On a stifling hot July night in 1945 at a little known place in the New Mexico desert called Alamogordo a group of scientist, technicians, engineers and military officers brought the Manhattan Project to its culmination. At a signal from J. Robert Oppenheimer a switch was closed detonating the world's first atomic device. A split second into the explosion more man-made energy was released in a shorter period of time then had ever happened before. As the blast, heat and shock waves passed and the mushroom cloud started to rise, Oppenheimer the genius whose brainchild it was, remembered a passage from the Bhagavad Gita -- "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." Ten days later, on July 26th, the Japanese government was issued an ultimatum. Surrender, demanded the Allies, or face "prompt and utter destruction." Japan did not budge. On August 6th the Enola Gay left Tinian. At 0815 (local time) a single bomb was dropped. Less than a minute later 28,000 residents were instantly vaporized. Within an hour upwards of 60,000 would die of burns and radiation. Another call for surrender was issued. The Japanese remained stoically silent. Three days later it was Nagasaki's turn to experience the searing heat and fulfill the musings of Oppenheimer's awestruck comprehension of what had been wrought at Los Alamos. Forty thousand more died and it still took Emperor Hirohito until August 14th to end the argument between hawks and doves in the Japanese Supreme Council and force a surrender. The following day the divine Hirohito told his people, in the mother of all understatements, "The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage." On September 2nd, frock coated and top hatted Japanese officials boarded the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, their seeming complacent acquiescence belying the turmoil in Japan. Just five days before, Hirohito's younger brother, Prince Takamatsu, had traveled to an airstrip in Atsugi and convinced a group of diehards to abort their kamikaze attempt on the American battleship. Had they succeeded in their plan to dive bomb and sink the Missouri the vengeance of the American people, when confronted with what they would have regarded as an act of treachery, is terrible to contemplate. After a brief ceremony presided over by General Douglas MacArthur, the signatures of the "High Contracting Parties" were affixed to the instrument of surrender. "These proceedings are closed," intoned the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. His words signaled the end of fourteen years of war for the Japanese, and the world. A Question of Ethics At fifty years events move from memory to history. The end of World War II is now a half century away. The principal actors are dead and the long process of sifting through facts to understand this most violent of all wars is now the province of the historian. Ironically opinion polls show that the typical American knows little about this epochal event that the changed the world and shaped the lives of his parents and grandparents. Ever since the bomb was dropped the world has debated the implications -- military, political and moral -- of the act. No one at the time believed that the bomb was essential to ending the war. The Japanese would be beaten and everyone knew it. But the timing and the human costs were uncertain. At its core Truman's decision centered around a single question: would the atomic bomb bring a swifter end to the war with less loss of life than a full blown invasion of Japan. Truman's answer was reached against the backdrop of an overwhelming desire to bring the casualties to a halt. As the Allies moved closer to Japan costs mounted. About one-half of American casualties in the Pacific Theater had taken place in 1945 -- the last seven months of a 44 month campaign. Kamikaze attacks had damaged or sunk 115 ships. Just 11 months earlier, during the invasion of Saipan, 25,000 Japanese and 4,000 Americans died in just four days of battle. Hundreds of Japanese civilians threw themselves off a cliff rather than risk capture by the Americans. Some who hesitated were shot in the back by Japanese soldiers. Truman's decision was made using the grim calculus of whether or not using the new weapon would save lives. The vast majority of historians have come to the conclusion that ultimately both American and Japanese lives were saved by Truman's willingness to unleash the new weapon. Faced with estimates of a million casualties, the 80,000 at Hiroshima and 40,000 at Nagasaki seem a small price to pay. In the purest and most detached sense it was not a moral or ethical decision, merely a choice between two evils. War never affords its participants the luxury of philosophical musings. Recently the venerable Smithsonian Institution was involved in a well publicized controversy regarding the Enola Gay and its cargo -- what Henry L. Stimson, then Secretary of War, called "the most terrible weapon ever known in human history." The proposed exhibit read at times like Japanese wartime propaganda. "Fearing that unconditional surrender would mean the annihilation of their culture," an early version read, "Japanese forces fought on tenaciously." One exhibit stated that the United States was engaged in "a racist war of revenge," using an "Avenge Pearl Harbor!" poster to illustrate the argument. There is no question that the Allies were guilty of a long list of decisions and actions that can be considered unethical -- the fire bombings of cities, unrestricted submarine warfare against the Japanese, Churchill's deliberate decision not to warn Coventry's citizens of their impending doom at the hand of the Luftwaffe, and the assassinations of enemy leaders such as Reinhard Heydrich and Admiral Yamamoto. In addition the western Allies embraced as a comrade-in-arms, Joseph Stalin, one of history's most monumental butchers. The Soviet dictator had ordered aggression against Poland, Finland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Without any context whatsoever these are damnable acts. To Save The World On June 6, 1994 at Normandy US President Bill Clinton assessed the role of his father's generation in the events that played themselves across the face of the globe. "These men saved the world," he declared. It is context that provides the solution to this seeming contradiction between the American president and the National Museums. Clinton understood it, the Smithsonian did not. Every millennia or so evil walks across the face of the earth. The actions of its adherents so far outside of the pale that normal men find them difficult to believe. So it happened in the far corners of the world in the 1930s when fascist dictators seized control of Germany and Italy and Japan's militarists rose to power in the Pacific. The true mark of evil is that nothing matters to it. So convinced that whatever it does cannot be wrong, there is no brake on its behavior, nothing that says "This has gone too far." Everything can be justified because nothing really needs to be. Even allowing for the typical demonization of an enemy that is part of every conflict, there is little question that the two principal aggressors, Germany and Japan, were controlled by individuals whose moral compass had long lost its bearing. The climate they fostered was not merely one of terror but of sanctioned brutality that encouraged their own people to abandon their previous ability to tell the difference between right and wrong. Amorality was the rule. The catalogue of crimes of the Germans is well known. With the exception of a few fringe elements there is no one alive who does not recognize the enormity of the evil that held sway over that nation and set Europe aflame. The Allied approach to the destruction of that regime is never called a "racist war of revenge." And the Germans, for the most part, accept the heinous nature of what the Nazis wrought. The Japanese however, seem to have developed an amazing ability to ignore their culpability, and to portray themselves as victims. What's worse is that they have managed to convince others of this outrageous lie and conjured an amnesia on themselves and others about the truly evil nature of what the militarist's engendered. From its attack on the Chinese province of Manchuria in 1931 until the Emperor's surrender in 1945, the Japanese slaughtered millions in war, prison camps, bombings and deliberate starvation. Japanese atrocities were an unending series of outrage upon outrage. In 1937 the army slaughtered at least 100,000 civilians in the Rape of Nanking. Another 100,000 Korean and Filipino women were forced into prostitution as "comfort women." Medical units indulged in thousands of experiments on Chinese and allied prisoners of war. The sacking of Manila, the dreadful treatment of prisoners of war (a third of whom died in captivity) and the Bataan Death March, which killed 33,000 of the 78,000 prisoners on it, are only a small example of the brutality Japan's regime spread across the Pacific. If the Germans are reluctantly remorseful they at least recognize that there were Nazi actions which were depraved. The Japanese have managed to avoid that realization, at least officially. Japanese cabinet minister Shin Sakuari recently ignited protests in former captive Asian countries nations by suggesting widespread positive results accrued from the Japanese invasions during the "Great Pacific War." More recently the Japanese Diet demonstrated its lack of comprehension by voting to recall World War II with a day of fukai hansei "especially sincere self-reflection bordering on contrition." Like "excuse me" (sumimasen), which the Japanese say countless times a day, notes Takeo Yamauchi a veteran who fought on Saipan, "It's not a sincere expression of repentance." Apologists explain away the lukewarm fukai hansei by citing practical and emotional grounds. Many Japanese it is argued feel an acknowledgment of guilt would dishonor their war dead. Others worry that a formal apology would give momentum to those who demand that the Japanese government pay individual compensation to the war's victims. These claimants include women in South Korea and the Philippines as well as British prisoners of war savagely treated by their Japanese captors. Clearly the Japanese have yet to come to grips with this sordid chapter from their past. In part their evasions are understandable -- no likes to admit they are wrong. At the same time these carefully phrased eschewals are deeply disturbing. Part of the process by which an individual learns is in acknowledging and owning up to past mistakes, errors and taking steps to avoid repeating them. It is the essential value of this self-examination that led Socrates to declare "the unexamined life is not worth living." As long the Japanese do not face the reality and enormity of the brutality of the regime that once ruled their islands, the possibility exists that others like them will lead the island, and the world, down the same path. Back to Cry Havoc #11 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com