Posted by
Brett Allen on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 6:00:00 AM
Over the Memorial Day weekend, I watched PBS's American Experience documentary on Harry Truman. Although it was a rerun, it was a bit of history I couldn't resist watching again. And, it reminded me of a debate that continues today in punditry: Should Truman, as president, have approved the A-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan?
I've read plenty of propaganda from leftist peaceniks who characterize the bombings as examples of America's history of hegemony. Even puritans within libertarian circles offer similar condemnations for such inhuman and unnecessary acts of murder. There are plenty of defenders of that decision made sixty-three years ago who wish to preserve a positive legacy for the Truman presidency and those that followed. It seems everyone has a perspective, or should I say, an agenda. Come August, the anniversaries of both bombings, I'm sure we'll suffer the same debates. So, let me slip in my two cents before the annual argument resumes.
I write about Hiroshima and Nagasaki from this perspective:
I was born more than a dozen years after the end of World War II. I've never served in the military. My memories of war are those of Vietnam's swamps and jungles. Images from Vietnam flooded our living room in black and white, and then in living color when my parents paid cash (saved-up cash!) for our first color set. All of my grade school years were marked by coverage of that war, and later, the protests against it. My view of the war was influenced by self-interest. As I entered my freshman year in high school, I prayed that it would end before I graduated. Thank God, it did. By the time of my 1976 commencement, Vietnam was but a dark memory. Although our part of the war officially ended in 1973, it was only the year before my graduation that the last helicopter fled the roof of our Saigon embassy as NVA tanks entered the city. That image sticks with me. The long years of TV's first war became a blur of mixed memories. Better to let those images fade with time.
Many years later, we were at war again. It was the war the Gen Xers would remember: the lightening-quick war in the Gulf. It was short-lived and showcased the power of high tech. It seemed easy, and it encouraged those of us who'd spent our childhoods and adolescence watching the mind-numbingly slow blood-letting in Vietnam that there would be no more Vietnams. Still, I didn't want any part of it. And, when the Gulf War encore of George W. Bush was imminent, I wanted no part of it either. The fear of another Vietnam haunted my mind. Whether or not Vietnam is being revisited in Iraq, history will have to decide. I have my suspicions.
I'll admit I'm gun-shy when it comes to war. But the experiences I just related were not alone in shaping my views. My dad was nearly forty when I was born. The disparity in our ages afforded me a view of war few members of my generation could have imagined. He had enlisted as a Marine after the country entered World War II following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Those of his eight brothers who were eligible, enlisted as well. He was sent to the Pacific where the war was fought from one beachhead to the next. Over the years, my dad said very little about his experiences during that war. There were no grand stories of victory or camaraderie, and he never attended any veteran reunions in the years following its end. For him, and those alongside him who survived, the war was a hell better left forgotten.
On a few rare occasions, my dad would allow a glimpse of those hellish days to escape his mind. He talked of bunks piled on each other in the depths of transport ships and the smell from the vomit which sloshed about as the ship rose and fell with the ocean waves. Most of the men had never been aboard ship and had never suffered seasickness. This is how he was taken from home to the tiny islands of the Pacific. From the ships, he was taken by open transport to the shallow waters where he and his fellow Marines carried the full weight of weaponry and supplies through the shallows to the beach. Bullets whizzed past and men on both sides of him fell. It happened over and over, island by island. He survived the hell of Saipan. Some men, he said, simply lost their minds. The experience of war was too horrendous. Of those days, he said no more. He did talk about the months after the war when he served as an MP (military policeman) in China. He found the devastation left by the Japanese occupation there appalling. After all he'd been through, the sight of malnourished little Chinese kids begging for food from soldiers never left him, although, again, he said no more about it.
While my dad and thousands of his generation continued in the bedlam of daily war, the Japanese, who were losing the fight, refused to surrender. Their leaders were ruled not by their emperor but by their fanaticism. While my dad and others were dumped on some sandy shore, we bombed Tokyo and other major Japanese cities to force their surrender. The Japanese refused. A long and bloody assault on the Japanese mainland, a larger replay of Saipan and other islands, was in the works for November 1945. We know this as a matter of record. What we don't know is whether or not my dad would have survived it. How many others would have survived it? How many American lives would it have required to finally convince the Japanese to surrender? Would it have taken the equivalent a hundred Saipans? A thousand? I don't know, do you? President Truman couldn't have known either, but I would imagine he was computing the costs as he weighed the A-bomb decision.
No warning and no demonstration of force could persuade the fanatics in the Japanese government to surrender - even after the Tokyo bombing campaign, the detonation over Hiroshima on August 6, and the near vaporization of Nagasaki on August 9. We now know that even after the terrible loss of life they inflicted upon their own men, women, and children, a remnant within the ruling hierarchy of Japan's collapsing empire plotted against surrender. We know the horror wrought by the atomic bombs. Can we imagine the hell that would have been endured by Allied soldiers, the peoples occupied by the Japanese empire, and the Japanese people themselves had they not been used?
Only God himself knows.
But, today, there are plenty of experts, pundits, and bloggers who seem to know only what God himself knows. They have somehow gained the wisdom that escaped the rest of humanity. To them the atomic bombs were tools of our aggression. If we had just negotiated in good faith with the Japanese, they'd have given up war for commerce. If we had just talked to Herr Hitler, one on one, we could have understood his true aims, and maybe he'd have spared the millions of lives consumed by his war machine and his death camps. If we had held a fourth summit with Stalin after Potsdam, we could have avoided the cold war. Maybe Stalin would have loosened his grip on the war survivors of Eastern Europe. He might have even traded in the international exportation of communism for vodka exports...
And pigs fly with impunity and the moon is made of cheese.
What I know about war is that is it but a glimpse of Hell on the earth. I learned of its horrors from my father who experienced it firsthand and who could speak of it for only a few brief moments during his eighty-three years. I know of the bedlam of war because it was brought into my living room every evening from the time I entered first grade until I was half-way through my freshman year of high school. War is not glorious, it is deadly and destructive, and it is not easily negotiated away. It is a waste of time, treasure and lives, but no one, living or dead, knows if it is always avoidable.
And I know one more thing: After the second atomic bomb fell to the earth, the war ended and my dad came home alive.