The North Coast times-eagle., August 01, 2005, Page 6, Image 6

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HIROSHIMA NO MORE
BY MICHAEL McCUSKER
Life betrays us We must die. Nothing can save us. Not love, not good works, not age­
less monuments, not wealth, power or prayer Our curse is to perceive our end, and to numb the
terror we empty our lives as readily as our bowels. It is the most enduring question: Why must I
die?
Each death is an end to the world. Elaborate constructions of life afterward persist in
every culture, yet for all of the rigorous hells and nirvanas a more solid faith gives our scanty lives
meaning: that the bloodlines will continue, that humanity will survive the smaller mortalities of its
members. Our children; their children. A future time.
The faith has lately been shattered. The human race has brilliantly invented its own
suicide. For the entirity of its future humanity, its civilizations and quite possibly all other life on
its home planet are threatened with a holocaust conceived by itself. We have seen our world from
space, so small and frail, a mote in God's eye; the same technical mastery that sent rockets to
the stars is capable also of sending them on a shorter, final journey of obliteration. Even now, in
the post-Cold War era, the ostensible end of the nuclear arms race and dismantling of the huge
arsenals, it is an act of faith that at any instant deadly missiles have not been launched from
somewhere: on a normal day we might all look up and see spiky umbrella-like comtrails of
nuclear missiles reentering the atmosphere, and all that was normal a few moments before will
vanish forever.
History has a fissure more pertinent than the birth of Christ or the sowing of grain.
The Sign of the Cross is transposed with a much more powerful icon. The Mushroom Cloud.
Humanity has lived 60 years with the enormous power and consequences of nuclear
energy. Yet since the beginning of the nuclear age very few of us have been able to confront
the horror that nuclear weapons represent, and because we have prefered to ignore or deny
the consequences of nuclear holocaust, we generally allow a free hand to those who ensure its
probability. We cling to promises of our leaders that they serve the best interests of humanity and
we pray they are right about their decisions because we are confused and perplexed about what
they are doing with the terrible power we have acceded to them. We have made ourselves like
trusting children, horrified and hardened by parental abuse, but we feel there is no alternative.
We permit our governments to keep secret from us the vital information necessary to preserve
ourselves and our descendants. If we are to know we might have to act, and prefer instead to
leave the unthinkable to its perpetrators.
It is difficult to hold for very long onto the consequences of nuclear war. The scale of a
world destroyed is too large and inaccurate. It is not easy to believe we can so quickly sweep
away what has taken centuries to construct.
People nostalgic for the Cold War might remember the daily crises and confrontations
that kept everybody a bundle of nerves behind their Happy Day smiles (which resembled terror
more than sublimity) Scores of doomsday books written by such popular writers as Nevil Schute,
Pat Frank and Philip Wylie fed a morbidly voracious dread. M.L.Graham of Arch Cape (Oregon)
tersely captured the basic scenario of these end of civilization as we know it novels in three
paragraphs, which he wrote for the NCTE (Feb1980) and titled "Ground Zero":
More brilliant than a thousand noonday suns the flash and racing inferno poured down
from the sky, and in an instant a countryside turned to ash. Little girls with delicate skin were
cremated in pink dresses. Old men on park benches vanished. Gone also were the benches and
the shade trees flared into burning forests. Shadows were burnt into the ground the instant bone
and blood burned away. Seeds that had contained such promise were scorched to lifeless pits by
a cosmic zephyr traveling at the speed o f death. Love and hope, in its way, were disintegrated
The giants of war had flung their spears. With unyielding and pitiless menace they had
squeezed a formula for horror out o f the Earth, then shaped laws around bombs that turned the
simple atom into the destroyer of worlds. The bombs quickly became the intent o f laws, and the
laws became hopelessly snarled with the laws and bombs of enemies. The drift to the final war
was inevitable because nothing was done to prevent it.
ROBERT JORDAN (AFTER YOSHITOSHI, c.1890)
A shower o f radiation particles fell gently like an invisible snow upon the charred land,
covering the smoking rubbish piles that had been alive moments before. There was silence. A
crazy kind o f silence.
shockproof; standing on the brink of nuclear atomization is our
threat of nuclear confrontation between the nuclear giants yet
The real event that actually happened is no less grim.
simultaneously these wars skirted oblivion by acting as pressure
national/natural posture.
Kai Erickson, editor of the Yale Review, writes, "These, we learn,
vents against the big bang.
The obsessive secrecy of the nuclear powers has not
are the facts of the matter:
Pat Frank wrote in his apocalyptic novel, Alas Babylon,
prevented the international proliferation of nuclear technology.
“A single B-29, lazy in the morning sky, passes over the
that once the U S. and USSR "possessed maximum capability”
Instead, the effect has been to remove the public from the issue
center of town at an elevation o f 25,000 feet, without attracting
in thermonuclear weapons and efficient means of delivering
and make it a process of the very few who, in the short term at
much attention. A few seconds later the whole area is lit up with
them,
"every maxim of war was archaic. War was no longer an
least,
profit
immeasurably
from
nuclear
armaments.
Patriotism
a bluish white glare, which is quickly transformed into a huge
instrument of national policy, only an instrument for international
and claims of national defense and security have obscured the
fireball and a thick column o f smoke beginning its climb into the
suicide. There was no sane alternative to peace"
fact that immense fortunes have been made from a war econo­
sky. Heat rays from the initial flash blister roof tiles for a distance
The debate about entering World War 2 cut through all
my fueled and made self-perpetuating with public money. There
of several hundred yards, char telephone poles more than a mile
levels of American life, an extensive soul-searching discussion,
has been since their inception a disease about nuclear weapons
away and burn exposed human flesh as far away as 21/2 miles.
argument and recrimination such as the nation has seldom
— not radiation, but the belief that a nuclear war can be fought
The heat rays are followed in an instant by a seemingly sound­
experienced (which was ended by Pearl Harbor). Yet no such
and won despite substantial evidence that mutual annihilation
less blast wave that smashes everything standing for a consider­
debate occurred around the use of atomic energy. Instead it was
will be its only result. Now, with the Cold War over, the Soviet
able distance and fills the air with bits of debris. A period of
from the very beginning surrounded in secrecy. "Only a handful,
relative calm follows as the day darkens under clouds of dust
Union banished to history's dungheap, the nuclear arms race
of course, knew what they were creating," Dwight MacDonald
over and the great arsenals deconstructing, fear of using a few
raised by the blast. And then a conflagration, a virtual whirlwind
said after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "It hardly needs to be stres­
nukes seems not so absorbing. After half a century on the brink
o f fire, bursts into motion and rages out o f control for the rest of
sed that there is something askew with a society in which vast
the morning and afternoon. In the meantime minute particles of
of possible oblivion, a city atomized here or there instead of the
numbers of citizens can be organized to create a horror like The
whole planet seems a much smaller threat.
carbon and as well as fission fragments and other debris are
Bomb without ever knowing they are doing it"
The two nuclear bombs that ended World War 2, might
sucked up into the colder air overhead, where they condense
have put an end to war for good. Instead a nuclear arms race
and return in the form o f an oily black rain, slick and full of
The so-called national security state started with
radioactive fallout ..In a matter o f hours, 9 square miles of
between two conflicting and aggressive ideologies, the United
Hiroshima, Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell (authors of
States and the Soviet Union, allies and victors in the war against
Hiroshima and 5 square miles o f Nagasaki — the latter some­
Hiroshima in America: 50 Years o f Denial) write in The Nation
Nazism, divided the world. Each developed huge stockpiles of
what protected between folds of hills — are reduced to dust and
—- a small group of relatively isolated leaders making drastic
nuclear weapons that were capable of obliterating the planet
ashes. ”
decisions and then concealing the nature and consequences of
several times over. The result was a balance of terror defended
As many as 140,000 people in Hiroshima (bombed
their decisions from the public. "The American coverup has been
by arguments that only nuclear parity could prevent a third
August 6, 1945) and 70,000 in Nagasaki (bombed three days
apocalyptic in at least two w ays" they write: "in the grotesque
world war. The U S. and the USSR spent hundreds of billions
later, August 9) died on the day of the attack or in the weeks
human dimension of what has been suppressed and in the
of dollars developing their nuclear arsenals, each government
immediately following, and the death toll rose by another
relationship of that coverup to our continuous embrace of still
130,000 in the next 5 years. Hundreds of thousands more
posing the threat of the other to continually escalate the race.
more destructive nuclear devices." Hiroshima, Lifton and Mitchell
The two superpowers raced through generations of
were severely injured, many to never recover; decades later
say, was "the mother of all coverups, creating distortions,
nuclear weapons, blackmailing each other into increasing their
people continued to die from wounds or illnesses traced to the
manipulative procedures and patterns of concealment that have
arsenals and making treaties that allowed for more and deadlier
effects of the two bombs
affected all of American life. Secrecy has been linked with
The world's most accomplished experts on the conse­
weapons. (One critic exasperatedly wrote after the superpowers'
national security — and vice versa — ever since"
quences of nuclear weapons are the survivors of Hiroshima and
incessant dickering over nuclear arms control for almost 40
Nuclear alienation was the result; starting with Hiroshima,
Nagasaki 'There is irony in the fact that it has taken the world so
years that "not a single weapon has been removed by mutual
officials advised Americans to leave all problems about the bomb
long to learn what it now knows about the Hiroshima and Naga­
agreement") Every small war anywhere in the world was a
to political, scientific and military "experts" — the nuclear priest­
saki bombings, for it is hard to imagine many events in modern
hood. Americans were requested to opt out of the most critical
times that have attracted more attention or been the focus of
issues of the age. Surrendering their right to know more about
more apprehension," Erickson wrote of what he called "one
nuclear policies contributed to the gradual alienation from the
of the greatest horrors humanity has yet imposed upon itself."
political process. Despite mass collusion in official secrecy, and
(The initial Japanese response was that use of the atomic bombs
resentment at what has been concealed and falsified, Lifton and
was "sufficient to brand the [U S ] for ages to come as the
Mitchell ask, T o what extent do we feel ourselves a people who
destroyer of mankind and public enemy number one of social
have been unforgivably deceived in the most fundamental of
justice")
human areas — having to do with how, when and by whose
Most people would rather not be reminded that they live
hand, or lethal technology, are we to die?"
in the age of plutonium, and that wherever they live they are an
Within 40 years the U S. and USSR built up arsenals
hour away from a missile that has their address despite current
which together contained more than 60,000 nuclear warheads.
dismantling of arsenals: enough remain to obliterate the planet
Soviet warheads alone numbered some 45,000 at their peak in
multiple times (and newer ones are under construction). To do
1986. "The USSR has enough multi-megaton nuclear warheads
something means to acknowledge what they prefer to not know
to bomb the USA every hour, every day for a year (or 175 bombs
as if ignorance is a form of protection, and defense of personal
in each state) and use less than half of its supply," Shay Williams
helplessness is formidable. Yet if we go about with heads down
and Jim Weathers of Cannon Beach wrote in a statement that
and hands in pockets and plead that nothing can be done, then
accompanied their 1983 design Save The Human Being. T h e
we have written our doom Our troubles did not originate with the
USA could bomb the USSR with half our supply for almost two
gods we invent nor from the cosmos we hardly understand: the
years." ("Why have we allowed our governments to build over
nuclear devil is our own It is not a bad joke played on us by a
50,000 warheads?" they asked)
malevolent deity nor is it a divine instrument of hurrah for the
Once the United States began to rely on nuclear
A JOURNAL OF ART & OPINION
faithful For all its awesome power and despite the suspicion
weapons to counter the perceived Soviet threat, the issues that
PUBLISHED IN ASTORIA, OREGON
that it is wildly out of control, nuclear technology is a product of
kept the arms race going with the USSR were, as Cart Kaysen
757 27TH STREET 97103
human beings and a problem of human scope that can only be
wrote,
the "profound ideological antipathy and demonization of
MICHAEL PAUL McCUSKER
the other side, the lag between the decision to build new weap­
resolved by human beings.
EDITOR & PUBLISHER
Everybody since 1945 have lived their entire lives under
ons and their deployment, worst-case analyses, Soviet secrecy
the shadow of nuclear war The abnormal is normal We are
NORTH COAST
TIMES EAGLE