North Star Writers Group

The 62^nd anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima (Aug. 6, 1945) is a fitting moment to pause and reflect on this horrific event and its evil twin, the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

If the United States had not dropped A-bombs on those cities, most certainly these ultimate weapons of mass destruction would have been unleashed elsewhere. Perhaps the world’s first nuclear attack would have come in the vastly more destructive hydrogen-bomb version that the United States developed after World War II with the help of former Nazi scientists.

In that sense, the bombings were mandated by human curiosity. We had to witness firsthand the unimaginable destruction of atomic power before we could learn to respect it.

Hundreds of thousands of human beings paid a ghastly price for such wisdom, but that is the nature of the human condition. Today, the Iraqis and U.S. troops in Iraq and their families pay a grisly price for the current administration’s misbegotten terrorism policies.

Will we ever learn?

The United States is by no means the only party with unheeded lessons. In the larger sense, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the outcome of Japan’s brutal aggression in Southeast Asia coupled with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What goes around comes around. Payback’s a bitch.

The Japanese mostly have refused to learn from their defeat. The hapless survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki garnered the name Hibakusha, and for decades were treated like lepers by Japanese society, shunned and shut away, shame heaped on them merely for being in the wrong place at the worst possible time.

Their maimed bodies and radioactively-shortened lives were visible reminders to the Japanese of their crushing, humiliating defeat. Their denial had the effect of making outcasts of the Hibakusha. Until recently, the Japanese just didn’t want to look at or acknowledge them. Many still do not, although Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors lately have had forums for speaking out to others in Japan and the world at large.

Is anyone in this country listening?

Today, much of the American public still doesn’t really want to know about the true costs of the Iraq war and its many stains on our national soul – CIA torture and rendition, denial of due process for prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, erosion of domestic civil liberties, the politicizing of every branch of government and so much more. The Bush administration is doing its best to oblige the public’s denial by refusing to allow the media to photograph the coffins and wounded soldiers arriving at Dover Air Force Base.

A letter to the editor recently printed in The Dallas Morning News claims to have heard through military medical personnel stationed in Germany that the Bush administration is hiding the true extent of Iraq war casualties, publicly releasing the names of only one-third of the dead and wounded. Given this administration’s non-stop record of mendacity and cover-up, even such a third-hand allegation cannot be dismissed out of hand.

If the atomic holocaust unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem like irrelevant, distant past events, ponder this. Tensions are again mounting between the U.S. and Iran. President Bush, goaded by his Iago of a vice president, Dick Cheney, again is leaning toward a military strike against Iran before his term expires. And the vice president is on record as favoring the use of nuclear weapons on Iran.

If we allow the Bush administration to drop nuclear bombs on Iran, we will reap a whirlwind that will make Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem tame by comparison. Payback works all ways, not just in the United States’s favor.

The lesson starts with impeachment proceedings for both President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

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