Editorially speaking…
Many B.C. communities will mark this week’s 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. From my archives, this historical column I originally wrote for a Nanaimo newspaper on the 60th anniversary.
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August 1945. It seemed that the Second World War would go on forever. Despite Germany’s surrender in the first week of May, Japan continued the battle. As 30,000 Canadian troops headed for Guam, the RCN cruiser HMCS Uganda headed home after seeing action with the American Pacific fleet.
On the home front, Canadians continued to live with rationing and senior levels of government grappled with plans for the return of 100s of 1000s of military personnel from the European war to a peacetime economy after six bitter years.
Everything was placed on hold at the momentous news of August 6th that an atomic bomb–the equivalent of 20,000 tons of T.N.T.–had been dropped on Hiroshima the day before.
Left: Smoke billowing 20,000 feet above Hiroshima; right, the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki. —Wikipedia
U.S. President Harry Truman declared that the momentous decision had been made because the Japanese refused to surrender immediately and unconditionally. He described the revolutionary weapon as “a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.”
For all of its historic significance, Nanaimo citizens–if you can judge them by the editors of the Free Press–seemed to take the arrival of atomic warfare in their stride.
Perhaps they needed time to digest the import of it all. A day after the almost total destruction of Hiroshima (first identified as a Japanese army base), two part-columns on the front page yielded greater space to an article on proposed changes in inheritance and income taxes although a lengthier piece from the American Press did speculate on how this “new weapon may shape the world of tomorrow”.
On the 8th, beneath a page-wide banner headline announcing that Russia had finally declared war on Japan, some of the horrors of this brave new age began to creep into the news (still regulated by wartime censors) with a report that “practically all human things–human and animal–were ‘literally seared to death’ by the new weapon loosed against the industrial and military city Monday...”
The Japanese government conceded that 60 per cent of the city (four square miles) had been “turned to ashes” by this single deadly blast. Three days after the attack on Hiroshima, Nagasaki and its population of 255,000 suffered the same fate.
This time the Free Press, in speaking for the Nanaimo community, responded with a lengthy and eloquent editorial headlined, The Atom’s Mission:
“It is doubtful if any single event connected with our years of global conflict has so deeply affected individual thinking in revelations regarding the so-called atomic bomb... What apparently has really happened is that man has discovered a method whereby the split atom’s monstrous power to disintegrate can be controlled, bottled, stored and unleashed by actual direction.
“Prudence would dictate that all the horrible details of this new power and its possibilities as an engine of destruction should not be revealed to the public. What has been blazoned already is quite sufficient to convince the man on the street that in development of such hitherto unknown powers, mere man appears to be reaching into realms of ominous portent too vast in ramifications for the average mind to understand...”
The editor warned that other nations would likely acquire atomic capability, thus creating future challenges for world peace:
“Far more interesting, even as our most sanguine hopes that Japan may be brought to her knees speedily, is the reading of sketchy and scant predictions regarding the probable powers of atomic control as applied to paths of peace and industry...”
It was regrettable, said the Press, that the initial harnessing of atomic power should have been for use as a weapon of mass destruction: “Capturing, harnessing, holding and directing this power should (in a world of peace) have been the modern miracle all humanity needs for realization of its dreams and ideals. That its first practical application should have been the terrorizing of those who bar the path to world peace carries a portent which should not be overlooked.”
The editorial ended almost wistfully by noting that development of the bomb had cost an estimated $2 billion “to blast the initial atomic warning to a gasping world.
“If it had been unnecessary to carry another in repetition of that warning it would have been a source of joy to a peace-wanting world...and if the men of science may now be permitted to cease working for destruction and more happily turn their talent[s] to new miracles which will unleash the unknown powers for progress, industry and construction...it may have all have been worth while.”
Japan’s immediate surrender after the bombings has since been a matter of contention; were the Japanese about to surrender, or did the atomic bombs spare a much greater loss of life on both sides had further resistance required invasion of the Japanese home islands?
For Nanaimo residents, so many of whom had family members and friends serving with the Canadian armed forces, the war was finally, truly over and a new world of peace–even if it was overshadowed by a nuclear Frankenstein–was dawning.
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We all know what followed: the legacy of radiation for the Japanese victims, the years of underground and atmospheric nuclear testing, development of far more powerful hydrogen weaponry, the Cold War.
For 80 years we’ve lived with the threat of nuclear weapons in a world of turmoil and other nations have acquired the technology to build and to deliver these weapons.
That said, however, in August 1945, most Canadians were just glad that the fighting was over. Even if only for a while.