Meditations on Tragedy and the Criminality of the bombing of Hiroshima on the 80th Anniversary

Meditations on Tragedy and the Criminality of the bombing of Hiroshima on the 80^th Anniversary

広島原爆投下の悲劇性と犯罪性に対する談話

８０周年において

Emanuel Pastreich

President

The Asia Institute

On August 6, 1945, the United States Army Air Forces dropped the atomic bomb “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, killing over 70,000 of its citizens and leaving at least as many ill, many to die, from radiation sickness. It was the beginning of a horrible madness that seized the American soul from within and that led us on the ghoulish march towards endless war and the destruction of humanity.

The United States government dismissed reports from Japan of radiation sickness in the months that followed, claiming that such reports were just conspiracy theories. It would take enormous battles within the United States to finally get us to admit that this atomic weapon was fundamentally different.

But the planners in the War Department knew exactly what sort of a bomb had been dropped and what it would do to people. American researchers anxiously investigated the effects of atomic warfare from the very start. They thought that information was of infinite value, much more valuable that human lives or peace.

At the same time, Americans had already started to use the words freedom and democracy as the velvet glove to hide the steel fist of the technocratic totalitarian destruction of society and culture.

The Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb seduced scholars of physics from around the world, taking men who were fascinated with the nature of atoms from a scientific perspective, and compelling, or bribing, them into cooperation in this horrible project to create a nightmare genie; one that could never be put back into the bottle.

The Manhattan Project was immense, with access to unlimited resources, but it was kept entirely secret in an illegal and unconstitutional manner so that citizens of the United States had no idea what was being developed, or for what purpose. That form of unaccountable governance by classified directives in the interest of “national security” continues to the present day, extending far beyond the military, and corrupting all of the American government.

The US government has never formally recognized the true purpose of that bombing, or of the bombing of Nagasaki where a similarly destructive weapon was dropped on August 9. There is no doubt among historians in Japan and the United States that the United States military was fully aware that Japan was preparing to surrender at that moment. There was absolutely no need for the use of that horrific bomb as military officers later admitted.

The purpose of the bombing was to test the weapon and to demonstrate just what sort of damage it could inflict. The purpose was also to send a threat to the Soviet Union, and to all other nations, that American military primacy was indisputable. That message drew on the very worst of imperialist thinking.

I want to take this opportunity, as an American who has studied the remarkable culture of Japan for decades, who has written on Japanese literature and philosophy, and who also ran as a candidate for president of the United States in the Green Party in 2023, the first Asian expert to become a presidential candidate in American history, to do what no previous president of the United States has had the decency to do.

As a representative of the United States, I take full responsibility for this atrocity that was committed eighty years ago today, on August 6, 1945. I hold that the United States has a duty to fully admit the nature of that attack and to pledge that nuclear weapons, or similar weapons, will never be used in such a manner, and that they will be abolished in the near future.

I pledge that the United States will declassify all materials related to the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb and those related to the Army Air Forces’ planning for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That will allow the entire world, and above all the Japanese people, to know the true story of this atrocity and to understand the deep flaws in American society that lie behind that act so that we can, at last, start to repair them. It is equally important that the American people themselves know what happened then, and how those actions are related to the current deadly addiction to war of the United States.

I believe that there were corporations and specific actors, beyond the vague and ambiguous term “government,” who pushed for this immoral act, and that those specific entities have legal liability, even today.

More importantly, I pledge that the United States will eliminate all nuclear weapons from its arsenal in the next ten years, and that such a step is not fast enough if we consider the growing danger of nuclear war we face today.

The United States should not try to hide the truth. Nuclear weapons today extend beyond strategic nuclear weapons to include hybrid and miniature nuclear weapons and munitions employing depleted uranium. All, all these weapons must be abolished.

The United States must sign immediately the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and it must stop encouraging other nations to develop these dangerous weapons.

Most importantly, the United States must recognize that the best way to bring about peace and to reduce the risk of nuclear war is not by using the horribly flawed idea of “deterrence” but rather by the United States rapidly reducing and then eliminating its own massive stockpile of nuclear weapons. We pledged to do exactly that when we signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in 1968, a treaty that requires that signatories must:

“Pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

It is the failure of the United States to uphold this commitment to disarmament that has brought us to the brink of destruction. We can regain our moral authority, which has been obliterated over the last six months, over the last six years, and over the last sixty years, by committing to eliminating nuclear weapons, and also landmines, cluster bombs, weaponized drones, nano-weapons, biological weapons, and other forms of information and psychological warfare.

The United States continues to develop those horrific weapons at this moment.

American generals, speak with foolish confidence about winning nuclear wars, and billions are being invested in tactical nuclear weapons which make the move from a conflict on the battlefield to global nuclear war far more likely.

Since President Obama, over a trillion dollars has been spent on modernizing, and increasing, America’s nuclear weapons, including the massive privatization of the systems for the control of nuclear weapons in the Strategic Command. The reckless introduction of AI and other command systems run by IT firms like Oracle and Amazon into the command and control of nuclear weapons creates the distinct possibility that nuclear weapons will be launched by an autonomous system in response to fake information.

Humanity has no choice but to eliminate nuclear weapons before AI leads us to destroy each other.

We must recognize that the foundations of security are found in the long-term protection of the environment, conservation of water, soil and air, in local organic agriculture and the promotion of a healthy participatory culture that plans for the future in terms of decades and centuries, not seconds and minutes of trading stock and bonds, or exchanging drones and missiles.

We must change our thinking from within, develop our understanding of human society first, and then we can change everything about our concept of security.

American civilization

There is a bright and a dark side to American civilization. It forms a complex chiaroscuro that inspires and repels the world at the same time.

On the one hand, the United States, from the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the promulgation of the Constitution in 1787, offered a new model for government that transformed the entire world and that inspired independence movements everywhere. The government established in the United States was based on a constitution that guaranteed basic rights to all citizens and that established the separation of powers between the congressional, judicial, and executive branches in a manner meant to avoid dictatorship. America was a nation that did not empower a king, or a nobility, and that excluded the church and religious organizations from governance. The American nation was a tremendous innovation and we are all products, in one way or another, of that bold experiment in creating a democratic republic.

But there was a dark side as well to the United States.

First, the wealth that attracted so many to America was a product of racist exploitation. That wealth came not from the hard work of pioneers, but rather from the seizure of the lands of the natives, and the exploitation of Africans kidnapped and used as slaves. Racism remains strong in American culture today, even as some in America advocate for a more equitable and open society.

During the American occupation of Japan, Americans told Japanese that Japan should have a more democratic and free society. But at that time America refused to give African Americans the right to participate in politics back home. That was the fundamental contradiction in American civilization.

It is hard to understand how the racism and violence in America coexists with the traditions of liberty, freedom, and democracy, but it does. The worst of American racism is returning today, and racism extends to Asians, to Japanese. The recent imprisonment of a Korean American scientist Tae Heung “Will” Kim without charges in the United States, who is being held in a secret prison right now, suggests what may lie ahead for all Asians.

At the same time that Americans talked about democracy in the 19^th century, the United States imitated Great Britain and tried to form its own empire, starting with the Philippines, and that empire has only grown larger since. The violence employed by American forces in the Philippines was shameful and it went against everything that the United States advocated for around the world under the banner of democracy and freedom. We saw the same contradictions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

London banks started planning in the late 19^th century to bring the United States back into the British Empire and they were largely successful at establishing a special relationship between the United States and Great Britain that negated the Declaration of Independence and that dragged America into foreign wars for British interests, and that eventually led to the United States to inherit the cursed mantle of the British Empire, instead of setting up a transparent and participatory global order under the United Nations after the Second World War.

That failure of the United States to act as a republic among republics after the Second World War, its decision to become an empire while pretending not to be, and its decision to try to rule the oceans and the skies with its military, is what produced the nightmare of endless war that we witness today. That nightmare threatens to drag Japan into future wars and to oppress everyone, including Americans.

The United States never returned to a peace economy after 1945, and its dependency on the use of petroleum for economic activity, the promotion of the production of automobiles, planes, and weapons as the primary engine to drive its consumption economy, is the consequence of that failure to return to a peace- time economy. America ceased to value agriculture and home crafts. America denigrated local economies and destroyed family-centered economic systems saying that they were backward and primitive. America was reshaped forever and then it reshaped the world too in its own twisted image.

What we did to Japan

It was a sin to destroy Japan’s traditional craft culture, a noble tradition that placed value on enduring objects made from bamboo, wood, and stone, and to replace it with a consumer society dependent on disposable plastic utensils and products designed with built-in obsolescence.

It was a sin to undermine Japanese values of respecting humanity, living in harmony with nature, and frugality in daily life, and instead to brainwash Japanese into believing that business administration focused on gaining short-term profits by taking advantage others was more respectable than supporting community and family.

Traditional Japanese fabric made from flax, silk, or cotton, was woven to last and used for the most comfortable and healthy clothing appropriate to Japan’s climate. But the kimono and yukata dresses, the zori and geta sandals, that I saw when I first visited Japan have disappeared. In their place are disposable Western-style nylon and polyester clothes, plastic shoes, and other poorly made accouterments that cause discomfort and disease, and produce mountains of undegradable waste.

Wooden Japanese houses breathe with the wind, water, and soil around, creating a true refuge for the family. They have been replaced with cold-blooded concrete housing complexes funded by multinational banks that have devastated traditional neighborhoods even more brutally than the bombings of World War Two.

Japanese food is highly nutritious and delicious, but has become a rarity these days. In its place we find American-style fast food, that is to say processed foods heavy with sugar and carbohydrates and filled with cancer-causing additives. What is left of traditional Japanese cuisine is for tourism and novelty.

The highly literate, artistic, and expressive Japanese have been stripped of their identity through decades of bombardment with consumerism propaganda that has distorted basic values. The role of American corporations promoting a culture based on money and waste in Japan was substantial.

We Americans can learn the most from Japan, from its long traditions of preserving forests and maintaining farmland over centuries, that were perfected in the Tokugawa period. Japan’s traditions of frugality and respect for nature are exactly what we will need in the future. We have no room in our search for real security for the ruthless pursuit of profit.

The United States had been possessed by the demon of war since 1945 and was jinxed by the sweet curse of victory. The United States that continued to wage indiscriminate wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries. That series of wars allowed a ruthless demon to reach its bloody hands deep into the American soul.

The “rights of the people” enshrined in the Constitution degenerated into “consumer hedonism,” “freedom” was replaced with “narcissism,” and America, the victorious nation, bravely set out on a course to damnation.

As a candidate for president, Donald Trump employed the slogan “Make America Great Again.” However, granted the chaos and violence that Japanese are facing at home and abroad, we have no time for such vague nostalgia.

Dear citizens of Japan, I am sorry for the crimes of the United States I have described.

“Gomen nasai!” I am sorry!

And from now on, I hope that you join with us as true friends and help us to build a new America; not an America that is “great again” for America was never great.

As the poet Langston Hughes wrote,

“Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!”

Speech Delivered in Japanese at Isshuikai Meeting in Shinjuku, Tokyo

August 6, 2025