NYT Editorial: Blood On Our Hands

Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times Op-Ed Columnist
Tuesday, August 5, 2003 Posted: 6:54 AM EDT (1054 GMT)

Tomorrow will mark the anniversary of one of the most morally contentious events of the 20th century, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. And after 58 years, there's an emerging consensus: we Americans have blood on our hands.

There has been a chorus here and abroad that the U.S. has little moral standing on the issue of weapons of mass destruction because we were the first to use the atomic bomb. As Nelson Mandela said of Americans in a speech on Jan. 31, "Because they decided to kill innocent people in Japan, who are still suffering from that, who are they now to pretend that they are the policeman of the world?"

More...

Link to CNN copy of same article

and we don't care what they think, right? It reminds me of the old riddle...

How does an American change a lightbulb?



















They throw a brick at it.


Meaning we are violent and wasteful.

"The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war" This is how my Japanese husband thinks.

Frankly it would be hard to imagine American's being so grateful for being bombed for all the wars it's started.

you should tell him the truth that the japanese did not surrender until their 1 condition was met - keep the emporer - and we ran out of nukes.

Hiroshima is the second most horrid word in the english language... Nagasaki being the first. kv

I told my wife of this fact who is japanese and as my children study history I make sure they are aware of this as well.

peace

You leave out the thrust of Kirstof's piece, that the conventional wisdom is wrong and that the greatest tragedy of Hiroshima was that, in a complex and brutal world, the alternatives were worse.

The dropping of the bombs saved far more lives -- American and Japanese -- than it took. Period.

...but the Japanese civilians who were killed were innocent, and powerless to change either their fate, or the direction of their country.

While an invasion of the mainland may have killed many, they would have been primarily soldiers killed (many of them ours), not civilians.

I think it was unforgivable.

suggested we accept japans offer to surrender in order to SAVE LIVES in the spring of 45.

now even if you look at it from an accountants perspective you can see that what we did COST even more lives (ours and theirs)

peace

Didn't the titular reason for rejecting it come down to having something to do with the status of the Emperor? ie., whether he remained Emperor, and whether he would be just a figurehead or not?

As I understand the reality of it, what our military really wanted to do was scare the approaching Soviets with a demonstration of our A-bomb.

the rest of the world think 'shock-N-awe'

the japanese primarily didn't want the emporer to stand trial as we wanted and also wanted him to remain in 'power' he really was simply a figure head even before we won the war though we made him say to the japanese people that he was not divine.

peace

If you start a war you don't get a say in how it ends.

And "innocents" will always suffer.

For instance, how many Red Cross workers and army personnel who occupied Japan immediately after the war died of cancer? Any statistics kept on that? Because my stepmother got back from Japan and was treated for thyroid cancer. She battled one kind of cancer or another for the rest of her life. My father knew one other from her group who also died of cancer but the others? Anyone check?

I'm not sorry we dropped the damn things, but the Japanese weren't the only ones to pay for that terrifying display.

The price of war SHOULD be too high.

how many lives would have been saved if we accepted the japanese overtures to surrender as all the military leaders at the time suggested to SAVE LIVES.

think about it...

peace

It was just the first two paragraphs, with a link to the rest. DU's policy is against posting entire articles, or I would have posted the whole thing.

But yes, now that you made me think of it, I perhaps should have posted a paragraph or two more.

World War II was horrible--but the Japanese killed millions of people and raped the populations of SE Asia. It may not have been right, but war is inhumane to begin with; and maybe, had the Japanese not been militarily aggresive to begin with, they would not have been attacked.

The US should apologize for its role in the World War II atrocities, but the Japanese need to make amends with the populations of SE Asia. I've been to Japan--they still don't admit their role in what happened in the rape of Nanking and how they treated people in SE Asia.

that is just as insane as when the right uses it.

but of course it can be effective against the uninformed but thank gore he invented the internet and we can easily refute such BS propaganda.

i don't see us appologizing for doing the same sorts of things every empire has done and worse from day one.

peace

That sentiment is all too prevalent here at DU. I do think that America has not always been the world's leader, but overall our record is one to proud of.

Sure, ask the Native Americans, Filipinos, Mexicans, Vietnamese, Central Americans in general, Iraqis, passenger pigeons and carolina parakeets.
That's history. What pisses me off is the lack of contrition of our elite and the historical ignorance of the masses.

I am proud of America, not ashamed by it. Yes our country has had its rough times and our leadership has made mistakes. But America is a great country and I won't let people here say otherwise.

You write, "But America is a great country and I won't let people here say otherwise...

You "won't let?" You have no authority over what people here say. You are allowed to express your opinion; it's not up to you to permit or not permit others to express their opinions.

America would be a greater country than it is, if it did more owning up to its past blunders, cruelties, hypocrisies & outrages. The attitude you express here is, by no coincidence, closely connected to why America is so systematically unable to do this.

is not just a river in Egypt.
thanks richm

Americans will see this as "a good moral thing which brought peace to the Middle East." (I'm putting words in his mouth......but that's my take on the article. I can see a case for Japan......it was a World War.

This is very different.

should have been demonstrated on an unpopulated area of land...
It's morally wrong to use that kind of force on the living.

committed unnecessarily by the US. It's very typical of Nick Kristof, who is usually (not always, but more than 95% of the time) a bootlicker & sycophant. He pretends to honestly consider the possibility that perhaps something was wrong with nuking 2 cities full of civilians (a question mark appears in the title on the original article, "Blood on Our Hands?"), in an already-defeated nation, unable to even get an airplane into the sky to defend itself against the fleets of American B-29's.

But not to worry - Kristof's real intent, visible after 2 quick paragraphs of considering the unthinkable, is to conclude happily that the US of course acted nobly and with wisdom, only resorting to nuclear weapons because the enemy was so deranged. Unsurprisingly, he manages to find a few Japanese willing to call the nukings a "gift from Heaven" that the US, in its infinite wisdom & justice, used against them.

Look at this sickening last sentence: "But we owe it to history to appreciate that the greatest tragedy of Hiroshima was not that so many people were incinerated in an instant, but that in a complex and brutal world, the alternatives were worse." Rough translation: "But we owe it to our own worship of power & violence to always view the crimes against humanity committed by our armed forces as justified by the power of Heaven & eternal Justice."

if we considered it.

We could have detonated the A-bombs offshore as a warning shot, and kept from the destruction.

Hindsight is 20/20, I know, but think about it.

Until then, the most powerful force that Japan probably felt was the Tsunami. This, offshore (just beyond the shockwave devastation), would have been a visual representation of the power that was coming.

Unfortunately, as I think about it now, it still would have caused massive tidal waves and coastal damage. But would it have killed as many people?

and much more to the japanese.

some of our officials did recommend a demonstration or at the very least a WARNING... both were rejected.

peace

Unfortunately, as I think about it now, it still would have caused massive tidal waves and coastal damage. But would it have killed as many people?

The Hiroshima bomb was about 15 kT, and the Nagasaki bomb (as well as the Trinity test bomb) were both about 19 kT. Assuming an airburst of about 1000 ft, then there would have been very little damage if they were, say, 1.5 miles offshore. The worst effect would have been fallout, but even then, we could have timed it so the radiation was blown out to sea.

"But, sadly, the record suggests that restraint would not have worked. The Japanese military ferociously resisted surrender even after two atomic bombings on major cities, even after Soviet entry into the war, even when it expected another atomic bomb — on Tokyo."

because they had 1 condition that had to be meet, even the politicians agreed on that 1 condition that was finally met secretly and surrender was given.

though that all could have been avoided in the spring of 45 when OUR military leaders all recommended that we accept that opne condition to SAVE LIVES.

it is interesting that he NEVER mentions why they - the imperial military - finally relented.

peace

In WWII, remember, the Allies (USA-UK-USSR) demanded UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER fromk both Germany and Japan. This is why the surrended which the Japanese proposed in the Spring of 1945 was unacceptable -- it set conditons for the surrender of Japan.

Later in 1945 (following the unconditional surrender of Germany), the Japanese approached the USSR in an effort to once again try to arrange a surrender that would not be unconditional in its terms.

It was in early August of 1945 (following the bombing of Nagazaki) that the Japanese received its answer from the USSR: a declaration of war against Japan.

At that point, the Japanese leaders knew that there was no hope for a negotiated surrender, and it weas at that point that the Emperor of Japan went on the radio to announce to his subjects that Japan must surrender -- and surrender unconditionally -- to the allies.

The A-bombs certainly played a role -- but remember -- they were hardly the worst bombings that the USA had infliceted on the Japanese. Our napalm fire-bombings of Tokyo killed far more people than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagazaki.

Hirohito cited "a most cruel and unusual bomb" as one of the reasons for the surrender.

The atomic bombings in Japan were morally abhorant at best, and an evil act of racism at the worst. Our government knew fully well of what would happen if those bombs were to be detonated, they were in the deserts in practice settings, and all of the setups in the testing area were destroyed in the area, we knew full well the destructive capability of the bomb. What's worst is that Truman was a racist, especially against those who were Japanese or East Asian in general. Regardless of this however, it was just plain morally wrong to knowingly kill innocent civillians when there are alternatives. It is a war crime to chose a method that will kill civillians to save your own military personnel. Yes what the Japanese soldiers did was wrong, however that does not justify our dropping of the bomb.

"THAT" is the cause and effect we have to live with now. Our chickens
will come home to rooste. God help all of us.

the now well-proven fact that Japan was goaded by the US into attacking Pearl harbor as a way to "help" Americans get "more enthusiastic" about entering the conflict. Gore Vidal's new book "Dreaming War" is an excellent introductory text for people unfamiliar with these nuances of history.


When that fact is taken into account with all the rest (the offers of surrender, etc), the first bombing becomes more than "questionable" and the second becomes an atrocity.

He also, like many commentators that seek to excuse these terrible acts, fails to intellectually seperate the two bombings. It is much less complex and more moraly simplistic to treat both as a single unit, but that is of course both historically and morally inaccurate.

What I would like to know is, not being an American: Is the fact that it is very probable that the US provoked or let happen Pearl Harbor well-known by better informed Americans, and can it be read sometimes in the NY Times, or it is still the opinion of some "foolish conspiracy theorists"?

one can judge by looking at the Kristof column, above. (As for "well-informed Americans," look at some of the comments in this thread.)

A few years ago, the airplane used for the Hiroshima bombing ("Enola Gay") was put into the Smithsonian in Washington. The display was meant to include some discussion of the morality of using nuclear bombs against civilians. A big furor erupted over this: rightwingers & militarists objected to ANY implication whatsoever (in the text accompanying the display) that the nukings were not absolutely justifiable and beyond all criticism. (The rightwingers won this battle.)

I happened to visit the US National Atomic Museum last month in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Visitors to the museum are shown a 45 minute documentary about the making of the bomb. It doesn't mention a single word about the A-bomb victims; nor does it acknowledge in any way even the possibility that dropping the bomb might not have been justified.

In America, the basic rule is: America is always right, noble, and moral. The armed forces are "peacekeepers" who only "fight for peace and democracy." The Iraq war was "self-defense." The Pentagon is the "Department of DEFENSE." The president is always a "strong leader who protects the American people."

The suggestion that Pearl Harbor was deliberately allowed to happen runs counter to mainstream propaganda. It is "just as crazy" as the suggestion that Lee Harvey Oswald was not a lone assassin; "just as crazy" as the suggestion that the present administration is a bunch of lying murdering gangsters.

When I visited the US and there Kennedy Space Center, I read a part of the NASA mission statement, that contained the claim that the space operations benefit the entire human race. Indeed, "America is always right, noble, and moral".

I read Stinnett's book on Pearl Harbor (at least partially). If this book has to appear now, already 50 years later, the topic still seems to be controversial (against the facts, probably).

1. hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Japanese AND American dead.
2. hundreds of thousands of Japanese dead.

I'd go with number 2 every time.

Those poor, sweet innocent Japanese and their kind little military...can't imagine, why, in 1945, ANYONE thought they were a threat to world peace. :eyes:

The first option would have left hundreds of thousands dead on both sides, but that would have been military deaths. We chose instead to have civillians be killed, and that is morally unjustifiable. Yes the Japanese military was a threat, yes they did commit atrocities, and yes the Japanese people went along with it, however using that as a justification does little other than to say that 'since they commited atrocities we should be allowed to also.'

I think you've oversimplified. Ever look at the death proportions in Okinawa apropos the civilian v. military Japanese dead?

The deaths in an invasion option WOULD NOT have been military vs. military. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians would have died as well.

You say "it wasn't that simple" and then oversimplify the facts to fit your thesis.

Right or wrong, the decision to use the atomic bomb was a VERY complex and confusing one. That things worked out to the U.S.'s advnatage is not a rationale, but it is a fact. That hundreds of thousands died is a horrible thing, and is also a fact.

But, civilian deaths were incredibly likely based upon prior knowledge from the invasion of Okinawa.

I think it too simple to suggest that since our military said we should accept the surrender terms, that the Japanese military would have capitulated. Let's all remember that it was the peace party and the emperor that pursued peace. The military only capitulated after the emperor said no more, based upon the destruction of two cities.

I'm neither defending nor castigating those who decided to use those weapons. To be honest, i think it's too complex an issue to have an opinion that it either for or against.

My opinion is that there are too many variables to have that level of personal moral certitude.
The Professor

The outcome was unspeakingly horrible. Yet, there were other outcomes possible that would have been even worse. I accept my government's decision to end the war when they did and the way they did.

I think you completely agreed with me but titled this post with a disagreement.

I was castigating the earlier poster who accused one writer of simplifying and then far more drastically simplified the situation to fit their thesis.

I didn't draw any conclusion in my post. That was my point. The issue is too complex to draw a single conclusion with any moral certitude. So, how could you disagree with a conclusion i didn't draw?

I am conflicted on this issue and will NOT come to conclusion on it. I wasn't there. I only know what i've read. I can't be sure what's completely true and what's not. To have any certitude in my view would be disingenuous and dishonest.

I actually think you said pretty much the same thing, as i did. Your comfortable with the gov't actions on this, but you're not concluding it was right or wrong. That's pretty much what i said. No?
The Professor

after 58 years, there will be an emerging consensus: we Americans have blood on our hands....for the Iraqi occupation...and maybe, if we are lucky there will be some cooperative Iraqi, like Chalibi, who will tell us what we want to hear: Thank-you for the favor.

(1) the bombing was militarily unnecessary (a point adequately discussed above)

but

(2)truman didn't realize what he had unleased - there was a thread a couple of weeks ago that outlined how he had no real understanding of the nature of the atomic bomb, and if he had, he probably wouldn't have used it.

I apologize for the following rant as it is directed at no one person in particular as I didn't exactly keep track of any names and have no itnerest in starting a flame war or holding nay eprsonal grudges here. However, anyone here who cries that we should not have dropped the bomb is ignorant, and I don't mean that to smear anyone or flame anyone, but please people, think for a second. Yes it is regrettable we dropped the bomb, but the Japanese were much more ruthless than us in that war. Also, I am willing to bet that I and many other Americans would not be here today had we invaded and lost thousands more young American future fathers and grandfathers. My grandfather served in the pacific. Ask anyone who fought in the pacific how awful the Japanese treated both American POWs, and those of the SE ASian countries they pillaged. If we invaded, many civilians and young US soldiers and future grandpas would have been killed. It would have been a bloodbath on both sides. Anyone who thinks otherwise should get a clue and read some history about Japan and World War 2 to put it bluntly.

ON edit: P.S. If you think I was offensive here, then PM me and I will be happy to apologize but I will not concede that "we should have done it differently".

arrogant. I highly doubt that you know more WWII history than I do -- and I certainly "think otherwise."

I can see from your post that you are sincere & mean no harm. However, you may be unaware of the extent to which your opinion has been formed by the US propaganda that we've all grown up with. These estimates about "losing a million Americans" in an invasion that would have been necessary without the nuclear bombs -- this is just a lot of hooey that the State Department cooked up to justify what they did.

At the time the bombs were used, Japan didn't even have enough fuel left to get airplanes up in the sky to defend itself. The US was able to bomb at will, & had a naval blockade in place. That means Japan was in effect strangled, economically. They have no natural resources. It would not have been necessary to invade them -- one could simply have choked them. Or, the US could have agreed to let them keep the emperor (which was finally done anyway) & possibly obtained a peace agreement without further warfare. Russia was willing to join the American side by that time; this also would have placed great pressure on the Japanese. By August of 1945, the Japanese were unable to harm the US in any way, except by occasionally getting lucky & sinking a ship (like the Indianapolis).

As to who was "more ruthless" -- there is good reason to believe that the US fuel & scrap metal embargo on Japan, in Aug 1941, was an effort to force the Japanese into a desperate position where they'd have no choice but to attack a US installation, creating a casus belli. That's pretty "ruthless" itself. Yet all Americans grow up with the oversimplified view that "we were at peace, & suddenly were attacked by the dastardly Japs at Pearl Harbor, for no reason." That's how US propaganda works.

The argument for using the bomb is a dishonest one, meant to conceal the real objectives of the US government at the time, which were a racist-tinged vengeance, a desire to gain practical experience with atomic weapons (similar to the US use of the then-new weapon napalm in France, a few days before V-E day), & a desire to "make a point" to the Russians.

and harbours were mined. Shipping could not move.

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