MOSCOW, August 6, 2005 – 60th anniversary of Hiroshima! CNN and BBC both had coverage of it – tens of thousands of Japanese commemorating the tragedy with a minute of silence on the streets of the city and blanketing the river with “peace candles,” etc.
I was 12 years old when the world’s first atomic bomb exploded. I don’t recall any great outpouring of compassion – the Japanese were, after all, our enemy. Perhaps some awesome shock at the inconceivable destructive power it held. But we were told that dropping the bomb shortened the war by months – maybe years – and saved the lives of tens of thousands, maybe a million, American soldiers.
The war did end just a week and a day later. I still have the August 15 edition of the Orlando Morning Sentinel proclaiming in 100-point headlines:
PEACE: jAPS QUIT – The Sentinel purposely lower-cased “japanese” and called them “japs” throughout World War II as a deliberate expression of disdain.
I have also been told – I think the first time was when I was in junior spy school at Fort Holabird in Baltimore in 1957 – that Russia entered the war against Japan only in its final days, and then only to be sure Russia would have a hand in divvying up the Japanese spoils.
By happenstance, I just came across a submission to the EnergyResource web site from a Marvin Gregor, who describes himself as a historian and scholar in Renton, WA, which puts the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagosaki in quite a different light and paints an entirely different picture of the role of my host country in the defeat of Japan.
According to Gregor, instead of the million U.S. casualties which McGeorge Bundy and co-author Simpson said were prevented in their “masterful piece of propaganda” in Harper’s Magazine in February, 1947, “the more realistic estimate from a meeting of the Joint chiefs of Staff and President Truman before the war’s end was that 22,576 casualties (killed, wounded, and missing) would result from the invasion with the possibility of another 11,000 casualties resulting from securing the landing afterwards.”
In fact, Gregor continues, the U.S. most likely wouldn’t have had to invade at all!
“The Soviet Union, living up to its pledge, declared war on Japan on August 9 [as soon as propitious after Hitler’s defeat on the western front] and [would have] proceeded to demolish Japan's mainland army and then look to Japan itself.”
Futhermore, he contends, “Russia's declaration of war has been cited as being much more important than our use of atomic weapons in causing Japan to capitulate.” Atomic weapons were instead used by the Japanese simply as a “convenient excuse” for the military staff to capitulate to the overwhelming power that was being arrayed against them.
“The best explanation for our employment of the bombs,” therefore, Gregor concluded, “was that we had them so we used them.”
Even more shaking is the assertion by linguist, scholar, and social critic Naom Chomsky that the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, which opened the U.S. Pacific theater of battle in that most destructive (so far) of all wars, was not an unwarranted act of unprovoked treachery as President Roosevelt told us then, and as I have always believed.
“It is perhaps worth bearing in mind,” says Chomsky in an essay on “Resort To Fear” published just last month, “that Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, ‘the date which will live in infamy,’ in FDR's ringing words -- were more than justified under the doctrines of "anticipatory self-defense" that prevail among the leaders of today's self-designated ‘enlightened States,’ the US and its British client.
Evidently, that is a far more powerful justification for bombing military bases in US colonies than anything conjured up by Bush-Blair and their associates in their execution of "pre-emptive war" -- and accepted, with tactical reservations, throughout the mainstream of articulate opinion.
I have also learned from another source that the US “had embargoed and all but blockaded oil and rubber from SE Asia getting to Japan.” Without oil and rubber, Japan could not remain an imperial power. So attempting to destroy the forces that were trying to choke off their lifeline – i.e., the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor -- was a logical reaction for national survival.
I’m sure my high school and college history teachers didn’t intentionally lie to me. They were simply parroting the official American propaganda line. If President Roosevelt or President Truman or President Eisenhower said it, it was true. The real truth is that much of our history has been patriotic propaganda -- simply the obverse of our enemies’.
All Russian high school students know, for instance, that America and England played a very minor role in the victory over Hitler’s fascism. By far the major factors were the brilliant execution of the war by Comrade Stalin and the indomitable will and triumphant fighting spirit of the Soviet Army and the Russian people.
I once had to argue long and hard with Vanya that America even fought in the war. His university history professor had told him that Americans never took up arms against Hitler and actually abetted him in his global assault so we could sell the rest of the world arms and munitions and grow rich and fat.
If he had been reading the history of the Bush Family, of Grandpappy Prescott Bush’s representing Hitler’s financial interests in the U.S. – for money, of course, the only guiding principle the Bush family has ever recognized -- while der Fuhrer was gearing up for war with Europe and with us, Vanya’s professor’s skepticism would have been warranted.
But the rest of the country, just as today, didn’t share the Bush family’s cynicism, greed, mendacity, and amoralism. The overwhelming majority of Americans in the ’30s and ’40s were blessed – or burdened – with a well-honed sense of honor and an over-worked conscience in separating right from wrong.
It is a burden the Bush family didn’t bear then and still doesn’t today.
So! Did 140,000 innocent Japanese civilians die needlessly 60 years ago today so that we, instead of Russia, could claim victory in the Pacific? Will we ever really know?
Speaking of Vanya, I got to practice my “noes” some more last week. As I was arriving at the British Forum for my one-on-one lesson with Zhana, an art history student and mother of a five-year-old, the SMS signal on my mobile phone sounded:
Plus ca change, plus c’est le meme chose! Nothing ever changes. Dima is still going on binges, passing out, and having mobile phones, documents, and money stolen. I can see it clearly: He boarded the train, immediately got black-out drunk as he did when we went to Nizhny Novgorod together two-and-a-half years ago (Chapt. 47), passed out on the train, and awoke still drunk and hung over in the Crimea to find all his money gone!
Surprise, surprise!
I’ve repeatedly warned him to lay off the bottle, that he is an alcoholic, and that he will never be successful at anything if he doesn’t give up the booze. But alcoholism, as an addiction, defies logic. Since he still had his bank job, I really had high hopes that he had gotten his drinking under control.
Even though he obviously hasn’t, I still would probably have sent him the money – if I had had any. As it is, all I could do was SMS him back a polite “no.”:
I could piously hope it will teach him a lesson. But alcoholics don’t learn lessons.
I ran into Bill Skyrme at BF a little later in the morning. He was uncommunicative to the point of being surly. Would hardly speak to me. Is this because I haven’t repaid him the USD1,000 I borrowed for the twins? But when I had mentioned earlier that it looked like the twins would have the money for him on time, he had replied with something like, “no hurry.”
So, figuring I could repay him by the middle of the month, I hadn’t said anything to him when I didn’t have the money on the 1st of August.
But he was obviously offended!
I tried to call him that evening. No answer. That’s odd. He has an answering machine. Even if he’s not home, the answering machine should have clicked on. Maybe he was ill. Maybe that’s why he looked so terrible that morning. Maybe it had nothing to do with me?
I sent him an e-mail:
Are you worried about the USD1,000 I owe you? I'm sorry I haven't talked to
you about it. The twins have not repaid anything yet, so I'm trying to
figure out my budget. I will pay you as much as I can as soon as I can, but
I will have the full grand back no later than the first week in September.
I'm very sorry that I wasn't able to pay you by the first of August as I
promised, but I got the feeling that you weren't desperate for it at the
moment. But please don't be concerned. You'll have it within a month.
I tried several times to call you tonight, but no answer.
Thanks again for everything.
I reached him by phone the next evening: “Bill, Are you upset with me?”
“Yes, very.”
“Because I haven’t paid you back the money?”
“Yes.”
“Bill, I’m terribly, terribly sorry. The twins haven’t paid me back, and I got the impression from you that you weren’t desperate for it, so I didn’t get in touch with you. I should have.
“I also borrowed USD3,000 from someone else, and I’ve been working on paying them back, too. If you need it, I can give you USD300 or USD400 tonight.”
He immediately softened. “No, no, that’s all right. If I can have some by the 15th of the month….”
“I’ll have at least half by the middle of the month, and the rest by the end of the month. Please don’t be upset with me. Your friendship and respect are very important to me, and I don’t want to lose it. I would never stiff you, Bill.”
So we ended the conversation on a friendlier note.
But he will never trust me again. It has taught me – rather late, I’m afraid – the lesson that I should have learned decades ago: Don’t lend money to friends. But I was so sure that the twins had their act together.
It’s actually worse than I thought. In fact, Zhorik was communicating with Anya’s fiancé Dima by SMS on my mobile phone last night, and the messages were still there this morning. According to a message from Dima, Sergei has lost his slot machine business. It probably means he lost all his investment – my investment.
I’m not angry. I am disappointed, and I feel very sorry for Sergei. He was so confident, so positive, so proud of himself. What is this doing to his self-image? I would like to talk to him, to tell him that I don’t care what has happened, I still love him, that nothing has changed between us. But I have no way of getting in touch with him.
Regardless, I will never loan him or Andrei any more money. I have already committed to lending Yegor USD10,000 for his apartment in December/January, but it will be a formal loan with a schedule of repayments and a collateral clause.
And I myself will renew my commitment never to borrow money again. I would never have borrowed it for myself. But I was so sure the twins were onto a good deal. USD5,000 to buy cigarettes, double their money, buy another USD5,000, etc., etc. What happened?
No future “good deal” will ever be good enough to pry money out of me, and certainly to induce me to borrow money for somebody else.
Shakespeare’s timeless advice, “Nor borrower nor lender be,” is still valid. Sorry, Bill, I should have listened.
But am I really being honest with myself? Frankly, no. The truth is, I knew full well that this was a real possibility. In fact, I assumed it. I immediately began figuring out how I could pay off the debts if they didn’t. I was merely hoping against hope.
But I could never have been at peace with myself if I had not lent them the money and Andrei had lost his USD11,000 truck and had to start all over again with nothing. Now I can honestly say I have given them every opportunity, every chance, to prove themselves. Their failure, if it is one, can never be laid to me. I will never lose sleep worrying about “what if…..”
And while my present inability to repay the loan is an embarrassing inconvenience, it is hardly a disaster. Beginning next month I will be taking in USD5,000 - USD6,000 a month, and I will quickly rebuild my nest egg. Now I have a perfect rationale for saying “no” to everybody. So I can pile up the little stash of money I’ve been trying for seven-and-a-half years to do.
And the Mary Poppins in me says they may yet justify the faith and hope I’ve put in them.
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious! Thanks, Mary.
