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Thursday,
August 12, 2010 The Moral Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "We
have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be
the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and
his fabulous Ark.... This weapon is to be used against Japan ... [We] will use
it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and
not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and
fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop
that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new. ... The target will
be a purely military one... It seems to be the most terrible thing ever
discovered, but it can be made the most useful." Harry
S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd U.S. President, (Diary, July 25, 1945) "The World will note that
the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima a military base. That was
because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of
civilians." Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), 33rd U.S. President, (radio speech to the Nation, August 9, 1945) "..
In [July]
1945... Secretary of War [Henry L.] Stimson, visiting my
headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to
drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a
number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. ...The
Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico,
and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a
vigorous assent.
...During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a
feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on
the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the
bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country
should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment
was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It
was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to
surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed
by my attitude." General
Dwight Eisenhower,
Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and 34th U.S. President from
1952 to 1960, (Mandate For Change, p. 380) "Mechanized civilization has just reached
the ultimate stage of barbarism. In a near future, we will have to choose
between mass suicide and intelligent use of scientific conquests [...] This can no
longer be simply a prayer; it must become an order which goes upward from the
peoples to the governments, an order to make a definitive choice between hell
and reason." Albert Camus (1913-1960), French
philosopher and author, August 8, 1945 "As
American Christians, we are deeply penitent for the irresponsible use already
made of the atomic bomb. We are agreed that, whatever be one's judgment of
the war in principle, the surprise bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are
morally indefensible." The American Federal
Council of Churches' Report on Atomic Warfare and the Christian
Faith,
1946 "It is my opinion that the use of this
barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in
our war against Japan. " - "The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare
in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to
use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the
Dark Ages." William Leahy, Chief of Staff to
Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman (“I Was
There”, p. 441) When
U.S. President Harry S.
Truman decided on his own to use the atom bomb, a barbarous
weapon of mass destruction, against the Japanese civilian populations of the
cities of Hiroshima and of Nagasaki on August 6 and on August 9, 1945, the
United States sided officially on the wrong side of history. General Dwight
Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe and 34th U.S.
President from 1952 to 1960, said it in so many words: "...the
Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with
that awful thing." (Newsweek, November 11, 1963). Between 90,000
and 120,000 people died in Hiroshima and between 60,000 and 80,000 died in
Nagasaki, for a grand total of between 150,000 and 200,000 most cruel deaths.
It seems that military man
Eisenhower was more ethical
than Freemason small-town politician Harry S. Truman regarding the fateful
decision. In being the first country to use
nuclear weapons against civilian populations, the United States was then in
direct violation of internationally accepted principles
of war with respect to the wholesale and indiscriminate
destruction of populations. Thus, August 1945 is a most dangerous and ominous
precedent that marked a new dismal beginning in the history of humanity, a
big moral step backward. In future generations, it most
certainly will be considered that the use of the atom bomb against the
Japanese civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a historic crime against
humanity that will stain the reputation of the United States
for centuries to come. It can also be said that President Harry S. Truman,
besides lying to the American people about the whole sordid affair (see
official quotes above), has left behind him a terrible moral legacy of
incalculable consequences to future generations of Americans. Many self-serving reasons have
been advanced for justifying Truman's decision, such as the objective of
saving the lives of American soldiers by shortening the war in the Pacific
and avoiding a military invasion of Japan with a quick Japanese surrender.
That surrender came on August 15, 1945 and it was made official on September
2 with the signing of the Japanese
Instrument of Surrender, nearly one month after the
bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nazi Germany had capitulated
on May 8, 1945 and World War II was already over in Europe. There was also
the diplomatic fear that the Soviet Red Army could have invaded Japan, as
they had done in Berlin, thus depriving the United States of a hard fought
clear-cut victory against Japan. But by the end of July 1945,
according to military experts, the Japanese military apparatus had de
facto been defeated. It is also true that the militarist
Japanese Supreme
Council for the Direction of the War was stalling with the aim of getting better capitulation terms hoping
for a negotiated settlement, especially regarding the future role of their
Emperor Hirohito as
formal head of state. In Europe, the allies had caused a
recalcitrant Nazi Germany to accept an unconditional surrender and there were
other military means to force the Japanese government to surrender. The
convenient pretext of rushing a surrender carries no weight compared to the
enormity of using the nuclear weapon on two civilian targets. And even if
President Truman was anxious to demonstrate the power of the atom bomb and
impress his Soviet friends—and possibly also assert himself as a political
figure vis-à-vis previous President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had
died a few months earlier, on April 12, 1945—this could have been done
while targeting remote Japanese military targets, not on targeting entire
cities. It seems that there were no moral considerations in this most inhuman
decision. Since that fateful month of August 1945, humanity
has embarked upon a disastrous nuclear arms race and is rushing toward
oblivion with its eyes open and its mind closed. _____________________________________ Rodrigue Tremblay
is professor emeritus of economics at the University of
Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com. He is the author of the book "The
Code for Global Ethics"
at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ The
book “The Code for Global Ethics, Ten
Humanist Principles”, by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by Dr. Paul Kurtz,
has just been released by Prometheus Books. Please visit the book site at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com/ See
it on Amazon
USA: See
it on Amazon
Canada: See
it on Amazon
UK: or, in Australia
at: Please ask your favorite bookstore and
your local library to order the book: The Code for Global
Ethics, Ten Humanist Principles,
by Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay, prefaced by
Dr. Paul Kurtz, Prometheus Books, 2010, 300 p. ISBN: 978-1616141721. *****The French version of the book is also
now available. See: www.lecodepouruneethiqueglobale.com/ or on Amazon
Canada _____________________________________ Posted, Thursday,
August 12, 2010, at 5:30 am Email to a friend: http://www.TheNewAmericanEmpire.com/tremblay=1128 or
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