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    滅び
    9 August is now over in Japan; mayor of Nagasaki Tomihisa Taue gave the expected speech on the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing:

    This year is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dr. Takashi Nagai, a physician who dedicated himself to caring for victims of the bombing. Nagasaki mayor Tomihisa Taue cited Nagai's words in his peace address: "In war there is neither victory nor defeat. What there is is only destruction." He also addressed the world: "Without the abolition of nuclear weapons, there is no future for humankind." As he did last year, he sought from the Japanese government leadership toward the abolition of nuclear weapons and the codification in law of the three principles of non-nuclearization.


    The three principles are that Japan will not (1) possess, (2) create, or (3) import nuclear armaments.

    I know I harp on this every year, but the fact--in this case as in so many others--is that suffering does not necessarily confer wisdom. The image of Japanese people as innocent burn victims and saintly doctors running about trying to alleviate suffering is not inaccurate in and of itself, but it does lack context. By the time of the Nagasaki bombing, the Japanese Empire had executed its plan of overrunning as much of East and Southeast Asia as it could get its hands on, figuring that if and when it lost the war, it could expect to bargain to retain at least some of its occupied territories. It rejected the Potsdam Declaration, even when it was clear that it could not possibly win the Pacific War. It tried to see whether it could leverage itself a more advantageous deal by approaching Moscow. It balked at surrendering even after the Hiroshima bombing. The suicidal belligerence of the Japanese in combat was well known, as was their egregious treatment of conquered peoples and prisoners of war, so a ground invasion promised to expend even more men and resources on a war that the Japanese knew they had already lost. Japan in 1945 was an extremely tenacious enemy that warranted an extreme response; that it is now peaceably integrated into the world economy as an industrial and consumer powerhouse does not change that.

    Added on 11 August: Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse posted yesterday at Pajamas Media:

    The stories of survivors are harrowing — flames everywhere, people walking by whose flesh had been ripped off their bodies by heat and the blast, the inability to find loved ones. All the ghastliness of Dante’s Hell and a Gothic horror novel rolled into one. We pity them and ache for what they went through that horrible day.

    But once –just once– I would like to hear the horror stories of the men and women of Pearl Harbor as counterpoint to the suffering of the Japanese and a reminder of who started the war and how they did it. I want to hear from those who can tell equally horrific tales of death and destruction. How Japanese aircraft strafed our men with machine gun fire while they were swimming for their lives through flaming oil spills, the result of a surprise attack against a nation with whom they were at peace. Or how the hundreds of men trapped in the USS Arizona slowly suffocated over 10 days as divers frantically tried to cut through the superstructure and rescue their comrades.

    Perhaps we might even ask surviving POWs to bear witness to their ordeal in Japanese prison camps — surely as brutal, inhuman, and gruesome an atrocity as has ever been inflicted on enemy soldiers.

    While we’re at it, I am sure there are thousands of witnesses who would want to testify about how the Japanese army raped its way across Asia. This little discussed aspect of the war is a non-event for the most part in Japanese histories. But the millions of women who suffered unspeakable mistreatment by the Japanese army deserve a hearing whenever the tragedy of Hiroshima is remembered.

    Yes, no more Hiroshimas. But to take the atomic bombing of Japan totally out of context and use it to highlight one nation or one city’s suffering is morally offensive. The war with Japan, with its racial overtones on both sides as well as the undeniable cruelty and barbarity by the Japanese military, should have been ended the second it was possible to do so. Anything less makes the moral arguments surrounding the use of the atomic bomb an exercise in sophistry.


    Yes. He also has much more background about the decision to use the atom bombs.

    All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:

    1. 作戦
    2. 滅び
    3. 核なき世界...
    4. Hiroshima bombing anniversary
    5. Tokyo fire-bombing anniversary
    6. Can't sleep
    Posted by Sean on 2008-08-09 13:10:32
    Luke Baggins (mail) (www):
    Thank you for harping on this point. It needs harping on, particularly in the Japanophile community.

    I also would like to hear your thoughts on the future of pacifism in Japan. Will it endure in its current form?

    For my own part, I would like to see pacifism abandoned everywhere, but especially in free countries that are allied with the US and have to deal with North Korea. Will Japan continue to cling to pacifism? Is pacifism really as dominant as it appears to be to someone who just started being able to read the language a couple of years ago?
    8.9.2008 9:17pm
    Sean Kinsell (mail) (www):
    I don't think pacifism in Japan (or Germany, et c.) can really endure in its current form, no. For one thing, we're eventually not going to want them as wards. For another, I think it's unhealthy psychologically for a people to be wards, especially when it has a proud history of warrior culture. It's good that Japan has diverted its competitive instincts into commerce, and it's also good that we're protecting it given current conditions; but eventually, it's going to get restive and resentful.

    Re. how prevalent pacifism is now, I think it's a function of the Japanese tendency to (1) conform to expectations and (2) avoid unpleasantness. After the war, Japan recognized that it can be admired by the world if it does lots of showy participation in the United Nations and talks up its peaceableness. Having succeeded in that PR effort, it's skittish about doing anything that might compromise that image. The SDF is, by many accounts, more ready to project force than Tokyo likes to let on, but there's still a great deal of controversy over collective self-defense, for example. Japan's eventually going to have to become more self-sufficient in armed-forces terms, for both internal and external reasons, though it's probably going to continue to happen in fits and starts.
    8.12.2008 8:10pm

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