Christianity and the Nagasaki Bomb
Though Christianity began as a religion of peace, it
soon became a cloak for genocidal violence, such as
the incineration of defenseless civilians in
Nagasaki, including many Japanese Christians, 71
years ago, writes Gary G. Kohls.
By Gary G. Kohls
August 11, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- "Consortium
News"
- Seventy-one years ago, on Aug. 9, 1945, an
all-Christian bomber crew dropped a plutonium bomb
on Nagasaki City, Japan, instantly vaporizing,
incinerating, irradiating and otherwise annihilating
tens of thousands of innocent civilians, men, women
and children. Very few Japanese soldiers were
affected.
In a nation whose citizens are historically
non-Christian (Shintoism or Buddhism are the major
religions), a disproportionately large number of the
Nagasaki victims were Christian (see below for the
history of that reality). The bomb mortally wounded
uncountable thousands of other victims who succumbed
to the blast trauma, the heat trauma and/or the
radiation trauma.
In 1945, the U.S. was regarded as the most Christian
nation in the world. The bomber crew, as were the
two Christian military chaplains of the Hiroshima
and Nagasaki crews, were products of the type of
Christianity that failed to teach what Jesus taught
concerning violence (that it was forbidden to his
followers) – which has been the case for the vast
majority of Christians, both clergy and laity, for
the past 1,700 years. For the first three centuries
of its existence, Christianity was a pacifist
religion.
Ironically, prior to the bomb exploding directly
over the Urakami Cathedral, Nagasaki was the most
Christian city in Japan, and the massive cathedral
had been the largest Christian church building in
the Orient.
Those Christian airmen, following their wartime
orders to the letter, did their job, and they
accomplished the mission with military pride. Most
Christian Americans would have done what they did if
they had been in the shoes of the crew.
And, if those Christians had never seen, heard or
smelled the suffering humanity that the bomb caused
on the ground, most of them would not have
experienced any remorse for their participation in
the atrocity – especially if they had been blindly
treated as heroes in the aftermath.
Some of the crew did admit that they had had some
doubts about what they had participated in
afterwards. But none of them actually witnessed the
horrific suffering of the tens of thousands of
victims up close and personal.
“Orders are orders” and must be obeyed, and
disobedience in wartime was known to be severely
punishable, even by summary execution. So the bomber
crew had no alternative but to obey the orders. Even
the two chaplains had no doubts before they finally
understood what they had participated in.
Hard for Japan to Surrender
It had been only three days since the August 6th
bomb had incinerated Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bomb
was dropped amidst massive chaos and confusion in
Tokyo, where the fascist military command was
meeting with the Emperor Hirohito to discuss how to
surrender with honor. The military leadership of
both nations had known for months that Japan had
already lost the war.
The only obstacle to ending the war had been the
Allied Powers insistence on unconditional surrender
(which meant that Hirohito would have been removed
from his figurehead position in Japan and perhaps
even subjected to war crime trials). That demand was
intolerable for the Japanese, who regarded the
Emperor as a deity.
The USSR had declared war against Japan the day
before (Aug. 8), hoping to regain territories lost
to Japan in the humiliating (for Russia)
Russo-Japanese War 40 years earlier, and Stalin’s
army was advancing across Manchuria. Russia’s entry
into the war had been encouraged by President Harry
Truman before he knew of the success of the atom
bomb test in New Mexico on July 16.
But now, Truman and his strategists knew that the
bomb could elicit Japan’s surrender without Stalin’s
help. So, not wanting to divide any of the spoils of
war with the USSR, and because the U.S. wanted to
send an early Cold War message to Russia (that the
U.S. was the new planetary superpower), Truman
ordered bomber command to proceed with using the
atomic bombs against a handful of targets as weather
permitted and as atomic bombs became available
(although no more fissionable material was actually
available to make another bomb after Nagasaki).
Decision to Target Nagasaki
Aug. 1, 1945, was the earliest deployment date for
the Japanese atom bombing missions, and the Target
Committee in Washington, D.C. had already developed
a short list of relatively un-damaged Japanese
cities that were to be excluded from the
conventional USAAF (US Army Air Force) fire-bombing
campaigns (that, during the first half of 1945, had
used napalm, augmented by high explosives, to burn
to the ground over 60 essentially defenseless
Japanese cities).
The list of protected cities included Hiroshima,
Niigata, Kokura, Kyoto and Nagasaki. Those five
cities were to be off-limits to the terror bombings
that the other cities were being subjected to. They
were to be preserved as potential targets for the
new “gimmick” weapon that had been researched and
developed in labs and manufacturing plants all
across America over the several years since the
Manhattan Project had begun.
Ironically, prior to August 6 and 9, the residents
of those five cities had considered themselves lucky
for not having been bombed as had the other large
cities. Little did the residents of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki know that they were only being temporarily
spared for an even worse carnage from a
revolutionary experimental weapon that could cause
the mass annihilation of entire cities and their
human guinea pig inhabitants.
The plutonium bomb that had been field tested at
Alamogordo, New Mexico, was identical to the one
that was dropped at Nagasaki. It had been
blasphemously code-named “Trinity” (a distinctly
Christian term) and had been detonated in secrecy
three weeks earlier on July 16, 1945. The results
were impressive, but the blast had just killed a few
hapless coyotes, rabbits, snakes and some other
desert varmints.
Trinity had produced large amounts of an entirely
new type of rock that was later called “Trinitite.”
Trinitite was a “man-made” radioactive molten lava
rock that had been created from the intense heat
that was twice the temperature of the sun. Samples
of it still exist in the desert at Alamogordo.
At 3 a.m. on the morning of Aug. 9, 1945, a B-29
Superfortress bomber (that had been “christened”
Bock’s Car) took off from Tinian Island in the South
Pacific, with the prayers and blessings of the
crew’s two chaplains. Barely making it off the
runway just yards before the heavily loaded plane
could have gone into the ocean (the bomb weighed
10,000 pounds), it headed north for Kokura, the
primary target.
Bock’s Car’s bomb was code-named “Fat Man,” partly
because of its shape and partly to honor the rotund
Winston Churchill. “Little Boy,” first called “Thin
Man” (after President Franklin Roosevelt), was the
code name of the uranium bomb that had been dropped
on Hiroshima three days earlier.
Japan’s Supreme War Council in Tokyo, scheduled to
convene their next meeting at 11 a.m. on Aug. 9, had
absolutely no comprehension of what had really
happened at Hiroshima. So the members had no
heightened sense of urgency. The council was mostly
concerned about Russia’s declaration of war.
But it was already too late, because by the time the
War Council members were arising and heading to the
meeting with the emperor, there was no chance to
alter the course of history. Bock’s Car – flying
under radio silence – was already approaching the
southern islands of Japan, heading for Kokura, the
primary target. The crew was hoping to beat an
anticipated typhoon and the approaching clouds that
would have delayed the mission.
The Bock’s Car crew had instructions to drop the
bomb only on visual sighting. But Kokura was clouded
over. After making three failed bomb runs over the
clouded-over city and then experiencing engine
trouble on one of the four engines (using up
valuable fuel all the while) the plane headed for
its secondary target, Nagasaki.
History of Nagasaki Christianity
Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese
Christianity. The city had the largest concentration
of Christians in all of Japan. St. Mary’s Urakami
Cathedral was the megachurch of its time, with
12,000 baptized members.
Nagasaki was the community where the legendary
Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier planted a mission
church in 1549. The Catholic community at Nagasaki
grew and eventually prospered over the next several
generations. However it eventually became clear to
the Japanese that the (Catholic) Portuguese and
Spanish commercial interests were exploiting Japan.
It didn’t take very long before all Europeans – and
their very foreign religion – were expelled from the
country.
From 1600 until 1850, being a Christian in Japan was
a capital crime (punishable by death). In the early
1600s, Japanese Christians who refused to recant of
their new faith were subject to unspeakable tortures
– including crucifixion. After a well-publicized
mass crucifixion was orchestrated, the reign of
terror stopped, and it appeared to all observers
that Japanese Christianity was extinct.
However, 250 years later, after the gunboat
diplomacy of U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry forced
open an offshore island for American trade purposes,
it was discovered that there were thousands of
baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith
in secret in a catacomb-like existence, completely
unknown to the government.
With this revelation, the Japanese government
started another purge; but because of international
pressure, the persecutions stopped and Nagasaki
Christianity came up from the underground. By 1917,
with no financial help from the government, the
re-vitalized Christian community had built their
massive cathedral in the Urakami River district of
Nagasaki.
So it was the height of irony that the massive
Cathedral – one of only two Nagasaki landmarks that
could be positively identified from 31,000 feet up –
became Ground Zero. (The other identifiable aiming
point landmark was the Mitsubishi armaments factory
complex – which had run out of raw materials because
of the successful Allied naval blockade.)
At 11:02 a.m., during Thursday morning confessions,
an unknown number of Nagasaki Christians were
boiled, evaporated, carbonized or otherwise
disappeared in a scorching, radioactive fireball
that exploded 500 meters above the cathedral.
The “black rain” that soon came down from the
mushroom cloud also contained the mingled cellular
remains of many Nagasaki Christians as well as many
more Shintoists and Buddhists. The theological
implications of Nagasaki’s Black Rain surely should
boggle the minds of theologians of all
denominations.
Nagasaki Christian Body Count
Most Nagasaki Christians did not survive the blast.
Six thousand of them died instantly, including all
who were at confession that morning. Of the 12,000
church members, 8,500 of them eventually died as a
result of the bomb. Many of the others were
seriously sickened with a highly lethal entirely new
disease: radiation sickness.
Located near the cathedral were three orders of nuns
and a Christian girl’s school. They all disappeared
into black smoke or became chunks of charcoal. Tens
of thousands of other innocent non-Christian
non-combatants also died instantly, and many more
were mortally or incurably wounded. Some of the
original victims (and their progeny) are still
suffering from the trans-generational malignancies
and immune deficiencies caused by the deadly
plutonium and other radioactive isotopes produced by
the bomb.
And here is one of the most important ironies: What
the Japanese Imperial government could not do in 250
years of persecution (i.e., to destroy Japanese
Christianity) American Christians did in mere
seconds.
Even after a slow revival of Christianity after
WWII, membership in Japanese Christian churches
still represents a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the
general population, and the average attendance at
Christian worship services across the nation is
reported to be only 30 per Sunday. The decimation of
Nagasaki crippled what at one time was a vibrant
church.
Father George Zabelka was the Catholic chaplain for
the 509th Composite Group (the 1,500-man USAAF group
whose only mission was to deliver atomic bombs to
Japanese civilian targets). Zabelka was one of the
few World War II clergy leaders who eventually came
to recognize the serious contradictions between what
his modern church had taught him and what the early
pacifist church believed concerning homicidal
violence.
Several decades after Zabelka was discharged from
the military chaplaincy, he finally concluded that
both he and his church had made serious ethical and
theological errors in religiously legitimating the
organized mass slaughter that is modern war. He
eventually came to understand that (as he
articulated it) “the enemy of me and the enemy of my
nation is not an enemy of God. Rather my enemy and
my nation’s enemy are children of God who are loved
by God and who therefore are to be loved (and not
killed) by me as a follower of that loving God.”
Father Zabelka’s sudden conversion away from the
standardized war-tolerant Christianity changed his
Detroit, Michigan ministry around 180 degrees. His
absolute commitment to the truth of gospel
nonviolence – just like Martin Luther King’s
commitment – inspired him to devote the remaining
decades of his life to speaking out against violence
in all its forms, including the violence of
militarism, racism and economic exploitation.
Zabelka travelled to Nagasaki on the 50th
anniversary of the bombing, tearfully repenting and
asking for forgiveness for the part he had played in
the crime.
Likewise, the Lutheran chaplain for the 509th,
Pastor William Downey (formerly of Hope Evangelical
Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota), in his
counseling of soldiers who had become troubled by
their participation in making murder for the state,
later denounced all killing, whether by a single
bullet or by weapons of mass destruction.
Wars That Ruined Their Souls?
In Daniel Hallock’s important book, Hell, Healing
and Resistance, the author described a 1997 Buddhist
retreat that was led by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat
Hanh. The retreat involved a number of
combat-traumatized Vietnam War veterans who had left
the Christianity of their birth.
The veterans had responded positively to Nhat Hanh’s
ministrations. Hallock wrote, “Clearly, Buddhism
offers something that cannot be found in
institutional Christianity. But then why should
veterans embrace a religion that has blessed the
wars that ruined their souls? It is no wonder that
they turn to a gentle Buddhist monk to hear what
are, in large part, the truths of Christ.”
Hallock’s comment should be a sobering wake-up call
to Christian leaders who seem to regard as important
both the recruitment of new members and the
retention of old ones. The fact that the U.S. is a
highly militarized nation makes the truths of gospel
nonviolence difficult to teach and preach,
especially to military veterans (particularly the
homeless, psychologically tormented,
spiritually-depleted, malnourished, over-diagnosed,
over-medicated, over-vaccinated, homicidal and
suicidal ones) who may have lost their faith because
of horrors experienced on the battlefield.
I am a retired physician who has dealt with hundreds
of psychologically traumatized patients (including
combat-traumatized war veterans), and I know that
violence, in all its forms, can irretrievably damage
the mind, body, brain and spirit. But the fact that
the combat-traumatized type is totally preventable –
and oftentimes impossible to cure – makes prevention
work really important.
An ounce of prevention is indeed worth a pound of
cure when it comes to combat-induced PTSD. And where
Christian churches should and could be instrumental
in the prevention of the soul-destroying combat-type
PTSD is by counseling their members to not
participate in it (which should be obvious when
considering the ethical message of the nonviolent
Jesus, a message that guided the pacifist church in
the first three centuries of its existence)
Experiencing violence, whether as victimizer or
victim, can be deadly, and it can run through
families like a contagion. I have seen violence,
neglect, abuse and the resultant traumatic
psychological and neurological illnesses spread
through both military and non-military families –
even involving the third and fourth generations
after the initial victimizations.
And that has been the experience of the hibakusha
(the long-suffering atomic bomb survivors of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki), whose progeny continue to
suffer disease – which has likewise been the
experience of many of the progeny of the
warrior-perpetrators who participated in the act of
killing in every war.
Years ago I saw an unpublished Veteran’s
Administration study that showed that, whereas most
Vietnam War-era soldiers were active members of
Christian churches before they went off to war, if
they came home with PTSD, the percentage returning
to their faith community approached zero. Daniel
Hallock’s sobering message above helps explain why
that is so.
Therefore the church – at least by its silence on
the critical issues of war and war preparation –
seems to be actually promoting (rather than
forbidding) homicidal violence, contrary to the
ethical teachings of Jesus, by failing to teach what
the primitive church understood was one of the core
teachings of Jesus, who preached, in effect, that
“violence is forbidden for those who wish to follow
me.”
Therefore, by refraining from warning their
adolescent members about the faith- and
soul-destroying realities of war, the church is
directly undermining the “retention” strategies in
which all churches engage. The hidden history of
Nagasaki thus has valuable lessons for American
Christianity.
Bock’s Car Crew and Chain of Command
The members of the Bock’s Car bomber crew, like
conscripted or enlisted men in any war, were at the
bottom of a long, complex and very anonymous chain
of command whose superiors demand unconditional
obedience from those below them in the chain.
The Bock’s Car crew had been ordered to “pull the
trigger” of the lethal weapon that had been
conceptualized, designed, funded, manufactured and
armed by any number of other entities, none of which
would feel morally responsible for doing the dirty
deed because they didn’t have literal blood on their
hands.
As is true in all wars, soldier trigger-pullers are
often the ones unjustly singled out and blamed for
the killing in the combat zone, and therefore they
often have the worst post-war guilt and shame that
is often the most lethal part of combat-induced PTSD
(other than the suicide and violence-inducing
aspects of many psychiatric drugs and the chronic
illness-stimulating aspects of the over-vaccination
schedules to which all military recruits are
subjected).
However, the religious chaplains that are
responsible for their spiritual lives of their
soldiers, are also at the bottom of the chain of
command and may share their guilt feelings. Neither
group usually knows the real reasons their
commanders are ordering them to kill or participate
in the killing operations.
The early church leaders, who knew the teachings and
actions of Jesus best, rejected the nationalist,
racist and militarist agendas of whatever passed for
nationalism 2,000 years ago.
And by following the Sermon on the Mount, true
Christians of today similarly reject the homicidal
agendas of the national security state, the
military-industrial-congressional complex, the
war-profiteering corporations, the mesmerizing major
media, and the eye-for-an-eye retaliation church
doctrines that have, over the past 1,700 years,
enabled baptized and confirmed Christians to, if
ordered to do so, willingly kill other humans in the
name of Christ.
Gary G. Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth,
MN, USA. He writes a weekly column for the Reader,
Duluth’s alternative newsweekly magazine. His
columns mostly deal with the dangers of American
fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism,
malnutrition, psychiatric drugging, over-vaccination
regimens, Big Pharma and other movements that
threaten the environment or America’s health,
democracy, civility and longevity. |
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