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The Immunity of Non-Combatants and the Myth of Good Intentions: Sixty-One Years After Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Herbert P. Bix
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In late 1945, in a context of restored peace, American leaders set about constructing the postwar international order. Among the issues they confronted were the establishment of the United Nations and the reaction of U.S. citizens to the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The latter especially provoked a short-lived mood of uncertainty about the future of humankind in the nuclear age.

The questions on American minds at the time were: Would atomic bombs someday be turned against us? Would this new “postwar” end, as the one that followed World War I had, with some great power rejecting the restraints of international law and morality and enfeebling the new world body? In June 1950 President Harry S. Truman, a firm believer in the primacy of power politics over law, gave his definitive answer to the second question by trampling on the letter and spirit of the UN Charter. Specifically, he illegally committed the U.S. to war in Korea on his own authority, without Congressional approval or prior authorization from the UN Security Council, and his Sec. of State, Dean Acheson, dismissed the UN Charter as “impracticable.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 8 , August 2006 , e21
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2006

References

[1] Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade—And After: American, 1945-1960 (Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), p. 5.

[2] Editor and Publisher, Staff, “Poll Shows Americans, For First Time, Divided on Use of ABombs in 1945,” E & P, July 24, 2005.

[3] Sahr Conway-Lanz, Collateral Damage: Americans, Noncombatant Immunity, and Atrocity after World War II (Routledge, 2006), p. 11.

[4] Conway-Lanz, p. 13; Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1995), p. 5.

[5] Conway-Lanz, p. 13.

[6] Conway-Lanz, pp. 13, 21, 229.

[7] Horst Fischer, “Collateral Damage,” available at Crimes of War Project—The Book,

[8] Herbert P. Bix, “The Faith that Supports U.S. Violence: Comparative Reflections on the Arrogance of Empires,” posted on Z-net website and japanfocus.org, Sept. 2, 2004.

[9] Herbert P. Bix, “War Crimes Law and American Wars in 20th Century Asia,” Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1 (July 2001), pp. 119-132.

[10] Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson, “Civilian Killings Went Unpunished: Declassified Papers Show U.S. Atrocities Went Far Beyond My Lai,” The Los Angeles Times (Aug. 6, 2006).

[11] Cited from Introduction to Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade, Shock & Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance (National Defense University, ACT 1996), n.p.

[12] See Seymour M. Hersh, “Watching Lebanon: Washington's Interest in Israel's War,” The New Yorker (Aug. 26, 2006), pp. 28-33.

[13] Declan Walsh, “Unexploded Cluster Bombs Prompt Fear and Fury in Returning Refugees,” The Guardian UK (Aug. 21, 2006).