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Learn from the Forests – Remembering Hiroshima and Naga

August 8, 2021 By Bob Kinsey

On August 6 and 9, people will commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Japanese people who died — crushed, vaporized, burned beyond recognition, poisoned by radiation — from the atomic bombs the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945

August 5, 2021 H Patricia Hynes  PORTSIDE

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Mushroom cloud above Nagasaki after atomic bombing on August 9, 1945. Taken from the north west., Charles Levy, U.S. Air Force photo

On August 6 and 9 throughout the world, people will commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Japanese people who died—crushed, vaporized, burned beyond recognition, poisoned by radiation—from the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.  The bombs’ hideous intent and impact constituted a crime against humanity, yet they were trivialized by the nicknames given them—“Little Boy” and “Fat Man.” The propaganda of their supposed necessity to end the war and save American lives was broadcast by our government and received by most Americans as truth.

Many top generals and admirals, more informed about Japan’s readiness to surrender than the American public, spoke forthrightly against their government’s use of the atomic bombs on both military and moral grounds, during and after the war.  In a 1950 memo, Admiral William Leahy, White House chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war, wrote, “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”  Moreover, “in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”

Nor did all Pacific war veterans approve the atomic obliteration of the two civilian Japanese cities.  In a 2001 interview, Ed Everts, a be-medalled major of the Army Air Corps who survived a crash at sea during the battle at Iwo Jima, stated that dropping of the atomic bombs was “a war crime” for which “our leaders should have been put on trial as were the German and Japanese leaders.”

Two atomic bombs devised by our country in 1945 have proliferated to thousands today in nine countries, some more than 3,000 times as powerful as those dropped on Japan, many on trigger alert and able to be launched without time and clarity for humans to make a rational decision.  Much vulnerability is baked into the nuclear weapons system:  potential computer malfunction, imperfect information for decision-making, accident, cyber-attack, human error, and human imperfections like fatigue or drug abuse.

Intentionally killing civilians in war is a war crime but threatening and risking the existence of all life on this planet with nuclear weapons—ecocide—is the ultimate crime.  Justifying these weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent to nuclear war—as the US and other nuclear weapons-owning governments do—is truly delusional.  Despite the rhetoric of deterrence, we learned a few years ago that our government’s leaders have a set of fortified sites constructed to save themselves in the event of nuclear catastrophe, lest the deterrence factor fails, while the rest of us fend for ourselves.  (See Raven Rock: The Story of the Government’s Secret Plan to Save itself While the Rest of US Die).

In its new cold war against China, the U.S. is locked in the domination fantasy that we must stay “top cop” in the world with no near competitors.  This recent “great power” hostility is being used to justify our upgrading of nuclear weapons to more lethal, versatile and faster-delivery weapons of mass destruction.

While millions lost jobs and businesses suffered in 2020—victims of the Covid-induced economic crisis, the 2020 fiscal year was “good for the industry” according to a recent Defense News article. Their revenues worldwide were up about 5% from 2019, with US military industrial firms garnering the lion’s share.   Upgrading nuclear weapons never slowed, assured by out-of-the-limelight government subsidies to the weapons’ industries during the Covid crisis.

Since 1946 the US has threated the use of nuclear weapons in conflict at least 12 times, according to security expert Joseph Gerson.  But our time is running out.   The “Doomsday Clock,” a visual representation of how susceptible the world is to a climate or nuclear catastrophe, registered ‘100 seconds to midnight’ in both 2020 and 2021—the closest it has ever been to the symbolic extermination of humanity since it was conceived in 1947.

Our government should take a lesson from forests.  In the past 25 years, scientists have discovered that trees in a forest communicate with each other, share nutrients and water, and act to protect neighboring trees from pests and other threats by releasing repelling chemicals.  Given forests create microclimates, individual tree health depends on the forest community.  Those trees connected in forests by underground life-supporting networks, christened the wood wide web, live far longer lives than isolated trees.

The takeaway lesson for hostile, competing nations: carefully craft rules of cooperation that trump hostility and the habit of weapons and war as a first resort.   Like trees in their community of forests, humanity will live longer for sure.

[Pat Hynes, a retired professor of environmental health from Boston University School of Public Health, is a board member of the Trapock Center for Peace and Justice and member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.  Her forthcoming book, Hope But Demand Justice, will be published by Haley Publishers, Athol MA. ]

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Disarmament Quotes

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see... 

Mahatma Gandhi from The Essential Gandhi, Louis Fisher, ed.

A world free of the threat of nuclear weapons is necessarily a world devoid of nuclear weapons…. Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to humanity and our habitat…. Others subscribe to Churchill’s assertion ‘Peace is the sturdy child of terror.’ For me, such a peace is a wretched offspring, a peace that condemns us to live under a dark cloud of perpetual anxiety, a peace that codifies mankind’s most murderous instincts….The beast must be chained, its soul expunged, its lair laid waste.

General Lee Butler Former Commander, Strategic Air Command, April 28, 1996

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending he sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children...This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --spoken to the American Society of Newspaper Editors 1953

Dwight Eisenhower US President 1953-1961

Elimination of nuclear weapons, so naive, so simplistic, and so idealistic as to be quixotic? Some may think so. But as human beings, citizens of nations with power to influence events in the world, can we be at peace with ourselves if we strive for less? I think not. 

Robert McNamara Former U.S. Secretary of Defense

Now, understand, this matters to people everywhere. One nuclear weapon exploded in one city -– be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague –- could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequences might be -– for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival. 

Former President Barack Obama, April 5, 2009

We seek the elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth. 

Ronald Reagan, Inaugural Address, January 21, 1985

Viewing Trinity Test July 16,1945: "Now we are all Sons of Bitches"

Kenneth Bainbridge Deputy Director

It is my fervent goal and hope…that we will some day no longer have to rely on nuclear weapons to deter aggression and assure world peace. To that end the United States is now engaged in a serious and sustained effort to negotiate major reductions in levels of offensive nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal of eliminating these weapons from the face of the earth. 

Ronald Reagan, October 20, 1986

[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

5-Star Admiral William D. Leahy Chief of Staff to President's Roosevelt and Truman, leader of Combined US-UK Chiefs of Staff during WWII

We endorse setting the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons and working energetically on the actions required to achieve that goal ... 

George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, January 4, 2007

There are still thousands of warheads loaded on operational systems and standing on high states of alert on virtually hair-trigger posture. And you have to ask yourself: Why is that? Who is the enemy? What is the threat? 

U.S. General Lee Butler Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Strategic Air Command in 1991-92

Through the release of atomic energy, our generation has brought into the world the most revolutionary force since prehistoric man's discovery of fire. This basic force of the universe cannot be fitted into the outmoded concept of narrow nationalisms. For there is no secret and there is no defense; there is no possibility of control except through the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world. We scientists recognise our inescapable responsibility to carry to our fellow citizens an understanding of atomic energy and its implication for society. In this lies our only security and our only hope - we believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death. 

Albert Einstein, January 22, 1947

We are prone to self-righteousness if we call ourselves peacemakers, and yet do not perceive how the peace issue cuts through all the economic and social issues that we often try to keep separate. If the race for nuclear arms is encouraged by our fear of losing the affluent ways of life that we have taken for granted, then we must see how our fears and desires have left so many other human beings naked and hungry.

Malsolm Warford "The Church's Role in a Nuclear Age

Over the past 15 years, the goal of elimination of nuclear weapons has been so much on the back burner that it will take a true political breakthrough and a major intellectual effort to achieve success in this endeavor.

Mikhail Gorbachev, January 31, 2007

“Everything I did at Kings Bay was a result of my faith and my commitment to challenge the idols whose only purpose is to destroy human life on an unimaginable scale. I went to Kings Bay to use my body to refuse to bow down to these idols. I went to try to bring attention to the idolatry that it is requiring of our nation and its people. I went in a spirit of prayer and repentance. I went in hope that this witness might invite other people to reflect on the obscenity and on the idolatry that it is before God.”

Liz McAlister Kings Bay Protestor 2019

It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason. 

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1995

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