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Last update: 6 August 1997.
Historical memory is a tricky business. Ironically, academic historians have difficulties with the practice. In part, the problem is intrinsic. The academic enterprise institutionalized in the late 19th century emphasized analysis, ever new "contributions to knowledge," and institutional rewards for perpetual revisionism. Every generation of career-minded scholars is out to run its own race. We impose new agendas and standards for judgement on the past as well as contribute new information. The professional historian may be better trained in the art of forgetting than in the art of remembering.
In a recent book, Remaking America, John Bodnar employed a relatively recent phrase in American studies, "public memory." In the U.S. popular culture, "public memory" would appear to last about fifteen minutes. And Bodnar successfully illustrated the point in a discussion of political commemorations, ideology, and patriotism in 20th century American staged events and pageants. "Public memory" is not seriously about memory at all. Paul Tibbets and the American Legion's response to the Enola Gay controversy made this evident. Nor will the Enola Gay restored in original condition for display in the Smithsonian be about memory.
"Old," "antique," and historically "authentic" are mental exercises in virtual reality. Vintage automobiles, gentrified building structures, restored military aircraft (witness the Confederate Air Force), authentic pre-industrial villages, renovated Conestoga wagons and western mining towns--all appear in mint condition made to blueprint standards, all too precious to use except under ideal conditions. These are not mnemonic devices assisting us in understanding what "working knowledge" was assumed by the participants at the time. Day to day working knowledge in a period encompasses a dimension which counterfactual retrospective knowledge usually does not: an obstinate resistance to categorical consistency.
In 1945 the industrial terror bombings of urban populations in Tokyo (napalm and incendiary dropped in a distinct pattern to fuel an inferno), Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were neither virtual reality nor virtuous. Discard any nostalgia that this was a good war. The fire bombings of Hamburg and Dresden preceded Tokyo. We had already accomplished in Europe, where we had run out of good targets, the punishment being delivered upon Japan. Even after the Nagasaki bomb an additional heavy B29 raid (more than 700 bombers and 150 fighters) dropped tons of explosives and consumed 15,000 additional lives. As a mnemonic device of working technology, the meticulously restored Enola Gay in the Smithsonian will share little resemblance to the oil-streaked, patched-up B29s in the South Pacific, each running on cannibalized parts, engines and hydraulic systems pushed to the limit. Each was punched around by flack, hanging precariously over the target lined up on the lead navigator. Pilots then straggled back to Iwo Jima for medical first aid and emergency repairs before heading home to Saipan, Guam, and Tinian. In less than six months, 25,000 crewmen set down for emergency landings at Iwo. This was an industrial war, an extension of the machines, run by the numbers, replaceable parts and expendable people. (A friend not given to hyperbole or false patriotism told me that regularly on final approaches to the target his bowels involuntarily released soiling his flight suit.)
In 1945, after 55 million deaths, the liberation of death camps, the levelling of Europe, the Soviet toll in lives, the ferocity of fighting on South Pacific islands, atrocities everywhere, punctuated by race hatred in every combatant nation--the world took death for granted. In 1945 "working knowledge" in fact said loudly WHY NOT drop the second A-Bomb and get this over with. The number of casualties had lost significance. Whether at the level of decision makers or the public, few had second thoughts about deploying the second A-Bomb, few expressed regrets over the event or any remorse. The record is reasonably clear.
In 1995, on the other hand, the counter-to-fact argument raises the moral question, WHY DID WE drop the second bomb? A consensus is growing today that blasting Nagasaki was unnecessary and vicious. It is this discrepancy in the angles of historical perceptions between 1945 and 1995, between the working knowledge a half century ago and the scruples today, that requires our attention. Fact vs. counterfact: would we have behaved any differently with the working knowledge of 1945?
The decision makers--Truman, Stimson, Marshall, Byrnes, Groves--have been extensively examined. Following are among the cultural considerations--the working knowledge in a variety of audiences at the time--that lend nuance to the representation of an event.
After Hiroshima, the Air Force stepped up operations to deliver the Nagasaki bomb quickly. Military careers as well as coveted medals were on the line with the success of this mission. No doubt, the hero's welcome for the Hiroshima crew was a powerful incentive at the personal level to achieve the objective.
Nuclear weapons had become the most expensive--and secret--weapon's project in history. Partisan domestic politicians were disposed to display the payoff to avoid being charged by the opposition with boondoggle, corruption, and coverup. The Japanese did not surrender unconditionally following Hiroshima. A second strike, more of the same medicine, followed. Given the expenditure of the development program, and the vicious fighting of a prolonged campaign against a "sneaky" foe, a demonstration bomb was never a serious consideration. (How would the Americans have responded in 1941 to a demonstration attack on Pearl Harbor?) With an unused second bomb in hand, domestic politicians would have had to explain to American mothers why the war was prolonged unnecessarily.
After Hiroshima the emperor, Hirohito, made a veiled statement to the nation about surrender, a statement taken seriously by the military fanatics. Unconditional surrender talks had been taking place for some time. The obstacle to a surrender was the Japanese condition for retention of the emperor after the war. It has been argued with considerable cogency in recent years that the Japanese military machine was beaten as well as the population defeated. Why did not the U.S. agree to the Japanese condition before dropping a second bomb? FDR died suddenly in early April, 1945; had he lived could he have made a difference in the surrender talks in early August?
Nevertheless, in early August the Japanese military still had a significant number of Kamikaze planes, a home militia of five million, a shame culture, and a bloody record of resistance and martyrdom to the last body. Perhaps a U.S. invasion of the home islands was a moot point, especially with the Soviets having entered the Asian War (the Cold War had begun)--but patience including proposals of a blockade of Japan which could have lasted for months were in short supply with so many lives disrupted by the war and the European campaign over. Moreover, given the tenacity of the enemy the Americans anticipated using even a third or fourth bomb against the enemy. A new president, perceived by many as a hack politician, was neither in a position nor disposed to explain delay to the nation.
The Nagasaki bomb was widely perceived at the time as the end of a war while relatively few perceived the beginning of a new--nuclear--age. The latter occurred more persuasively in the late 1940s when "THE BOMB" first began to become a common reference. Though government censorship was tight in 1945, there is no indication that had more information been released the audience responses and public opinion would have been more critical of the use of the Nagasaki bomb.
The end of an era, not a beginning! The nuclear blasts were discussed in the customary terms of pounds of TNT, leaving the impression of a super orthodox weapon with the distinct advantage of placing only one air crew at risk not eight hundred. Conventional and nuclear weapons were seen as complementary. U.S. scientists assumed those exposed to high levels of radiation would die in the usual manner from heat and blast. The number of casualties at the time didn't exceed standard air raids (the Japanese have included all subsequent deaths from radiation poisoning in the total given for 1945). At the time the long-term effects of medium to low levels of radiation were not understood even in domestic testing of nuclear energy. Both devices dropped on Japan were crude and dirty, not prototypes of later production bombs. In August 1945 the photograph in Life Magazine of a mushroom cloud was a brilliant spectacle focusing the viewer's attention on the aesthetics of an aerial picture, not the horror occurring offstage beyond the camera's lens.
The Future from 1945! Scientists, for instance, overwhelmingly were looking forward to resuming their careers and spoke optimistically of the peaceful domestic uses and consumer promise of this new energy. Few looked backward. Also, few Americans believed that American racial discrimination and injustice--as wrong as it was--belonged in the same league with the consequences of state-sponsored lethal racial hatred perpetrated both by the Germans and the Japanese. (In 1995, a corrupt revisionism in Japan persists in explaining the war in terms of self defense, that Japan's aggression was simply to protect Asia against Western colonialism. After fifty years, the Japanese Parliament still will not apologize for invading other Asian nations and slaughtering millions.)
Burt Bledstein
Co-Editor: H-Ideas
bjb@uic.edu
Return to resources for BANG! and Nuclear Fictions.
Last update: 6 August 1997.