Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology

  Vietnam had negotiated a peace agreement to end the war in late 1972, he approved the

  breaking off of the talks and the brutal bombardment of residential districts in Hanoi by the

  most ferocious bombing plane of the time the B-52.32

  Kissinger's biographers describe his role: "If he had disapproved of Nixon's policy, he could

  have argued against the Cambodian attack. But there is no sign that he ever mustered his

  considerable influence to persuade the President to hold his fire. Or that he ever considered

  resigning in protest. Quite the contrary, Kissinger supported the policy."33

  During the Christmas 1972 bombings New York Times columnist James Reston wrote,

  It may be and probably is true, that Mr. Kissinger as wel as Secretary of

  State Rogers and most of the senior officers in the State Department are

  opposed to the President's bombing offensive in North Vietnam… . But Mr.

  Kissinger is too much a scholar, with too good a sense of humor and history,

  to put his own thoughts ahead of the president's.34

  It seems that journalists too, can be Machiavel ian.

  Serving National Power

  Machiavel i never questioned that national power and the position of the prince were proper

  ends: "And it must be understood that a prince … cannot observe al those things which are

  considered good in men, being often obliged, in order to maintain the state, to act against

  faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion."35

  The end of national power may be beneficial to the prince, and even to the prince's

  advisers, an ambitious lot. But why should it be assumed as a good end for the average

  citizen? Why should the citizen tie his or her fate to the nation-state, which is perfectly

  wil ing to sacrifice the lives and liberties of its own citizens for the power, the profit, and the glory of politicians or corporate executives or generals?

  For a prince, a dictator, or a tyrant national power is an end unquestioned. A democratic

  state, however, substituting an elected president for a prince, must present national power

  as benign, serving the interests of liberty, justice, and humanity. If such a state, which is

  surrounded with the rhetoric of democracy and liberty and, in truth, has some measure of

  both, engages in a war that is clearly against a vicious and demonstrably evil enemy, then

  the end seems so clean and clear that any means to defeat that enemy may seem justified.

  Such a state was the United States and such an enemy was fascism, represented by

  Germany, Italy, and Japan. Therefore, when the atomic bomb appeared to be the means for

  a quicker victory, there was little hesitation to use it.

  15

  Very few of us can imagine ourselves as presidential advisers, having to deal with their moral dilemmas (if, indeed, they retain enough integrity to consider them dilemmas). It is

  much easier, I think, for average citizens to see themselves in the position of the scientists

  who were secretly assembled in New Mexico during World War II to make the atomic bomb.

  We may be able to imagine our own trade or profession, our particular skil s, cal ed on to

  serve the policies of the nation. The scientists who served Hitler, like the rocket expert

  Wernher von Braun, could be as cool as Machiavel i in their subservience; they would serve

  national power without asking questions. They were professionals, total y consumed with

  doing "a good Job" and they would do that job for whoever happened to be in power. So,

  when Hitler was defeated and Von Braun was brought by military intel igence agents to the

  United States, he cheerful y went ahead and worked on rockets for the United States, as he

  had done for Hitler.

  As one satirical songwriter put it:

  Once the rockets are up,

  Who cares where they come down?

  That's not our department,

  Says Wernher von Braun.36

  The scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project were not like that. One cannot imagine

  them turning to Hitler and working for him if he were victorious. They were conscious, in

  varying degrees, that this was a war against fascism and that it was invested with a

  powerful moral cause. Therefore, to build this incredibly powerful weapon was to use a

  terrible means, but for a noble end.

  And yet there was one element these scientists had in common with Wernher von Braun:

  the sheer pleasure of doing a job wel , of professional competence, and of scientific

  discovery, al of which could make one forget, or at least put in the background, the

  question of human consequences.

  After the war when the making of a thermonuclear bomb was proposed, a bomb a thousand

  times more destructive than the one dropped on Hiroshima, J. Robert Oppenheimer,

  personal y horrified by the idea, was stil moved to pronounce the scheme of Edward Tel er

  and Stanislaw Ulam for producing it as "technical y sweet." Tel er, defending the project against scientists who saw it as genocidal, said, "The important thing in any science is to do the things that can be done." And, whatever Enrico Fermi's moral scruples were (he was

  one of the top scientists in the Manhattan Project), he pronounced the plan for making the

  bombs "superb physics."37

  Robert Jungk, a German researcher who interviewed many of the scientists involved in the

  making of the bomb, tried to understand their lack of resistance to dropping the bomb on

  Hiroshima. "They felt themselves caught in a vast machinery and they certainly were

  inadequately informed as to the true political and strategic situation." But he does not

  excuse their inaction. "If at that time they had had the moral strength to protest on purely

  humane grounds against the dropping of the bomb, their attitude would no doubt have

  deeply impressed the President, the Cabinet and the generals."38

  Using the atomic bombs on populated cities was justified in moral terms by American

  political leaders. Henry Stimson, whose Interim Committee had the job of deciding whether

  or not to use the atomic bomb, said later it was done "to end the war in victory with the

  least possible cost in the lives of the men in the armies."39 This was based on the

  assumption that without atomic bombs, an invasion of Japan would be necessary, which

  would cost many American lives.

  16

  It was a morality limited by nationalism, perhaps even racism. The saving of American lives was considered far more important than the saving of Japanese lives. Numbers were wildly

  thrown into the air (for example, Secretary of State James Byrnes talked of "a mil ion

  casualties" resulting from an invasion) but there was no attempt to seriously estimate

  American casualties and weigh that against the consequences for Japanese men and

  women, old people and babies. (The closest to such an attempt was a military estimate that

  an invasion of the southernmost island of Japan would cause 30,000 American dead and

  wounded.)

  The evidence today is overwhelming that an invasion of Japan was not necessary to bring

  the war to an end. Japan was defeated, in disarray, and ready to surrender. The U.S.

  Strategic Bombing Survey, which interviewed 700 Japanese military and political officials

  after the war, came to this conclusion:

  Based on a detailed investigation of al the facts and supported by the

  testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's

  opinion
that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in al probability prior

  to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic

  bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and

  even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.40

  After the war American scholar Robert Butow went through the papers of the Japanese

  Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the records of the International Military Tribunal of the Far East

  (which tried Japanese leaders as war criminals), and the interrogation files of the U.S.

  Army. He also interviewed many of the Japanese principals and came to this conclusion:

  "Had the Al ies given the Prince (Prince Konoye, special emissary to Moscow, who was

  working on Russian intercession for peace) a week of grace in which to obtain his

  Government's support for the acceptance of the proposals, the war might have ended

  toward the latter part of July or the very beginning of the month of August, without the

  atomic bomb and without Soviet participation in the conflict."41

  On July 13, 1945, three days before the successful explosion of the first atomic bomb in

  New Mexico, the United States intercepted Japanese Foreign Minister Togo's secret cable to

  Ambassador Sato in Moscow, asking that he get the Soviets to intercede and indicating that

  Japan was ready to end the war, so long as it was not unconditional surrender.

  On August 2, the Japanese foreign office sent a message to the Japanese ambassador in

  Moscow, "There are only a few days left in which to make arrangements to end the war … .

  As for the definite terms … it is our intention to make the Potsdam Three-Power Declaration

  [which cal ed for unconditional surrender] the basis of the study regarding these terms."42

  Barton Bernstein, a Stanford historian who has studied the official documents closely, wrote,

  This message, like earlier ones, was probably intercepted by American

  intel igence and decoded. It had no effect on American policy. There is no

  evidence that the message was sent to Truman and Byrnes [secretary of

  state], nor any evidence that they fol owed the intercepted messages during

  the Potsdam conference. They were unwil ing to take risks in order to save

  Japanese lives.43

  In his detailed and eloquent history of the making of the bomb, Richard Rhodes says, "The

  bombs were authorized not because the Japanese refused to surrender but because they

  refused to surrender unconditional y."44

  17

  The one condition necessary for Japan to end the war was an agreement to maintain the sanctity of the Japanese emperor, who was a holy figure to the Japanese people. Former

  ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew, based on his knowledge of Japanese culture, had been

  trying to persuade the U.S. government of the importance of al owing the emperor to

  remain in place.

  Herbert Feis, who had unique access to State Department files and to records on the

  Manhattan Project, noted that in the end the United States did give the assurances the

  Japanese wanted on the emperor. He writes, "The curious mind lingers over the reasons

  why the American government waited so long before offering the Japanese those various

  assurances which it did extend later."45

  Why was the United States in a rush to drop the bomb, if the reason of saving lives turns

  out to be empty, if the probability was that the Japanese would have surrendered even

  without an invasion? Historian Gar Alperovitz, after going through the papers of the

  American officials closest to Truman and most influential in the final decision and especial y

  the diaries of Henry Stimson, concludes that the atomic bombs were dropped to impress the

  Soviet Union, as a first act in establishing American power in the postwar world. He points

  out that the Soviet Union had promised to enter the war against Japan on August 8. The

  bomb was dropped on August 6.46

  The scientist Leo Szilard had met with Truman's main policy adviser in May 1945 and

  reported later: "Byrnes did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb against the

  cities of Japan in order to win the war… . Mr. Byrnes' view was that our possessing and

  demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable."47

  The end of dropping the bomb seems, from the evidence, to have been not winning the war,

  which was already assured, not saving lives, for it was highly probable no American invasion

  would be necessary, but the aggrandizement of American national power at the moment

  and in the postwar period. For this end, the means were among the most awful yet devised

  by human beings—burning people alive, maiming them horribly, and leaving them with

  radiation sickness, which would kil them slowly and with great pain.48

  I remember my junior-high-school social studies teacher tel ing the class that the difference

  between a democracy like the United States and the "totalitarian states" was that "they believe that the end justifies any means, and we do not." But this was before Hiroshima and

  Nagasaki.

  To make a proper moral judgment, we would have to put into the balancing the testimony

  of the victims. Here are the words of three survivors, which would have to be multiplied by

  tens of thousands to give a ful er picture.49

  A thirty-five-year-old man: "A woman with her jaw missing and her tongue hanging out of

  her mouth was wandering around the area of Shinsho-machi in the heavy, black rain. She

  was heading toward the north crying for help."

  A seventeen-year-old girl: "I walked past Hiroshima Station … and saw people with their

  bowels and brains coming out … . I saw an old lady carrying a suckling infant in her

  arms … . I saw many children … with dead mothers … . I just cannot put into words the

  horror I felt."

  A fifth-grade girl: "Everybody in the shelter was crying out loud. Those voices… . They

  aren't cries, they are moans that penetrate to the marrow of your bones and make your hair

  stand on end … . I do not know how many times I cal ed begging that they would cut off my

  burned arms and legs."

  18

  In the summer of 1966 my wife and I were invited to an international gathering in

  Hiroshima to commemorate the dropping of the bomb and to dedicate ourselves to a world

  free of warfare. On the morning of August 6, tens of thousands of people gathered in a park

  in Hiroshima and stood in total, almost unbearable, silence, awaiting the exact moment—

  8:16 A.M.—when on August 6, 1945, the bomb had been dropped. When the moment came,

  the silence was broken by a sudden roaring sound in the air, eerie and frightening until we

  realized it was the sound of the beating of wings of thousands of doves, which had been

  released at that moment to declare the aim of a peaceful world.

  A few days later, some of us were invited to a house in Hiroshima that had been established

  as a center for victims of the bomb to spend time with one another and discuss common

  problems. We were asked to speak to the group. When my turn came, I stood up and felt I

  must get something off my conscience. I wanted to say that I had been an air force

  bombardier in Europe, that I had dropped bombs that kil ed and maimed people, and that

  until this moment I had not seen the human results of such bombs, and that I was ashamed

  of what I had done and wanted to help make sure things like that never happened
again.

  I never got the words out, because as I started to speak I looked out at the Japanese men

  and women sitting on the floor in front of me, people with horribly burned faces, people with

  no eyes in their sockets, without arms, or without legs, but al quietly waiting for me to

  speak. I choked on my words, could not say anything for a moment, fighting for control,

  final y managed to thank them for inviting me and sat down.

  For the idea that any means—mass murder, the misuse of science, the corruption of

  professionalism—are acceptable to achieve the end of national power, the ultimate example

  of our time is Hiroshima. For us, as citizens, the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

  suggests that we reject Machiavel i, that we do not accept subservience, whether to princes

  or presidents, and that we examine for ourselves the ends of public policy to determine

  whose interests they real y serve. We must examine the means used to achieve those ends

  to decide if they are compatible with equal justice for al human beings on earth.

  The Anti-Machiavellians

  There have always been people who did think for themselves, against the dominant

  ideology, and when there were enough of them history had its splendid moments: a war

  was cal ed to a halt, a tyrant was overthrown, an enslaved people won its freedom, the poor

  won a smal victory. Even some people close to the circles of power, in the face of

  overwhelming pressure to conform, have summoned the moral strength to dissent, ignoring

  the Machiavel ian advice to leave the end unquestioned and the means unexamined.

  Not al the atomic scientists rushed into the excitement of building the bomb. When

  Oppenheimer was recruiting for the project, as he later told the Atomic Energy Commission,

  most people accepted. "This sense of excitement, of devotion and of patriotism in the end

  prevailed." However, the physicist I. I. Rabi, asked by Oppenheimer to be his associate

  director at Los Alamos, refused to join. He was heavily involved in developing radar, which

  he thought important for the war, but he found it abhorrent, as Oppenheimer reported, that

  "the culmination of three centuries of physics" should be a weapon of mass destruction.50

  Just before the bomb was tested and used, Rabi worried about the role of scientists in war: