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Bill Templer, "Hiroshima at 60"
August 6, 2005 - 2:54pm -- nolympics
Bill Templer writes:
"Hiroshima at 60"
Bill Templer
In recalling Hiroshima’s holocaust, a memorable letter written on 8/6 by the grand old man of the American socialist left, Scott Nearing, is worth remembering, here from his autobiography The Making of a Radical:
"The event which tore me away from my emotional and habitual commitment to western civilization was the decision of Harry Truman to blot out the city of Hiroshima. It happened on my sixty-second birthday, August 6, 1945.
On that day I wrote President Truman: 'Your government is no longer mine. From this day onward our paths diverge: you to continue on your suicide course, blasting and cursing the world. I turn my hand to the task of helping to build a human society based on cooperation, social justice and human welfare.'
[…] The decision which led to Hiroshima was one of the most crucial ever made by modern man. […] The decision was the death sentence of western civilization. I dissociated myself from the United States government after August 6, 1945 because I felt that the use of atomic weapons against Japan was not only a crime against humanity but was a blunder which would lead to a gigantic build-up of the planet’s destructive forces."
Nearing's thought and life as a Debsian socialist remain relevant to progressive politics today, he’s being read again inside the green left and elsewhere. His anti-war anti-capitalism pamphlet "The Great Madness: a Victory for the American Plutocracy" as timely today as in 1917. Worth a look: bigeye.com/madness
Ted Van Kirk, the Enola Gay’s navigator, gave an interview today on BBC in which he repeated the standard myth about how the bombing of Hiroshima "saved American lives and ended the war." Ted has no regrets about having incinerated 140,000 innocents in a split second, the 'mother' of all atrocities. Any bombing today anywhere pales in the shadow of 8/6. There are nearly 240,000 names of the dead on the Hiroshima Monument. Brief insightful article on these myths: truthout.org
-- along with two narratives from survivors.
Bill Templer writes:
"Hiroshima at 60"
Bill Templer
In recalling Hiroshima’s holocaust, a memorable letter written on 8/6 by the grand old man of the American socialist left, Scott Nearing, is worth remembering, here from his autobiography The Making of a Radical:
"The event which tore me away from my emotional and habitual commitment to western civilization was the decision of Harry Truman to blot out the city of Hiroshima. It happened on my sixty-second birthday, August 6, 1945.
On that day I wrote President Truman: 'Your government is no longer mine. From this day onward our paths diverge: you to continue on your suicide course, blasting and cursing the world. I turn my hand to the task of helping to build a human society based on cooperation, social justice and human welfare.'
[…] The decision which led to Hiroshima was one of the most crucial ever made by modern man. […] The decision was the death sentence of western civilization. I dissociated myself from the United States government after August 6, 1945 because I felt that the use of atomic weapons against Japan was not only a crime against humanity but was a blunder which would lead to a gigantic build-up of the planet’s destructive forces."
Nearing's thought and life as a Debsian socialist remain relevant to progressive politics today, he’s being read again inside the green left and elsewhere. His anti-war anti-capitalism pamphlet "The Great Madness: a Victory for the American Plutocracy" as timely today as in 1917. Worth a look: bigeye.com/madness
Ted Van Kirk, the Enola Gay’s navigator, gave an interview today on BBC in which he repeated the standard myth about how the bombing of Hiroshima "saved American lives and ended the war." Ted has no regrets about having incinerated 140,000 innocents in a split second, the 'mother' of all atrocities. Any bombing today anywhere pales in the shadow of 8/6. There are nearly 240,000 names of the dead on the Hiroshima Monument. Brief insightful article on these myths: truthout.org
-- along with two narratives from survivors.