our lives today continue to be effected by their decision's consequences.