The second Monday of the month of October has been a federal holiday in the United States since 1937. The reason? Columbus Day. The landing of Christopher Columbus on the shores of Hispaniola in 1492, and the subsequent European incursion into the native American territories, has been the subject of official commemorations and celebrations. Columbus Day is the time when American audiences are exhorted to celebrate the ostensibly heroic adventure of the great explorer, and subsequent economic and political success of the European project to colonise the indigenous civilisations of the American continents. This laid the groundwork for the emergence of the American nation-state as a capitalist entity. The story of great explorers from Europe, discovering hitherto ‘untouched’ lands, and forging the path to a new settled and urbanised white-settler nation-state has particular resonance in Australia.

The story of the intrepid and entrepreneurial Columbus, actively seeking out an imperial patron in his determined quest to discover new lands for adventure, excitement and the expansion of scientific understanding, is taught in American schools and universities. A native of Genoa, an Italian trading city-state, he courted the European monarchs of his time, finally finding acceptance at the Spanish court. The Spanish monarchs, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, had done their bit of ethnic cleansing in the Iberian peninsula, expelling the Spanish Jewish community in 1492, and conquering the largely Moorish territory of Granada, thus forcibly converting the entirety of the Iberian territories to their brand of Christianity. The Spanish Inquisition was given free reign to extend its fanatic savagery. Classical books, libraries, manuscripts that had been preserved by the educated Moorish Islamic emirate were systematically destroyed. The civilisation that had flourished in Granada, its cultural and educational contributions, had to be wiped out.

What has that got to do with Columbus? In the same year, the Spanish royals gave their consent to Columbus’ proposed journey of conquest – a fact not lost on Columbus himself, who recorded as much in his diaries. The Spanish royalty had enforced its religious and political conformity on their Iberian territory, defeating and expelling the Jewish and Muslim communities. Now, the stage was set for the barbarity of European expansion to begin.

Columbus did not actually discover the Americas – he was lost and thought he had reached India. However, with that out of the way, Columbus set about making a tremendous impact both demographically and economically on the native civilisations that initially welcomed his presence. The late Howard Zinn, the socialist American historian, wrote of how the Bahama Indians, the Arawaks, were quite hospitable towards the new arrivals – the boat people – but Columbus had other plans. He immediately began to take slaves, subjugating whole tribes and nations to his project of exploiting the natural and mineral resources of Hispaniola. Setting up gold mines, he forced thousands to work to death, taking hostages, killing any recalcitrant persons, and using brute force to implant his economic system on the population.

Howard Zinn wrote that:

In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up 1,500 Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the 500 best specimens to load onto ships. Of those 500, 200 died en route.

Too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

Apart from the lucrative gold mines, Columbus found another use for the indigenous people – as slave labour on enormous landed estates, the encomiendas. The indigenous population was not only physically subjugated, but its culture, languages, and education had to be eliminated. He also engaged in another form of entrepreneurial activity – sexual slavery. Columbus himself wrote that:

A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand.

Back in 2004, in an article called ‘Rethinking Columbus Day’, published in Counterpunch magazine, Patrick W. Gavin quotes the words of Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish priest who wrote of what he saw while accompanying Columbus on his exploits. De Las Casas recorded what he had witnessed:

“What we have committed in the Indies stands out among the most unpardonable offenses ever committed against God and mankind and this trade [Indian slavery] as one of the most unjust, evil and cruel among them.” Natives who did not deliver enough gold had their hands cut off. Those who ran away were hunted down by dogs. Prisoners were burned to death. Las Casas wrote that his countrymen “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” To avoid such treatment, many natives committed suicide, and mothers killed their children to spare them from such an abject life.

The European enslavement of the Americas is no cause for celebration. As James Nevius wrote in an article published in Common Dreams online magazine, Columbus was a lost sadist, and does not deserve a holiday in his honour. The Columbus Day narrative feeds into a false history of the Americas as untamed, wild nature, which was subdued and flourished due to the economic and cultural enhancements brought by European settlement. The purpose of removing this holiday and replacing it with Indigenous Peoples Day is not just to regurgitate a painful history, necessary as that is. It is also to celebrate a series of cultures and nations that have been struggling to find acceptance and understanding.

Movement to abolish Columbus Day based in indigenous people’s resistance

A number of American cities have moved to officially replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day, and this is a welcome achievement. Seattle city authorities abolished Columbus Day last year, 9 other cities have followed suit this year, and Alaska has become the first state to rename Columbus Day the Indigenous Peoples Day. We must stop celebrating an enemy, and recognise the reality of the Indigenous nations, and their suffering at the hands of European conquest. The push to abolish Columbus Day has broader political, social and cultural implications.

It compels all of those nations that have their origins in colonial-settler projects – like Australia – to face up to uncomfortable truths about history and identity. Columbus represents the European conquistador, much like Captain James Cook is the archetypal British pirate………sorry, explorer. Columbus, in a similar way to Cook, was the first boat person, to establish his presence on lands that had complex and cultured civilisations. The resistance of the indigenous nations forms the basis for the abolition of Columbus Day, and also sets a necessary precedent for those of us in Australia who originate from the non-Indigenous nations to re-examine our own history of pushing the indigenous people to the margins. We can start by heeding the words of socialist councillor in Seattle, Kshama Sawant, who stated that abolishing Columbus Day is part of a wider struggle against racism and discrimination:

The 15th-century explorer “played such a pivotal role in the worst genocide humankind has ever known,” Sawant said, referring to the decimation of the Native American population in the decades after Columbus.

She continued:

“Learning about the history of Columbus and transforming this day into a celebration of indigenous people and a celebration of social justice … allows us to make a connection between this painful history and the ongoing marginalization, discrimination and poverty that indigenous communities face to this day.”

The Independent newspaper carried an inspirational story on October 2 2015; the 43 Group, a band of British Jews who fought against the resurgence of British neo-fascism after the end of the world war, is to be the subject of a new TV series. While half a million Jews served in the Soviet Army during the years of World War Two, about 30 000 fought in the British army. After witnessing the horrors of that war, with its concentration camps, systematic extermination of subject peoples and maltreatment of Jews and other ethnic groups as ‘sub-human’, the Jewish veterans of that conflict returned to their homes in Britain, only to find that British neo-fascism was marching in the streets, stirring up hatred against alien peoples, namely Jewish communities.

Oswald Mosley, the main British exponent of fascism in the UK, had reorganised his group, and the Blackshirts were on the rampage in London. Interred during the war, Mosley had led the British Union of Fascists, (BUF) the largest ultra-rightists and white supremacist political organisation in Britain. During the 1930s and 1940s, their shrill rhetoric against Jews, socialists and anyone who opposed fascism brought terror directly to the streets of Britain. The defeat of Nazi Germany had removed the immediate appeal of fascism to the British public, and after the war, newsreels about the genocide of the Jews brought home the full genocidal horror of the concentration camps.

Morris Beckman, a Jewish veteran of the British army, returned home after seeing the devastating consequences of that war; however, as the Guardian explained:

He, like thousands of British Jews, came home from the war thinking fascism was buried. Each week they saw fresh newsreel evidence of the Nazi genocide. But they were sickened to find Mosley released from internment and reviving the British Union of Fascists, which had flourished in Jewish areas such as the East End before the war. He says:

“The Talmud Torah (religious school) in Dalston had its windows smashed. Jewish shops were daubed ‘PJ’ (Perish Judah). You heard, ‘We have got to get rid of the Yids’ and ‘They didn’t burn enough of them in Belsen’.”

With the Labour home secretary James Chuter Ede refusing to take action and the Jewish establishment urging peaceful protest, the demobbed Jews had had enough.

The reformed Mosleyites – calling themselves the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women, were railing against the foreign presence in England, smashing businesses owned by Jews, daubing racist graffiti across the streets, and terrorising the Jewish community.

Another group of British ex-servicemen and women decided that they had had enough. From April 1946, 43 Jewish war veterans met at the Maccabi Sports and established the 43 Group. Their purpose? To confront and disrupt the Mosleyite fascist organisation, sabotage its activities and shut it down. From then on, whenever and wherever the neo-fascist groups organised to intimidate and terrorise the Jewish community, they were confronted by Jewish ex-soldiers and paratroopers equipped with the necessary skills to fight back.

Let The Independent correspondent, Cahal Milmo, elaborate the consequences:

The result was a succession of pitched battles during fascist gatherings where the 43 Group and their opponents gave no quarter. Knuckledusters, knives, steel-toed boots and sharpened belt buckles were wielded on both sides with devastating effect. One former veteran said he was told: “We’re not here to kill. We’re here to maim.”

It is easy to dismiss post-war fascism of the Mosleyite variety as a lunatic fringe movement, unworthy of so much attention and publicity. Let us not forget that Mosley’s reinvention of British fascism as a nationalistic defender of British values and empire against the swarthy tide of foreignness was not an uncommon view in Britain in the years after the war. Mainstream British political parties have found electoral success with campaigns designed to stir up xenophobic sentiment among the voting public. While the Mosleyites transcended social class, incorporating the thuggish hooligan in the street into their ranks, it is the quiet support of the genteel entrepreneurial class that has provided expression for the anti-immigrant political stream in Britain, minus the low-level shouting and thumping hooligan aspect. Anti-semitism and racism of the street has always found a similar yet refined expression in the socially acceptable middle and upper classes in Britain.

The 43 Group spent five years breaking up fascist meetings, confronting white supremacist violence on the streets, and infiltrating fascist groups for the purpose of smashing them. Jewish cemeteries were guarded to protect them from desecration by racist vandals. Aided by sympathetic black taxi drivers, who provided crucial intelligence updates and transport, the Mosleyites were successfully repulsed. The British variant of neo-fascism was broken. The Mosleyites disbanded in 1950.

Their story, to be told in a new television series, is an interesting, inspirational and encouraging episode amidst the decline and greyness of post-war Britain. When ordinary people stand up against hatred, they can achieve extraordinary accomplishments.

Go read the article in The Independent here.

Eric Cantona, the long-term French footballer (now retired), was in the news again only a few days ago. He used to be in the news quite frequently, having played for a number of French football clubs before moving to England and making his mark for Manchester United. Cantona’s arrival at Manchester, his strong, tenacious and skillful footballing and his determination despite the odds revived the fortunes of the Manchester United club. His career was closely followed by the mainstream media, and his football prowess, along with his fiery temperamental nature, were never in doubt. However, earlier in September 2015, he was quoted in the news for an issue unrelated to football (okay, soccer for our Australian readers).

He made a strong, assertive statement about the current refugee crisis now confronting the European Union. The former Manchester United legend stated that he was quite happy to open his home to accommodate refugees, and blamed the Western governments for the refugee crisis through their devastating wars in the Middle East. Appalled by the rising ultra-right and anti-immigrant xenophobia in Europe, Cantona stated that “We create wars for economic reasons and then people flee countries because we’ve created chaos and we’re not even able to receive them.”

Cantona reasoned that his French compatriots had swung to the right on a national level, and while he voted for the nominally socialist French President Hollande, he expressed his disappointment in the rightward trajectory of the governing party in France. Cantona’s remarks were widely reported in the British media, and were made in response to the current influx of refugees seeking entry in European Union countries – the most serious refugee crisis in Europe since the end of World War Two. As Molly Scott Cato stated in her article for the New Statesman magazine, the response of European governments to the refugee influx today has ominous parallels with the treatment of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Germany in the 1930s. Today we know what happened to those Jewish people who were denied sanctuary. Scott Cato notes the overwhelming cacophony of xenophobic outpouring, and the expression of semi-fascistic viciousness exemplified by the cowardly sneering of Murdoch columnist Katie Hopkins, in greeting those who are escaping the horrors in their own countries – nations that have been driven into chaos by the wars of the imperialist states.

Je Suis Cantona – twenty years on

This is not the first time that Cantona has confronted racism – indeed, this years marks twenty years since the most seminal moment in English football history. This moment has significance not so much because of its association with football – okay, soccer – but because it forms the equivalent JFK moment for those who follow football in the United Kingdom.

In an excellent article published in Counterfire magazine, Philosophy Football’s Mark Perryman described the immediate impact and ongoing repercussions of Cantona’s actions in ‘Je Suis Cantona’. January 1995, in an ordinary match between Manchester United and Crystal Palace, Cantona, after being targeted by the opposition Crystal Palace players, is red-carded. Nothing unusual there – Cantona, being a Frenchman playing in the English premier league was the frequent recipient of foul play by other players and jeering abuse by opposing football fans.

The game was proceeding as normal – the fans were shouting, cheering their respective teams, booing the opponents. Cantona was walking off the field when a particular fan, who happened to be a member of the anti-immigrant and racist British National Party (BNP), made his way down eleven rows to the fence on the field and expressed his opinion of Cantona. What did he say? According to court transcripts, our racist friend offered the following intelligent commentary about Cantona’s presence in the sceptered isle: “You dirty French bastard. Fuck off back to France”. Some versions of the event have the foul-mouthed, racist assailant, expressing the following variation on the theme: “Fuck off back to France you French motherfucker.”

We can see here the common theme expressed by the racist abuser; a profound cultural aversion to anything of foreign importation, in this case, French. Not exactly a criticism one would find in the arts and cultural review pages of The Guardian or The Independent newspapers, but nevertheless we can discern an emergent theme: foreigners are not welcome. Cantona, already seething, did the unthinkable – he ran up to the fence, and launched himself feet-first at the racist footballer fan – something that sent shock waves not just through Britain, but through the rest of Europe as well. The Guardian newspaper covered the event here. The BBC offered a retrospective on the incident in an article largely hostile to Cantona here.

Counterfire’s Mark Perryman summarised the issues in his article in the following way:

Je Suis Cantona? To identify with Eric then rather than his National Front and BNP supporting foul-mouthed verbal assailant was about taking sides. Football, from the authorities and players to the media and the fans, then and now, would excuse almost anything said at a game as ‘banter’. A collective refusal to bother with making any kind of distinction between a wind up, anti-social behaviour causing offence and criminal acts of racist abuse. Eric knew the difference.

Adam Goodes and Nicky Winmar know the difference between banter and racist abuse

Cantona proved his worth on the field – in 1996, he scored the winning goal for Manchester United in the FA cup final of that year, defeating the renowned and intimidating Liverpool side. Not his most brilliant goal, but one that lifted Manchester United out of the doldrums, bringing redemption to a team that had been underestimated and written off. In that year, Cantona hoisted the FA Cup trophy for Man-United – the first non-English captain to lift the hallowed trophy in victory. While the 1996 victory has not been forgotten, it has been overshadowed by the kung-fu kick that Cantona administered to a racist, shrieking football fan that is still the subject of discussion. He took his stand against racism – albeit in the language that someone like a BNP violent offender can understand. Yes, Matthew Simmons, the cultural-critique antagonist of Cantona’s, has a history of violent offences.

In 2013, Indigenous footballer and two-time Brownlow medalist Adam Goodes was the subject of racial abuse by a 13-year old fan. How did he react? He called the security guards, and the offending person was escorted off the field. When he was booed again in May 2015, how did Goodes respond? By performing a war dance and throwing an imaginary spear.

In 1993, at St Kilda, Indigenous footballer Nicky Winmar was subjected to a torrent of racial abuse. How did he respond? He lifted his jersey, and pointed to his chest, affirming his pride in his Indigenous heritage and culture. As Keith Parry, lecturer in Sports Management at the University of Western Sydney explained in his article “Booing Adam Goodes – racism is in the stitching of the AFL”:

Although the AFL became the first major Australian sporting code to outlaw on-field racial sledging in 1995, there continues to be too many shameful incidents of racial vilification by fans towards Indigenous AFL players. That Goodes has now been consistently booed by a variety of opposition fans for a sustained period of time suggests racial abuse may be an endemic problem.

We all have our personal preferences when it comes to sport. Some players we like, others we do not like. Some teams we support, others we do not. Granted that not every single person who booed Adam Goodes over the course of his matches is a vicious, small-minded racist. There has been an interminable debate in the pages of the Australian corporate media about whether or not the booing of Goodes is motivated by racism. This can be examined from here until the end of time, so for the purpose of clarity, let’s make a judgement call – as elaborated by Chris Graham of New Matilda magazine:

We can debate the booing of Adam Goodes till the cows come home, but it doesn’t really get us anywhere. So in the interests of moving forward, how about we negotiate a deal.

Racists, you can boo Adam Goodes all you want, and pretend it’s not racist.

The rest of the nation: We’ll continue to call it what it is. Racist.

And in the meantime, maybe the AFL can pull its finger out and actually do something practical to address the problem.

Robbie Blowers, legal practitioner and American expatriate who has adopted Australia as his home, wrote a insightful essay for Business Insider Australia. He notes that Goodes was not booed (well, no more than normal) prior to his speaking out against racism. Blowers elaborates that in many ways, Australia’s problem with racism has parallels to America’s problem with guns: they are both so deeply culturally ingrained that its practitioners and purveyors can hardly see that they are problems for the wider society. As Blowers explains:

It is a fact that Adam Goodes gets booed horrendously at football games because of his race. It is also a fact that many people out there who boo Adam Goodes are not doing it with the intention of racially vilifying him. While these two facts seem diametrically opposed, they can and do coexist. However, the people booing at these football games need to understand that, irrespective of their intentions, they are contributing to racial vilification nonetheless.

Goodes has attracted this level of hostility, precisely because he has emerged as an advocate for his people. As Nisha Thapliyal elaborates in her article for Green Left Weekly, Adam Goodes is not just an exceptional player, but stands apart because he has gone beyond philanthropic work and spoken out about the endemic racism against the First Nations of Australia that is found at all levels and sectors of Australian society. He has used his position as a sporting star not just to enrich himself, but to be an advocate for his people. Confronting racism against the Indigenous people by speaking out in the public domain will elicit a hostile reaction from those who wish to shut down any such discussion, because it confronts basic notions of ‘Australianness’, and the historical amnesia that surrounds the frontier wars waged by colonial Australia against the First Nations.

There should be no excuses for racism in sport. As Celeste Liddle elaborates in her informative article regarding the Adam Goodes issue:

If there is one lesson I’ve learnt from AFL recently, it’s that in the world of competitive contact sport, nothing is more terrifying than an Aboriginal player lobbing an invisible spear in the general direction of the crowd. What’s more, despite this imaginary projectile being, well, imaginary, it is clear that it is far more offensive to commentators than any of the racist jeers from the crowd that preceded it.

Adam Goodes threw an imaginary spear; lucky for the fans that booed him, he did not react like Eric Cantona.

Let us leave the last word to the Indigenous Australian journalist and writer, Stan Grant. He wrote a thought-provoking, poignant commentary called “I can tell you how Adam Goodes feels. Every Indigenous person has felt it“. The First Nations are estranged and marginalised, pushed to the outskirts of an otherwise wealthy society. Grant explains that his nation is marooned on the tides of history, excluded from the ‘boundless plains to share’ celebrated in Australia’s national anthem. Grant found a path to success through education and journalism; Goodes found his path through exceptional sporting prowess. But the weight of history, and the ongoing systemic exclusion of the Indigenous from the wider society, cannot be overcome so easily. It is heartening to see the groundswell of support for Goodes, indicating that there are Australians who realise that racism is not a historical artifact, but a living part of the Australian political and economic society. However, it is also high time to recognise that the political athlete, the sportsperson who stands up for their community, is a welcome and necessary component of an equitable society.

This month marks the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States in August 1945. Hiroshima city remembered the attack with solemn ceremonies, commemorative and educational activities, and the city fell silent on the day of August 6 to respect all those who were killed and maimed by the bombing. During the official ceremonies to mark the event, doves were released into the sky, and a Buddhist temple bell tolled at 8.15 am. That was the exact time the atom bomb, dropped by the pilots and crew of the American B29 bomber Enola Gay, detonated over the city of Hiroshima in the first nuclear attack in human history on August 6, 1945, 70 years ago.

The blast from the bomb, the latter codenamed with the euphemistic ‘Little Boy‘, vaporised 80 000 people in the city, with thousands more dying over the following days and weeks. Much of the city was flattened, with every building, excepting a few earthquake-resistant buildings, within a 1.6 kilometre radius of the explosion destroyed.

The effects of the radiation took their toll over the subsequent years, leaving a poisonous legacy. In the months and years that followed, thousands more succumbed to leukemia and other cancerous diseases, the consequence of prolonged exposure to severe radiation.  This attack, followed by the bombing of Nagasaki three days later, involved atomic weapons. The United States had already subjected Japanese cities to firebombing by conventional means, such as that of Tokyo, in March 1945. That firestorm was so intense and unrelenting, it remains the subject of intensely emotional debate, much like that surrounding the atomic bombings.

Within the period March to August 1945, the United States Army Air Force systematically attacked and firebombed 66 Japanese cities, with any town with a population greater than 30 000 considered a legitimate target. As Associate Professor Tilman Ruff from the University of Melbourne notes, the US Army Air Force deployed on average 500 bombers with a payload of 4000-5000 tons of conventional bombs per city. These bombings took their toll, with the Japanese war effort shattered, and the economy grinding to a halt in 1945. The Toyko firebombing remains the single most destructive and overwhelming attack on any city in a time of war.

Hiroshima – an act of terror masked as a mercy killing

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are portrayed, mainly in the English-speaking world, as actions motivated by a strong desire to end the war as quickly as possible in order to save lives (American). The Hiroshima bombing, and the similar atomic attack on Nagasaki, are given a humanitarian cover, disguised as mercy killings by an American political and economic leadership intent on reducing the death and destruction resultant from a ground invasion of the Japanese mainland.

This narrative of ‘saving lives’, portraying the incineration of two cities and their inhabitants as life-saving measures to avoid a prolonged and bitter war, has become deeply ingrained in the English-speaking countries. Hiroshima has come to symbolise the beginning of a new atomic age of warfare. Remembering Hiroshima as a world-changing event, serves to disguise the destructive impact of the atomic bombings. The New York Slimes, the faithful lapdog of the imperial American ruling class, described the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as ‘awesome brutality’. While the article’s author, Serge Schmemann, does admit that the atomic age escalated the danger of geopolitical disputes to human survival, he casts doubt on ever resolving the ethical question of whether these attacks are justifiable.

This official portrayal, underlying the motivation for the pursuit of nuclear weapons by the United States and associated imperialist powers, is undermined by a number of stubborn facts. By 1945, the Japanese war machine had been largely defeated, the Imperial Japanese navy sunk to the bottom of the ocean, and the economy laying in ruins. The Japanese air force had an achilles heel – fuel supplies, which were in short supply. The Japanese army was retreating, and fighting only rearguard defensive actions to maintain its losing grip. In July 1945, the Allied powers – the USSR, the United States and Britain – issued the Potsdam declaration, insisting on a complete surrender of the Imperial Japanese forces.

As Professor Gar Alperovitz, the principal expert on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks and author of the definitive works on the decision to use the bomb, notes that:

Long before the bombings occurred in August 1945—indeed, as early as late April 1945, more than three months before Hiroshima—U.S. intelligence advised that the Japanese were likely to surrender when the Soviet Union entered the war if they were assured that it did not imply national annihilation. An April 29 Joint Intelligence Staff document put it this way: “If at any time the U.S.S.R. should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable.”

The Japanese government was already suing for peace, sending out overtures to the United States and the Soviet Union. The Japanese leadership was worried, not so much by the destruction of cities, but by the removal of the emperor-system should a surrender be negotiated. As early as April 1945, the Japanese government was approaching its main antagonists with proposals for terms of surrender. The United States, under then President Harry S Truman, knew full-well of these tentative proposals, and were aware of the sensitivity with which the Japanese regarded the preservation of the emperor.

Henry Stimson, then US Secretary of War, wrote that:

the true question was not whether surrender could have been achieved without the use of the bomb but whether a different diplomatic and military course would have led to an earlier surrender. A large segment of the Japanese cabinet was ready in the spring of 1945 to accept substantially the same terms as those finally agreed on.

Atomic bombings were militarily unnecessary but politically expedient

In an article for The Nation magazine, Professor Alperovitz stated that; “The War Was Won Before Hiroshima—And the Generals Who Dropped the Bomb Knew It”. That is the title of an informative article in which Alperovitz elaborates that the top American military leadership, fanatical conservatives in their political beliefs, were quite clear in their opinion about the atomic bombings – they were unnecessary and militarily futile. Alperovitz quotes the writings of Admiral William Leahy, President Truman’s Chief of Staff and the most senior American naval military officer on active service during World War Two. Leahy wrote in his memoirs that:

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.… in being the first to use it, we…adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

It is interesting to note that Leahy, writing these words back in 1950, clearly resolved the ethical question surrounding the atomic bombings, an issue that Schmemann, writing for the New York Slimes in 2015, cannot.

Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a speech two months after the atomic attacks that “the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan…” General Henry Arnold, commander of the US Army air forces, stated in an interview that the Japanese military position was hopeless even before Hiroshima, and that the Japanese air force had lost control over its own skies. This was General Arnold’s statement only eleven days after the destruction of Hiroshima. General Dwight Eisenhower, later to become president, regretted the use of the atomic bomb, and expressed his misgivings when its use was being debated to then Secretary of War, Stimson. After the war was over, Eisenhower expressed the opinion that “it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.”

The bombing of Hiroshima, and Japanese cities in general, was very expedient politically. The United States had a long history of not only racism towards its indigenous nations, but also against any non-white nations generally. Anti-Japanese, and wider anti-Asian racism, was a deeply embedded features of American media and popular culture. Japan had emerged as an imperialist competitor at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, directly challenging the United States. The ‘yellow peril’ became a fixture in American cultural output. As Christian Appy, author of an article in The Nation magazine explains it:

American wartime culture had for years drawn on a long history of “yellow peril” racism to paint the Japanese not just as inhuman, but as subhuman. As Truman put it in his diary, it was a country full of “savages” — “ruthless, merciless, and fanatic” people so loyal to the emperor that every man, woman, and child would fight to the bitter end. In these years, magazines routinely depicted the Japanese as monkeys, apes, insects, and vermin. Given such a foe, so went the prevailing view, there were no true “civilians” and nothing short of near extermination, or at least a powerful demonstration of America’s willingness to proceed down that path, could ever force their surrender. As Admiral William “Bull” Halsey said in a 1944 press conference, “The only good Jap is a Jap who’s been dead six months.”

As Appy elaborates, while the most virulent expressions of anti-Asian racism have diminished in the post-World War Two years, the idea that the atomic bombings saved lives, has not.

The entry of the Soviet Union into the Pacific war

The USSR had agreed, at two international conferences with the western Allies, to enter the war against Japan in the event of the defeat of Germany in Europe. In May 1945, Germany surrendered, and three months later, the Soviet Union entered the war against Imperial Japan by invading the Japanese-occupied area of north-eastern China, Manchuria. Though this military invasion occurred in between the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it had been planned well in advance, and the Soviets were also making preparations to invade the Japanese mainland.

Japan was facing a war on two fronts, its military forces already overstretched. The USSR brought with them not just military prowess and strength, but an ideological commitment to destroy the emperor system, overturn capitalistic relations in the areas they occupied, and implement a socialist system in tune with their political calculations, as the Soviet Army had done in Eastern Europe. Even the most hardline elements in the Japanese leadership knew that the war was all but lost with the entry of the USSR. Now it was a question of not whether it was feasible to continue the war, but what the best possible terms might be in any imminent surrender. In the meetings of the Japanese War Cabinet in 1945, it was recognised that if the USSR brought its full might to bear in the Asia-Pacific, the ability of the Imperial Japanese military to fight would be extinguished.

Japanese historian Yuri Tanaka, interviewed by ABC Radio’s North Asia correspondent Mark Carney, explained that the Soviets would have had no hesitation in overturning the emperor-system, changing the economic structures, and even killing members of the royal family. By August 1945, the Japanese ruling class had no choice but to surrender.

The Soviet Army smashed through the remaining Japanese formations in Manchuria in August 1945. But this was not the first time that the USSR and Japan had faced off – back in 1939, Japan, using Manchuria as a launching pad, began an annexationist war against the Soviet Union. In what was the largest tank battle in history up till that time, the Soviets decisively defeated the Imperial Japanese troops at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol. From May until September 1939 the two antagonists fought it out in this this important, decisive, yet largely-forgotten theatre of war. Japan sued for peace with the USSR, and a peace treaty was signed in September 1939.

Japan’s leaders were aware that the Soviet contribution to the war effort would be strategically decisive. However, the political leaders in Tokyo were not the only ones aware of the Soviet Union’s aspirations and capabilities to realise them – the ruling class of the United States was also worried by the rise of an economic and military superpower. The bombing of Hiroshima, while less important that the participation of the Soviet Union in convincing Japan to surrender, was also an opening salvo of a long Cold war against a new ideological and economic enemy. Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian Studies at Tokyo’s Temple University, stated that the atomic attacks were opening shots in the subsequent cold war, a demonstration of which power has the most destructive weapon in order to intimidate and coerce a post-World War Two political settlement favourable to their interests.

Emperor Hirohito remained in place after the surrender, and the American occupation of Japan resulted in the gradual rehabilitation of that country as a largely pro-western capitalist power in the Pacific, always under the watchful eye of the United States. Atomic diplomacy became a new reality, as the United States used its near-monopoly of nuclear weapons to threaten, coerce and cajole its rivals in its bid to become a supreme international power after the end of World War Two. Hiroshima was the start of atomic intimidation, directed not just at the Japanese ruling class, but also at the emergent Soviet Union. Greater numbers of historians, such as Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at the American University in Washington, and Mark Selden, Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University, are recognising that the atomic bombings were not purely defensive and humanitarian gestures, but rather belligerent actions by an aggressor power intent on demonstrating its capacity for destruction.

A crime against humanity

The atomic bombings by the United States were part of its ruthless drive to extend its economic and military domination in the Pacific, demonstrating the same economic motivations, and contempt for human life, as their Japanese counterparts in Tokyo. The war planners in Japan have blood on their hands – the mass killings of Chinese in Shanghai, the mass murder and rape of civilians in Nanking, the coercion of women prisoners into sexual slavery, the death marches of malnourished and diseased war prisoners as they toiled in hard labour – these are not in dispute, nor are they being whitewashed. Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, must apologise for the crimes of the Japanese military and political command, and cease his efforts to sanitise these aspects of Japan’s war-time history. Abe’s push to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution so as to allow the deployment of Japanese troops overseas must be resisted.

The nuclear age, the age of atomic weaponry, has been constructed on an edifice of lies – that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima ushered in an era of peace. The Hiroshima bombing, and its counterpart in Nagasaki, underlie the mythological absurdity that atomic weapons bring peace and stability. The scramble by the imperialist states to build and stockpile nuclear weapons has only resulted in escalating tensions, and brought the risk of total annihilation of human (and planetary) life ever closer. Each geopolitical dispute can spiral into a cascade of out-of-control events, and the use of nuclear weapons becomes a realistic possibility. The Cold War, far from being a period of peace, was one of an armed truce. While the major imperialist states were largely unaffected by war, the non-white world of Asia, Africa and Latin America bore the brunt of inter-imperialist competition, suffering heavy loss of life in proxy wars of geopolitical rivalry.

The title of the current article comes from an article by Irish journalist Eamonn McCann – Hiroshima was a crime against humanity. McCann writes that the full horror of the Hiroshima bombing was first brought home to the English-speaking world by an Australian journalist, Wilfred Burchett:

It wasn’t until the Australian Wilfred Burchett arrived as the first journalist to make it to Hiroshima that the aftermath of the explosion was described to a western audience: “I write this as warning to the world,” was his intro on page one of the Daily Express. He described in detail how he had walked through a hospital ward packed with people with their skin hanging in flaps from their bodies, eyes opaque, dying, but with no visible marks. There being no word for it yet, he wrote of “an atomic plague.”

The voice of the Irish Times is a welcome break from the usual Hiroshima apologia that is recycled on the anniversary of that event. More voices are being raised, asking the difficult questions about this attack. The numbers of the hibakusha – the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings – are dwindling, and their experiences and testimonies need to be circulated around the world to warn of the danger of nuclear weapons. Not only should the United States apologise for the gratuitous acts of mass murder committed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but they should listen (as we all should) to the words of the mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui. In his remarks on the seventieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, he said:

Meanwhile, our world still bristles with more than 15,000 nuclear weapons, and policymakers in the nuclear-armed states remain trapped in provincial thinking, repeating by word and deed their nuclear intimidation. We now know about the many incidents and accidents that have taken us to the brink of nuclear war or nuclear explosions. Today, we worry as well about nuclear terrorism.

As long as nuclear weapons exist, anyone could become a hibakusha at any time. If that happens, the damage will reach indiscriminately beyond national borders. People of the world, please listen carefully to the words of the hibakusha and, profoundly accepting the spirit of Hiroshima, contemplate the nuclear problem as your own.