After 65 years, we would like to forget the terror we unleashed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fortunately, the hibakusha, the dwindling number of survivors, continue to remind us that the use and even the mere possession of nuclear weaponry remains an intrinsic evil. Gently, they ask us to recall that the firebombing of Japanese cities and the effective blockade of Japan had already convinced 64 percent of the Japanese people that the war could not continue.
The loss of life and the suffering caused by what were then deemed “conventional means” had brought the Japanese government to make peace overtures. Many of our military leaders, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Adm. William Halsey, Adm. William Leahy, Gen. Douglas MacArthur among them, were of the same opinion: The Japanese would surrender without an allied invasion of their homeland.
Why, then, was it thought necessary for us to use atomic bombs? Why use them against deliberately chosen population centers up to then spared the destructive power of firebombing? Our fear was that the effects of the firebombing would mask the effect of the new bombs. To choose an already battered target would not allow for the proper “shock and awe.” (See, for example, Gary Wills’ “Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State.”)
By the time of the vaporization of Hiroshima, we had turned to: propaganda justifying the use of the bomb as the most “humane way” of ending the war and preventing future wars; producing more nuclear devices to use against Japan and secure the power the exclusive possession of such weapons gave to the U.S.; and continu-ing the secrecy surrounding the development of the bomb to prevent others from acquiring the weapon and thereby undercutting the greater power in international affairs that monopoly possession was thought to give the U.S. All three efforts proved mistaken or unachievable.
Nevertheless, these concerns produced radical changes in the structures and functions of our government. The creation of the National Security State essentially stripped Congress of the power to declare war and gave rise to a host of executive usurpations, ending in the preventive — not preemptive — war against Iraq, a clear violation of international law.
The secrecy successfully maintained in the production of the bomb, when extended to the CIA and other departments of the executive, became a cover for deception, incompetence and corruption; for illegal and frequently immoral executive activity; and for disastrous choices in foreign relations, because such choices and actions saw no public discussion or criticism until long after the choices were made or the actions were taken.
Our Founding Fathers, who thought that in a republic the legislature would predominate, saw that arrangement give way to the American president as the predominant political figure, his transformation made necessary to preside over the unending crises his much augmented and constitutionally illicit powers created to begin with. In short, we, as unwittingly as the Romans of old, allowed the gradual transformation of our republic into an empire.
Therefore, our reflections concerning Hiroshima and Nagasaki should not focus only upon the horrors we inflicted upon our demonized enemy, but upon the changes these weapons worked upon us. We would do well to begin with a reflection on this theme: Is American democracy compatible with empire?
Frank Perreault Kuebel of Eddington is a member of Penobscot Valley Pax Christi. He wrote this commentary on behalf of the group.