Diversity in the Workplace
Page 6
O PINION
June 22, 2016
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Nuclear Bomb Doomsday Clock Still Ticking
How will we
write the next
chapter?
M arian W right
e delMan
President Obama’s
historic visit to Hi-
roshima was an op-
portunity to take a
clear-eyed look back to the irst
and only time nuclear weapons
have been used in war. Germany
had surrendered on May 8, 1945.
Japan refused to surrender and
continued to wage the Paciic War.
President Harry S. Truman faced a
decision on whether or not to drop
the world’s irst atomic bomb in
Japan.
“President Truman formed a
committee of men to tell him if
this bomb would work, and if so,
what he should do with it. Some
members of this committee felt
that the bomb would jeopardize
the future of civilization. They
were against its use. Others want-
ed it to be used in demonstration
on a forest of cryptomeria trees,
but not against a civil or military
target. Many atomic scientists
by
warned that the use of atomic
power in war would be dificult
and even impossible to control.
The danger would be very great.
Finally, there were oth-
ers who believed that if
the bomb were used just
once or twice, on one or
two Japanese cities, there
would be no more war.
They believed the new
bomb would produce eter-
nal peace.”
The description is from Trap-
pist monk and social justice and
peace activist Thomas Merton’s
1962 prose poem “Original Child
Bomb,” a title that is a rough
translation of the root characters
in the Japanese term for the atom.
It includes a numbered list of 41
points about the atomic bomb’s
creation, the decision to drop the
irst one on Hiroshima, and its af-
termath:
“32: The bomb exploded within
100 feet of the aiming point. The
ireball was 18,000 feet across.
The temperature at the center of
the ireball was 100,000,000 de-
grees. The people who were near
the center became nothing. The
whole city was blown to bits and
the ruins all caught ire instant-
ly everywhere, burning briskly.
70,000 people were killed right
away or died within a few hours.
Those who did not die at once
suffered great pain. Few of them
were soldiers.
“33: The men in the plane per-
ceived that the raid had been suc-
cessful, but they thought of the
people in the city and they were
not perfectly happy. Some felt
they had done wrong. But in any
case they had obeyed orders. ‘It
was war.’”
It was war, and despite the ini-
tial reaction by co-pilot Captain
Robert Lewis as he witnessed the
devastation — “My God, what
have we done?” — pilots and
crew members stressed over and
over again that they believed they
did what they had to do. But the
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki have not produced eter-
nal peace. Instead they opened a
Pandora’s Box that can never be
fully locked back up.
I have visited Hiroshima twice
— once with my husband and
once with him and our three sons.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial
(Genbaku Dome), created from
the ruins of the only structure left
standing near the bomb’s hypo-
center, is a reminder of how far
we still have to go to make this a
world worthy of and safe for all
our children.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Sci-
entists’ “Doomsday Clock” has
this ominous message today: It is
still three minutes to midnight.
Beginning in 1947 the clock’s
hands have moved based on the
scientists’ evaluation of wheth-
er events are pushing humanity
closer to or further from nuclear
apocalypse; since 2007 they have
also considered climate change
and other threats that might lead
to global catastrophe. Last year,
the scientists noted: “The prob-
ability of global catastrophe is
very high, and the actions need-
ed to reduce the risks of disaster
must be taken very soon.”
Will we hear and heed?
President Obama’s recent vis-
it should prompt us all to realize
that if we do not want the horrors
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be
repeated ever again we cannot be
complacent.
While we can celebrate all
steps that have been taken to con-
trol access to more weapons in
our nuclear saturated world we
must do even more to protect our
children’s and grandchildren’s
futures in a world rife with war
and religious, racial, gender, sec-
tarian, and political strife.
When anyone argues that the
world might be safer if more
countries had nuclear weapons it
is yet another reminder that his-
tory can and may repeat itself on
our watch if we are not vigilant.
The clock is still ticking.
The same year that “Origi-
nal Child Bomb” was published,
Thomas Merton also wrote this
in the essay “Nuclear War and
Christian Responsibility”: “. . .
there can be no doubt that Hiro-
shima and Nagasaki were, though
not fully deliberate crimes, nev-
ertheless crimes. And who was
responsible? No one. Or ‘histo-
ry.’ We cannot go on playing with
nuclear ire and shrugging off the
results as ‘history.’ We are the
ones concerned. We are the ones
responsible. History does not
make us, we make it—or end it.”
What we have wrought by
trying to play God is still our re-
sponsibility. How will we write
the next chapter?
Marian Wright Edelman is
president of the Children’s De-
fense Fund.