This week marks the 55th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, surely one of the darkest moments for the human race. On August 6, 1945, our country dropped the first nuclear bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima, killing over 130,000 people in an instant. Three days later, on August 9, the catastrophe was granted an encore performance when another bomb was dropped on Nagasaki killing another 75,000.
Americans cheered the news that we had become by far the most powerful nation on earth and in fact were surprised that it took the Japanese a whole six days before they cowered before us with an unconditional surrender.
These shattering events changed the world forever; in fact, last year an association of journalists voted this as the biggest news story of the century. And indeed it was; for ever since, we have lived with the knowledge that we had the power to destroy our world in the blink of an eye. A sobering realization that has forced us to put constraints on ourselves and be ever more vigilant of whom we allow to gain power. (Though quite possibly, not enough.)
As a new century dawns, it is imperative that we look back upon this dark moment and recognize that it is always possible to do again what we had done before. We must examine and recognize what led to such a catastrophe 55 years ago, and recognize those same characteristics in our own age.
All too often, humans have a tendency to see only their self-interests and neglect the larger picture. For too many countries, from our own America to smaller nations like Pakistan and Israel, nuclear weapons represent power, not human annihilation. They are seen as a triumph of technical superiority, not a moral failing.
The consequences of such thinking enflamed a Cold War arms race which nearly destroyed us on more than one occasion (the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 being the most serious); and now we see such nations as India and Pakistan falling into the same trap. And even Americans, even a decade after the end of the Cold War, are still bent on proving our political power by enhancing our nuclear arsenal with a revised version of the Strategic Defensive Initiative (Star Wars) which was debated and rejected in the 1980s. It seems a highly impractical project since it is designed to intercept ICBMs launched from the other side of the planet, when an enemy attack is much more likely to come in the form of biological terrorism sneaked past our borders and released without fanfare in the middle of America. SDI is clearly not a real defense against a nuclear attack-it is a symbol of power and a political tool, just like nuclear weapons.
The only problem is, nuclear weapons are far too serious to be used as pawns in political chess games. If not treated with the awesome fear and respect they deserve, the entire world could pay the horrible consequence.
This past Sunday, in rebuilt Hiroshima, thousands of Japanese prayed that the terrible price paid by their nation would never have to be paid again by anyone. It had been their idealistic goal that all nuclear weapons could be eliminated from the planet by the end of the 20th Century. Well, we as humans failed miserably in that goal. (Most contemporary thermonuclear weapons have 1600 times the yield of the bomb which destroyed Hiroshima.)
As we stand on the verge of this new century, we need to think very seriously about where we are going and where we want to go. The 21st Century has the potential to be remembered as the time we managed to solve our problems and got along in peace, or as the ultimate failure of the human race. If we don't want such a failure, we need to seriously re-examine our attitude toward our weapons of mass destruction and recognize our own capabilities to use them. We did it before, and we can do it again, if we are not careful.
Let the human names and faces of those innocent civilians who suffered and died 55 years ago this week serve as a reminder of the human toll of these horrendous acts. Clearly, this was not about a nation claiming world power; this was about individual humans, over 200,000, who died-and over 6 billion who have the potential to die-all for political pride and power.
In the noisy storm of information-pollution of the 21st Century, we must not forget the mistakes of the 20th.