Aftermath

An exhibit of photographs, available on the internet here, begins with text reading

On August 10, 1945, the day after the bombing of Nagasaki, Yosuke Yamahata began to photograph the devastation. His companions on the journey were a painter, Eiji Yamada, and a writer, Jun Higashi.

One bomb did this, one bomb. Over a dozen years after the Cold War, the United States, Russia, the UK, China, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea, maybe Iran -- and perhaps even al Qaeda (did I forget anyone?) -- still possess several thousand of even-more devastating versions of this bomb. They can be delivered anywhere on the planet using devices ranging from multi-warhead missiles on a variety of land-based and sea-based platforms, to vehicles or containers where the quite small bombs could be placed and smuggled. The dynamics of the post-Cold-War world order led by the US and its now-demonstrated policy of preventive war have increased the chances that one or more such superbombs will be used.

After viewing the Nagasaki photo exhibit, how can anyone feel like it would be a good idea to unleash that force again? Shouldn't America again become a leader in backing away from the nuclear brink? Even Ronald Reagan could take up this mantle, as he engaged with Gorbachev and signed the INF treaty. Shouldn't we return to moving in this direction, instead of destroying our diplomatic legacy, as President Bush did in his unilateral abrogation of the ABM Treaty?

The traditional bilateral policy labeled "nuclear deterrence" is gone. A new type of deterrence, where the sole global superpower is only deterred from military domination of weak yet uncooperative target states when these targets possess or are perceived to possess nuclear bombs, forms the new perilous nuclear dynamic.

Furthermore, the possibility of nuclear terror has markedly risen in the current global pathology. The US invasion of Iraq under the stated theory that not to do so would risk a "mushroom cloud" as "first warning" was of course a ruse -- but only in the sense that the target of the invasion was incorrect. In fact, no longer is there any state target that America can attack with hope that permanent safety from nuclear attack will follow. Perhaps Pakistan or Saudi Arabia could have been better selections for last year's invasion, as the more likely source of such a surprise attack exists within these countries -- noting that the 911 plot was arguably centered there. And Pakistan is known to have nukes -- they tested one, remember? But Pakistan is President Bush's Terror War "ally", even as it is wrapped in layer after layer of secret machinations. What is the truth? Is the US afraid of Pakistan? Is that why it receives treatment far different than that given Iraq?

Military might is a blunt instrument in the era of "stateless" terrorism. The danger of that "mushroom cloud" has only grown as a result of the US conquest of Iraq.

August 6 demonstration in Bangor, Maine
How can we stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons if our own government insists on going in the wrong direction and provoking the world with invasions and a whole new program of nuclear weapons development, including new bomb concepts -- the "robust earth penetrator" -- and new weapons-making facilities?

That is the question we presented to the media and our representatives in Congress during a moving demonstration on Friday August 6, the 59th anniversary of the first nuclear bombing of civilians in Hiroshima, Japan.


Coverage on all three local TV stations was excellent, as illustrated by the above screen grabs. Yes, that's Deep Blade giving the TV about a 10-second comment. This story in the Bangor Daily News for August 7 was a bit odd, focusing as it does on two brief and very minor hecklings.

Please see a pdf version of our handout, with our requests for action by our congressmen and senators. This 2-page piece contains a wealth of information about our nuclear concerns, including a model letter for contacting your congresspeople to oppose new funding for new nuclear weapons and facilities in the 2005 Energy and Water Appropriations bill.

Excellent additional coverage of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki 59th anniversary
Nuclear bombs were not needed to either "save lives" or hasten the end of World War II. Those are myths. Calling these widely-held beliefs myths invites irrational emotional attacks from those steeped in them, but I must point this out just the same. The truth is that far from ending a World War, the civilian nuclear attacks of 1945 started a new war with surprising and uncontrollable consequences. We don't know yet all of these consequences as the world remains fraught with nuclear danger.

A number of websites have in the last few days provided excellent examinations of these issues of myth and reality concerning the 1945 civilian nuclear attacks. Here are three recommendations:

--Danny Schecter, the News Dissector and one of American journalism's national treasures, posted a terrific column on August 6. He covers reporting Hiroshima, secrets of the uranium, and was it necessary in this fine posting with numerous links.

--Click through to the links provided in these postings at Under the Same Sun: 1, 2. The first is an interview with Gar Alperovitz, whose examination of the Truman diaries uncovered in the mid 1980s followed by a decade of work on the "decision to drop the bomb" has led to an important book by that name. According to Alperovitz, "The use of the atomic bomb, most experts now believe, was totally unnecessary. Even people who support the decision for various reasons acknowledge that almost certainly the Japanese would have surrendered before the initial invasion planned for November. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey stated that officially in 1946.

--A piece on Counterpunch by anthropologist David Price of St. Martin's College in Olympia, Washington describes how, through a 1996 interview and examination of the papers of the late sinologist and cold warrior George Edward Taylor, he assembled an untold story about Japan and "the cultural conditions of unconditional surrender". Price writes that Taylor

came to see his job as being to convince U.S. civilian and military leaders that they did not have to engage in acts of genocidal annihilation to end the war. Racist stereotypes of maniacal Japanese soldiers and citizens fighting to the death dominated the War Department and the White House, and Taylor and his staff increasingly strove to battle this domestic enemy as a prime deterrent of peace. It was with great difficulty that Taylor and his staff of anthropologists worked to convince civilian and military personnel that the Japanese were even culturally capable of surrender.

In 1945 the US War Department preferred "a genocidal campaign to obliterate a 'race' believed incapable of surrender", despite the MAGIC intercepts showing "that in the days before the attacks of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American intelligence had good evidence that Ambassador Sato was close to surrendering to the Americans".

The sad lesson that follows from this preference informs a litany of US interventions ever since, including the one-track path towards the conquest of Iraq no matter what its previous government conceded to the US on its tenacious "disarmament" demands, including the former Iraqi regime's apparent total destruction of the weapons that were built with American help.