This summer
media sources are remembering the start of the First World War 100 years ago in
August 1914. Somewhat overshadowed has been the events of August, 1945 that
brought the Second World War to an end. On August 5, 1945 a U.S. Air Force
bomber dropped the first Atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Four
days later a second Atomic bomb was dropped on the port city of Nagasaki. Five
days later on August 15 Japanese Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government
agreed to accede to Allied demands and surrender unconditionally.
Earlier that
year, on May 8, 1945, the European Allies had accepted the surrender of Germany
after Hitler’s suicide. VE Day marked the end of the war in Europe and the
Allies could now turn their full attention to the defeat of Japan. Joseph
Stalin, the brutal Communist dictator in Russia, had refused to open an Asian
front against Japan until the defeat of Germany.
After VE Day
Stalin agreed to launch an attack on the Japanese puppet state in Mongolia
within three months. On July 26, 1945 the Allied leaders met at Potsdam and
issued a demand to Japan to surrender unconditionally or face utter
destruction. While the Russians built up their forces in the East, the United
States launched a series of devastating firebomb attacks on Japanese cities
from their recently taken islands in the Pacific.
When these
attacks failed to bring the Japanese to their knees, the Allies made
preparations for a full-scale attack on the Japanese mainland. Massive casualties
were projected on both sides.
Finally, by the beginning of August scientists had successfully tested
the Atom bomb. President Truman then made the decision to use the bomb.
I was six
years old at the time and have only the slightest recollection of that world-shattering
event. I don’t think anyone at the time could have imagined the awful
destruction caused by those two bombs. A few years later, after the Soviet
Union had managed to steal the technology and build their own bomb, I remember
participating in air raid drills in school. Teachers told us to crouch under
our desks or just put our heads on the desks with our hands over them. I guess
that this exercise was to protect against shattered windows but even we
children realized its futility.
As I got older I became somewhat aware of
the debate that had gone on within the Truman administration about the decision
to drop the bomb, as well as the debate that still goes on among scholars and
other commentators about the necessity and morality of the action. I’m sure
that this question is one in which there are strong arguments on both sides.
For myself, I still wonder why it was necessary to drop the second bomb on
Nagasaki only four days after Hiroshima.
Coincidentally,
at the time Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan. The day the Japanese
government agreed to surrender was August 15, the feast day of the Assumption
of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven. Although Catholics had celebrated the
feast of the Assumption on August 15 for centuries, the doctrine had never been
officially defined by the Church.
Maybe it was
the awful destruction of the Second World War, maybe it was the horror of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and maybe it was the prospect of an atomic arms race,
but only five years after the surrender of Japan on August 15, Pope Pius XII,
in a rare exercise of Papal infallibility, declared that belief in the
Assumption of Mary was a binding doctrine of the Catholic church.
So far,
despite the Cold War and the continued development of nuclear weapons, the
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain unique. Although warfare has continued, there has thankfully been no
worldwide conflagration to match either WWI or WWII. It might not seem so, but since August 15, 1945 we
have witnessed an unprecedented era of peace.
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