I always get cranky this time of year. The first week of August. It really begins in early July when I notice on the Internet announcements for “peace vigils” around the world for August 6th and 9th. Memorial services worldwide will be held too. Hundreds of services, maybe thousands, will be observed for the tragic events of August 1945.
A ceremony will be held in Oak Ridge. In the past it was held early morning on August 6th in front of the entrance to Y-12. At 8:15am a bell is rung and prayers are offered for the dead of Hiroshima. Symbolism is important and powerful, when done right.
In Oak Ridge, during World War II, the bomb actually was detonated at 7:15pm on August 5th. If you want to honor the dead, it would be nice to get the time right.
The big daddy of memorial services is the one held in Hiroshima on August 6th of each year. Even the ceremony in Nagasaki, just three days later seems to pale in comparison. Being second at anything is a pitiful distinction.
I looked at Google news citations in August of 2015, the 70th anniversary of the bombings. On August 6th there were 10.2 million citations for Hiroshima. On August 9th there were 4.8 million news mentions of Nagasaki. On August 15th, the day Japan surrendered, I googled the phrase “Japan surrenders.” There were 21,000 references. The news media doesn’t think peace is sexy.
The ceremony in Hiroshima is a masterful effort by the Japanese to focus on the United States’ actions and by doing so, deflect attention from the 5-12 million people slaughtered by the Japanese in their brutal, nationalistic attempt to control all of east Asia. Their campaign to be the victims of war has worked almost perfectly.
There are five things I want to see happen to reverse this Japanese victim centric marketing campaign. None of these things will ever happen, but a guy can dream.
First, Japan should discontinue their memorial services at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they will never do that. Short of that, they should move the services to December 7th of each year. Not gonna happen.
Second, the Japanese could impose a news blackout on the services. They say they want to honor and respect their war dead. Plastering the event all over the international news media markets is exploitive. Their current media frenzy desecrates the very lives they claim to honor.
Third, the Japanese should stop sending invitations to 154 of the 193 world’s countries to send representatives to the Hiroshima ceremony. When you invite 81% the entire neighborhood to your memorial service it no longer is a ceremony of respect for your war dead, it has become a pity party.
Fourth, the Japanese should support the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. They have not and they are hypocrites for not doing so. Why haven’t they? They are petrified of North Korea obtaining deliverable nuclear weapons and they want the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. It takes a special kind of moxie to condemn, by implication, the U.S. actions on August 6th and 9th and then demand our country’s nuclear protection from Japan’s neighbors the other 363 days of the year.
Finally, Japan’s Emperor Akihito needs to go to Nanking, China on December 13th of this year to attend the memorial service there for the 300,000 Chinese slaughtered during the Japanese siege of that city in late December of 1937. Akihito’s father, Emperor Hirohito, approved the slaughter.
Think about it for a moment. The United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over the next 73 years, about 275,000 people died because of the blast affects and from the long term affects of radiation exposures.
The Rape of Nanking, as it is known, killed 300,000 Chinese in seven weeks. The Japanese accomplished in 43 days what the United States couldn’t achieve in 73 years. The Japanese have never taken responsibility for Nanking. Their response? It really wasn’t that bad. The Chinese, according to the Japanese, have inflated the fatalities at Nanking for their own propaganda purposes. Japan should know. They are experts about exploiting their own war dead.
Yes. I am biased on this subject. Over 600,000 workers nationwide built and operated The Manhattan Project. Those workers have been ignored by the United States and each August, the world community, led by the Japanese, condemn our actions from 1945.
Japan has, over the last 73 years, dominated world opinion on the bombings. The narrative needs to change, but Japan will fiercely defend their victim status to the world.