Hiroshima: A Lesson for True Victory
By Syed Kamran Hashmi
Westfield, IN
Wars spawn great human tragedies. They epitomize our barbaric nature and illustrate our lust for power. In this struggle for dominance unfortunately, millions of people have been immolated just in the two major combats of the previous century: World War I and II. Even today, millions more are at risk of losing their lives in a matter of a few hours, if not sooner, through our possession of sophisticated nuclear weapons and deadly firearms.
During WWII, we regrettably unleashed our vicious instincts in the pursuit of victory and displayed a glimpse of our capacity to massacre the whole city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, the gloomiest day in the history of the world, a day that the world had never seen before when the US attacked the unarmed civilians of Japan.
If we recall that dark morning when Colonel Paul Tibbets departed the Tinian Airbase of the Mariana Islands at 2:45 am, he knew the disaster was just a few hours away from his target. He was flying a B-29 fighter, Enola Gay, and was heading north towards Japan.
Col Tibbets was accompanied by 12 other crewmembers in the flight along with ‘Little Man’, the code name of the first atomic bomb to be used in the history of mankind. As the B-29 rushed towards its destination roaring over the Pacific, the captain received the final approval from headquarters. His message had said: “Y-3, Q-3, B-2, C-1” and can easily be considered as the deadliest combination of letters and numbers known to us. After the captain had deciphered the coded instructions, he was quiet and stressed for few moments; he reckoned the colossal destruction in his mind, but he also realized that this message would bring an unambiguous victory to the United States of America. Determined to take on the challenge, he uttered the final words alluding to the target: “It’s Hiroshima.” Little Man was dropped at 8:15 am local time; it hit the destination in 90 seconds and within a few minutes, over 70,000 people were burnt alive. Shortly afterwards, drenched with blood, a mushroom cloud appeared over Hiroshima and covered the devastated city. A world came to an end that day.
After the calamity of Hiroshima, WWII was essentially over but the official surrender of Japan had yet to come after the second attack on Nagasaki on August 9, and a loss of another 50,000 human beings. Finally, on August 15, Japan laid down her arms and a scarlet victory was handed over to the United States and the Allied forces.
Although 67 years have passed and Japan still remains the only country that has endured the havoc caused by atomic bombs, even today the horror of a mushroom cloud still ignites our fears. Japan’s tragedy was tremendous on the collective human conscience; the loss of 150,000 lives in one week was so despairing for mankind, the demolition of her cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was so distressing for the whole world that the concept of victory lost its meaning forever.
The people of Japan were shocked by the sheer brutality of the USA and the massive bloodshed; they were outraged and were simmering with vengeance but strangely, Japan has never retaliated against the USA with organized guerrilla warfare and terror tactics. Instead, it has emerged as one of the closest allies and a reliable partner of the USA. It has developed strong business ties and is invested deeply in the USA. Just the Toyota Motor Company has 14 manufacturing plants across North America. It has invested more than $ 18 billion and created 365,000 jobs for the Americans. Similarly, Honda has an investment of $ 12 billion and it has created more than 125,000 jobs in the USA. Nissan has invested $ 2.5 billion through its three manufacturing plants, creating thousands of jobs.
Meanwhile, Japan has also emerged as the third largest economy of the world and ranks only after the USA and China. It has a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $ 5.87 trillion and a per capita income of roughly $42,000. At the same time, Japan spends less than one percent of its GDP on defense and focuses mostly on the welfare of its citizens by spending 17 percent on beneficiary programs.
No other country could have a better reason to wage a war or cut diplomatic ties with the USA than Japan. She was justified to hit back on moral, social and religious grounds, but she did not. The concept in the minds of the Japanese administration and the lesson they learnt from the nuclear explosions must have been to safeguard the lives of Japanese people, provide them with food and shelter, boost the economy, and value the importance of every living soul in the country instead of imperiling them in another futile war with the world powers. And no other country could have done as good a job as Japan has done in achieving these objectives. This is victory in the true sense since it teaches peace, it promotes non-violence, it emphasizes reducing human sufferings, and mostly it protects mankind.
(The writer is a US-based freelance columnist and can be reached at skamranhashmi@gmail.com)
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