THE HIRO OF HIROSHIMA
Wechsler, James A.
The Hero of Hiroshima by JAMES A. WECHSLER IDrom a new Canadian maga-•1 zine, Exchange, I learn that Claude Eatherly has escaped from the mental hospital in which he had been confined and is now a...
...By all modern standards he was where he belonged—in a mental hospital...
...the court accepted psychiatric testimony that he had been driven mad by his "guilt feeling" over his role in the bombings...
...And now responsible, respectable men are glibly saying that we may have no option except a massive nuclear struggle...
...Now I accept the fact that I am unlikely to bring about that recognition by getting into scrapes with the law as I have been doing to shatter the 'hero image' of me by which society has sought to perpetuate its own complacency...
...it is easy for a man to vanish from the newspapers and from our minds...
...I don't want you to consider me as one that is wholly unselfish...
...Then, on May 27, 1960: "To most people my method of rebellion against war is that of an insane person...
...Exchange carries only fragments of the correspondence...
...yet enough is printed to raise some brutal questions about the identity of the sane and the sick...
...Khrushchev toys with megaton monsters...
...The Hero of Hiroshima by JAMES A. WECHSLER IDrom a new Canadian maga-•1 zine, Exchange, I learn that Claude Eatherly has escaped from the mental hospital in which he had been confined and is now a fugitive hiding out somewhere in this land...
...In obvious self-defense, society had to pronounce him insane...
...He transmitted expressions of remorse to the Japanese survivors...
...Are these the maunderings of a madman...
...Harry Truman has said he never had a moment of doubt or torment about the great decision...
...Finally, on January 14, 1961, a county court jury in Waco, Texas, ruled he must remain a patient in a Veterans Hospital...
...On occasion he had voluntarily committed himself for hospital treatment, especially after several drunken sprees...
...But I am still sufficiently with it to believe that Claude Eatherly's doubts make more sense than the bland-ness of the Commander-in-Chief who gave him the order, and of the nuclear warriors now planning caves for all of us...
...Major Eatherly was the navigator who gave the "go-ahead" signal for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and who subsequently told the world that he had been unable to sleep for fifteen years after the event...
...We live in a crowded, hectic time...
...The letters are accompanied by a commentary by Anders, which takes the form of a plea to President Kennedy to think about the Eatherly case and perhaps even extend a hand to him...
...if it accepted his concept of sin, how could larger men—including the Commander-in-Chief —escape a verdict of guilty...
...But he did not wholly succeed in the effort...
...Condensed from a column in the New York Post...
...Wherever Eatherly is, I hope he finds a moment of peace...
...At this moment, in some furtive corner of a drab saloon, Claude Eatherly may be trying to explain himself to some boozed-up companions, and one can almost hear them murmuring that this guy is real gone...
...When the Waco court, at the request of his brother, formally interned him in January, that seemed to be the end of the story...
...I will have that great feeling of satisfaction that maybe I had something to do with the final decision which the peoples of all countries must make...
...He had permitted a plea of insanity to be offered at his burglary trial in 1957, and he was acquitted on that basis...
...Perhaps by now he is...
...It does not matter to me what people think of my moral character if it will only make them stop and think that they must not let the same thing happen to themselves and their children...
...To a 'certain degree Eatherly had gone along with the act...
...Thus in August, 1959, Eatherly wrote to Anders: "The truth is that society simply cannot accept the fact of my guilt without at the same time recognizing its own far deeper guilt...
...The disclosure came in connection with the magazine's publication of a series of letters from Eatherly to Gunther Anders, an Austrian philosopher who is now writing a book entitled Morals of the Atomic Age...
...No other way could I have made people realize that nuclear war is a moral degeneration as well as . . . physically destructive...
...I suppose I am myself so far gone as a prisoner of the atomic age that I cannot say flatly that Hiroshima was morally indefensible, or to accept the notion of unilateral nuclear disarmament while Mr...
...Eatherly could not sleep for fifteen years after he played his subsidiary role in unleashing hell over Hiroshima...
...Perhaps we have to exclude Eatherly from memory because he posed such troublesome questions...
...No further newspaper references to his case can be found, and not until I saw Exchange did I learn of his escape...
...he could not endure the accolades of "war hero" and felt driven to commit a series of burglaries seemingly because that was the only way in which he could force society to punish him rather than praise him...
...to exist on this earth...
...But it is, of course, highly desirable that society should recognize this, which is why my and our story is of such vital importance...
Vol. 26 • February 1962 • No. 2
