The White Peril 白禍

9 August is now over in Japan; mayor of Nagasaki Tomihisa Taue gave the expected speech on the anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing:

This year is the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Dr. Takashi Nagai, a physician who dedicated himself to caring for victims of the bombing. Nagasaki mayor Tomihisa Taue cited Nagai's words in his peace address: "In war there is neither victory nor defeat. What there is is only destruction." He also addressed the world: "Without the abolition of nuclear weapons, there is no future for humankind." As he did last year, he sought from the Japanese government leadership toward the abolition of nuclear weapons and the codification in law of the three principles of non-nuclearization.

The three principles are that Japan will not (1) possess, (2) create, or (3) import nuclear armaments.

I know I harp on this every year, but the fact--in this case as in so many others--is that suffering does not necessarily confer wisdom. The image of Japanese people as innocent burn victims and saintly doctors running about trying to alleviate suffering is not inaccurate in and of itself, but it does lack context. By the time of the Nagasaki bombing, the Japanese Empire had executed its plan of overrunning as much of East and Southeast Asia as it could get its hands on, figuring that if and when it lost the war, it could expect to bargain to retain at least some of its occupied territories. It rejected the Potsdam Declaration, even when it was clear that it could not possibly win the Pacific War. It tried to see whether it could leverage itself a more advantageous deal by approaching Moscow. It balked at surrendering even after the Hiroshima bombing. The suicidal belligerence of the Japanese in combat was well known, as was their egregious treatment of conquered peoples and prisoners of war, so a ground invasion promised to expend even more men and resources on a war that the Japanese knew they had already lost. Japan in 1945 was an extremely tenacious enemy that warranted an extreme response; that it is now peaceably integrated into the world economy as an industrial and consumer powerhouse does not change that.

Added on 11 August: Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse posted yesterday at Pajamas Media:

The stories of survivors are harrowing — flames everywhere, people walking by whose flesh had been ripped off their bodies by heat and the blast, the inability to find loved ones. All the ghastliness of Dante’s Hell and a Gothic horror novel rolled into one. We pity them and ache for what they went through that horrible day.

But once –just once– I would like to hear the horror stories of the men and women of Pearl Harbor as counterpoint to the suffering of the Japanese and a reminder of who started the war and how they did it. I want to hear from those who can tell equally horrific tales of death and destruction. How Japanese aircraft strafed our men with machine gun fire while they were swimming for their lives through flaming oil spills, the result of a surprise attack against a nation with whom they were at peace. Or how the hundreds of men trapped in the USS Arizona slowly suffocated over 10 days as divers frantically tried to cut through the superstructure and rescue their comrades.

Perhaps we might even ask surviving POWs to bear witness to their ordeal in Japanese prison camps — surely as brutal, inhuman, and gruesome an atrocity as has ever been inflicted on enemy soldiers.

While we’re at it, I am sure there are thousands of witnesses who would want to testify about how the Japanese army raped its way across Asia. This little discussed aspect of the war is a non-event for the most part in Japanese histories. But the millions of women who suffered unspeakable mistreatment by the Japanese army deserve a hearing whenever the tragedy of Hiroshima is remembered.

Yes, no more Hiroshimas. But to take the atomic bombing of Japan totally out of context and use it to highlight one nation or one city’s suffering is morally offensive. The war with Japan, with its racial overtones on both sides as well as the undeniable cruelty and barbarity by the Japanese military, should have been ended the second it was possible to do so. Anything less makes the moral arguments surrounding the use of the atomic bomb an exercise in sophistry.

Yes. He also has much more background about the decision to use the atom bombs.

My, reporters can be uncritical. The Asahi reports that this year, the mayor of Nagasaki will cite the opinions of prominent Americans in calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons:

In calling for peace at the memorial ceremony, Taue will discuss proposals by Kissinger and three other key U.S. figures who, concerned by nuclear proliferation, have done an about-turn and called for the abolition of the (world's) "deadliest weapons."

"In the United States, the largest nuclear power, those who formerly led nuclear policies are speaking out (against such weapons)," Taue says. "I have decided to take it up so I can more strongly appeal to the United States for what Nagasaki has long sought."

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the world's only cities to experience atomic bombing, are trying to press the nuclear powers more aggressively for action to eliminate their arsenals.

Okay, fine. But then there's this:

The Bush administration has refused to ratify the CTBT.

But the two men vying to replace him have both made clear they have different goals.

"We'll make the goal of eliminating all nuclear weapons a central element in our nuclear policy," Democratic Sen. Barack Obama said July 16.

Earlier on May 27, Republican Sen. John McCain said former President Ronald Reagan's dream of seeing nuclear weapons banished from the Earth "is my dream, too."

You remember Ronald Reagan, right? He helped hasten the collapse of the U.S.S.R. by dramatically cutting back the U.S. defense program.

I mean, yeah, sure, a world without nuclear weapons was Reagan's dream. I'm sure it's McCain's. It's mine, too. We all have plenty of dreams. But reality is where we live, and the McCain speech referred to by the Asahi reporters does not indicate that the mayors can expect much from him:

Our highest priority must be to reduce the danger that nuclear weapons will ever be used. Such weapons, while still important to deter an attack with weapons of mass destruction against us and our allies, represent the most abhorrent and indiscriminate form of warfare known to man. We do, quite literally, possess the means to destroy all of mankind. We must seek to do all we can to ensure that nuclear weapons will never again be used.

While working closely with allies who rely on our nuclear umbrella for their security, I would ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff to engage in a comprehensive review of all aspects of our nuclear strategy and policy. I would keep an open mind on all responsible proposals. At the same time, we must continue to deploy a safe and reliable nuclear deterrent, robust missile defenses and superior conventional forces that are capable of defending the United States and our allies. But I will seek to reduce the size of our nuclear arsenal to the lowest number possible consistent with our security requirements and global commitments. Today we deploy thousands of nuclear warheads. It is my hope to move as rapidly as possible to a significantly smaller force.

I'm sure Obama recognizes this, too, BTW--I'm just not focusing on him because no one tried to demonstrate that he was a nuclear abolitionist by comparing him with Ronald Reagan. Sheesh.

The fact is that nuclear weapons now exist, and we need to maintain them as one of our options in case we again encounter an enemy that's like, well, the Japanese Empire.

Yes, Japan knew that it could no longer win the war by August; but it had flouted the Potsdam Declaration and continued to figure that, if it held out, it would be allowed to retain some of the territories it occupied (and perhaps avoid being occupied itself). Who knows how many more Allied personnel would have died if it had come down to a ground invasion? Japan is now a peaceable society; back then it was not.

The anniversaries are a good opportunity to think about the unprecedented destruction the bombings caused and the agonizing ethical and moral decisions that led up to them. Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered horribly--but that doesn't make Japan the victim in the war; nor does it make complete nuclear disarmament practicable.

Interesting news in the case of the tainted gyoza:

An unknown number of Chinese suffered serious pesticide poisoning in mid-June after eating frozen gyoza dumplings made by a Chinese firm that recalled the products after identical cases were reported in Japan earlier this year, according to sources.

Chinese authorities have determined that methamidophos in the gyoza, produced by Tianyang Food, based in Hebei Province, was the source of the poisonings, which matched those in Japan.

With the likelihood the gyoza were contaminated in China having increased, Chinese investigators are expected to step up efforts once more to determine whether the poisonings were deliberate or accidental. According to the sources, it is unknown how many people were poisoned in China, their exact symptoms, or why products that had already been recalled were marketed again. They said the distribution route of the gyoza also was unclear.

It had been starting to look as if the gyoza in Japan may have been tampered with, most likely to make Chinese food processors look bad. The poisonings are not, of course, being reported widely in China.

It's already 6 August in Japan; that makes it the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. One Japanese man thinks the Germans are insufficiently aware of how awful the U.S. was to Japan at the end of the war. No, really:

Before the anniversary of the Hiroshima atomic bombing, Japanese former president of a company, now residing in Hamburg, Shigemi Kawakatsu (79) completed the manuscript of a book that includes the German translation of his friends' accounts of their experience of the bombing and a compilation of the bombing victims' drawings. The book is called The Hell of Atomic Bombing: Sketches of Hell by Those Who Are Living Proof of the Hiroshima A-Bombing; Tracing the Fates of the Bombing Victims (A4; 200 pp).

...

"I want to sear the hell of the atomic bombings into the reader's vision," [Kawakatsu said, explaining why] he incorporated approximately two hundred drawings of the bombing made by citizens and preserved in the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima. The poet Sankichi Tooge's piece about the bombing is also included. Kawakatsu said, "The sensitivities of the Germans are similar to those of the Japanese. They are sure to understand the cruelty of the bombing."

Kawakatsu was motivated by a close friend, a bombing survivor who didn't write about his experiences until a few years ago:

Kawakatsu put himself into [his friend] Okada's place, translating how the black ran fell on him as he fled from the violent fires, how he saw people drifting around like ghosts crying out, "Water...water," and how he collapsed from exhaustion and slept among charred corpses.

The accounts of the atomic bombings are, indeed, horrific; but I fail to be convinced that the lesson to be drawn from them is that the Germans and Japanese should feel a heightened sense of kinship over their shared suffering. In this context, a sentence like "The sensitivities of the Germans are similar to those of the Japanese" strikes me as chilling rather than touching. No one expects Japan (or Germany) to spend the rest of civilized eternity groveling for forgiveness because of the war; but it does seem reasonable to expect it not to strike a flat, uncomplicated victim pose. Kawakatsu is not some kind of official spokesperson for Japan--I realize that--but his attitude is, in many ways, representative. How often do you hear Japanese people who undertake war-related documentary projects of this magnitude publicly expressing the hope that Unit 731 or the Nanking Massacre will never be repeated?

Added on 11 August: Rick Moran of Right Wing Nuthouse posted yesterday at Pajamas Media:

The stories of survivors are harrowing — flames everywhere, people walking by whose flesh had been ripped off their bodies by heat and the blast, the inability to find loved ones. All the ghastliness of Dante’s Hell and a Gothic horror novel rolled into one. We pity them and ache for what they went through that horrible day.

But once –just once– I would like to hear the horror stories of the men and women of Pearl Harbor as counterpoint to the suffering of the Japanese and a reminder of who started the war and how they did it. I want to hear from those who can tell equally horrific tales of death and destruction. How Japanese aircraft strafed our men with machine gun fire while they were swimming for their lives through flaming oil spills, the result of a surprise attack against a nation with whom they were at peace. Or how the hundreds of men trapped in the USS Arizona slowly suffocated over 10 days as divers frantically tried to cut through the superstructure and rescue their comrades.

Perhaps we might even ask surviving POWs to bear witness to their ordeal in Japanese prison camps — surely as brutal, inhuman, and gruesome an atrocity as has ever been inflicted on enemy soldiers.

While we’re at it, I am sure there are thousands of witnesses who would want to testify about how the Japanese army raped its way across Asia. This little discussed aspect of the war is a non-event for the most part in Japanese histories. But the millions of women who suffered unspeakable mistreatment by the Japanese army deserve a hearing whenever the tragedy of Hiroshima is remembered.

Yes, no more Hiroshimas. But to take the atomic bombing of Japan totally out of context and use it to highlight one nation or one city’s suffering is morally offensive. The war with Japan, with its racial overtones on both sides as well as the undeniable cruelty and barbarity by the Japanese military, should have been ended the second it was possible to do so. Anything less makes the moral arguments surrounding the use of the atomic bomb an exercise in sophistry.

I already linked Moran's piece on another post, but because a lot of the people who land here come through searches about Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or the Tokyo firebombings, I think it's important to have it available here, too.