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Th. By IRENE FOULKS

ded ed Was permanently changed in 1945,” con- a alter Cronkite in a recent “CBS Reports” docu- : Th on the legacy of Hiroshima. lumen Very existence of life on earth was made subject to Madness for human frailty, human anger and human Yith the New generations are going to have to struggle | Hitog “terrible destructive force that remains the legacy of } tap ma, 40 years after, and still counting,” the news- : The wcluded: lip, «808 learned from the Hiroshima tragedy may ‘ “sary Come to grips with this reality and take the steps ¢! Bhs, to ensure human survival. behind ¢ are divergent historical views as to the reasons a} of the first and only use of nuclear boms as weapons

till... © 2verage person in North America probably

Steps the argument repeatedly advanced by former

Hinggp sient Harry Truman that the atomic bombing of i) and Nagasaki was justifiable because it helped ‘ Ea war in Japan and saved untold American lives. thous” this rationalization has been questioned by : ‘tful historians and their doubts have received | bg, Y© Confirmation as additional information has wiq_, “Vailable concerning the real motives of those who

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... Vallis, the editor of Sojourners, an independent the bo Monthly magazine, has become convinced that egg war view propounded by Truman is a serious They rtion. In the August, 1985 edition Wallis states: hay things the people of the United States were told and ‘tnply Ways believed about the necessity of the bomb are PT the et true... The bomb was not the shot that ended the Nd World War; instead, it was the opening round d Tena New Cold War. Its ultimate target was not the im; © but the Russians. The decision to use the tijary ome was a calculated display of American power, Hise np uPetiority and political advantages... The Japa- iy UClear victims were the first to pay the price of anew Hain Sal conflict between two superpowers that would many more victims.” ‘ ‘forthright conclusions were based on the revela- nthe accompanying feature article, “The Hiroshima p renee adapted from the introduction to Atomic , Macy, by Gar Alperovitz. (The new edition of this 1cusly documented book has been updated to. “much new material not previously available.) 7, Robert Oppenheimer, leader of the “Manhat- J€ct” which developed the first nuclear weapon, Tn the last war, the two nations which we like to

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think are the most enlightened and humane in the world used atomic weapons against an enemy which was essen- tially defeated.”

In the opinion of Admiral William D. Leahy, U.S. Wartime Chief of Staff, “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. Because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conven- tional weapons ... My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we have adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the dark age.”

Winston Churchill also acknowledged that, “It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the first

b fell.” ae his memoirs, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower described his reaction when Secretary of War Henry Stimson told him at the Potsdam Conference in July, 1945, that atomic weapons were to be used aginst the Japanese. He wrote: “I voiced to him my grave misgivings, firstly on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that drop- ping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I felt that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives . .. Japan was at that very moment seeking some way to surrender with a minimal loss of face.”

Alerpovitz reminds us: “The matter of dates should have been enough to stimulate obvious questions.” At Yalta, the Russians had agreed to enter the war in the Far Fast three months after Germany’s surrender, and the

Soviet Union did indeed declare war on Japan on schedule Aug. 8.

Hicoshignn was bombed on Aug. 6 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, the day the Soviet troops entered Northern China. A major American concern was to end the war quickly before the Soviet army got very far in Manchuria, and to exclude the USSR from the settlement with Japan.

Leo Szilard, the scientist who with Einstein urged Roosevelt..to. undertake. research..on atomic, weapons, reported that in a conversation with Truman’s secretary of state, James Byrnes, Byrnes “did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war ... Mr. Byrnes’ view was that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make the Russians more manageable in Europe.” Truman himself told his reparations chief, Edwin Pauley, that the atomic bomb “would keep the Russians straight.” :

B-29 prepares to.bomb Hiroshima.

P.M.S. Blackett, a Nobel-Prize winning physicist who later became president of the British Royal Society, and who was Director of Naval Operations Research at the British Admiralty during the war, concluded in his book, Atomic Weapons and East-West Relations, that the use of atomic weapons was not necessary to shorten the war with Japan. In explaining his motives for questioning deeply- held views, Professor Blackett states: “I am convinced that the only guide to sensible future action is to under- stand the past, for all rational action involves an element of prediction, and prediction can only be based on extrapola- tion from the past. An incorrect description of what has happened may lead to false predictions of what will happen.”

The possivle benefit to be accrued from an examination and evaluation of the little known and poorly understood political implications of the Hiroshima tragedy is that our understanding, perception and attitudes toward the Soviets might be sufficiently ame'iorated so that we could begin to shed the “evil enemy” stereotype, and consider testing the possibility that the various peace initiatives proposed by the Soviet Union might indeed provide an opportunity to reverse the arms race — while there is still time. ;

The fact that we have been misled in the past about the political role and military necessity of nuclear weapons, should make us cautious of again falling prey to such misconceptions. The Reagan administration’s persistence in the quest for military superiority — its recent rejection of a moratorium on nuclear weapons testing to match that observed for a full year by the Soviet Union; its announced intention to abandon the limits on arms contained in the SALT II treaty; its unyielding pursuit of an illusory techno- logical “fix” which will allegedly shield us from the conse- quences of nuclear war — should be evaluated in light of the lessons learned from the historical insight into the real background of Hiroshima. ; :

Irene Foulks is a Vancouver freelance writer and peace activist. This article was originally submitted as a letter to The Vancouver Sun, and the author secured agreement from the editor to publish it on Hiroshima Day, 1985. But it never appeared. It has been updated for publication here.

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} | Use Ae forty years ago, on the morrow of the first | Ringt atomic weapons, the great physicist, Albert is 12 Observed: ‘‘A new way of human thinking ° | €ssary if mankind is to survive and go on

| : | chy Ping. Today the A-bomb has fundamentally i | |

hged the world; we know that, and people find Mselves in a new situation which their thinking Correspond to’’.

| he Oday, Einstein’s warning has acquired re-

Sob ‘Urgency. The level of danger is so high and

Vious that many leading politicians around the

forty are reiterating Einstein’s exact words. Un-

" the tly for our world, however, four decades

| Way. Nuclear age have produced two distinct new YS of thinking. -

Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the his. nist Party of the Soviet Union, has outlined | int. UNtry’s approach to the complex problems of Wy Usgpational relations in our dangerous age. The | Ww has advanced a plan to abolish nuclear Pons by the year 2000 — on the basis of multi- has he Negotiations and equality of security — and N 8Un to act on that plan. S Gorbachev has noted, ‘“‘the modern world }] a%q ' Come much too small and fragile for wars TT] eq Policies of force. (The world) cannot be | built and preserved if the thinking and actions ‘T] Wap UP over the centuries on the acceptability of F all 2nd armed conflict are not shed once and for ‘ ntevocably’’. | | Shut, the other side, U.S. secretary of state George 2 gave a speech to the Senate Foreign Rela-

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tions Committee in January 1985 entitled, “The Future of American Foreign Policy — New Reali- ties and New Ways of Thinking’. In it he outlined a starkly different approach. Said he: “Changes in the international system will follow positive trends only if we — the United States and the free world __ meet our responsibilities to defend our interests and seek to shape events in accordance with our ideals and goals.”’

In other-words, in pursuit of its ‘vital interests’ the U.S. will make unilateral decisions, the conse- quences of which will have to be endured by the entire planet. : :

What Shultz’ ‘‘new”’ style of thinking signifies is a renewed drive to control the world — neo-global- ism. In practice, what this means is a regenerated crusade to “roll back communism,”’ to crush the legitimate struggles. of the peoples of Nicaragua, Chile, South Africa, the Middle East, the Philip- pines, and many others. The U.S. administration’s ‘“‘new’’ thinking mandates a new wave of im- - perialist aggression on a global scale. It also au-. thorizes escalation of a new arms technology which, as we are all increasingly aware, could one day spin out of control with devastating consequ-

ences. The fate of our world cannot be left to such

thinking. Yet how can we change the approach of the Reagans, the Thatchers and the Mulroneys who act in complete disregard of reason and sanity, not to mention the wishes of the global public? They represent a way of thinking that puts nar- rowly defined national self-interest, or imperial

MAGGIE BIZZELL

prerogative, ahead of the needs of the human spe- cies as a whole. They will continue stoking the fires of war until the majority of people unite in militant action; they can only ignore the will of the majority at their peril.

To achieve that breadth of united opposition against the arms race requires that people mobilize on the basis of a genuinely new approach. As Eins- tein pointed out many years ago, there are no longer any unilateral military measures that can be taken to enhance the security of a nation. The only actions that will improve our chances for survival are those which build mutual understanding, de- velop new channels of cooperation and commu- nication, and remove competition from the military sphere. These are the key elements of a positive and hopeful new way of thinking.

The division of the world into capitalist and so- cialist blocs is an historical reality — the rivalry between the two will not disappear. However, in the nuclear age, when a runaway arms race threatens the existence of all, the world must find new ways for socialism and capitalism to live in

’ peace. Competition must be channelled into eco- nomic avenues, and expressed through the peace- ful struggle of ideas; conflicts must be resolved politically, not militarily.

Today, the world shares a common enemy: the threat of global annihilation. It is a danger which transcends our political differences. Einstein’s words were never so true as they are today — for humankind to survive and continue to grow, we must win a genuinely new way of thinking.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JULY 30, 1986 e 7