August 21, 2024
by Lawrence Davidson for Counter Punch
On 6 August 1945, President Harry Truman announced to the world that one U.S. airplane, named the Enola Gay, had “dropped one bomb on Hiroshima.” The bomb had the equivalent “power of 200,000 tons of T.N.T.” That single bomb killed 140,000 people in a matter of minutes. Truman went on to say that “We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city.” And to prove the point, a few days later another U.S. airplane, named Bockscar, dropped a similar bomb on Nagasaki. That one killed 74,000 people. The Japanese then rapidly complied with the Allied ultimatum to surrender unconditionally. Truman said that by doing so, the Japanese would be “spared utter destruction … the raining of ruin from the air, the likes of which has never been seen on this earth.”
Subsequently, there has been a lot of ambivalence over the dropping of the atomic bombs. In the U.S. there has been heated debate on the need, in 1945, to use these weapons. At least one member of Truman’s team of advisers, Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy, suggested ways around using the Atomic Bomb. In any case it was, of course, used and subsequently there has been a real sensitivity to questions and criticism. For instance, in January 1995 the Smithsonian Institution was forced to cancel a planned exhibit of the Enola Gay due to opposition from both veterans groups and members of Congress. Their objections were, in part, to the exhibition’s “dwelling in excess on horrible effects of the atomic bombs” and “raising the question as to whether the bombings were necessary to end the war.” Efforts at compromise on the content of the exhibition program could not silence the opposition of what veterans groups labelled “revisionist history” and so the entire program was dropped.
In Japan, of course, commemoration of the bombing of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki is never questioned. Their anniversaries are the occasion for solemn ceremonies that are also pleas for world peace. Much of the rest of the world at least superficially honors these pleas by diplomatic attendance at the ceremonies. In so doing, they recognize the sheer brutality of such acts of war without having to officially address the question of their necessity
This year, 2024, marked the 79th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs. It also brought forth another controversy. This one was not about whether such horrific bombing should take place. Rather, more simply, should the Japanese invite to their ceremonies a representative of a country presently using air power to commit genocide?
Controversy Anew
Here is the background to this issue. This year the mayor of Nagasaki, Shiro Suzuki, declined to invite the Israeli ambassador to Japan to the city’s commemoration ceremony, but did invite the Palestinians. Simultaneously the organizers in Hiroshima did invite the Israelis, but under “outside pressure,” failed to invite a Palestinian representative.
Suzuki stated that, because the violence in the Middle East may expand, “we are currently faced with the possibility of losing the peace we have long taken for granted.” By singling out the Israeli ambassador, the mayor was explicitly indicating who he believed was the instigator threatening the peace. It would just be hypocritical to follow the Hiroshima lead. That is the controversy in a nutshell.
When it came to their reaction, it made no difference to the U.S. government and its partners that Suzuki’s judgment was objectively accurate. That according to every reputable human rights organization on the planet, the Zionist regime is culpable of not only genocide, but also being an apartheid state. Nor did it seem to matter that a good majority of the Jewish population of Israel is gung-ho for wholesale exile, or outright annihilation of the Palestinian people. And why? Because, like the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, they (the Palestinians) have fought back against their persecutors. Not true, said Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan. Suzuki has, in essence, made a category mistake. He sees Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip in the same light. But, Emanuel explained, Israel is fighting in Gaza in self-defense, and you shouldn’t confuse the victims with the perpetrators. This was all dissimulation on the part of the Israeli ambassador and the mayor of Nagasaki knew it—the Israelis stayed uninvited and the Palestinians had reserved seats.
Emanuel’s argument is actually “a shroud of talk” to hide us from the truth, but it isn’t an isolated one. It was all too familiar. In fact it was much like the argument of those who opposed the Smithsonian program years earlier. Now, as then, there was/is a need to rationalize the massacre of the innocent. Both at Nagasaki and Gaza, it is all about “self-defense” against a “sneaky enemy” who carried out a surprise attack. And, if the mayor of Nagasaki won’t adhere to that allegation, the U.S. was not going to his ceremony.
Hocus-Pocus
Saying that something is true (such as the Israel’s Gaza campaign is a defensive act or the dropping of the atomic bombs was an unquestionable necessity), doesn’t make it so. It may not even make it logical or sensible. But then the Big Lie has always been a force in history. So, in a hocus-pocus sort of way, it is a con that governments are often able to pull off. And, it is easier to do so if the audience lives within a relatively closed system. In other words, if you are brought up in a community that holds itself together with one or more repetitive themes, chances are pretty good that you aren’t going to analyze them. Rather, you are just going to believe them. That is certainly the case of most Israeli Jews and their Zionist supporters in the diaspora (like Joe Biden).
When such a theme (in this case, that Israel is an innocent party in constant danger from Palestinians) is used to rationalize the need to eliminate the threat, the resulting actions, supported by group solidarity, can override everyday ethics that make for a livable society. It frees up the predatory potential embedded in our genetic makeup and directs it outward, often indiscriminately. Subsequently, we speak of strategies and tactics as if they were an exercise in map making. We mix up offense with defense in order to make things easier on our conscience. To gloss over such facts is to falsify history, but after all, that is the whole point of the exercise.
Perhaps, that is why many Americans cannot abide “revisionist history” when it comes to the annihilation of the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It certainly contributes to the fact that, having grown up in an informational bubble that equates Palestinians with Nazis, the Israelis now “swarm” into Gaza “with passion, like a plain devoured by locusts.” It takes poetic language to find the right analogies.
Where does this leave us? Well, with total lack of faith in U.S. government spokespeople, to say nothing of Israeli representatives. Here is how great English essayist Samuel Johnson put it, some 266 years ago: “The law of truth, sacred and necessary, is broken without punishment, without censure, in compliance with inveterate prejudice and prevailing passions.” When you become aware of this sort of lying you have to ask yourself, as to the spokespeople at the State Department, Defense Department, etc. how much do they pay these people to speak in contradiction to observable facts? Do they really believe what they say? Then you can move down the line and ask the same question of college and university presidents, police chiefs, and most local politicians. For instance, when it comes to defending Israel from protesters, they all sound like they are justifying 74,000 dead at Nagasaki.
Conclusion
The denial of responsibility has become an official art. And, it is practiced worldwide. We not only deny the obvious nature of our offensive actions as a group (say, as a nation), but also are determined to deny the documentable consequences of those actions. The folks who objected to the Smithsonian contextualization of the use of the atomic bombs literally refused to countenance any presentation that did not relieve the U.S. and its collective leadership of responsibility for the observable—visible—consequences of the use of a weapon that may yet destroy civilization. The case is the same for the Israelis. They deny the apartheid character of their society, they deny that 79 years of dispossession, de-development and “lawn mowing” (assassination, etc.) could possibly justify Palestinian resistance—resistance which, in an act of linguistic hocus-pocus, is transformed into “terrorism.” They thus deny all responsibility for the present program of genocide in Gaza and express shock and indignation when others call them on their Big Lie. Most nations of the world likewise deny any responsibility to stop Israel’s genocide, though they do a lot of verbal hemming and hawing.
When you deny the facts, the impact of the facts, and accountability for those facts, there is, conveniently for you, nothing left of truth. As a result, “we can look on, almost unmoved, at the most appalling … exhibitions of human stupidity and wickedness.” 74,000 dead at Nagasaki and 40,000 and counting in Gaza. Well, not everyone can look on unmoved—the world’s relatively small cadre of protesters against genocide insist there be no denial of responsibility. For this we get furious and criminalize them. Yet, the future of truth now lies in their hands.
Lawrence Davidson is a retired professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester, PA.
