My Own Thoughts On Hiroshima

WNU Editor: I had the good fortune of being in Hiroshima on August 6, 1988 (I was traveling through Japan, visiting/living in China, and going as a spectator to the Seoul Olympics .... all at the same time). The atomic bomb ceremony was much smaller then .... not like it is today .... but the experience of standing there at 8:15 AM and remembering what happened 43 years earlier is a sensation that will stay with me for a lifetime.

Was it a right thing to do .... to use the atomic bomb on Hiroshima to end the war?

All of my Chinese and Korean friends and colleagues in Asia say yes. It ended almost immediately the brutality and viciousness of the Japanese Army against the civilian populations in their respective countries. If the war was to drag on for another year while the Americans were preparing for a conventional invasion of Japan, the Japanese would have easily killed off hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Korean civilians during the interim. They were already killing thousands on a daily basis, and there was no reason to assume that they would stop. Therefore .... from the Asian point of view (non-Japanese) .... I have found that there is almost universal support among these peoples for the bombing of Hiroshima.

When I was young I also asked my father this same question .... his comments were most poignant. When Hiroshima was bombed he was a Soviet officer in occupied East Germany .... and when he first heard of the attack he realized two things. (1) The world will never be the same again. (2) Thank God .... this was going to end the Second World War. And then he said the following that has stuck with me ever since ....

Thank God these horrible weapons were used. It finally ended mankind's bloodiest war.

The way he said it .... the realization that after four horrible years the war was finally over for him .... the relief in his voice and eyes .... years after the fact .... that clinched it for me.

Fast forward to today .... we must always be vigilant and assertive in the international arena to make sure that the use of such weapons will never happen again. We have been fortunate that after 68 years nuclear weapons have not been used against human beings .... but this success is no guarantee that the next 68 years will bring the same result.