Opinion

The A-Bomb's Legacy

By SCOTT T. HARDS

It's an annual ritual here in Japan. On August 6 and 9, the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki pray for the victims of the atomic bombs, which destroyed those cities in 1945. And every year, those cities' mayors give speeches urging the banning of nuclear weapons in the name of world peace. And every year the mass media dutifully record these events. You don't need to look at the evening paper on August 6 to know what's on the front page.

While I am as much a proponent of world peace as anybody, I cannot help but think that the efforts of these anti-nuclear activists might not be misplaced if world peace is truly the goal they hope to achieve. Why? I don't believe that nuclear weapons are a serious threat to mankind.

Consider the following:

(1) No nuclear weapon has been used in anger in 52 years. Since the bombing of Nagasaki, not a single person has been killed by a nuclear weapon in wartime.

(2) The possibility of global nuclear war is so small as to be insignificant. The United States and the Soviet Union built their arsenals to use against one another. Even during the height of the Cold War, and during the war in Vietnam, neither side used them because they each knew the repercussions would be far too horrible (thanks to the lessons learned at Hiroshima and Nagasaki). Now, with the USSR having collapsed, those two nations effectively have nobody against whom to use their weapons.

(3) Nuclear weapons in the hands of responsible nations provide an effective deterrent against "rogue" nations like North Korea, Libya or Iraq, which have sought to acquire nuclear weapons on their own for offensive purposes. While the total elimination of nuclear weapons is a noble goal, I believe it would be dangerous for the major powers to destroy their entire arsenals while such governments continue to exist.

At the same time that these peace movements overestimate the danger from nuclear weapons, they underestimate the horror of conventional weapons by ignoring them. On the night of March 9, 1945, 300 American B-29 bombers dropped 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo. The resulting fires killed anywhere from 85,000 to 100,000 people ― nearly as many people as died at Hiroshima and more than were killed in Nagasaki. Yet the anniversary of this event passes each year with hardly any mention by the media. Similar bombings killed tens of thousands of people in the German cities of Hamburg, Dresden and Kassel.

While most uses of conventional weapons don't produce this kind of horrible catastrophe, in the 52 years since the atomic bombs took their last victim, millions and millions of people have been killed around the world by these less spectacular weapons. While I applaud the work of anti-nuclear activists, I believe they should expand their efforts to include all forms of weapons if they truly want to make the world a safer place.

Shukan ST: Aug. 29, 1997

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