Editorials:

...We said: 'To the Orient we are bringing the latest inventions of our civilization...

...That effort was brought down by veterans' groups, the Air Force Association, and elements of the U.S...

...HIROSHIMA 1995 In August 1945 the end of war with Japan ushered in an era of peaceful American-Japanese relations that has lasted for fifty years...

...At Iwo Jima and Okinawa Americans faced a Japanese force committed to victory or suicide (see Nancy Westerfield's account on page 30...

...If we use that we will have brought them all...

...The war against Japan was nearly won...

...We must keep it the property of peace-loving nations...

...For our war, for our purposes, to save American lives we have reached the point where we say that anything goes...

...The war against Japan was ended by immoral means-civilians were directly targeted...

...The Commonweal editorial was right: even before the advent of the A-bomb, the Allies had tragically adopted the practices of the enemy...

...After we had brought indescribable death to a few hundred thousand men, women, and children, we said that this bomb must remain always in the hands of peace-loving peoples...

...But we will not have to worry any more about keeping our victory clean...

...Though their analyses diverge, each points to the last fifty years and reminds us of one paramount fact and diabolical irony: After Nagasaki atomic weapons have never been used again...

...An outcome so positive and enduring could hardly have been imagined after the fierce combat that brought the war to Japanese territory in the spring and summer of 1945, nor, indeed, after our use of the atomic bomb...

...The war with Japan ended-and the effort to write the history and debate the morality of the atomic bomb began...

...The passage of time has not changed the gruesome and awful facts of what the Japanese did in beginning and conducting the war and what Americans did to end it...

...Of course, matters moral and historical are never simple- as the Commonweal editorial of August 24, 1945 (reprinted above), makes clear...

...German and Japanese cities had been fire bombed, and the slaughter of civilians continued even as the Japanese agreed to surrender...

...There was a port in the Pacific which sheltered American naval power...

...Our planes, the greatest bombers in the world, flew from hard won, gallantly won bases and bombed Japanese shipping, Japanese industry and, already, Japanese women and children...

...finally two atomic bombs were dropped: August 6 on Hiroshima and August 9 on Nagasaki...

...Loebs's moral analysis is not our own, but his history, we believe, is accurate in describing the last days of the war with Japan (see also, J. Bryan Hehir, page 9...

...If we were to threaten the use of it against the Japanese, we could have told them to pick a desert and then go look at the hole...

...We had to invent the bomb because the Germans were going to invent the bomb...

...These names of places-Rotterdam, Coventry-were associated, and seemed likely to be associated in men's minds for a great number of years, with a judgment of German guilt and German shame...

...Three writers, Thomas Powers (Atlantic Monthly, July 1995), Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Michael Walzer (both in Dissent, Summer 1995), who, like Commonweal, count themselves among the critics of the decision to drop the bomb, press various issues and we urge a full reading of their reflections...

...Perhaps that shame, too often unacknowledged and unexpressed, as much as the deterrent value of all our weapons has stayed the hand that would use such weapons again...

...Certainly, like everyone else, we will have to write a great deal about the future of humanity and the atomic bomb...

...And then we said that this bomb could mean the end of civilization if we ever got into a war and everyone started to use it...

...Well, it seems that we were ridiculous writing that sort of thing...

...Bruce Loebs, in his account of the final days of the war (page 10), argues that it was the destruction of Hiroshima that finally brought Emperor Hirohito to confront the Japanese military and order the surrender of Japan...

...Our fleet and Britain's fleet stood off Japan's coast and shelled Japan's cities...

...Undoubtedly...

...Their "shame" was also our own...

...To secure peace, of course...

...It was attacked by air without warning and the name Pearl Harbor was associated, and seemed likely to be associated for many years, with a Japanese idea that you could win a war by attacking the enemy before declaring war on the enemy...

...Once we have won our war we say that there must be international law...

...There was no doubt before or after Russia entered the war that the war against Japan was won...

...And then we said: "The time has come when nothing more can be added to the horror if we wish to keep our coming victory something we can use-or that humanity can use...

...So that we must keep it a secret...

...That is small comfort in a time when conventional weapons are ever more savage and arms control rests on precarious international efforts...

...There were names of places in Europe which from the early days of the war were associated with a German idea that by disregarding the rights of civilians you could shorten a war...

...It was a matter of avoiding our own possible destruction...

...Fifty years later, when the Smithsonian Institution set out to create an exhibit that would remember the end of the war, it tried to raise these difficult questions...

...Neither has the passage of time convinced most American soldiers and sailors slated to be part of the invasion forces that the atomic bombs and the fire bombing were not justified (see Brian Doyle, page 14...

...The last one we have to use...

...Until we invent a new one...

...The moral restraints of the just-war tradition embodied in international law and violated by both incendiary devices and atomic bombs were not compelling for those destined to die in the war nor for the political leaders who controlled their fate...

...Then, without warning, an American plane dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima...

...There is only one we have not brought...

...The scenario of Japanese fanaticism and the militarization of the whole population, the potential American casualties, and war weariness have been used to justify the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: They would save lives-American ones certainly, but Japanese as well...

...The name Hiroshima, the name Nagasaki are names for American guilt and shame...

...It is gas...

...This kamikaze spirit-fighting to the death at Iwo Jima and Okinawa-lent credence to warnings by U. S. military leaders that an invasion, scheduled for November 1,1945, would be hard fought...

...We must keep it as sole property of people who know how to use it...

...the lowest estimates at the time were for 95,000 casualties in the first months alone, one-third of them deaths...

...To save lives, of course...

...Congress...

...Without warning we dropped it into the middle of a city and then without warning we dropped it into the middle of another city...

...But the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not, as the editorial notes, the first occasion when the Allies bombed cities and targeted civilians, nor were they the last...

...When it is created, Germans, Japanese, and Americans will remember with horror the days of their shame...

...That is why Germans, Japanese, Russians, Americans, and British must "remember with horror the days of their shame...

...Despite military defeats on the Asian mainland, dire shortages of food and oil, a total naval blockade, and the loss of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, the Japanese military were resolute: victory or national suicide...

...Russia entered the war...

...We will not have to write that sort of thing any more...

...Fifty years later, the cold war has ended, the United States and Russia are gradually dismantling a huge and varied stockpile of nuclear arms, and this past May, 179 nations signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty...

...Air Force fire bombed Tokyo in March and then other Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians...

...A-bombs or fire bombs-the ends still do not justify the means...

...Gas is no worse than flame...

...An American plane dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki...

...And yes, it is true: Though we can dismantle and bury pieces of atomic weaponry, we cannot bury the knowledge of such weapons...

...Many who focus solely on our use of atom bombs and who say that Japan would have surrendered without it overlook the immoral nature of fire bombing...

...It is defiled...

...The collapse of the Smithsonian exhibit shows that even today we are, as a nation, loath to raise these necessary questions...

...Each day they announced to the Japanese where the blows would fall, and the Japanese were unable to prevent anything they chose to do...

...That is what the Germans said at the beginning of the war...

...That is what we said about the atomic bomb-together with odds and ends about motors the size of pin points which would drive a ship three times round the world-that is what we said about it, after we had used it ourselves...

...It is only that it is one more weapon...

...The name Pearl Harbor was a name for Japanese guilt and shame...

...Still, this anniversary has been the occasion for further reflection, moral and political...

...We had to test the bomb and we tested it in a desert...

...the U.S...

...There was no opposition...