EDITORIALS

Editorial: 'History is harsh,' only the future can be less so

Editorial Board
Journal Star

President Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. commander in chief to visit Hiroshima — site of America’s dropping of the atomic bomb to finish off World War II in 1945 — on Friday. And predictably, those determined to dislike this president are using it as an opportunity to bash him for allegedly going on a global “apology tour.”

Never mind that the White House has indicated that no apology will be forthcoming, that there will be no second-guessing of President Truman’s decision to drop that bomb and then a second on Nagasaki, that his visit and remarks will instead focus on the shared future of our two nations in an economically critical and potentially combustible region.

Let us be clear here: America’s use of those two atomic weapons was a terrible call to have to make, it killed up to a quarter million people, overwhelmingly civilians, and no one should discount that, but we have little patience for the historical revisionists who wish to Monday morning quarterback from the comfort and geopolitical climate of 70 years later.

We appreciate that there are two sides to this, that ours is from the perspective of the victor, but in fact we were at war with an uncommonly vicious enemy — arguably the ISIS of its day, only bigger and stronger. We had a weapon and we used it to end the war we did not start, arguably sparing far more Japanese lives than it took, while very importantly saving countless Americans who would have been put at risk in a prolonged invasion in a nation indoctrinated to never surrender. Japan is not owed a “We’re sorry,” and only those guilty of a willful amnesia — of Pearl Harbor, of the Bataan Death March, of Okinawa and Iwo Jima, of Japan’s savage occupation of China including the Rape of Nanking, of the 20 million dead at Japan’s hands in Asia — would suggest otherwise.

Beyond that, Japan’s mainstream leaders aren’t asking for one. As Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told our Congress last year, “History is harsh. What is done cannot be undone.” He was speaking to the “immeasurable damage” his own nation had inflicted upon “innocent people” so long ago, but even that has its limits, as he noted: “We must not let our children, grandchildren and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.”

We feel much the same way about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What the bombs did was horrible — horrible enough to ensure no such weapon has been used on a human population since. Our nations have been partners in the decades since, and it’s important that remain so, along with South Korea and others, in a part of the world where arguably a madman rules North Korea, where China is flexing its muscle in ways neither of us always appreciate.

What Obama can productively do is express the goal of “never again,” though there is a hint of hypocrisy, and perhaps a dash of naivete, from an administration that speaks of “a world without nuclear weapons” but whose own disarmament efforts are checkered, from the deal with Iran to this week’s lifting of the arms embargo on Vietnam to the president’s advocacy for spending $1 trillion updating our own nuclear stockpile. It doesn’t hurt to hope, so long as the recognition remains that peace — at least in the 21st century as it was in the 20th — is most likely achieved through strength, and best and most durably accomplished when it is judiciously applied.

That said, it is important that we have these moral debates, that we continue to examine our consciences, but also that we never forget the instructive facts of history — as polls suggest many Americans are today regarding the realities of World War II — as we never stop trying to get things right, for humanity’s sake.