On 75th anniversary of A-bomb attacks on Japan we must accept that racism played role in US choice of Japan over Germany as first target

By Fareed Khan 

August 6th and 9th marks the 75th anniversary of the United States committing the single worst act of racist state terrorism in history.  These are the dates in 1945 when the US dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The US justified the use of atomic weapons as the quickest way to end the war with Japan without incurring thousands of American casualties to conquer the Japanese homeland.  However, this was not the view held by US military leaders, and President Harry Truman’s military advisors were ultimately overruled by Truman’s political advisors about using the A-bomb against Japan.The two bombings collectively killed 225,000 people immediately and in the days and weeks that followed, as well as an additional 200,000 more people by 1950.  These numbers don’t include the tens of thousands who lived with lifelong physical injuries and cancers resulting from radiation exposure that eventually took their lives in subsequent decades.

The decision to target Japan rather than Germany was made on September 18, 1944, a time when the war in Europe was still raging.  No one at the time could predict that by the spring of 1945 Nazi Germany would surrender and the war in Europe would be over.  Therefore it begs the question why only Japanese targets were selected rather than targets in Germany for the first use of these new weapons. 

 

The overwhelming majority of citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were women, children and the elderly, not involved in any way in the Japanese military.  This alone should raise questions about the rationale and justification put forth by advocates of using America’s ultimate weapon against targets that were essentially defenceless and without any significant military value.

 

The answer lies in the dehumanization of the Japanese as part of US war propaganda, and the virulent racism targeting all things Japanese.  By the time the summer of 1945 arrived the US government had spent three and a half years putting out racist anti-Japanese propaganda to instill a sense of nationalism in all Americans to support the war effort.  The fact that this propaganda portrayed the Japanese as a sub-human society without a sense of humanity resulted in Japanese Americans (who had no real ties to Japan) being stripped of their property and possessions and imprisoned in American concentration camps after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.

Despite this racist propaganda, many U.S. politicians, scientists and military experts came forward in the months and weeks before the bombs were dropped to state that the war could be ended quickly without the use of the atomic bombs.  Admiral William Leahy, President Truman’s Chief of Staff, wrote in his 1950 memoir I Was There that, “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 . . . in 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.”

 

Others who counselled President Truman against dropping the atomic weapons on Japan included: General Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe; General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander in the Pacific; General Curtis LeMay, future head of the U.S. Air Force; Navy Secretary James Forrestal; former President Herbert Hoover; Albert Einstein; and some of the lead scientists of the Manhattan Project.

 

In a visit to President Truman a couple of weeks before the bombing, General Dwight D. Eisenhower urged him not to use the atomic bombs given that the Japanese had indicated they were willing to surrender. In a 1963 interview in Newsweek Eisenhower said,“It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.” 

 

War is state terrorism on an epic scale but the perpetrators rarely if ever see the inside of a court or are convicted for their crimes. In this instance it was American state terrorism fuelled by a virulent racist hatred towards the enemy, that resulted in the US imprisoning tens of thousands of its own citizens for the mere fact that they shared the Japanese ancestry of their enemy, and justifying the nuclear incineration of two Japanese cities which ultimately resulted in more than 400,000 civilian deaths by weapons of mass destruction. 

World War 2 was an act of terrorism initiated by Nazi Germany but involving most of the nations of the world. The decisions by both the Allies and the Axis powers to target civilians in their military strategy were criminal acts of terrorism, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and violations of the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, and the 1925 Geneva Protocol.  America's decision to target Hiroshima and Nagasaki with their atomic bombs, where the majority of victims were civilians, were not only violations of these treaties but were in effect acts of state terrorism.

 

History is written by the victors in that the most egregious and criminal acts of the victor nations are rarely if ever brought to light or prosecuted.  The US and its World War 2 allies wrote the history of the atomic attacks on Japan to put the US in the most positive light. However, anyone who seeks the truth will discover that nations that create empires build those empires on the bodies of the innocent, and on foundations infused with lies to hide their war crimes. 

 

The reality is that US President Harry Truman, who had the final say on going ahead with the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was a racist war criminal and should be remembered as such.  He was the leader of a terrorist state which chose to target its non-white enemy (Japan) rather than its white enemy (Nazi Germany) when the decision was being made on where to use America’s new weapon.  He chose targets that were civilian, primarily populated with women and children, and he pushed forward with the attacks despite the advice of his most senior military advisors, and many prominent Americans and senior statesmen. 

 

Of all the nations on Earth, the US is the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of the world. On the one hand it holds itself up as the beacon of democracy, human rights and freedom, and on the other hand it undermines democracy, violently violates human rights, and destroys the freedom of people in other nations in support of its own political or economic interests, or if foreign governments dare to challenge the US. For modern examples all you have to do is look at Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and Venezuela. 

 

It seems that if you are not an ally or friend of the US, the only way to keep them from interfering in your nation's business or violating your sovereignty is to do like North Korea and build your own nuclear weapons – the very weapons that made the US a terrorist state in the first place. 

 

The US is the only nation in the world that has used nuclear weapons against an adversary.  It did so because its president was a virulent racist, who accepted America’s racist propaganda which had dehumanized all Japanese into caricatures that were sub-human ogres without a shred of civility or humanity.  This made it easier to move forward with the plan to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki despite the better judgment of his military leaders, who believed that the surrender of Japan could be achieved without targeting women and children.  The fact that Truman went ahead with the plan says much about him as a person, and about the racist mindset of the political advisors that surrounded him who encouraged him to do so.

 

As the world marks the 75th anniversary of the nuclear attacks by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, let us never forget the racist mass murder committed on these two days.  Ultimately it was hate that won day when thousands of Japanese civilians in those two cities were incinerated in the 6000°C fireball created when the bombs exploded.  Let us hope that no nation that possesses nuclear weapons ever gives in to such hate again, and for the sake of humanity let us hope we live to see the day when nuclear weapons are eliminated from the Earth.

 

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