This year will be the first year in over a decade that, as chair of the Utah Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (UCAN), I have not been involved in planning a commemoration of the bombings of Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945.
Our events usually included music, especially singing. And often they were in places of worship, the last three being at Wasatch Presbyterian Church.
COVID-19 changes things. After much brainstorming of other possible options, and knowing that a number of national and international groups will be hosting amazing web-based programs, UCAN decided that we needed to not ask people to come to something at which they might catch a terrible disease.
This decision is painful for me. Writing a newspaper commentary doesn’t completely ease that pain.
But writing gives me the opportunity to express ideas that probably wouldn’t be shared at our annual event. In particular, I’m wondering if we have been making a serious mistake all these years by emphasizing Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yes, they are the only two cities to be destroyed by atomic bombs. Yes, nuclear weapons now threaten civilization on our earth. Yes, the radioactive fallout of a nuclear bomb continues to hurt long after the initial blast.
But the single most destructive attack on a city in our world history of war was on March 9-10, 1945, when the U.S. fire-bombed Tokyo. Tokyo was the target of more fire-bombing after that horrific night until, finally, the U.S. removed Tokyo as a military target in late May.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were just two of over 60 Japanese cities devastated by U.S. bombing.
History suggests that destroying cities does not make a county surrender. Rather, a country surrenders when its military is defeated — or it is clear that its military is about to be defeated. Most likely, Japan surrendered on Aug. 14, not because two more cities were destroyed, but because the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on Aug. 8 and then invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria on Aug. 9.
Of course history is not a science experiment. We can’t go back in time and re-run August 1945 and see if Japan would have surrendered without the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We can’t state with complete certainty that the Soviet declaration of war and subsequent invasion is what caused Japan to surrender.
But we can question the usefulness of nuclear weapons. We can question their military value. We can wonder if spending another trillion dollars on modernizing our current stockpile is really what our country needs.
We can question whether it makes sense for the U.S. to spend more on its military than the next 10 countries combined. We can ask what we want of our government — to spend funds on weapons and wars or to spend more on health care and education and creating a clean-energy economy.
Nuclear weapons have not exploded over a city as an act of war since Aug. 9, 1945. There are many reasons these weapons have not been used. They are way too imprecise. The radiation from an explosion is too dangerous.
Actually, they are pretty stupid weapons and I wonder if they should even be called “weapons” as they just aren’t useful. But, then, I don’t think war is useful either.
My hope is that in my lifetime we will celebrate the abolition of nuclear weapons rather than commemorate the two cities which most suffered from their detonations.
My hope is that, starting with a new U.S. president in January, the U.S. will take concrete steps to help move the world away from the brink of nuclear annihilation. We will take our weapons off of alert status. We will declare that we will not use these weapons in a first strike. We will cancel the nuclear modernization program and thus have needed funds for pressing human needs. We will work with the international community to get rid of these radioactive atrocities.
And then we can celebrate dates that affirm a global commitment to a better world for all.
Deb Sawyer
Deb Sawyer, Salt Lake City, is chair of the Utah Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.