Hiroshima, 60th Anniversary

It's been 60 years since the first nuclear weapon was used in "combat" and the debate still continues.

Let me just state my position on war right off the bat: I believe that war is never morally justifiable. I understand that we live in a fallen world and that there are people and countries that are lead by evil people with less than perfect motives. It's a dangerous world we live in, for sure, and it behooves every nation to be prepared to defend themselves or help defend others. But in the end, I do not believe any war is ever inevitable or unavoidable.

That said, the United States, Great Britain, Australia, China and a variety of allies were at war against the aggressor nation of Imperial Japan in August of 1945. Justifiable or not, we were engaged in a life and death struggle. The Allies were winning a slow and costly campaign that would have meant slogging it out in insane house-to-house fighting in the streets of Tokyo. But could the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki be judged as morally or pragmatically necessary?

As stated before, war is never a moral option; the prosecution of war always involves choosing to behave like an animal, always causes more harm than good and always brings out the worst in people. To answer the question: it is my judgment that the use of atomic weapons on Japan was not morally necessary, but it may have been pragmatically necessary.

Conventional wisdom says that we needed to use the bomb in order to preserve lives, the lives of American soldiers who were to invade the islands of Japan and the defenders alike who certainly would have put up considerable resistance. The facts though do not support this assertion. Russia was transferring thousands of troops from the fight against Nazi Germany (which ended two months before the dropping of the bombs) to take on the Japanese. Japan could no longer effectively defend itself from the air or sea. Japanese officials knew the war was lost, and, it seems likely now, that they would have surrendered (atomic bomb or not) by the end of the summer of 1945.

Now, whether President Truman knew what the Japanese knew is another issue all together. Let's give Harry the benefit of the doubt and say that he actually felt the Japanese were going follow the Nazi example and fight to the death. He felt (obviously) justified in ignoring his advisors on the subject, because he believed there would be no surrender without a massive and costly invasion. Maybe he just wanted to test the bomb's effectiveness. Maybe he wanted to use it as a deterrent against Soviet aggression. Maybe he simply wanted to avoid another million casualties (by one contemporaneous estimate) and force the Japanese to surrender as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, not much is present in the historical record concerning the decision to drop the bombs, but we can make reasonable assumptions.

As a historian, I was trained not to make moral judgments about the subjects I study; historical figures and actions should be explained not judged. So, all of Truman's reasons strike me as extremely pragmatic and justifiable in it's historical context. To kill between 130,000 to 150,000 people (that's just Hiroshima and that's just within the first few days after the bombing) in exchange for the lives of an unknown number of American, Russian, Chinese, Australian, British and Japanese casualties or for mere political gain (stopping Stalin from turning northern Japan into another Poland for example) may have seemed reasonable. The bomb may have had enormous practical use (we may never know). Whatever "good" reasons Harry Truman had for doing so does not hide the monstrous immorality of the decision.

Hiroshima After Sixty Years: The Debate Continues

Decoding the Past

I got a chance to catch the History Channel's first installment of "Decoding the Past" which purported to be a rational, "historical" evaluation of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. For the most part, I must admit, they did a good job of balancing the myths and legends from historical fact. The show was quick to point out that The Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction and therefore only requires plausibility to make the claims that it did. For example, the story hinges on the plausibility of Jesus (who was after all a real man, living in a real culture) and Mary Magdalene being husband and wife. I'll admit, it's beyond plausible that a First Century Jew would be married. One also has to admit that Mary played an important part in the early Jesus movement. But as a matter of fact, of historical fact, there is no documented evidence to support the claim that Mary bore Jesus' child. That goes for the whole notion that Jesus has an actual bloodline in southern France or that the Church actively suppressed this radical "truth". (Then again, the lack of proof only proves the conspiracy, right?!?)

The crux of the story for my wife and I is the strange case of Da Vinci. Our take on it is: "So what if Da Vinci thought there was some cover-up? So what if he thought Mary Magdalene was Jesus' wife?" Granted, Da Vinci was a genius, but that does not make his thoughts true or false, especially when his ideas on this particular subject were never explicitly stated. This goes for the legends of Mary Magdalene's flight to Egypt and subsequent "oar-less" boat ride across the Mediterranean to the south of France. There are always people with alternative theories, stories and plausible re-constructions.

Plausibility never equals truth.

Granted, the Church has always had a dark side to it; violent suppression of heterodoxy is fairly common in the history of the Christianity. In the end, if you feel the Church is radically misogynic, suppressed vital information about the progeny of Christ, then you can safely construct a model on which to make this claim--just as it's plausible to make the case that Christianity directly caused the Holocaust. You will, though, be forced to admit, that your conclusion is based purely on speculation and a unique interpretation of the documentary evidence.

For more information on this topic, particularly the Council of Nicea check out "Breaking The Da Vinci Code"