Remember why Hiroshima happened

(Reprinted courtesy of the Calgary Sun)

Paul Jackson

　The Japanese think Americans should still hang their heads in shame because 55 years ago their military dropped two atomic bombs and brought the Second World War to an end.

　Some naive groups also still believe that the Americans should abolish nuclear weapons and make themselves defenseless even though China, India and Pakistan continue to refine their own atomic arsenals and North Korea and Iraq are feverishly trying to build their own bombs.

　In reality, nuclear weapons are weapons of peace. They are the free world's safeguard against blackmail by heinous dictatorships.

　On TV this weekend, I saw Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori shedding tears for the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, I heard the tolling of a lone bell, I listened to 300 children singing and I saw 150 doves released into the sky. All very nice, but also a charade.

　For what we didn't hear from Japan was any explanation as to why U.S. President Harry Truman ordered bombs to be dropped on Japan, or any apology for the crimes that militaristic nation committed.

　We're not likely to hear any, either, for Japan has never officially apologized for its cowardly attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941 and for unleashing its might against the defenseless countries of Asia. The war is glossed over in Japanese schools, so most Japanese children somehow think the Allies were the aggressors and their own nation an innocent victim.

　It's impolite to mention the sickening rape of Nanking, in which an estimated 250,000 Chinese girls and women were raped by Japanese soldiers, not to mention the inhumane conditions in prisoner-of-war camps. And their use of live prisoners for chemical and biological weapons experiments must be forgotten.

　Yet we still continue to rub Germany's nose in what Nazi leader Adolf Hitler did - even though Germany has frequently apologized and made huge reparation payments. Even Israel admits to Germany's record of making amends.

　Coincidentally, while 75,000 people died in the Hiroshima attack and 70,000 when the bomb fell on Nagasaki, an estimated 200,000 Germans died in the February 1944 carpet bombing of Dresden. Yet the Germans don't constantly condemn the British and Americans for this "war crime."

　To this day, Japan's evil wartime leader Hideki Tojo is regarded as something of a hero - even though he was hanged for his abominable crimes by the Allies. Can you image the uproar if any Nazi official was treated with honour by Germans?

　The truth is, the Japanese got what was coming to them when Truman ordered the bombings. Germany had surrendered, but Japan was determined to fight on to the last Japanese man, woman and child. It's estimated that one million American boys would have died in a conventional assault on the Japanese mainland - as well as four million Japanese. By dropping the bombs, the U.S. actually saved millions of Japanese lives.

　Today, despite constant campaigns by such appeasement groups as Project Ploughshares, Physicians for Global Survival, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and other outfits, we have avoided another world war simply because we do have nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union was bent on world conquest, but the American nuclear arsenal was protection. Right now, Washington is working on a peace shield to protect the U.S. and Canada against nuclear attacks by the likes of North Korea and Iraq. Neither Kim Jong-Il nor Saddam Hussein are going to disarm - but these leering despots would love to see us drop our defences.

　As long as we have the bomb, we don't have to worry - but get rid of it, and we're asking for war.

Opposing View (Letter written in response to the article "Remember why Hiroshima happened" in The Edmonton Sun on 12 August 2000)