WHO ARE THE CRIMINALS?
Meyer, Ernest L.
Who Are The Criminals? By ERNEST L MEYER SINCE those fateful days last August when American-made atomic bombs made charnel houses of two populous Japanese cities, many thousands of words of...
...Even though the 200 included men convicted of murder and rape and other crimes of violence and bestiality...
...Final Congressional action should include denunciation of the secret's first use and public repudiation of the orders of a misguided few claiming to act in the name of a civilized nation...
...Let us ask whether the ethics inherent in the use of the atomic bomb on a criminal Japanese nation would be sanctioned in the case of real, certified, legally condemned criminals in our own country...
...The classification has varied enormously even in our own short history, for in the course of our sundry wars we have labeled as evil the inhabitants of such countries as England, Spain, Mexico, Germany, Russia, Italy, and even the citizens of our own Southern States whom we accused at the time of the most fiendish atrocities...
...It Was, as one correspondent put it, "full of concentrated ferocity...
...If we apply the atomic bomb technique to a prison riot it would be morally justified to blast the entire prison and all its inmates to rubble, thus killing not only the ringleaders of the revolt but the lesser criminals as well, including, perhaps, some innocents wrongfully convicted and awaiting pardon...
...humanity with clean hands, but we can, at least, stand before the bar with penitent hearts...
...The warden yelled through the door that if they didn't surrender they would be bombed by an Army plane now circling overhead...
...And occasionally the outlaws suddenly arise and strike swiftly and without warning, as the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor...
...Three of the ringleaders were shot dead in the battle...
...The uprising on that July day started during the recreation period in the yard when suddenly the convicts ran wild and fell upon the guards...
...Yet in the long record of prison riots in this country a course so brutal has never been adopted...
...It is safe to say that had the warden, without warning, ordered a bomb dropped and slaughtered the 200, public opinion would have condemned the wanton massacre...
...Clinton Prison, known as the "Siberia of New York," had at that time 1,568 inmates including 118 lifers and 400 serving a minimum of 20 years...
...They have remarked that a demonstration atomic bomb dropped, after giving notice to high Japanese authorities, on some unpopulated area of Nippon might have brought capitulation just as the warning of the warden of Clinton Prison induced the surrender of 200 desperate criminals...
...In our wantonness lies our guilt...
...The blast of the atomic bomb is followed by an echo, a question as yet not officially answered: "Who are the real, criminals, we or the men, women and children we slew ? And how can we hold high the banners of brotherhood when we have soiled our fingers in the very trough of bestiality we were pledged to eradicate ?" It is not yet too late for an official answer...
...A Congressional sub-committee only recently came forward with a report on the atomic bomb, urging that the United States keep secret the bomb's details until all phases of atomic power have been investigated...
...By ERNEST L MEYER SINCE those fateful days last August when American-made atomic bombs made charnel houses of two populous Japanese cities, many thousands of words of argument, pro and con, have been written on the moral question poised by the use of the most potent instrument of annihilation ever invented by man...
...OTHER commentators have pointed out that in thus not sounding a warning lies our real guilt in the holocaust of Japan...
...Yet in the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki no such warning was issued...
...The story of the uprising at Clinton Prison, Dannemora, N. Y., on July 22, 1929, is rather typical...
...The ruse worked...
...death, sudden and awful, came out of the clouds, blasting the innocent as well as the guilty...
...The "realists" defending the twin holocausts in Japan counter this point of view by neatly packaging the human race into separate bundles marked "good" and "evil...
...The result, from a fireman's point of view, would be swift and highly satisfactory, yet it is doubtful whether any sane bystander would justify'the means...
...There really was an Army plane overhead, which the convicts could hear, but it contained only photographers...
...But the "realists" point out, and not without citing evidence, that the Japanese are super-criminals and that the only thing wrong with the late war in the Pacific, as Admiral Halsey mournfully proclaimed, was that not enough of them were killed...
...The men surrendered...
...The vocal outrage of humanitarians has been countered by self-styled realists who proclaim that use of the superbomb was ethical because it shortened a war costly in lives and money...
...LET us adopt this point of view for a moment and see where it leads us...
...Public opinion supported the tactic of the warden in sounding a warning and forcing a surrender without needless bloodshed...
...On this basis it may be just as valid to argue that it is wise and just to halt the spread of a fire in a city building by dynamiting the surrounding dwellings without giving the men, women, and children asleep under the roofs a warning or a chance to evacuate...
...Two hundred of their fellows barricaded themselves in the prison tailor shop...
...In adopting such a course, we may not come into the councils of...
...These are centered in the State and Federal penitentiaries scattered throughout the nation...
...Slaughtering, perhaps, some of our own potential friends, for we have learned now that even in "all-wicked" Japan there are, lately languishing in prison, good liberals, good anti-militarists, good men...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 41
