Robert Fisk reports on the day America and Britain united with Japan to remember victims of the world’s first atomic bomb
At last we’ve apologised for Hiroshima – well, sort of. We’ve recognised the suffering our atom bombs caused –well, kind of. President Obama was showing off his anti-nuclear credentials in the killing grounds of Hiroshima, but this was not to be confused with saying sorry.
The presence of John Roos, the US ambassador to Japan, and the British deputy ambassador, David Fitton, at the site of the world's first atomic bombing was an odd appearance.
We are looking at the survivors' ceremony and recognising their suffering – how very Blairite of us – and even the British embassy's words were of Blairite insincerity. "This is the right move at the right time," it said. But the right 'move' for what? After all, we are really not apologising for the 220,000 dead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hell, didn't we win the Second World War?
What it really comes down to is this. If you apologise for slaughtering civilians – or, at the minimum, causing their deaths – you have to do it quickly and for humanitarian reasons. Wait too long and do it for political reasons, and it will lose its effect. Germany was quick to start admitting responsibility for the Jewish Holocaust and now calls itself Israel's best friend in Europe. Turkey has never apologised for committing the Armenian Holocaust in 1915. But if it ever does, will anyone except the Armenians care?
On the surface, it's all very simple. Most of us seem to believe the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a war crime. I certainly do. The Japanese were already talking of surrender. That Caesar of British historians, AJP Taylor, quoted a senior US official. "The bomb simply had to be used – so much money had been expended on it. Had it failed, how would we have explained the huge expenditure? Think of the public outcry there would have been ... The relief to everyone concerned when the bomb was finished and dropped was enormous".
Taking his cue from the idea that Hiroshima and Nagasaki spared the Allies a bloody invasion of mainland Japan – a thesis which now appears to be completely untrue – Lord Louis Mountbatten remarked that "if the bomb kills Japanese and saves casualties on our side I am naturally not going to favour the killing of our people unnecessarily ... I am responsible for trying to kill as many Japanese as I can. War is crazy ... But it would be even more crazy if we were to have more casualties on our side to save the Japanese". The Independent
