Today is the 71st anniversary of the surrender of Japan. President Harry Truman announced the surrender on the evening of August 14th which was the 15th, in Tokyo.
I have been thinking how upside down our perspective is about Nagasaki. Nagasaki has always been the ignored bombing. Hiroshima was the first time an atomic weapon was used in a time of war. The second time has always seemed like an asterisk to history. Which is an abomination.
During early August, the Google News citations for Hiroshima are always at least twice the Nagasaki mentions. This devalues the lives of Nagasaki. It makes their deaths less sacred than the souls of Hiroshima.
Yes, Nagasaki was the second time a bomb was used and it was the last time a weapon was used too. For 71 years the world has not used another weapon. The critics of the bombings imply that this amazing accomplishment was some kind of dumb luck. We built tens of thousands of armed missiles which allowed us to destroy the planet many times over. But we didn’t. The critics say this was an accident.
It was anything but an accident. Tens of thousands of people around the world dedicated their entire professional careers to insure that mutually assured destruction remained a reality without a stumble.
Part of the solution was intense diplomatic wrangling. Treaties were negotiated, arm-twisting happened in private and then signing was a public affair. Diplomacy failed at times. Crippling economic sanctions were used to convince the unwilling to succumb.
International teams went into unstable nations to secure fuel which easily could’ve landed in the wrong hands. Regular inspections forced sanctioned nations to toe the line.
The military played their part. A massive build-up of weapons encouraged restraint on all sides. Forces were used to secure weapons and fuel sites during times of political unrest in some areas of the world. Covert operations stalled or destroyed potential weapons development in nations with provocative objectives.
Each year at a few minutes past eleven in the morning on August 9th, the world should celebrate Nagasaki as the last time a weapon was used in war. Part of the last seven decades was a tiny bit of luck, but mostly, it was focus, discipline and years of hard work by the international community to keep the world from going over the brink.