Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Hiroshima - What We Think

HOST INTRO : Tomorrow we mark the 60th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima … American public opinion about the bombing has changed a lot over the years. Producer Richard Paul takes a look at how and why.

To every generation, the past becomes something different. The Atomic Bombing of Japan that ended World War Two is no exception.

[Movie clip - A Tale of Two Cities
ANNOUNCER: The bomb was exploded above the city and in the towering mushroom, Japan could read its doom.]

[WINKLER: Every generation re-writes history, as indeed it must. This is simply part and parcel of the very nature of history itself.]

Alan Winkler is a history professor at Miami University in Ohio and author of “Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Atom”. And he says the different ways of thinking about the bomb emerged over a period of several years.

[WINKLER: There was enormous relief in the beginning. There was a growing sense of doubt and questioning “What had we done?” that a few people early on had begun to voice but more and more began to echo that as the years passed. Later, as people began to look at what the bomb had done, against the background of Hamburg and Dresden and Tokyo and the firebombing in those places some people began to argue that basically there wasn’t much difference between dropping one bomb and dropping 100 B-29 bombs in Tokyo.]

This is a look back at what caused that evolution in our thinking. What Americans heard and didn’t hear …. And a lot of what they saw in the papers. Like this …. read by an actor …. from the day after the Hiroshima bombing.

[ACTOR (reading) : “They declare that countermeasures are already being taken, which is whistling in the graveyard of Japan’s hopes. What are the countermeasures available against annihilation?”]

CHANGE That’s an editorial in the Los Angeles Times. It ran next to a cartoon that showed Japan being blown off the face of the earth. polls at the time show 85 percent supported the bombings … believing they’d save countless American lives. And According to Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, of those, twenty-three percent …

[KUZNICK: Wished the Japanese had not surrendered so quickly so we could have dropped MORE atomic bombs on them.]

You can hear that attitude on display here …. Also on the day after the bombing …. on the editorial page of The New York Times.

[ACTOR (reading): “If Japan's war leaders are still so blind as to persist in the rejection of our mercy, they may expect, as President Truman says, ‘A rain of ruin from the air the like of which has never been seen on this earth.’”]

Alan Winkler says this attitude is completely understandable under the circumstances.

[WINKLER: The American public was overwhelmingly positive and relieved that the bomb has brought a fairly rapid end to the war.]

[Movie clip - A Tale of Two Cities
CHANGE ANNOUNCER: This was more than a routine bombing. It was the funeral pyre of an aggressor nation.] FADE AND LEAVE UNDER

But even this early, with America savoring victory, and still very much in the dark about the magnitude of civilian deaths in Japan, the first notes could be heard of a growing chorus of doubt.

[WINKLER: The radio commentator H. V. Kaltenborn, talked about “Perhaps we have created a Frankenstein in our midst.” The author E. B. White reflected in the pages of the New Yorker about the possibility that, “Here was man, meddling with God’s work.”]

As word began to slowly trickle out about just how many Japanese civilians had been killed, it became even harder for many Americans to feel comfortable about what had been done. A strong push in that direction came as early as 1946 when the Author John Hersey published his intimate portrait of the bombing titled “Hiroshima” and millions of Americans heard what happened from a human perspective for the first time.

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[CLIP John Hersey reading Hiroshima
HERSEY: He moved nervously and fast. With a restraint that suggested that he was a cautious, thoughtful man. He showed, indeed just those qualities in the uneasy days before the bomb fell.] – FADE AND LEAVE UNDER

[WINKLER: John Hersey’s book made a tremendous splash.]

Alan Winkler.

[WINKLER: It was read aloud over the radio. Ministers gave sermons about it. The Book of the Month Club gave out free copies. And that was the way many Americans really began to understand just what the bomb had done.]

[CLIP John Hersey reading Hiroshima
HERSEY: so that they might evacuate whatever they wished to a safe distance from the probable target area.]

That change of heart is reflected here in a Los Angeles Times editorial, discussing a ceremonial dropping of flowers on Hiroshima in 1951.

[ACTOR (reading): We do not repent dropping the bomb but we are sorry that we had to do it. We grieve for those we had to kill. We feel their deaths and the hurts of the survivors and we show that we feel this by our wreath of flowers.”]

CHANGE And a year later, when a test of the Hydrogen Bomb carved out a mile-long hole in the bottom of the ocean, that growing sense of identification with the Japanese combined with anxiety about an atomic future to bring America into a brand new relationship with the bomb.

[WINKLER: In 1952, after a test called “Mike,” which basically carved out a huge, mile-long hole in the bottom of the ocean, people began to realize the hydrogen bomb was something pretty ominous.]

[MUSIC - Lowell Blanchard - Jesus Hits Like the Atom Bomb
BLANCHARD: (singing) People got worried all over the land / Just like folks got in Japan / Everybody's worried 'bout the atomic bomb ] – FADE AND LEAVE UNDER

[KUZNICK: There’s a growing recognition of what Truman understood at the time – that the human species is faced with annihilation if we don’t smarten up and do something about these weapons]

And American University’s Paul Kuznick says the reactions cut across political lines. On the left there was a sustained call for world government. But also, according to an article in the National Review that Kuznick quotes here

[KUZNICK: Criticism of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has become part of the national conservative credo. So in the 1950s there were a lot of conservatives denouncing it including a lot of the top American military leaders from World War Two.]

Again, you can hear the change of attitude on the nation’s editorial pages. Here’s the New York Times in 1955.

[ACTOR (reading): The world was stunned by the frightful efficiency of its new weapon. Now surely there are signs that even where there is utter tyranny and cynicism absolute, even there, those who might say the word shrink from atomic war.]

[Movie clip
(Civil Defense siren) ANNOUNCER: That signal means to stop whatever you're doing and get to the nearest safe place fast. (Civil Defense siren)] – FADE AND LEAVE UNDER

Public opinion polls in the 1960s showed African-Americans and Asian Americans were more negative in their judgments than whites. Women reported being more uneasy about the decision to drop the bomb than men. But, according to Paul Boyer, author of the book “By The bomb’s Early Light,”

CHANGED [BOYER: the older folks who remembered World War Two uh tended to be quite strongly supportive of the decision to drop the bomb.

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Those under 30 were more critical.]

These were people who did NOT feel their lives had been saved by the bomb … who had no connection to World War Two. Miami University’s Alan Winkler.

[WINKLER: The growth of a different generation who had not fought in World War Two clearly had an impact on changing perception in powerful ways.]

Baby Boomers started by questioning the appropriateness of Vietnam. But then, Miami University’s Alan Winkler says

[WINKLER: They began to question larger issues. They began to question the American role in World War Two]

And as this generation moved on to become scholars, opinion leaders and, especially historians, they found more and more evidence questioning whether the bombing was necessary. This debate broke out most recently in 1995 when the Smithsonian tried to mount an exhibit marking the 50th anniversary of the bombing. A key point of disagreement between the younger and older generations – as the Chicago Tribune discussed in it’s 50th anniversary editorial – was whether a moral threshold was crossed at Hiroshima.

[WINKLER: We had been killing 100,000 people in Tokyo with our B-29s and almost that many people in places like Dresden and Hamburg. What difference did it make that we were dropping an Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing about the same number of people? The counter to that is that now we were doing it almost effortlessly with a single bomb.]

This process of revising history has always gone on. So we can expect it to continue. But Alan Winkler says there’s no need to worry that as the World War Two generation dies, their version of history will die out with them.

[WINKLER: There’s no right answer. There’s no wrong answer.]

CHANGED But historians say it’s important to keep asking questions, and to keep talking. Even to people we disagree with. From this process, some semblance of truth will emerge. Even if it only holds until the next generation comes along. I’m Richard Paul in Washington.

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