De-blessing The Original Child

by pessimist

Sixty years ago today, the ultimate act of terrorism - one that is today used to scare otherwise rational human beings into believing the unbelievable - was first committed.

In an act of wartime revenge rife with racism and nationalism, the city of Hiroshima was levelled by the newest weapon in our arsenal, the atomic bomb. In an instant, 70,000 Japanese paid with their lives for the attack on Pearl Harbor which killed less than 5% of that number.

50,000 more died over the next few days as they were joined by 40,000 citizens of Nagasaki who died immediately in the blast - including American POWs - and tens of thousands of others as they succumbed to the horrible new disease later known as radiation sickness.

Some believe to this day that without these bombs, Japan wouldn't have surrendered, and would have fought to the last person when invaded. Certainly, thanks to the numerous examples of such total annihilation on islands across the Pacific - Attu, Saipan, Peleliu, Okinawa, just to cite a few - there was reason to believe that this would be the case.

But Japan was finished, and had been attempting for over a year to find a way to end the war without losing their emperor as their political and religious leader (which, in the end, they did manage to do despite the unconditional demands placed upon them, needlessly extending the war), and many top Allied officers were of the opinion that a naval blockade and spot attacks upon certain installations and facilities would keep the Japanese in check, eventually forcing them to surrender due to starvation.

I wasn't there, so I can't say who was right. But I can defer to some who were there to tell their story - an Army Air Force chaplain and a US Marine.

Sky Pilot

He blesses the boys as they stand in line The smell of gun grease and the bayonets they shine He's there to help them all that he can To make them feel wanted he's a good holy man - Sky Pilot by The Animals

Father George Zabelka, a Catholic chaplain with the U.S. Air Force, served as a priest for the airmen who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and gave them his blessing.

Days later he counseled an airman who had flown a low-level reconnaissance flight over the city of Nagasaki shortly after the detonation of “Fat Man.” The man described how thousands of scorched, twisted bodies writhed on the ground in the final throes of death, while those still on their feet wandered aimlessly in shock—flesh seared, melted, and falling off. The crewman’s description raised a stifled cry from the depths of Zabelka’s soul:

“My God, what have we done?”

Over the next twenty years, he gradually came to believe that he had been terribly wrong, that he had denied the very foundations of his faith by lending moral and religious support to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The destruction of civilians in war was always forbidden by the church, and if a soldier came to me and asked if he could put a bullet through a child’s head, I would have told him, absolutely not. That would be mortally sinful.

But in 1945 Tinian Island was the largest airfield in the world. Three planes a minute could take off from it around the clock. Many of these planes went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of children and civilians — and I said nothing.

Tombstones of unknown A-bomb victims crowd a hillside at Mitaki Temple, northwest of Hiroshima.

I never preached a single sermon against killing civilians to the men who were doing it. I was brainwashed! It never entered my mind to protest publicly the consequences of these massive air raids. I was told it was necessary—told openly by the military and told implicitly by my church’s leadership. (To the best of my knowledge no American cardinals or bishops were opposing these mass air raids. Silence in such matters is a stamp of approval.) - from an interview with Zabelka published in Sojourners magazine, August 1980.

You're soldiers of God you must understand
The fate of your country is in your young hands
May God give you strength
Do your job real well
If it all was worth it
Only time it will tell

As an Air Force chaplain I painted a machine gun in the loving hands of the nonviolent Jesus, and then handed this perverse picture to the world as truth. I sang “Praise the Lord” and passed the ammunition. As Catholic chaplain for the 509th Composite Group, I was the final channel that communicated this fraudulent image of Christ to the crews of the Enola Gay and the Boxcar.

Nagasaki's Urakami Cathedral, August 1945.

The bombing of Nagasaki means even more to me than the bombing of Hiroshima. As a Catholic chaplain, I watched as the Boxcar, piloted by a good Irish Catholic pilot, dropped the bomb on Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki, the center of Catholicism in Japan. I knew that St. Francis Xavier, centuries before, had brought the Catholic faith to Japan. I knew that schools, churches, and religious orders were annihilated. And yet I said nothing.

By August 9, 1945, we knew what that bomb would do, but we still dropped it. We knew that agonies and sufferings would ensue, and we also knew — at least our leaders knew — that it was not necessary. The Japanese were already defeated. They were already suing for peace. But we insisted on unconditional surrender, and this is even against the Just War theory. Once the enemy is defeated, once the enemy is not able to hurt you, you must make peace.

What War Would Jesus Wage?

For the last 1700 years the church has not only been making war respectable: it has been inducing people to believe it is an honorable profession, an honorable Christian profession. This is not true. We have been brainwashed. This is a lie.

War is now, always has been, and always will be bad, bad news. I was there. I saw real war. Those who have seen real war will bear me out. I assure you, it is not of Christ. It is not Christ’s way. There is no way to conduct real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus. There is no way to train people for real war in conformity with the teachings of Jesus.

I struggled. I argued. But yes, there it was in the Sermon on the Mount, very clear: “Love your enemies. Return good for evil.”

I went through a crisis of faith. Either accept what Christ said, as unpassable and silly as it may seem, or deny him completely. The morality of the balance of terrorism is a morality that Christ never taught. The ethics of mass butchery cannot be found in the teachings of Jesus.

Stopped when the A-bomb hit Hiroshima on the morning of August 6, 1945, this watch belonged to Kengo Futagawa, a 59-year-old who was crossing a bridge 1600 meters from the hypocenter. Horribly burned, Futagawa jumped into the river for relief, and later made his way home, but died on August 22, 1945.

War Ethics

He mumbles a prayer and it ends with a smile The order is given They move down the line But he's still behind and he'll meditate But it won't stop the bleeding or ease the hate

In Just War ethics, Jesus Christ, who is supposed to be all in the Christian life, is irrelevant.

In Just War ethics, no appeal is made to him or his teaching, because no appeal can be made to him or his teaching, for neither he nor his teaching gives standards for Christians to follow in order to determine what level of slaughter is acceptable. He might as well never have existed.

Ethical hairsplitting over the morality of various types of instruments and structures of mass slaughter is not what the world needs from the church, although it is what the world has come to expect from the followers of Christ.

For the 300 years immediately following Jesus’ resurrection, the church universally saw Christ and his teaching as nonviolent. Remember that the church taught this ethic in the face of at least three serious attempts by the state to liquidate her. It was subject to horrendous and ongoing torture and death. If ever there was an occasion for justified retaliation and defensive slaughter, whether in form of a just war or a just revolution, this was it. The economic and political elite of the Roman state and their military had turned the citizens of the state against Christians and were embarked on a murderous public policy of exterminating the Christian community.

Yet the church, in the face of the heinous crimes committed against her members, insisted without reservation that when Christ disarmed Peter he disarmed all Christians. Christians continued to believe that Christ was, to use the words of an ancient liturgy, their fortress, their refuge, and their strength, and that if Christ was all they needed for security and defense, then Christ was all they should have. It was Christ, not Mars, who gave security and peace.

As the young men move out into the battle zone He feels good, with God you're never alone He feels tired and he lays on his bed Hopes the men will find courage in the words that he said

Today the world is on the brink of ruin because the church refuses to be the church, because we Christians have been deceiving ourselves and the non-Christian world about the truth of Christ. There is no way to follow Christ, to love as Christ loved, and simultaneously to kill other people. It is a lie to say that the spirit that moves the trigger of a flamethrower is the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ. It is a lie to say that learning to kill is learning to be Christ-like. It is a lie to say that learning to drive a bayonet into the heart of another is motivated from having put on the mind of Christ. Militarized Christianity is a lie. It is radically out of conformity with the teaching, life, and spirit of Jesus.

Now, brothers and sisters, on the anniversary of this terrible atrocity carried out by Christians, I must be the first to say that I made a terrible mistake. I was had by the father of lies. I participated in the big ecumenical lie of the Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox churches. I wore the uniform. I was part of the system. When I said Mass over there I put on those beautiful vestments over my uniform. (When Father Dave Becker left the Trident submarine base in 1982 and resigned as Catholic chaplain there, he said, “Every time I went to Mass in my uniform and put the vestments on over my uniform, I couldn’t help but think of the words of Christ applying to me: Beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing.”)

All I can say today is that I was wrong. Christ would not be the instrument to unleash such horror on his people. Therefore no follower of Christ can legitimately unleash the horror of war on God’s people. Excuses and self-justifying explanations are without merit. All I can say is: I was wrong! But, if this is all I can say, this I must do, feeble as it is. For to do otherwise would be to bypass the first and absolutely essential step in the process of repentance and reconciliation: admission of error, admission of guilt. I was there, and I was wrong.

A glass jar melted by the blast of the Hiroshima bomb.

Yes, war is hell, and Christ did not come to justify the creation of hell on earth by his disciples. The justification of war may be compatible with some religions and philosophies, but it is not compatible with the nonviolent teaching of Jesus.

All religions have taught brotherhood. All people want peace. It is only the governments and war departments that promote war and slaughter. Each one of us becomes responsible for the crime of war by cooperating in its preparation and in its execution. This includes the military. This includes the making of weapons. And it includes paying for the weapons. There’s no question about that. We’ve got to realize we all become responsible. Silence, doing nothing, can be one of the greatest sins.

So today again I call upon people to make their voices heard. We can no longer just leave this to our leaders, both political and religious. They will move when we make them move. They represent us. Let us tell them that they must think and act for the safety and security of all the people in our world, not just for the safety and security of one country. All countries are inter-dependent. We all need one another. It is no longer possible for individual countries to think only of themselves. We can all live together as brothers and sisters or we are doomed to die together as fools in a world holocaust.

Excerpted from a speech George Zabelka gave at a Pax Christi conference in August 1985 (tape of speech obtained from Notre Dame University Archives). Zabelka died in 1992, but his message, in this speech given on the 40th anniversary of the bombings, must never be forgotten.

Another Marine Reporting, Sir! I've Served My Time In Hell!

Sixty years ago, Paul Pappas was a member of the United State Marine Corps stationed on Saipan, in the Pacific. Today, at 81, he is a committed pacifist who can often be found speaking with the teens in his neighborhood about the evils of war. Paul made the comments below to a gathering at Bellvale Bruderhof (Chester, NY), where he is a member, after reading the story of George Zabelka, the army chaplain who blessed the bombers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the summer of 1945 I was stationed on Saipan, one island north of Tinian Island, where the planes carrying the A-bombs took off, and I was among the first troops to land in Nagasaki after the war.

Still today the lie is perpetuated that the atomic bombs were dropped in order to save lives — American lives that would have been lost if we’d have had to invade Japan. The unit I was with was scheduled to be in that invasion, if it had ever taken place. But it was all a lie.

The Japanese were seeking peace long before August 6, 1945, and our government knew it.

[Tojo was forced from office in July 1944. His successors sought peace mediation (Sweden and the Soviet Union were approached for help in such a process), but the {Allies} offered only unconditional surrender.]

When German planes started to bomb England in 1939 and 1940, Winston Churchill said it was a crime against humanity, and it was. But we went on to commit the same crimes!

This 1945 photo shows the industrial section of Tokyo along the Sumida River. Some 16 square miles of the city were razed by incendiary and other strikes by U.S. warplanes March 9-10, 1945.
The Tokyo attack was aimed in part at demolishing Japanese morale and hastening a surrender. Planners also wanted to wipe out small factories and drive away their employees as a way of choking the economy. (AP Photo)

Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.
- General Curtis E. Lemay

In war there is no limit; you’ll do anything.

Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier.
- General Curtis E. Lemay

And the longer a war goes on, the worse it gets.

The so-called victor is simply the one who proves to be the most destructive, who kills the most people. It’s always the same, in any war you want to talk about.

If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.
- General Curtis E. Lemay

I heard George Webber, a local veteran of the Vietnam War, speak about his experiences. He had been with the Navy, and he said, “I spent three years of my life killing people.” As a former Marine, I have to say the same. It’s completely irrelevant who it was who pulled the trigger, who it was who dropped the bomb. We all did it. That was what we were there for. We were there to kill and destroy.

Nagasaki was the center of Catholicism in Japan. It had a big cathedral, and if I’m not mistaken, it had the biggest Christian population of any city in the country. And yet there we were—Catholics killing Catholics, and Protestants killing Protestants.

Nuked Nagasaki in 1945

After the war, one of the things I grappled with was the question of allegiance. Where, as a Christian, should your allegiance be? As soldiers, our allegiance was to the nation state, not to our brothers and sisters, nor to Jesus.

Jesus said, “He who tries to save his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will save it.” That’s what it always comes down to: Are you going to save your own skin, or are you going to stand up for the truth?

At some point in our lives, we’ll each have to face this question. Of course, we’re all tempted to save our skins. It’s human nature. But the truth has to become more important to us than our own lives.

This worship of the nation state is one of the worst idolatries of our day. In fact, I think it’s probably the worst. But people can’t see it. Like George Zabelka, the chaplain of the A-bomb pilots, said, they are brainwashed.

This is not just about Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I wish with all my heart that this were a time of repentance for our country — a time when we could recognize what we did. But we don’t want to face the horror of it. We’re too “good.” And so I can only foresee judgment coming. I don’t think anything will change without it. We should all be aware where we’re going to stand, what we’re going to represent.

If you think of all our soldiers over in Iraq, Afghanistan, and wherever else they are — how many have been taken in by a lie? Each of us who has seen the truth must live it; we must try to show the world that this endless cycle of violence and killing is not necessary; that people can live together in peace and harmony.

That’s why this time of year—the time of the anniversaries of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—is important. And I hope that people everywhere pause to consider it.

In the morning they return With tears in their eyes The stench of death drifts up to the skies A soldier so ill looks at the sky pilot Remembers the words "Thou shalt not kill" Sky pilot.....sky pilot How high can you fly You never, never, never reach the sky

SPECIAL REPORT: Hiroshima Cover-up Exposed

Six weeks ago, E&P [Editor & Publisher.com] broke the story that articles written by famed Chicago Daily News war correspondent George Weller about the effects of the atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki were finally published, in Japan, almost six decades after they had been spiked by U.S. officials. This drew national attention, but suppressing film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was even more significant, as this country rushed into the nuclear age with its citizens having neither a true understanding of the effects of the bomb on human beings, nor why the atomic attacks drew condemnation around the world.

The public did not see any of the newsreel footage for 25 years, and the U.S. military film remained hidden for nearly four decades. The color U.S. military footage would remain hidden until the early 1980s, and has never been fully aired. It rests today at the National Archives in College Park, Md., in the form of 90,000 feet of raw footage labeled #342 USAF.

In fact, that newsreel footage might have disappeared forever if the Japanese filmmakers had not hidden one print from the Americans in a ceiling.

When that footage finally emerged, [author Greg Mitchell] corresponded and spoke with the man at the center of this drama: Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel A. McGovern, who directed the U.S. military filmmakers in 1945-1946, managed the Japanese footage, and then kept watch on all of the top-secret material for decades.

"I always had the sense," McGovern [said], "that people in the Atomic Energy Commission were sorry we had dropped the bomb. The Air Force -- it was also sorry. I was told by people in the Pentagon that they didn't want those [film] images out because they showed effects on man, woman and child. ... They didn't want the general public to know what their weapons had done -- at a time they were planning on more bomb tests. We didn't want the material out because ... we were sorry for our sins."

McGovern declared that Americans should have seen the damage wrought by the bomb. "The main reason it was classified was ... because of the horror, the devastation," he said. Because the footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was hidden for so long, the atomic bombings quickly sank, unconfronted and unresolved, into the deeper recesses of American awareness, as a costly nuclear arms race, and nuclear proliferation, accelerated.

The atomic cover-up also reveals what can happen in any country that carries out deadly attacks on civilians in any war and then keeps images of what occurred from its own people.

McGovern's crew ... documented the physical effects of the bomb, including the ghostly shadows of vaporized civilians burned into walls;

The circular grey patch on the steps is a shadow formed by a woman who was sitting there waiting for the bank to open for business.

and, most chillingly, dozens of people in hospitals who had survived (at least momentarily) and were asked to display their burns, scars, and other lingering effects for the camera as a warning to the world.

[Other photos here.

NOT FOR THE SQUEEMISH!!!]

At the Red Cross Hospital in Hiroshima, a Japanese physician traced the hideous, bright red scars that covered several of the patients -- and then took off his white doctor's shirt and displayed his own burns and cuts.

See For Yourself

This week, on Aug. 6 and 7, "Original Child Bomb" - a major documentary award winner - will debut on the Sundance cable channel. After 60 years at least a small portion of that footage will finally reach part of the American public in the unflinching and powerful form its creators intended. Only then will the Americans who see it be able to fully judge for themselves what McGovern and Sussan were trying to accomplish in shooting the film, why the authorities felt they had to suppress it, and what impact their footage, if widely aired, might have had on the nuclear arms race -- and the nuclear proliferation that plagues, and endangers, us today.

Strongly recommended for those who have Sundance Channel on their cable systems.

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Views from Ground Zero
(160 x 120 QuickTime MOV, 2.4 MBytes)
This video clip shows views in various directions away from ground zero at Hiroshima.

Japanese Military Headquarters
(160 x 120 QuickTime MOV, 1.0 MBytes)
The Japanese Military Headquarters were 0.3 mi from ground zero at Hiroshima.

It was a closely guarded secret for many, many years that a number of American POW's were held here when the bomb was dropped.

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