Speaking Truth to Atomic Power
Not that I’m eager to repeat the event, but Fumio Kyuma gets it right:
Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to end the war, a news report said Saturday.
“I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn’t be helped,” Kyuma said in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo.
Kyuma’s remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb victims.
“The U.S. justifies the bombings saying they saved American lives,” said Nobuo Miyake, 78, director-general of a group of victims living in Tokyo. “It’s outrageous for a Japanese politician to voice such thinking. Japan is a victim.”
Kyuma said later that his comments were misinterpreted. He told reporters he meant to say the bombing “could not be helped from the American point of view.”
“It’s too bad that my comments were interpreted as approving the U.S. bombing,” he said.
Sorry, fellas, but the point was to save American lives. There was a war on, if you remember, and the goal of most countries in war is to try to kill the enemy at the expense of themselves—see Pearl Harbor. If you have a problem with that, you should have taken it up with your emperor at the time.
But, seriously, were the Japanese about to surrender? Weren’t the lessons of Tarawa, Iwo Jima, Guadalcanal, Guam, and many other bloody battles, that the Japanese, like ‘em or not, fought to the last man? Did anyone want to see that played out on the home islands?
I wish no atomic bombs had been dropped, or failing that only one, or a demonstration of their power had been arranged—but I can see why history happened the way it did. We don’t have to like it, but we would do well to understand it.