What I owe to August 6
It was a war crime. And my relationship to it is complicated.
Today, August 6, marks eighty years since the bombing of Hiroshima.
Nuclear weapons are clearly abhorrent: weapons of mass destruction designed to level entire areas. So many civilians were killed, there was so much damage beyond military targets, that many believe dropping the bomb was a war crime. I agree.
There’s fierce debate over whether the bombs were a key factor in Japan’s surrender. But if you think that they were, it’s also fair to say that I wouldn’t exist without them.
At the time, my father was detained in a Japanese-run concentration camp in Indonesia. He was surrounded by brutality — some of his first memories are of atrocities being committed there — and was significantly malnourished. Food was scarce. His digestive system was beginning to fail. Had he not been rescued by the camp by allied forces when he was, he undoubtedly would have died.
I’m not glad that the bomb dropped or that somewhere between 150,000 and 246,000 people died. I’m not glad that atomic weapons exist or have the potential to be used again. I’m not glad that the US unilaterally decided to target civilians in their hundreds of thousands.
But I am glad that my dad survived. I’m grateful for him. I’m grateful to be alive.
It was unquestionably a barbaric act. No nuclear weapon should be dropped again. No child should be intentionally starved again. There should be no war like it again. There is no moral clarity in war except that human life is valuable and precious, and that children should be protected.
