As a pilot, I’ve been to Japan many times and am proud to have flown some of the first relief flights after the Fukushima disaster. Last June, I went as a tourist with family and friends. I was content to let others determine our itinerary, except that I knew I wanted to visit Hiroshima. We arrived by train in the afternoon, then took a bus to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, where the first atomic bomb exploded 600 meters above the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, now known as the A-Bomb Dome. “Little Boy” was set to detonate at that altitude to maximize its destructive force. In less time than it’s taken to read these words, 140,000 souls were vaporized, incinerated or died other unimaginably horrifying deaths. The memorial, while serenely beautiful, is also educational. At the adjacent museum one can learn of a horror that’s impossible to comprehend, that threatens us all even more today.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is dedicated to preventing the use of atomic weapons ever again, but in this, it has not succeeded. If it had, the world would not have over 15,000 nuclear weapons vastly more powerful than “Little Boy” or “Fat Man” with the U.S. comprising nearly half the total. The United States would be disarming, not spending $1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years on developing new and smaller nuclear weapons that experts say make them more attractive for first use rather than for deterrent.
That Nobel Peace Prize recipient Obama could speak his eloquent words at Hiroshima yet simultaneously move the world further along the path to annihilation astounds me, but I am angered, not surprised by such hypocrisy. The punditocracy was all atwitter prior to Obama’s visit over whether he should go and filled with angst over whether he would or should apologize for the unnecessary slaughter of civilians — a war crime, by the way. Not to worry. Obama began his remarks, “Seventy-one years ago, on a bright cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself.” He never once mentioned who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki or noted that at the time what was demonstrated was that the United States alone had that power. Perhaps he, like most, believes what we’re all taught in public school: That dropping the bombs brought a quicker end to the war and saved lives. But if you do just a bit of research, you’ll learn this is not the case.
Well before Aug. 6, 1945, the Japanese empire was already seeking to surrender to the U.S. because Russia was preparing to declare war from the west and they much preferred to surrender to the Americans. The U.S. military knew this. President Harry S. Truman knew this. The Russians knew this. There were American generals opposed to the attack as unnecessary. American scientists warned it would set off a nuclear arms race, yet Truman proceeded. Three days later he dropped the second, more powerful plutonium bomb on Nagasaki. Why? To send a clear message to the communists: “Look what we can do to you.” They got the message, and the nuclear arms race was on.
But like a punch in the stomach, here’s what really surprised, shocked and shamed me in my research (from “Who Rules The World” by Noam Chomsky):
Five days later came what the official air force history calls the “grand finale,” a 1,000 plane raid on Japan’s cities, killing many thousands of people, with leaflets falling among the bombs reading “Japan has surrendered.”
Jake Jacobs has lived in Kailua-Kona since 1975. He works as a 747 pilot for a worldwide cargo company and writes a monthly column for West Hawaii Today.