Madam, - Around the th anniversary of the atomic incineration of Hiroshima, you had a headline about the "lessons of the nuclear catastrophe". Like other papers you also published articles which said there was an unresolved debate about whether or not that incineration was justified.
Surely in Ireland, where no patriotism or wartime loyalty induces us to deceive ourselves, we can speak about the matter in plain terms and state the obvious.
The wiping out of Hiroshima was not a "catastrophe": that word means a disaster caused by natural or other impersonal agents. Objectively and beyond possible dispute, it was a deliberate act of indiscriminate massacre. The cited debate as to whether that massacre was "justified" is ambiguous. In the verbal sense of the word, it was justified, with reasons given, by president Truman and others, and their "justification", though rejected by many prominent persons, was tacitly accepted by the rulers of the West. The question that has since been debated is whether the massacre was "justified" in the sense of being a legitimate act or, alternatively, was a war crime.
The answer is obvious, and if the Germans or the Soviets had done it, there would be no debate. The agreed morality and law of the West at the time forbade any deliberate act of indiscriminate massacre and held such an act to be a grievous sin and a heinous crime. This ethical and legal principle admitted of no exception, no possible justifying circumstances or motives.
Consequently, in pleading that he had justifying motives, president Truman was proposing and declaring a new post-hoc and post-Western ethic, namely: "A deliberate act of indiscriminate massacre is legitimate if performed with good intentions, such as bringing a war to a rapid end or saving a larger number of lives than would otherwise be lost."
That ethic had not been in force when the massacre was committed. If a criminal on trial for a crime were to enunciate novel legal principles that would have justified his act if they had been in force, he would be laughed out of court.
Those are the facts of the matter. Quite apart from them, historians have observed with dismay the pitiful, lying tactic which Truman used in subsequent years in a desperate attempt to justify himself to himself. The American military's advance estimates of fatal casualties in a full-scale invasion of Japan varied between 20,000 and 63,000, with 46,000 being the most accepted estimate. In a speech on August 9th, just after the double bombings, Truman said that "thousands of American lives" had been saved. By December, the figure he was citing had risen to "a quarter of a million lives".
In subsequent years, in his speeches or writings, it rose further - until in 1959, at a Columbia University seminar, he said: "The dropping of the bombs stopped the war, saved millions of lives."
Historians now generally accept that Truman's motives in perpetrating the two massacres were a mixture of righteous revenge, a desire to placate the nuclear scientists who wanted experimental data, and, above all, a desire to impress and warn the Soviets by a display of American power. - Yours, etc,
Dr DESMOND FENNELL, Maynooth, Co Kildare.
Madam, - On reading Kevin Myers's Irishman's Diary of August 9th on the bombing of Nagasaki I was moved to view the photographs and accounts of Yosuke Yamahata, a staff photographer who served in the Japanese army at the time of this awful deed. His testimony can be viewed via a web search.
In the interests of perspective one should also remember the other tragic victims whom Japan refuse to acknowledge to this day - the 377,400 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war slaughtered by the invading Japanese troops at Nanking between December 1937 and March 1938 (Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking, 1997).
This figure exceeds the combined death tolls of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. An estimated 80,000 women and girls were raped; many of them were then mutilated or murdered. Thousands of victims were beheaded, burned, bayoneted, buried alive, or disembowelled.
Each human life is precious and commemoration should not be hostage to hostility. We have come some small way in acknowledging our own native dead from the two world wars. The forgiveness of the Vietnamese people towards their former French and American aggressors is admirable considering the immense death tolls - according to Agence France Presse, the civilian casualties of the Vietnam War were 2 million in the north, and 2 million in the south.
We are by now too desensitised to imagine the naivety of the soldiers who lost their lives in a "war to end all wars" ninety years ago. Human nature lends itself to conflict, unfortunately. However, there is also compassion, even in these cynical times, where many people devote their lives in the relief of human suffering.
So let us not forget Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Nanking or indeed the 1,791 negroes murdered by lynching in the United States between 1900 and 1950 (according to the 1952 World Almanac and Book of Fact). Let us not forget the perpetrators. Let us not forget the world that often stood idly by. - Yours, etc,
JOHN DANDY, Rush, Co Dublin.