By HAEWON CHO
“And that failure (the failure to eradicate nuclear weapons) would be a betrayal of those people who somehow maintained their human dignity midst the most dreadful conditions ever suffered by humankind.” — Oe Kenzaburo, May 1, 1981
It has been nearly 80 years since the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
In “Hiroshima Notes,” Oe Kenzaburo writes of a moment in the midst of the Korean war when the United Press bureau chief in Tokyo asked a blind A-bomb victim, “I suppose we could end the war if we dropped two or three atomic bombs on Korea; as an A-bomb victim, what’s your opinion?”
In my high school, every year in World History and then again in U.S. History, the same debate topic would circulate: “Was the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki justified?” Students would be put into two groups, to make a “balanced debate,” regardless of their opinions, and the whole thing was framed as a thought exercise. There was every effort made, systematically, to avoid the stories of the survivors. The effects of the bomb might have been vaguely mentioned, but in essence, students were taught to argue for and against the nuclear bomb based on “pragmatism” and “logic.”
This is a pattern that was present from the very beginning.
U.S. censorship began in Japan with the witness accounts and medical reports that were produced as soon as physicians arrived at the scene. It began with the silencing of the survivors of the bomb and the neglect of the U.S. government and of the Japanese government under U.S. occupation.
To this day, the number of deaths that resulted from the two nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are unknown, remaining estimates. These deaths not only include Japanese civilians but also thousands of Japanese Americans, many of whom were children stuck there after visiting family, and as many as 50,000 Koreans, who had been conscripted into forced labor during the war.
The survivors, and especially the survivors who were not Japanese citizens, faced neglect from both Japan and the U.S. While Japan eventually enacted a medical care law for survivors, Japanese Americans faced a Congress that refused to consider a medical program for the care of U.S. citizens suffering from the effects of radiation, which might have set a a precedent for U.S. culpability in its “legitimate” wartime actions. And the Koreans who had been affected only gained recognition and redress a year ago, when their number had shrunk from the 45,000 who returned to the peninsula to less than 2000. And even then, they were only offered compensation from contributions by Korean firms and companies, not Japanese ones, a distinction that was predicated on the compensation already “paid” through the 1965 treaty.
But this total disregard, this active neglect, is not an unintended consequence. It is a facet of the remnants of Japanese imperialism and of ongoing U.S. imperialism. It is a result of a colonial legacy and plays a key role in ongoing genocides.
We see this same total disregard in Congo, where the uranium used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was mined. This took place in the colonial Belgian mining operation that destroyed the health of the miners who handled uranium. The same Belgian company, Union Miniere, was suspected to have transferred 200 tons of processed uranium ore to Israel in 1968 after the Six Day War—ore that is suspected to have been used to build nuclear weapons in Israel.
We see this same total disregard in the U.S., British, and other countries’ deployment of depleted uranium munitions in the Gulf War, in Kosovo, in Iraq, and now in Ukraine. This weaponry is alleged to create long-term harm to the land, including lasting radiation, and is linked to a higher prevalence of cancer and congenital diseases. And depleted unanium ammunition is also alleged to have been used by the Israeli military against against Palestinians in Gaza.
We see this same total disregard in the history and continued use of Indigenous lands not only for uranium mining but also in nuclear waste disposal. Environmental racism and settler colonialism underlie the active coverup of health problems and radiation in these areas. Nuclear waste disposal is carried out not only by the United States but also by Japan, the first and only country victimized by atomic bombs. And we see this disregard of historical fact in the perpetuation and construction of nuclear reactors, which will fail again and again, generating more and more waste to be disposed of, buried, and hidden.
This total disregard also becomes evident in the question that the United Press bureau chief asked. It is a total disregard for human suffering, for the known effects of radiation—expressed as well in the way that the U.S. and other imperialist countries vote again and again to not consider a moratorium on the use of depleted uranium. It becomes evident in the way that U.S. presidents have a history of planning nuclear first stikes, despite the threat of a nuclear winter, despite the human cost, despite the irreversible effects on the land. It becomes evident in the “strategic” proliferation of nuclear weapons under the imperialist logic of “mutually assured destruction,” weapons that could destroy the world several times over used as intimidation, as imperialist posturing.
The threat of nuclear war has risen with the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine to the highest it has been since the Cold War of the 1950s and ’60s. Since we cannot trust the U.S. government, indeed any imperialist government, with these weapons, we must act.
We must reject any justification for these weapons, remembering the dead and the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and pledging: Never again! We must remember the miners in the Congo both then and now who suffered under colonialism, forced to produce metals that only serve to entrench imperialism. We must remember the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East, the suspected effects in Palestine and Kosovo, and the potential effects that we will see in Ukraine. We must remember the continued harm of uranium mining on Indigenous communities and the horrendous effects of nuclear waste, and see this as a continuation of that history of neglect, harm, and censorship.
Kanai Toshiro, in Oe’s “Hiroshima Notes,” asks, “Is the atomic bomb known better for its immense power or for the human misery it causes?”
It seems that so often we forget the reality of the people who suffered and who are suffering from the effects and aftereffects of the beginning of the nuclear age. Imperialist powers may treat nuclear bombs as powerful tools, but we as revolutionary socialists must strive for the elimination of such weapons. We must understand that these weapons are abhorrent, recognize that their use will never be given up by the bourgeois state, and work unceasingly for a global workers’ revolution—one that will end imperialist warmongering and the dictatorship of capital.
