Henry Imler September 20th, 2006

This paper will seek to explore the relationship between those in power that abuse it, otherwise known as the oppressors, and those that were the recipients of that abuse of power, affectionately known as the oppressed. More specifically, this paper will look first at a particular case of this relationship, the case of the bombing of Hiroshima by the American military with an atomic bomb. Then it will look at a wide-scale nuclear war in general. Three main sources were used in this limited inquiry; John Hersey’s Hiroshima, Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth, and lastly the academic paper Moral Disengagement in the Perpetration of Inhumanities by Albert Bandura. The grid of oppression will be looked at as it applies to the case, incorporating elements from Hiroshima and The Fate of the Earth. The grid of oppression is a collection of five ways that oppression can work according to Marion Young in Justice and the Politics of Difference. They include exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, violence, and environmental injustice. Finally, the cases will be examined in light of the social cognitive theory put forth by Bandura. While the bombing and aftermath of Hiroshima was not a clear-cut example of postcolonial strife, there are elements that pervade the reading. The Fate of the Earth details the consequences would be if the powers left over from the postcolonial world ever took the step and started a nuclear holocaust.

There are several ways one can look at the oppressed/oppressor relationship in the case study of Hiroshima. There are several power levels that one can consider. The first way is to look at the struggle between the nations before the attack. The second set concerns itself with the post-attack descriptions of power relationships. One can take the post-attack considerations into two more sup-groupings, internal and external. The first external relation is of the Americans to the Japan after the attack; the second external relation is from the Americans to those that suffered the attack directly, to the hibakushas. After the external considerations are looked at, then one can turn internally, from the non-hibakushas to the hibakushas. It is in this last grouping that one finds the most interaction. After all, the Americans are for the most part, half a world away and as such does not come into contact with the populace. One can look at how the occupying forces treated and viewed the populace, but the book does not delve into that area much. What little it does will be discussed.

Early in the morning on the sixth day of April in the year of 1945 an atomic bomb exploded nineteen hundred feet above Hiroshima. The explosion affected a great many people there. Those that it did affect were given a literal name, the hibakusha. The hibakusha bore the brunt of the after-effects of the bomb. Japan’s economy suffered from the effects of war and the bomb and was booming again by 1975. The government of Japan collapsed and reformed as a more liberal, pacifist nation. The hibakusha, on the other hand, were scared for life. The bombing left an inerasable mark on their bodies, mind, and soul. It was an incredible instant of violence for thousands. One second all was relatively calm and peaceful after the initial warning. The next second, their city had turned into hell. Miss Sasaki was hobbled for life as a result of her broken leg and subsequent infections. Father Kleinsorge suffered from unhealalbe wounds, was constantly hospitalized, and died as a bedridden man. Many people that were affected by the violence of the bomb did not get a chance to even become hibakushas. Upwards of one hundred thousand people perished in various ways. Some were instantly killed. Others, like the soldiers in Asano Park had their eye melted by the flash of the bomb. The details of the horrors inflicted on the citizens of Hiroshima are too numerous to count. As Father Cielik is quoted, “This is no time for books.” The shock of the bomb on the people’s psychics was incredible. In some ways, it allowed for more survivors. The shock enabled the survivors of the blast to help others.

Miss Nakamura was marginalized by her society. According to Hersey, there developed an anti-hibakusha sentiment that drew from several factors. First was the natural affliction of chronic fatigue that they suffered from as a result of the radiation exposure. They were seen as unreliable workers as a result. Granted, this was true to a certain extent. If the business margins are small, it is hard to employ chronically fatigued people and still remain profitable. Notice what the values and results are. Money is the motivation for the employer and the effect is poverty, homelessness, and perhaps death for those that are not profitable. The value placed on life is less than the value placed on the acquisition of money. Later, this sentiment was emboldened because of the help that the government have to the hibakushas. There was a perception that many hibakushas were not that disabled and were unjustly rewarded for their happenstance. To the hibakushas that were the recipients of the prejudice, the result was an overwhelming sense of oppression, as Hersey describes in Nakamura. This nature of the oppression was not by a classification of race, as Young says is most often the case, but by nature of a disability. Those hibakushas that were well-off and well-educated had an easier time making it after the strike. Dr. Fujii was able to rebuild his clinic and go on to be a well off orthopedic surgeon. His level of education enabled him the pathway to prosperity and the independence to pursue his desires. Not everyone was that lucky.

A curious effect of the bombing evidenced in the lives of the six people followed in Hiroshima was the sense of powerlessness that they had. Restated, not many of them acted as if the bombing could or should have been prevented. Hersey talks about this resignation of the bombing to fate when he quotes Nakamura as saying “Shikata ga nai,” or, “It can’t be helped.” Father Kleinsorge describe a similar sentiment saying, “Da ist michts zu machen,” translated, “There is nothing to be done about it”. This sense of powerlessness is further echoed by the feeling of oppression that many of the hibakushas had at the hands of being discriminated against. Even in the face of help were some powerless to stop their degradation. The daughter of one of the hibakushas was treated like a lab rat by the scientists who were studying her about the after-effects of the radiation. Her dignity was robbed from her when she was ordered to remove her clothes in front of a mass of men. While there was not sexual basis for this, the effects of being suddenly bared in front of strangers makes one very much feel like an object. The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission found the hatred of many hibakushas because of their policy of study and not treatment.

It is harder to get a grasp on the environmental impact of the attack. The principle area of devastation was already an unnatural environment, as it was the site of a large city of around two hundred and fifty thousand people. As a consequence of that, the environment was already quite disrupted. Hersey seems to minimize the environmental impact of the bomb and focuses instead on the human toll of the attack. He does mention that the radiation levels in Hiroshima were well within tolerable levels days after the attack. Other environmental markers were the freakish tornado, a brief mention of the “black rain” and an ominous discussion between a two people about eating a dead, floating fish. They decided against it. Those in the inner city were much more affected by the bomb.

Schell paints a more vivid picture of the environmental implications not only of the attack itself, but of the consequences of a modern day nuclear conflict. In The Fate of the Earth he describes how trees for five miles round were charred. A radioactive acid rain poured down on the city and its runoff contaminated the waters downstream. Schell points out that Hiroshima was lucky in that Little Boy’s blast did not occur on the ground. If it had, the effects of the radiation would have been more widespread and as a consequence, the cities would not have been habitable for many years. To prevent the reader from breathing a sigh of relief about the twin bombings, Schell quickly points out that the effects of those bombings would pale in comparison to what the current arsenal would do to the environment. Today’s weapons could do over a million times more damage. In drastic fashion Schell paints a picture of mankind wiping out itself, creating a great unified world government of “insects and grass.”

The picture presented in Hiroshima and The Fate of the Earth presents most of the hardship as brought on the hibakushas by the Japanese culture. The two principle instigators of their plight were the inactions of the government and the bias of the non-hibakushas. Once the bombing had taken place, there was not a lot of oppression from the former colonial power towards the people of Japan. The perception one gets from the book was that the American realized what had occurred at their hands and tried to rectify the situation.

There does remain the fact that the origin of the hibakushas was the American bomb. In that respect, the American people do bear that responsibility. Once can glisten very little from the texts on how the Americans viewed the Japanese that they were about to slaughter and bring misery on. What little one looks at reveals very close parallels to some of Bandura’s moral disengagement methods, the principle ones being compartmentization and moral justification. The only account that one is given in Hiroshima was from the co-pilot of the Enola Gay. He was only the delivery boy, a small compartment of the whole operation. After he had committed the act of dropping the bomb, he recoiled in horror, realizing what he had done. He was able to see the damage inflicted by his cargo. To a degree it personalized it for him. From other readings, it seems that the Americans justified themselves in that Japan was waging a total war. In a total war everyone will attack the invaders and as such can be construed as part of the army. Another line of justification is the utilitarian math that the sacrifice of two cities would be less lives lost than if the US launched a land invasion of Japan. The only thing is that the lives in the two cities were not the American’s to sacrifice.

Yet, the specific issue of the Hiroshima bombing does not bear the hallmarks of the colonial powers wielding oppression over the previously colonized powers. Japan and the United States were both relatively modern powers in a battle to dominate the Pacific Ocean. The issue of colonial powers does rear its head on close inspection. While Hiroshima was not a clear cut case of colonial oppression, the real issue is the effects of war on the populace when colonial powers try to export control outside their borders. After the war and the bombing, nothing happened to the leadership of Japan that could compare with what happened to the hibakushas. The emperor did not have to suffer the same fate or anything remotely like radiation sickness or seeing one’s mother charred to death by the blast. The lesson of Hiroshima is that all actions have consequences. Beware of throwing these consequences on others.

Also, the powers that primarily have the stockpiles of nuclear weapons are for the majority, the former colonial powers. There are exceptions; of course, as it is with every rule, but the majority of megatons lie in the hands of the old guard. They have their guns pointed at each other’s heads. If they all start to fire at one another, the damage does not stop with their deaths. Schell was proven wrong about MAD, as it staved off a third real world war between the United States and the USSR. However, with more and more countries obtaining magic pistols the odds of MAD holding true become slim. There are reports that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants the world to end so that the twelfth Imam can come :”Threats Watch - Understanding Ahmadinejad”:http://analysis.threatswatch.org/2005/11/understanding-ahmadinejad/. With such a possible scenario, religious motivations for the use of nuclear weapons, the principles that upheld MAD do not hold sway. As Schell points out, the price paid for a MAD misstep is the end of humanity. Even the concept of a limited nuclear war, as ridiculous as it may sound, is a devastating ecological blow. What the nuclear powers much incorporate into their offensive and defensive schemes are the lives of those that would be affected. They must remember that each one of the affected lives is worth as much as their own life, as their children’s lives and as much as their children’s children’s lives. With that mindset, perhaps Schell’s’ seemingly impossible notion of ridding the world of these weapons might be obtainable.

• Ethics
• Comments(0)