Homage to Hiroshima

An excellent program of Herbie Hancock’s music ended with his performance at Hiroshima’s atomic bomb remembrance. During that mournful performance, Hancock apologized for the horrific, destructive act we perpetrated against the innocent people of Japan. The August 6, 1945 a nuclear attack on Hiroshima, and the following day on Nagasaki, instantly killed between 100,000 and 120,000 people, with the final death toll reaching about 185,000. Words fail to adequately describe the scope of that tragedy, and debate still rages concerning America’s justification for using atomic bombs against cities.
            Some say the Japanese had it coming, after their unprovoked, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, where 2,335 American servicemen and sixty-eight civilians were killed. As an act of vengeance, 185,000 versus 2,403 is decidedly unbalanced, but those who think of the Japanese atomic holocaust as vengeance are absolutely wrong.
            America’s use of the A-bombs prevented many times more deaths, both military and civilian, than were lost in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When Japan surrendered in August of 1945, America and her Allies were in the process of executing Operation Olympic and Operation Coronet, the combined invasion of the Japanese home islands. Some casualty predictions for Japanese military and civilians ran into the multiple millions, while Allied casualties were predicted to greatly exceed one million servicemen.
          As both Japan and Germany intended world-domination, what would have happened if they had succeeded in defeating the Allies? Would they have amicably sliced up the world’s real estate between themselves? Never! By the time they finished punching it out, billions would have died around the world, and the winner would have been the most brutal of the lot.
            For perspective, estimates of German military and civilian losses due to Allied strategic bombing in World War II number a half-million, far more than Japan lost to the A-bomb attacks. The German deaths were just as tragic, but due to the wide circulation of grisly photos, the Japanese deaths seem more horrific. Few America-bashers criminalize the U.S. for dropping nearly 657,000 tons of high explosives on German cities. Why, then, are they so adamant about demonizing our government for killing fewer Japanese.
            No one could argue the rightness of using nuclear bombs on cities, but right or wrong is not the point. Human governments are always wrong because they are all institutions comprising degenerate human beings. Socialism versus capitalism versus monarchy versus feudalism versus tribal warlords; all such arguments are moot.
            World peace is at best a dream, and more realistically, a myth, without God’s regenerative intervention. Fallen humanity’s default “solution” for disputes is war, and we would rather blast each other to smithereens than submit to God’s plan of salvation.

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