Background leading to the bombing of Nagasake

The use of Atomic bombs was not so much just a result of militarism. The weapons were a product of a system. We need to get deeper than the concept of militarism as a critique. The use of nuclear weapons developed because of Imperialism, a world wide economic system baised on exploitation and domination by International Capitalism.

U.S. at War: A Shameful History
Burning Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Name of Freedom

Revolution #011, August 14, 2005, posted at revcom.us
This is the first in a new series for Revolution.

April 25, 1945, U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson met with the new
president Harry S. Truman to brief him about a major military secret.
“Within four months,” Stimson said, “we shall in all probability have
completed the most terrifying weapon ever known in human history.”
This briefing lasted 45 minutes. There was no debate over whether to
use this weapon. The leaders of the United States condemned tens of
thousands to an awful death without hesitation.
Sixty years ago this month, on August 6, 1945, the U.S. military plane
Enola Gay circled over Hiroshima, and released a single bomb. It
plunged toward the Japanese city below and detonated in an enormous
fireball as hot as the sun. At Ground Zero almost everything was
simply destroyed and every human being died. Even two miles from the
blast, human skin was severely burned.
The wind blew at 1,000 miles per hour—shattering the bodies of
thousands of people as it hurled them through the air or brought
buildings crashing down upon them.
When the firestorm died down, the former city was a scorched plain. A
heavy black rain brought radioactive dust back down to earth. Some of
the dead had been vaporized, many others lay where they died, in their
thousands and thousands.
When President Harry Truman was told of the Hiroshima bombing, he
said, “This is the greatest thing in history.”
The U.S. high command felt that the destruction of one city was still
not enough. Three days later, also without warning, they dropped a
second bomb on the city of Nagasaki.
Long after the bombing, people kept dying, from a then-mysterious
illness — radiation. Five months after the bombing 140,000 people had
died in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki.
Crimes in the Name of Safety and Freedom
How was this horror excused? How did the U.S. government and military
try to convince their soldiers to fight, their bomber crews to bomb,
and the people of the “civilian home front” to back all of this?
The people of the U.S. were told that this war against Japan was a war
of self-defense. They were told that they faced invasion from Japan—
and that “the enemy” was vicious, fanatical, and barely human.
People were told that the expanded American war machine would defend
their homes and “the American way of life.” They also were told that
this war was “bringing freedom and democracy” to the world.
Official U.S. mythology teaches the U.S. armed forces are always the
“good guys,” guided by the purest motives.
This is one of the world’s greatest lies—covering a truly shameful
history. And this war in the Pacific, including the horrific bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is a vivid example.
The Pacific war was part of a much larger world war—where many
different class forces, much of the planet and all its major powers
were all drawn into a bitter series of interconnected wars. It is
beyond the scope of this article to analyze all of that. But we can
see, from a closer look at just the Pacific theater of that world war
(where the U.S. and its allies fought with the Japanese) how all these
U.S. justifications for war were deceptions covering the real motives
and goals.
Not Defense, But Imperialism!
By the time World War 2 broke out, the United States had already been
fighting for control in the western Pacific for over half a century.
The U.S. brutally conquered the Philippines in the early 1900s and
demanded an “open door” into China —to exploit those countries without
barriers.
Japan emerged as a rival power—similarly eager to dominate China,
Korea, the Philippines, and the rest of this region. The U.S. built a
“deep water navy” to “project power” to eastern Asia. And when the
Japanese military built a navy to rival all that, and when Japanese
troops took over parts of China in the 1930s—driving out U.S. and
British “interests” — then it became pretty clear to everyone in power
(in both Washington and Tokyo) that a showdown (and probably war) was
coming.
But we have all been taught that the main issue was that Japan
attacked first at Pearl Harbor.
In fact, you can’t correctly analyze the wars by “who hit first” or
even “who is fighting on whose soil.” You have to evaluate them by the
goals and class interests that various forces are fighting for. This
Pacific war came out of an imperialist rivalry, rooted in capitalism’s
drive to “expand or die.” It was a war over which powers would
dominate and exploit hundreds of millions of people—and this makes the
U.S. war for the Pacific unjust, no matter which of these rivals ended
up landing the first blow.
And there is much evidence that powerful forces in the U.S. government
were quite excited when the Japanese navy attacked Pearl Harbor—
because it now gave them a public justification for the war they had
long wanted to launch.
And all this talk of Pearl Harbor being “sacred American soil” is
especially grotesque once you look into the way the U.S. military
conquered Hawai’i from its own people.
Promising Liberation, Delivering Domination
In history books and war movies, people are told that U.S. marines
went “island hopping” through the Pacific to “liberate” the people.
The colonial master Douglas MacArthur is portrayed as a hero when he
promised “I shall return” (to the Philippines he had ruled at
gunpoint!).
But the U.S. was fighting for domination, not liberation.
Look at what happened after the war. The U.S. took over the
Philippines again, and eventually became the main power in Singapore,
South Vietnam, Indonesia, Taiwan, and South Korea. The U.S. also tried
to replace Japan as the power dominating China, but the people of
China prevented that through the great revolution led by Mao Tsetung!
The victorious U.S. imposed a series of brutal regimes, including the
notorious Marcos government, that tortured the Filipino people over
the following decades. Look at the history of Indonesia or South
Korea.
The U.S. victory in World War 2 meant more brutal domination, not
liberation, for these countries. Generations sweated in the fields and
sweatshops, women were crudely sold around U.S. bases, and brutal
regimes were propped up by U.S. aid and guns.
And today, U.S. domination is still going on!
Bringing Democracy to the Conquered
During the current war in Iraq, U.S. war-makers like Paul Wolfowitz
have said they intend to “bring democracy to the Middle East” and
point to U.S. post-war policies in Japan as a model. And it is a way
of saying that the U.S. may do terrible things in war, but their
victory always means good things in the end.
Is this true? No.
After Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and the Japanese surrender), the U.S.
occupied Japan and imposed a new arrangement that included a political
system with elections.
But this bringing of democracy was constructed to serve the political
and strategic interests of the U.S. First, great care was taken to
make sure that Japan remained a capitalist class society. Much of the
hateful, oppressive old Emperor system was preserved—and in
particular, the Emperor himself was not removed from power.
New political forces were allowed to form and allowed to contend for
power as long as they were committed both to capitalism generally and
the pro-U.S. strategic arrangement in particular. Revolutionary
political forces who opposed all that were suppressed, and important
workers strikes were simply banned.
The new Japanese government was not allowed to create a large new
military that could ever challenge the U.S., but the Japanese ruling
class of monopoly capitalists was allowed to share in the exploitation
of the surrounding poorer countries.
In short, the democracy that the U.S. brought to Japan was a bourgeois
democracy— designed to prevent revolution, preserve capitalism, and
create a Japan in keeping with U.S. interests.
Saving Lives with Mushroom Clouds?
It is particularly shocking when these U.S. war- makers claim their
treatment of the Japanese people could be a model for Iraq and the
Middle East. As if no one remembers Hiroshima and Nagasaki! As if the
world will accept their lame, shameful and still- unapologetic
justifications of those bombings!
Officially, the U.S. government claims that these atomic bombs were
dropped to “save lives” (meaning, of course, American lives)!
The U.S. military (and its apologists) claim that many U.S. soldiers
would have died, if the U.S. had “been forced to invade” Japan’s home
islands. And so the atomic mass killing of tens of thousands of
civilian Japanese (in their heartless calculations) are treated as if
it is a good trade-off. And in such ways, then and now, people of the
U.S. are trained to think that mountains of dead bodies are quite
fine, as long as they are not American bodies.
And, in fact, all this talk was a lie. By August 1945, the Japanese
military and empire were on the verge of collapse—and the conditions
were ripe for a negotiated end to the war. Where did this need come
from to directly occupy Japan and drop these atomic bombs—it came from
what the rulers of the U.S. saw was in their interests.
The U.S. ruling class wanted complete surrender of Japan and long-term
occupation—because they were after unquestioned domination—both of
Japan itself and the whole vast surrounding region. They were using
the most gruesome means to grab complete victory for their global
ambitions, and yet claiming to do all this in the name of the people
of the U.S.
They wanted to remake Japan in ways that would prevent future rivalry.
And they wanted to end this war with a great show of ruthless strength—
leaving piles of scorched and radioactive bodies—to send a message to
anyone who might still think about challenging the U.S. in the postwar
world.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sacrificed—wiped out in
great fireballs—to deliver a gangster threat to the then-socialist
Soviet Union (which was preparing to launch military moves in east
Asia) and to the restless colonized people of the western Pacific,
especially the communist- led revolutionary movement of China.
Those who rule the U.S. today still try to excuse the destruction of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki—and claim these mass murders were all for the
greater good.
“Fighting for freedom”? “Fighting to defend America”? No. The atomic
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are among the most bloodthirsty and
brutal acts in human history—and they were all about expanding the
reach and profits of U.S. capitalism and its imperialist grip on much
of the world.
http://revcom.us/a/011/burning-hiroshima-nagasaki.htm