Hiroshima Guilt

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HIROSHIMA GUILT

On a warm summer morning above Hiroshima, Japan, an atomic bomb was for the first time dropped on a target as an act of war. The date was August 6, 1945. Less than a minute after the bomb was released, Hiroshima nearly disappeared in a brilliant cloud of atomic dust. The nuclear age had begun with a terrible fury. Sixty-six thousand people died and thousands more were injured; additional thousands later succumbed to radiation poisoning. Four square miles of the city were instantly erased.

President Harry S. Truman had given the order for a U.S. B-29 aircraft to deliver the bomb knowing what destruction it would cause. He later admitted that it weighed heavily on his conscience, but Truman felt he had no choice. In mid-June 1945, the administration was weighing the possibility of Japan's surrender. The Japanese navy had ceased to exist and Japan's military losses were staggering, but instead of surrendering the Japanese army decided to fight on. U.S. military leaders then calculated what losses could be expected if U.S. troops invaded the Japanese mainland. Based on earlier battles, they expected the casualties to be horrendous. The fight for Okinawa in April, for instance, had killed 13,000 Americans, about one-third as a result of kamikaze attacks on ships, and wounded 36,000. The figures for the invasion of the mainland varied, but they ranged as high as 250,000 casualties with as many as 65,000 deaths.

Truman weighed these figures against the arguments of those who opposed using the bomb. Critics of the bomb's use argued that the United States would be accused of using it in Japan because the enemy was Asian. Even more crucially, they argued that merely demonstrating the bomb's destructive power would cause Japan's surrender without the bomb having to be used on a civilian target. As Truman later admitted, it was a heavy decision, but he and his military leaders believed that their main purpose had to be saving the lives of U.S. soldiers and sailors, so the choice was made.

Since that time, Truman's decision has remained a subject of national discussion, and psychologists speak of a sense of national guilt that is felt by many Americans. Contributing to this sense of guilt were pictures of survivors, the most vivid of which were shots of burn victims, their bodies almost completely destroyed by fire. But the injuries caused by the bomb did not end in the first few days. No one had any idea of the long-term suffering that would be caused by an atomic explosion. Weeks and months after the blast, seemingly healthy people were suddenly overcome by exhaustion or their hair began to fall out. Then, as the burn wounds healed on those who survived, thick, ugly scars called keloids

grew over the wounds, which in most cases required plastic surgery.

Pictures of the suffering caused by the atomic blast were kept in the public consciousness for years and became part of U.S. psychology during the Cold War with the Soviet Union (1945–1991). Both the United and States and the Soviet Union developed intercontinental ballistic missiles, but by the early 1960s it was clear that neither side was ready to use such weapons for fear of mutual atomic annihilation.

Fifty years after Hiroshima, in 1994, the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., made ready to open its exhibit on the Enola Gay, the B-29 that had dropped the Hiroshima bomb. The museum had spent ten years restoring the plane, and in addition the exhibit would include burnt watches and broken wall clocks from Hiroshima, and victims' photos. As soon as the plans were aired, however, protests poured in from the Congress, veterans groups, and from the Japanese themselves. Some complained that the display glorified the dropping of the bomb and the terrible destruction it caused. Veterans groups complained that the museum was using the exhibit as an excuse to moralize against nuclear warfare. After months of quarreling, the museum replaced the exhibit with a smaller, less controversial remembrance of the Enola Gay's part in history. The controversy revealed the continuing debate over the American rationale for the use of atomic weapons in World War II.