Making Meaning Of The Crime Of Nagasaki: American Power And Dehumanisation In The Nuclear Age

It is on this day, August 9, seventy-seven years ago that the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan. It is another, if related, kind of barbarism to adopt the view, in the words of an American military officer at that time, that “the entire population of Japan is a proper military target”. It is still another kind of barbarism, however, to continue to defend both the atomic bombings years and decades later, as many Americans especially do, on grounds that are at best specious. The Chairman of the US War Manpower Commission, Paul V. McNutt, said that he “favored the extermination of the Japanese in toto”, and President Franklin Roosevelt’s own son, Elliott, admitted to the Vice President that he supported continuation of the war against Japan “until we have destroyed about half of the civilian population.” A case can be made that the United States, in undertaking the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, committed war crimes, even crimes against humanity, and engaged in state terrorism. The Japanese may have believed that the United States had only one bomb; some argue that surrender was not an option for the Japanese since the warrior culture was pervasive in their society and “Oriental culture” does not permit such an ignominious ending.