Hiroshima has long been a breeding ground for euphemism, dating back to when Harry Truman announced the city’s obliteration merely as having “destroyed its usefulness to the enemy.” That tradition is not dead, as demonstrated by the Washington Post in a report on this weekend’s G-7 meeting in the relevant city, which its reporters describe as having been “severely damaged” eight decades ago by an American nuclear bomb. Good to know!
A Festive Atmosphere
Nowadays, damage limitation on memories of what we did to Hiroshima (and Nagasaki, also “severely damaged” by our nukes, according to the Post) can be safely left to the ignorance of reporters. Back in the 1950s, when recollections were fresher, the task required a lot more work and ingenuity, particularly in weaning the Japanese people off their irksome “nuclear allergy.” Nevertheless, the authorities, both U.S, and Japanese, were equal to the task, an effort that culminated in the “Atoms for Peace” exhibit that opened in Hiroshima on May 27, 1956. As chronicled by Ran Zwigenberg in the Asia-Pacific Journal, the exhibit, paid for in large part by the U.S. Information Agency and the war criminal, media mogul, and CIA asset, Matsutaro Shoriki, featured examples of the supposedly beneficial role of nuclear energy in agriculture, medicine, space travel and other fields. Guides dressed in the “latest American fashions” conducted visitors in what was described as a “festive atmosphere” through the displays, which were housed in the Hiroshima Bomb Museum, from which 2,000 items related to the nuclear catastrophe had been removed to make room for the show.
It was all a wild success, as demonstrated by a local merchant who declared: “My parents and children were all killed by the bomb. I have seen the exhibition and am thrilled with what atomic energy can do for the future welfare of mankind. I wish therefore to offer a large television set to be awarded the millionth visitor.”
Fukushima Payoff
The ultimate reward for the promoters of this macabre PR triumph was the Japanese decision to bet the country’s energy future on nuclear power, notably in the form of General Electric boiling water reactors with problematic Mark 1 containments as installed in the Fukushima Daichi complex on the coast of Honshu. As was predicted, but of course ignored by responsible authorities, these fell victim in spectacular fashion to a Tsunami that washed away their emergency cooling systems, leading to meltdown, not only of the reactors, but of the entire Japanese nuclear power program..
Why Worry? It’s Green!
Weaning the Japanese people off a renewed nuclear allergy has taken. a while, but as with those festive Hiroshimians, memories of nuclear catastrophe have been gradually assuaged. Last December, the government decreed that all plants idled since the Fukushima disaster are to be restarted as soon as possible. The restart (and operating-life extension of aging reactors past their design lifespan) is part of Japan’s "green transformation" policy. Where once upon a time nuclear power was sold as beneficial to space travel and other futuristic fantasies, nowadays the promise that it is the answer to climate change has found eager buyers among a young generation - as most arrestingly demonstrated by enthusiastic misinformation-rich reports from Green New Deal author Alexandria Occasio-Cortez following a visit to the Fukushima ruins in April this year.
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Meanwhile the U.S. is of course in the midst of a trillion dollar nuclear weapons buildup complete with new ICBMs, bombers, missile submarines and assorted devices, notably “low yield” warheads far less powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, and therefore more temptingly usable in a crisis.
Nevertheless, relax. If Hiroshima can live with severe damage, so can the rest of us.