There were several diaries written on Hiroshima yesterday, some condeming the attacks, some defending them as an ugly but necessary tactic to end the war. In particular, this diary offered a detailed and well sourced analysis of claims that Japan was on the verge of surrender.
Obviously, a lot of people have relatives that fought and or died in World War II and people have very strong feelings on the subject. I, as a resident of Japan, am not immune from emotion or the occasional inflammatory remark regarding Harry Truman.
But what I want to explore in this diary is not the dropping of the bomb itself, not the question of its justification or lack thereof, but its aftermath and what it says about our chances in moving toward a non-nuclear world.
Living in Japan, you can't help but meet the occasional person who has lived in or has relatives in Hiroshima. Though most people try to avoid discussing the events of 1945, know them long enough and you will eventually realize that everyone has a story. These stories relate not to the detonation and the 140,000 people killed but to the effects of residual radiation which are still felt today.
The people who survived the bombing are known as 被爆者 or "Hibakusha." Hibaku is the word for "atomic bomb" and "sha" is a respectul term for people, often used to form compound words describing victims. The Hibakusha have a complicated and ultimately shameful history. In the years following the bombing, many of them began to develop strange symptoms - frequent vomiting, diarrhea, strange purple discolorations on the back of their necks, hair loss, etc. As their symptoms took hold, they were initially denied medical care by their own government. Still more were forced to hide their plight out of a sense of shame, as stories began to circulate that victims were being denied employment and were unable to marry.
They lived with a ticking time bomb in their body, unable to judge the full extent of its effects, every day unsure if they would even live to see the next. With more and more victims developing cancer, giving birth to mentally or physically disabled children, and dying at an early age, even the advent of a common cold would cause worry that their body was breaking down. Still worse was the government's continued refusal to acknowledge that the surge in health problems was related in any way to the bombings. A thousand theories were developed to explain away the symptoms: birth defects were the result of starvation due to food rationing, nausea and diarrhea the fault of a chance viral outbreak that simply happened to affect thousands of people in Hiroshima and had no effect elsewhere.
Until now, I had always heard that it was the Japanese government who was the primary culprit in these matters. That changed last night when I watched a documentary on Japanese TV marking the anniversary. In the documentary I came to face the shame of my own government's complicity. A complicity which began shortly after the bombings and still contiues.
In the documentary, we were introduced to surviving members of the Manhattan Project. These men proceeded to look at the camera, flash their ivories, and announce in a warm voice their belief that residual radiation was a scientific impossibility and that the Hibakusha were an unfortunate group who had been duped into believing that they were somehow sick. Thus began the story of ABCC, a commision set up by Truman to study the after effects of Little Boy.
ABCC's mission was not to fully uncover and study the outcome of Hiroshima, it was to kill any possibility of such a study before it could take place. The scientists who worked on the Manhattan project informed the commision that they had pre-determined a "safe height" from which the bomb could be exploded without fear of radiation sickness. The pilots had taken great care to follow instructions and it was the finding of experts that any reports of residual radiation were scientifically impossible and thus false. Official victims were those who had been within a two kilometer radius of the blast. Any other claims were illegimate.
This was the line ABCC took forward as they conducted test after test and study after study. No matter how many victims came forward, no matter how clear the patterns became, ABCC's job was to deny and rationalize. When the Hibakusha finally mobilized in the 1950's and demanded recognition from the government, a law was passed where victims who met stringent requirements would be compensated for their treatment. Even then, the surviving members of ABCC worked with the Japanese government to systematically deny coverage to thousands of people, many of whom had passeed the effects on to their children.
Finally, in this our new millenium, the Hibakusha sued. Class action lawsuits that attacked the metrics by which victims were judged. They've won more than 11 cases against the Japanese government and even now, many are still coming forward for the first time.
There is no doubt that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought a quick and in some ways positive end to the war. 60 years later, the world has come to terms with what America did and it has forgiven us. My wife's grandmother, an 80 year old woman who spent over three years on the run during World War II, scrounging for food in Hokkaido, has not only welcomed an American into her home but met and embraced my entire family. This is not to say animosity does not exist, but it is not as widespread as it could be.
So why, then, must we persist in denying the bomb's long term legacy? Why do American scientists, acting in coordination with the American government (ABCC was shut down in the 70's but there have been other groups since), seek to deny and even in some cases suppress evidence of fallout sickness? For all the talk of dirty bombs and unsecured nuclear material, it is the US which is largely responsible for the conventional acceptance of nuclear weapons. By ignoring the obvious, by refusing to allow a story that should be heard by everyone even to be told, we do more than any terrorist to legitimize their continued use. We, more than anyone else, must take responsibility. We, more than anyone else, must work to not only prove that it should have happened but to see that it never happens again.
And that, Kossacks, is the rallying cry. Forget why. Forget the past. This is about the future. Never again. Never again.
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** An update
with video from Shohei Imamura's wrenching film about the Hibakusha, "Black Rain" (not the freakin Michael Douglas movie). As for what's happening in the second scene - The old man catches a small fish, throws it back and sees a bigger fish jump out of the lake. The girl who can't see well begins fantasizing that there are all sorts of giant fish there but really the lake is dead (I think. I can't remember the context here and it's hard to tell from this small clip. The only dialgoue is about the girl's marriage).
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