MAKING A DIFFERENCE
Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Sixty-five years ago, the two, single most horrifying acts of war in the history of humanity were unleashed.
On Aug. 6, 1945, after several months of bombing more than 60 Japanese cities, including the dreadful firebombing of Tokyo and Osaka, the United States dropped the world’s first atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, instantly killing approximately 80,000 people; by the end of the year, another 60,000 died from radiation poisoning and injuries, bringing the death toll to 140,000. Nearly all were civilians.
On Aug. 9, 1945, the United States detonated a second atomic bomb over the city of Nagasaki, killing about 80,000 human beings and annihilating two-thirds of the Catholic population of Japan.
Father George Zabelka, chaplain to the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs, later regretted his failure to condemn these military missions. In a Sojourners magazine interview, Father Zabelka said, “I was brainwashed!” referring to the atomic blasts and the massive conventional bombings. He added, “The whole structure of the secular, religious and military society told me clearly that it was all right to ‘let the Japs have it.’”
President Harry S. Truman claimed that dropping the atomic bombs was necessary to save the lives of 1 million American soldiers who would have been killed during a land invasion of Japan. But Truman’s statement was contrived. It had absolutely no factual basis.
Actually, the facts paint a very different picture.
Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Truman, wrote in his book “I Was There” that “a large part of the Japanese Navy was already on the bottom of the sea. The combined Navy surface and Air Force action even by this time had forced Japan into a position that made her early surrender inevitable. ...
“It was my opinion, and I urged it strongly on the Joint Chiefs, that no major land invasion of the Japanese mainland was necessary to win the war. ... The invasion itself was never authorized.”
The most authoritative Air Force unit during World War II was the United States Strategic Bombing Survey, which was responsible for selecting bombing targets. In its postwar document titled “Hiroshima’s Shadow,” it reportedly stated: “The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs did not defeat Japan.
“It is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, ... Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, ... and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
An honest, mature examination of conscience can only conclude that America’s dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan was militarily unnecessary and gravely immoral.
And any future use of nuclear weapons would likewise be morally indefensible.
Therefore, it is of crucial importance that each of us e-mail and/or phone (Capitol switchboard: 202-224-3121) our two U.S. senators, urging them to vote for ratification of the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.
Also urge them to significantly reduce and not expand nuclear weapons funding in all categories.
During a lecture at Georgetown University in 2007, Nagasaki Archbishop Joseph M. Takami, who was in his mother’s womb in Nagasaki the day the U.S. atomic blast destroyed that city, said the direct experience of the atomic bomb taught the Japanese “a precious lesson of nonviolence as a way of life, a conviction, a belief and a nonnegotiable commitment.”
The majority of Japanese people, most of whom are not Christian, understand far better the nonviolent teachings of Jesus than most Christians care to.
Honestly, who would Jesus bomb?