the clouds
one won't apparently go away
It’s hot, as you probably know well, in most of the world. Our aftereffects of Friday morning’s storm lasted one further day so the humidity is still tolerable and the temperature upward trajectory wasn’t intolerable today. We took the water taxi downtown, then sauntered back through the quaint streets of Eastport between Back Creek and Spa Creek. It was macrophotography heaven.
Many people probably headed for the movie theaters this weekend, regardless where they are located, for relief from the heat. Others, as seems true of those I encounter online, went to see the summer blockbusters (regardless of the SAFTA strike) Barbie and Oppenheimer.
I would not go see the former in any circumstances. No, I am not a ‘fun’ person as my kids grumbled over the years. But, I am also painfully aware that I had a Barbie. I grew up, sadly, with the cruel, deep-down messaging that if a womoan did not have a natural 16 inch waist (Scarlett O’Hara even got to use a corset), perfectly formed boobs, and a conveniently cute butt, I was a failure. I suspect that more than a few people reading this know what I mean. It’s easy to say we should have known better but it’s difficult to overstate how cultural icons, ubiquitous ones, influence young. This is not exactly an unknown topic in our country of late but I failed at every one of Barbie’s attributes (whether she was blond or brunette) so I have no interest in the movie. About all it’s worth is that they use pink which I do like as a colour.
Oppenheimer is a completely different matter. While the movie builds on a biography of a fascinating figure from a century ago, it’s wrong to lay all of the blame or congratulations about the atomic bomb at his feet. The single best book I have ever read was Richard Rhodes’, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It, along with Joe Galloway’s, We Were Soldiers Once…and Young, ought be mandated reading for anyone holding a U.S. passport. Not only are they both superbly written, they discuss two aspects of our lives that are too often uncomfortable for many to consider.
My dissertation, written many years ago, explored nuclear non-proliferation at a time when we worried about an authoritarian government in Argentina (no, neither Vlad the Impaler nor Xi Jinping invented authoritarianism although you’d think from the breathy reports as if no one else ever engaged in it) developing nuclear weapons in its pariah status. They did not and the chances of that occurring in Latin America are pretty remote these days. I spent many years looking at many nuclear weapon questions.
But Robert Oppenheimer led the effort for us to go nuclear. We are the only country to use the weapons against another country. We both developed them and deployed them to prevent others from using these dire weapons against us and to bring Japan to the negotiating table, respectively. Acquaninted with lots of people asked to make life and death decisions for our nation today, I cannot criticise either decision because each was a choice that had to be made. Oppenheimer, as I recall Rhodes’ descriptions in multiple places, struggled with the choices.
Ultimately, on 16 July 1945, the Almagordo test occurred successfully, offering President Truman and the military leadership another tool against Japan. Three weeks later we dropped these potent weapons on Hiroshima (6 August), then Nagasaki (three days later). Japan surrendered within days, and the war effort ended with the signing of a peace on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945. Germany surrendered almost four months earlier in Europe but nuclear weapons certainly would have been part of our calculus against Germany had development moved more quickly.
Tens of millions of people, mostly civilians, died across the theaters of operations in World War II. High end estimates suggest 240,000 died immediately from the atomic weapons. U.S. authorities anticipated it would require a sizable force to invade the Home Islands of Japan to force the Imperial Japanese government to surrender; implied was that millions of U.S. airmen, soliders, sailors, and Marines would perish or face internment camps. Less was said of the Japanese civilians also likely to perish.
The atomic bombs, thus, were a relatively painful choice that national security leaders had to weigh. In a war deemed existential, there are few perfect or happy options. Oppenheimer himself agonised over the success of the project he led for so many years. I can only imagine the movie portrays this incredibly agonising yet decisive discussion with all deliberate consideration. It remains, more than three quarters of a century later, one of the most monumental decisions any government ever took.
The tiny cadre of government officials involved took the decision after weighing options and implications. They did not race out to drop bombs willynilly as so many anti-war charicatures of the Vietnam era portrayed the mindsets of military leaders. We can debate individual decisions but we the citizens empower the military, on our behalf, to defend us and our national interests. If we as individuals don’t want to participate in the decision on those interests or desired outcomes, then our views for or against something will not be heard. The military, subjected to civilian authority in our system, operates as we send them.
Yes, there are rogues but not at high ranks. That is what checks and balances are all about. Our ability to regulate those checks and balances reside in the Executive Branch (the head of whom the voters choose ) and the Legislative Branch (who we again select). Both of those branches also participate in selecting the Judicial Branch and its role. We like to blame a lot but we have considerable power in this equation, my friends. If we surrender that power by not voting and implying we don’t care, it’s a whole different ballgame.
My reason for not seeing Oppenheimer, however, because it’s needed recognition later in his life on polarisation of our society. I see this as so common now, personifying differences as evidence of gross evil. So much of polarisation leads to stated and unstated assumptions that anyone who differs on policy is expendible. I am not sure I need stomach that when I can simply turn on my computer to read about it today.
So, I stick with my clouds over Eastport today. The nuclear clouds remain contained for now but seemingly unlikely to ever disappear entirely. Those clouds, as a result of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s work, threaten and defend us. Hard to think of a more paradoxical event in the background of our daily lives.FIN
Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Knopf, 2005).
D.M. Giangreco, ‘Casualty Projectons for the U.S. Invasions of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications, Journal of Military History 61 (July 1997): 521-582. retrieved at http://theamericanpresident.us/images/projections.pdf
Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once…and Young (New York: Ballantine Books, 1992).
Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987).