On May 19, the three-day, most recent G7 Summit started in Hiroshima. During its 10 thematic sessions, problems of both a global scale and a rather specific plan, which are of particular interest to the G7 countries at the current stage of the “Great World Game,” were considered.
However, among the G7 participants, there are increasing discrepancies, as successfully illustrated by the Chinese publication Global Times, regarding assessments and approaches to solving almost all of the problems mentioned. This was reflected in the course, as well as the results of this event, which require special commentary.
Here, however, the author would like to draw the reader’s attention to some notable circumstances related to the summit’s location. Although Japan is this year’s host and organizer of all G7 events, and the political career of current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is closely linked to Hiroshima, it seems certain that the choice of this city as the venue for the recent G7 summit was agreed with other participants and had the character of a kind of joint message to the outside world.
Apparently, it is motivated by the intention to reduce the importance of the nuclear capability of the Russian Armed Forces and to prevent from rapid increase the importance of said capability in China’s Armed Forces. To accommodate this goal, all the negative information that still accompanies the discussion of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is used. It makes sense to dwell on this information and propaganda aspect of this historical fact, because many important aspects of the current political situation in the world are connected with it in one way or another.
Firstly, let us note that the devastating consequences of the first atomic bombs were no greater than the results of the bombing of Tokyo (or Dresden in Europe) six months earlier using quite “conventional” weapons. Many experienced experts in the use of the latter, having looked in a few days at the results of the atomic bombings, declared rather skeptically that they would have inflicted the same amount of damage in a one-time, medium-scale raid, and spent 4-5 times less “TNT equivalent.” That is the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and earlier of Tokyo (Dresden, Cologne, Hamburg…), was only the final and already almost ordinary event in that madness, which was the World War II as a whole.
However, throughout human history, war has invariably looked like madness. More often than not, a collective madness. Although there are “scientific” definitions of was, for example, “the continuation of politics by other means.” That is, if in opponent refuses to be persuaded by “peaceful” means, then “other” means may be the solution. Maybe the opponent will come to his senses.
Especially since, as a rule, the initial intention is not to harm the opponent excessively. Because people are mostly good and everyone, without exception, wants to “do good.” “Doing good,” however, usually yields rather expected results with lots of people invariably dying in the process.
And with each new war, more and more people end up dying. Remarkably, with scientific and technological progress (accompanied, however, by the process of urbanization), the share of civilians in total losses only increases. If back in World War I the ratio between killed civilians and combatants looked like an even split, then today the share of civilian casualties already accounts for about 80%. If the dream of today’s connoisseurs of apocalyptic scenario of “solution” of global problems comes true, then there will be no one left on Earth at all.
The inherent insanity of war as a phenomenon also reveals itself in the conventional division of methods and means of its conduct into “humane” and “inhumane.” It is “humane” to slit an enemy’s belly with a bayonet, but not to kill him with sarin or alpha-gamma radiation. War as a phenomenon is most adequately evaluated by those who deal with it professionally. From outstanding generals to ordinary soldiers. For example, the miraculously surviving Japanese kamikazes. And in the most irresponsible way it is done by public propaganda fighters far from the front lines, easily waving nuclear weapons. State-owned weapons, mind you.
It had become clear to the Japanese leadership after Midway and the Coral Sea – that is, by the beginning of 1943 – that the Pacific War won’t be won easily. However, the prospect of a complete and crushing defeat became visible by the summer of 1945 with the loss of the Philippines and a number of islands in the Pacific remote from the territory of the “four main islands” of the Japanese archipelago at a distance of 1,500 km.
What the continuation of resistance could end with for the Japanese Empire was clearly described in the Potsdam Declaration of July 26, 1945. The already mentioned bombing of Tokyo showed that the threats to the very existence of the Japanese nation had not been an empty bluff. The only way to avoid the prospect of national catastrophe was specified in the same Potsdam Declaration. It consisted in the immediate and unconditional surrender of Tokyo.
Here, however, one must take into account the specifics of Japanese state-historical myth-making and national culture, which stood in the way of the only possible way to end the war. To justify the inevitability of accepting the proposed conditions, Emperor Hirohito had to have unbreakable arguments to lay out in the face of the Japanese turbo-patriots of the time.
And in early August such “arguments” were provided to him. First from the US and then from the USSR. These events laid the basis for Emperor Hirohito’s statement on the night of August 14 to 15 that he agreed to the conditions proposed by the victors. Although there were undoubtedly other motives in the decision to use the new weapons at the final stage of World War II that were important at the time and which the author will not discuss here.
Let us note that in the final phase of the drama in the Pacific all its main participants succeeded in completing it in one way or another (and sometimes even more or less satisfactorily). But in doing so, each of them also was solving their own problems. As for the Japanese nation, no matter how monstrous it sounds, the atomic bombings (together with the entry of the USSR into the war) turned out to be an act of salvation. One involuntarily recalls appropriate memes: “war is easier started than ended,” “fight fire with fire” and so on.
It is mainly because modern Japanese understand quite adequately what happened in August 1945 to their ancestors who took part in preparing and unleashing a large-scale military conflict in Asia and the Pacific that they refuse (admittedly strangely for some people) to make any claims towards present-day Americans.
It would make absolutely no sense today to utter some sort of apologies or repentances for deeds which the living Japanese and Americans have nothing to do with. And it is impossible to “replay” the past. Except in the fantasies of fighters from the “alternative history,” which has nothing to do with the science called “History.”
Whose subject of research is to find an answer to the question “What was really happening to humanity at this or that stage of development.” A complete and definitive answer to this question does not exist in principle. Nor does it exist with regards to main questions of any other areas of scientific knowledge. This does not mean that it is not necessary to engage in the search for such answers. Simply, the “History” of this or that event is eventually and inevitably subject to “rewriting.” A common phenomenon in any science. After all, even the laws of physics sometimes get “rewritten.” In fact, this elementary starting point is the basis of the famous “Appel de Blois” from 15 years ago.
How to use the results of scientific research is a matter of a person’s free choice. The same nuclear physics is used in the construction of energy facilities, but also in the process of creating the most advanced murder weapons. From the results of historical research, one can try both to draw some useful lessons and to apply them as an “information bludgeon” in the current struggle with this or that opponent. This is what certain individuals do, those who claim (it is not clear on what basis) to combine the functions of prosecutor, judge and executor, not only regarding certain historical events, but also regarding the people who are alive today.
Yet this is precisely what both the leadership of contemporary Japan and the majority of the country’s population do not want to do, when it is impossible to avoid the very need to respond in one way or another to each new actualization of the events discussed here. This has nothing to do with the notorious “American occupation,” in which Japan itself is primarily interested.
Almost for the first time the actualization of this, let us say, unpleasant (for both the United States and Japan) issue occurred back in May 2016 when Tokyo for the first time had to host a G7 summit, at the end of which the participants were supposed to visit the same Hiroshima. In order to get then US President Barack Obama out of a potentially embarrassing situation, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, i.e. the current prime minister, said that the high American guest did not need to utter any words of apology in Hiroshima.
Which was not only an act of political expediency, but also reflected the mood of ordinary Japanese, including the residents of this city. There was a message to the American president from them that read something like the following: “Don’t hesitate for a minute, come to our city, we will be glad to see you. Don’t say anything at all and just stand silently with us on the memorial square.” That was the end of it. The visit of the present US president to Hiroshima on May 19-21 last year followed roughly the same format.
It would be appropriate to conclude this text with a reference to an interesting interview that was taken before the G7 summit with one of the witnesses of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, who was at that time a child. He survived the event because a few days before it he had been sent for some reason to visit his relatives on a neighboring island 30 km away. On the morning of August 6, he saw a bright flash and “thunder like lightning” on the horizon. What he saw on his return a few days later in Hiroshima prompted him to conclude: “War is wrong.”
At that time the boy was only ten years old, but he was already so smart. Unlike some of today’s propaganda fighters.
Vladimir Terekhov, expert on the issues of the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
