MY TURN

Greenfield Recorder, August 6, 2021

By PAT HYNES

On Aug. 6 and 9 here and throughout the world, people will commemorate the hundreds of thousands of Japanese people who died — crushed, vaporized, burned beyond recognition, poisoned by radiation — from the atomic bombs the United States dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

The bombs’ hideous intent and impact constituted a crime against humanity, yet they were trivialized by the nicknames given them — “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.” The propaganda of their supposed necessity to end the war and save American lives was broadcast by our government and received by most Americans as truth.

Many top generals and admirals, more informed about Japan’s readiness to surrender than the American public, spoke forthrightly against their government’s use of the atomic bombs on both military and moral grounds, during and after the war.

In a 1950 memo, Admiral William Leahy, White House chief of staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the war, wrote, “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.” Moreover, “in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. ”

Two atomic bombs devised by our country in 1945 have proliferated to thousands today in nine countries, some more than 3,000 times as powerful as those dropped on Japan, many on trigger alert and able to be launched without time and clarity for humans to make a rational decision. Much vulnerability is baked into the nuclear weapons system: potential computer malfunction, imperfect information for decisionmaking, accident, cyber-attack, human error, and human imperfections like fatigue or drug abuse.

Intentionally killing civilians in war is a war crime but threatening and risking the existence of all life on this planet with nuclear weapons — ecocide — is the ultimate crime. Justifying these weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent to nuclear war — as the U.S. and other nuclear weapons-owning governments do — is truly delusional. Despite the rhetoric of deterrence, we learned a few years ago that our government’s leaders have a set of fortified sites constructed to save themselves in the event of nuclear catastrophe, lest the deterrence factor fails, while the rest of us fend for ourselves. (See “Raven Rock: The Story of the Government’s Secret Plan to Save itself While the Rest of US Die”).

In its new cold war against China, the U.S. is locked in the domination fantasy that we must stay “top cop” in the world with no near competitors. This recent “great power” hostility is being used to justify our upgrading of nuclear weapons to more lethal, versatile and faster-delivery weapons of mass destruction.

While millions lost jobs and businesses suffered in 2020 — victims of the COVID-induced economic crisis, the 2020 fiscal year was “good for the industry” according to a recent Defense News article. Their revenues worldwide were up about 5% from 2019, with US military industrial firms garnering the lion’s share.

Upgrading nuclear weapons never slowed, assured by out-of-the–limelight government subsidies to the weapons’ industries during the COVID crisis.

Since 1946 the U.S. has threated the use of nuclear weapons in conflict at least 12 times, according to security expert Joseph Gerson. But our time is running out. The “Doomsday Clock,” a visual representation of how susceptible the world is to a climate or nuclear catastrophe, registered ‘100 seconds to midnight’ in both 2020 and 2021— the closest it has ever been to the symbolic extermination of humanity since it was conceived in 1947.

Our government should take a lesson from forests. In the past 25 years, scientists have discovered that trees in a forest communicate with each other, share nutrients and water, and act to protect neighboring trees from pests and other threats by releasing repelling chemicals. Forests create microclimates individual tree health depends on the community. Those trees connected in forests by underground life-supporting networks, christened the wood wide web, live far longer lives than isolated trees.

The takeaway lesson for hostile, competing nations: carefully craft rules of cooperation that trump hostility and the habit of weapons and war as a first resort. Like trees in their community of forests, humanity will live longer for sure.

On Friday Aug. 6, meet at THE Emily Williston Library, Easthampton at 7 p.m. for a commemoration nearby at Nashawannuck Pond, cosponsored by Nuclear and Carbon Free Future, The Resistance Center, the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice, and the FC CPR Peace Task Force.

On Saturday, Aug. 7, a standout vigil will be held from 11 a.m to noon on the Greenfield Town Common, with banners, flyers and more.

Pat Hynes is a retired environmental engineer and professor of environmental health at Boston University. She is a board member of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice and member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. She writes a monthly column for the Recorder.

Copyright © 2021 Greenfield Recorder 8/6/2021