Pilger on Hiroshima

John Pilger marked the 63rd anniversary of Hiroshima in the Guardian this week with a typically impassioned assault on US foreign policy, then, now and, presumably forevermore. For Pilger, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the first names on a rap sheet of US nuclear bullying that takes us up to current attempts to cow Iran; in his words, Hiroshima was ‘a criminal attack on an epic scale’.

Pilger’s description of the aftermath is moving and macabre, echoing the harrowing testimony of John Hersey’s seminal account, Hiroshima, and laying bear the full horror of atomic attack. The fallout was literal, metaphoric and enduring: radiation-related cancer claimed lives for decades to come (cases of leukemia didn't peak in the city until 1951), while in the West dissenting voices were ruthlessly suppressed. Aussie journalist Wilfred Burchett raised questions of motive and morality in the Daily Express and quickly found himself ostracised.


The problem with Pilger's piece is that the logic is twisted and arguments second hand, borrowed mainly from late ‘60s revisionist historians. At the height of Vietnam, liberal American academics began to question not only war in Indochina, but the origins of the Cold War itself. The A-Bombs weren’t the final shots of the Pacific War, but the first of the Cold one, they argued. One, Gar Alperovitz, coined the term ‘atomic diplomacy’, indicting his country for sacrificing tens of thousands of lives to send Stalin a veiled message. In other words, an act of war driven by the considerations of peace.

Although it is true to say that the Soviet Union was a factor — and many would argue the Cold War was well underway by 1945 — this is spurious stuff. Pilger analyses the decisions made in August 1945 through the prism of August 2008 to create a picture of America as a nuclear monster, then and now.

But what is the link with Iran? What connects the Truman and Bush administrations? and where is the attempt to understand the American mindset in the summer of 1945? after all, this was a nation tiring of a Pacific conflict of monstrous barbarity, of bloodstained beaches and warships transformed into tangled hulks by kamikaze attacks. In June, US marines had watched open-mouthed as the citizens of Okinawa threw themselves off the island’s cliffs, preferring death to capitulation. As Pilger and Alperovitz have it, Japan was on the verge of surrender. As far as America was concerned, Japan was a nation for whom surrender had no obvious verge.

Truman did not wear the responsibility of atomic power lightly. He heard about the successful tests at Los Alamos soon after inauguration (only days before Stalin did), requesting of the press, "Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don't know if you fellas ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when they told me what happened yesterday, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me."

Pilger's main evidence comes from an unlikely source: the US Strategic Bombing Survey of 1946. “Air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender,” it claimed. Yes, but the US Strategic Bombing Survey, Curtis LeMay et al, had a fairly obvious axe to grind. And unless I’m missing something Pilger seems to be arguing that conventional bombing would have obviated the need for the A-bombs, which is bizarre and counter-intuitive. 97,000 people died in one fire raid on Tokyo alone. 67 cities were bombed. The suffering was immeasurable.

This is not good history and it’s not good journalism. In making these accusations, Pilger has a responsibility to demonstrate exactly what it would have taken to make Japan surrender, with evidence that extends beyond one eyewash report justifying General LeMay’s salary.

Hiroshima was a monumental human catastrophe and released the nuclear genie from its bottle, but to single it out as ‘murder on an epic scale’ in global conflict that cost almost 72 million lives is a terrible charge to lay at Truman's door. Was Roosevelt a war criminal for what happened in Dresden? What about Churchill? With Pilger there's a conspiracy lurking behind every conspiracy, which is particularly depressing because with PR increasingly a weapon of war, we need insightful, accurate journalism more than ever.


postscript
One question continues to be troubling, but wasn't raised by Pilger. The anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing fell on Friday, only 3 days after Hiroshima. with the shockwaves still hitting the Emperor and his advisors, and Japan's communications infrastructure collapsed, how could a surrender have been offered in that time?