It Shouldn't Ever Have To End This Way

[omorka]

Sometimes, the options have been reduced to the bad, the worse, and the disastrous. And even with sixty-five years' hindsight, it's not clear which option was which.

. . . the problem is one that touches on the dirty little secret of social class in America. Arthur T. Hadley said recently that those for whom the use of the A-bomb was "wrong" seem to be implying "that it would have been better to allow thousands on thousands of American and Japanese infantrymen to die in honest hand-to-hand combat on the beaches than to drop those two bombs." People holding such views, he notes, "do not come from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots."

- from Paul Fussell's incredibly eloquent, morally complex, and provocatively titled essay Thank God for the Atom Bomb.

There were no good decisions. As the granddaughter of a WWII veteran, I don't think we made the worst one. But then again, I'm enough of a Utilitarian that I'm not sure I'd walk away from Omelas, either.

Comments

[northwall.livejournal.com]

You want to make this a class argument, fine. Let's rumble.

Both my grandfathers were WWII pilots; maternal in Europe, paternal in the Pacific. The most they would ever tell me is what planes they flew and where. Nobody talked about killing or friends or Huns or Japs. Just because I am educated doesn't mean I don't come from a working or military class.

I fully recognize that my view is strongly informed by a Japanese perspective, but let me point out a few things. Right there in your quote, the key word is INFANTRYMEN. Not women, not children, not non-combatants. Yes, the war would have dragged months or years longer without the use of the bomb. Yes, more lives would have been lost. Yes, many of them would have been civilian. But the US and the Allies had already firebombed the shit out of every single last military target in Japan. Firebombing is scary enough. When thousands are killed in seconds, and many tens of thousands more *civilians* die in the next decade from residual radiation, that is unacceptable.

I don't think you can honestly tell me that if a US city had been nuked, we would not have tried to or successfully banned the use of such weapons. Hiroshima is as much my prefecture now as Texas is my state, and for the most part, you don't find anger or resentment among its people. You find a fervent hope and diligent working for peace. I'm not sure that same hope would exist, given a different history, but there is no need for any people to endure that. I cannot condemn atomic weaponry strongly enough.

[fiona-conn.livejournal.com]

It's even scarier when you realize how long the rest of the world rumbled on, making bigger weapons, and how many times we've probably come close to annihilating ourselves. Being born in 1987, the Cold War was sort of just coming to an end, so I never really grew up with the same sort of... I dunno, "paranoia" going on? So when you're my age and actually reading about what your parents grew up knowing...

There's a video that was on Gizmodo recently - an animation showing exactly how many nuclear bombs have been detonated on our earth during the process of making and testing these weapons. The simple graphics and sounds are eerie enough, but it's when you connect it to the bigger picture... that's when the shock starts to set in.

http://gizmodo.com/5600704/the-explosions-of-every-nuclear-bomb-to-date

(Well, not quite to date -- it ends in 1998, but... you'll get the idea.)

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

Except that, as I understand it, the alternative to dropping the bomb was NOT an invasion of Japan- it was accepting the quiet overtures of surrender Japan was offering. They wanted only one condition- that the emperor not be arrested, imprisoned, or tried as a war criminal. That, in the event, was pretty much what we ended up giving them...

... but Truman wanted a demonstration of the bomb to show the Russians who was going to be boss after the war, so hundreds of thousands of civilians died horribly.

(And, of course, by allowing the Russians to enter the war, Truman let Mao get a firm industrial base in Manchuria, and Korea got divided- which led to the Korean War, not to mention an ugly short marionette singing, "I'm So Ronery.")

[awbryan.livejournal.com]

...except that we were not actually certain that Japan really would be able to enforce an accepted surrender. We speak of "Japan" and "America" as if they are well-integrated entities, but they are in fact quite heterogeneous. It wasn't that there weren't people in the Japanese Government ready to surrender that kept everyone awake at night. It was that the military would not be able to surrender under the kamikaze code, and would overthrow the government rather than surrender.

This was not an idle fear. We knew how bat-shit the Japanese warrior class was. The Navy knew the kamikazes' willingness to die for their country at the drop of a hat. The Marines had watched civilians commit suicide before surrender on Okinawa.

And even when the surrender DID go through, there STILL was a revolt and attempted coup. But enough people -- including military officials -- had been scared witless and humbled and shocked by the nukes that more men defended the Emperor than assisted the insurgents.

Demonstration of the Bomb for the Russkis was just a good side effect of nuking the Japanese. We nuked them to tell the military caste that they had to accept the deal their foreign ministry had already worked out with us below the table.

We can argue about whether it would have been better to nuke a small island we'd already taken, with observers present under truce, to demonstrate the Bomb, rather than nuking inhabited cities. Or maybe nuking Fuji's peak. But given the then-recent events and evidence, No Bomb wasn't an option. It was just a question of what Bomb target would get the generals to give up.

Leaving Omelas is not as easy as it sounds. Even if you walk out, seeking a better world, you are still Omelasan, and that child is still suffering.

[lord-of-entropy.livejournal.com]

Truman got his briefing on the bomb from the guys with an institutional investment in the nuke program succeeding. The USSR, who the US had failed to strangle in the cradle, had demonstrated its might across Eurasia. Hiroshima was a first shot in the Cold War.


"People holding such views, he notes, "do not come from the ranks of society that produce infantrymen or pilots."

A fine thrust but I have to reply both "So? Do I have to have be raped to recognise it as injustice?" & "But given the numbers involved, they likely come from families in which infantrymen or pilots were drafted."

It was an evil act and a war crime, one of many committed by all sides (e.g. Admiral Nimitz's defense of Admiral Dönitz during his Nuremberg trial).

[wren-chan.livejournal.com]

My recurring fantasy re: Omelas has always been to take the kid and fight my way out. Then watch it burn behind me.

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

No, indeed. We come instead from the ranks of people who believe that CIVILIANS ARE NOT LEGITIMATE TARGETS. And believe me, that's not a class-oriented issue. If it's terrorism when some random wacko does it, then our government shouldn't be doing it either. The military's obligation to protect civilians doesn't end at our country's borders.