Tag: J. Robert Oppenheimer

Harry Truman and His Undisturbed Sleep After Hiroshima

Clifton Truman Daniel, the eldest grandson of Harry Truman, came to the Moberly auditorium last Thursday, a week from August 6th (today), the date 81 years ago that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. He told us many funny stories about his grandfather, and considering the age of the audience (at 70 we were on the younger side of this grey headed group), and the content of the evening, it was as if we were transported back to a more innocent time in the 1950’s. Good ole’ give ‘em hell Harry was back with us. We heard of his car trip to Washington, how he got out of mowing the lawn, and of his attempts to keep the grandchildren from watching cartoons by reading to them from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Clifton quickly provided the usual explanation of the dropping of the bombs: it saved half a million lives, it brought the war to an end, and it was the only option. Mostly we all felt the warm glow of former days and enjoyed hearing about the Missouri President.

After the program he asked for questions or comments, and some told of personal association with the Trumans, or relatives who remembered the Trumans in Independence. No one really broached or disagreed with the narrative on the bombs, though one older gentleman noted the numbers killed in the fire bombings in Tokyo exceeded the deaths due to the bombs. This was a patriotic crowd, some of whom had friends and loved ones who had gone off to war. I was happy not to break the spell of the evening and to leave, but Faith had a different idea. She wanted to talk to Clifton personally, and I must say, I did not. But we got in line, and made our way to Clifton, who strategically stayed up on the stage. At our turn, Faith explained to him, that her father had been stationed in Japan after the war and that they had returned as missionaries, so she grew up in Japan. Clifton said he had spent more time in Japan than any other foreign country, and he had met many times with hibakusha – those who survived the bomb. He had met Setsuko, famous for her anti-nuclear advocacy, and other survivors who spent their life speaking out against nuclear arms. Faith has a soft voice, and was a bit emotional as they traded stories, and Clifton drew closer and closer and knelt down, till he was only a few inches from her face. They had clearly connected.

So, I felt free to ask my one question, about his grandfather’s reaction to the bombs. I explained, I had heard reports, that he said he never lost a minute of sleep over the decision, or alternatively, that the dropping of the bombs haunted him. I wanted to know which was true. By the time I had finished posing the question, Clifton had stood up on the stage, and was backing away. He responded, “He never said that.” He then repeated the propaganda we all know. “If anything, he knew he would save lives.” Clifton distanced himself, up and away from us and my question, much like his grandfather had distanced himself from the issue. It was obvious I had touched a nerve, and the conversation was over. I had not meant to be provocative and the strong reaction surprised me. Our warm evening with the Trumans was over.

The strange thing in Clifton’s reaction, was that his grandfather’s standard answer was that he never lost any sleep over the issue.[1] Robert Lifton and Greg Mitchell say in their book, that the metaphor of sleep was his best known reaction. “As early as 1959, he declared, as he did many times subsequently, that “I never lost any sleep over my decision.”[2] Sleeping soundly was his way of saying he felt justified in doing what he had done. In 1959 he told an enormous twelve-hundred-student “class” at Columbia University that the bomb was just like an ordinary artillery weapon, that the Japanese had deserved it, that he had lost no sleep over the decision, and that, if necessary, he would make the same decision.[3] Of course the weapon was not ordinary, and Truman would say as much himself in describing it later, and to say the Japanese “deserved it” gets at the revenge in using the weapons. The women and children of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, even in Truman’s more thoughtful statements, did not deserve it, but the tendency was to demonize the race.

Sleep was a lifelong concern for Truman; the losing of it or getting it. He had trouble with insomnia and anxiety, especially when younger, but then when he did sleep, he would boast as to how quick he could do it. To sleep quickly was for him, metaphorically and literally, a sign of moral steadfastness, which he connected with his energy, and overall self-confidence. As Truman told Paul Tibbets, who piloted the Enola Gay over Hiroshima, “Don’t you ever lose any sleep over the fact that you planned and carried out that mission. It was my decision. You had no choice.”[4] He wanted Tibbets and the world, strangely even those in Hiroshima to whom he would convey similar sentiments, to lose no sleep.

A Japanese doctor from Hiroshima asked him by letter about his glib answers; “Why didn’t you have conscience enough to avoid using such means as to completely destroy humanity and human civilization?” Not losing sleep, indicates a lack of both consciousness and conscience. “Do you consider it a humane act to try to justify the outrageous murder of two hundred thousand civilians of Hiroshima, men and women, young and old, as a countermeasure for the surprise attack?” The doctor artfully weaves throughout his letter, an implied lack of awareness, that the well-slept Truman glibly willing to drop more bombs, should have not been guilty of. His letter went on to ask, “Do you consider your country which having manufactured the atomic bomb, was aware of its explosive power, and could anticipate the formidable destruction, be excused, just because it is a conqueror, for the crime of the first, the most cruel, and the largest scale manslaughter that has ever taken place in the history of mankind?”[5] Maybe the whole country should have been more awake. Truman did not respond, though they had been corresponding about a possible visit to Hiroshima. Imagine the response, “I did not lose any sleep,” in this context. To say he lost no sleep, would be a confirmation of his lack of conscientious morality.

 The message was, let’s not think about it. The decision is done, we saved lives, and we can now move on and distance ourselves from such considerations. In other words, Clifton’s reaction to my question was a physical enactment of his grandfather’s recommendation. My question was little more than, did Truman think about what he had done or did he not think about it? To move beyond sleep, to thought, implies consideration, and consideration itself is problematic, whether deep consideration or no consideration. What Clifton was resisting was what his grandfather resisted, and that was to express regret. To say he regretted it had too many implications for all the lives lost needlessly and for his poor decision. Good sleep, no regret, is the message.

The insistence on good sleep was to hide just how troubled Truman may have been. As Lifton and Mitchell note, “There is evidence that Truman never ceased to be preoccupied with his decision. Tom Clark who had been his attorney general, told of visiting Truman in a Kansas City hospital four or five months before his death. Though told to stay only briefly, Clark remained for about 45 minutes, during much of which Truman defended his dropping the bomb.”[6]  The old man spent some of his final conversations on the subject over which “he lost no sleep.” Lifton and Mitchell also record Truman’s private discussion, which may be the only occasion upon which he expressed regret about using the bomb. Former White House photographer Joe O’Donnell told them that in 1950 he accompanied Truman on his trip to Wake Island to meet with General MacArthur. Truman strolled along the beach with O’Donnell who dared to ask if Truman had any “second thoughts” about the decision to drop the bomb. “According to O’Donnell Truman quickly replied, ‘Hell yes!’ and then added, somewhat cryptically, ‘I’ve had a lot of misgivings about it, and I inherited a lot more, too.’” 

What he may have meant about his “inherited misgivings” is not clear, but several, including Eisenhower had tried to warn him off of using the bomb. Eisenhower, according to his daughter, was deeply disturbed by even the prospect, and he thought it unnecessary, as he confided to his diary: “It always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”[7]  As he goes on to write, “I had been conscious of depression and so I voiced (to Sec. Of War Stimson) my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” He reiterated on multiple occasions that he thought they were on the verge of surrender. “It was my belief that Japan was, at this very moment, seeking a way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.'”[8] They wanted to surrender and it was unnecessary to hit them with that “awful thing.” At Potsdam, he conveyed his unsolicited advice to Truman. In the PBS documentary, American Experience, Samuel Rushay (the Presidential Archivist) maintains Eisenhower said to Truman at Potsdam, among other things, “Mr. President, I don’t think it is necessary to use the bomb.” The overwhelming testimony is that the majority of military men were against it.

Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, though inconsistent, had not wanted to use the bomb. He thought Truman should consider backing down on his demand for unconditional surrender. William Leahy, Truman’s Chief of Staff, Henry Arnold, the commanding general of the US Army Air Forces, Admiral Halsey, Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, Major General Curtis LeMay, who had innovated new weaponry in the fire bombings of Tokyo, all opposed the bomb. Congressman Stewart L. Udall thought the bomb prolonged the war by delaying immediate negotiations. He says, “I have come to view the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings that August as an American tragedy that should be viewed as a moral atrocity.”[9] This may be what he “inherited.”

Some may have spoken more strongly with hindsight, but Truman was made aware of options. Far from a foregone conclusion, those who understood the situation most intimately, considered it a “war crime,” a “holocaust,” a “barbarity,” and “a return to the dark ages,” in their various descriptions. They thought the Japanese were defeated, and talk of the loss of a half-million lives in an invasion was an estimate they knew was wildly exaggerated. Also, it did not take into account that with the bomb, there was to be no invasion. It was not simply a matter of invade or drop the bomb, as invasion was taken off the table as an option, as soon as the bomb was available. It was a matter of negotiation before or after dropping the bomb.

Truman, may have been carried along by events, by the huge investment in the bomb, by the foregone conclusion of making it means using it, and by the manipulations, lies, and prodding of Leslie Groves, the general in charge of seeing the project to completion, but it was not, as some have contended that no decision was ever made. Truman made the decision, and he wanted that to be clear, and he also resisted any show of feelings of regret, any note of self-condemnation. He would become infuriated when asked about regret or ethical responsibility in the mass killing, itself a sign he had thought about it.

Truman was threatened by any reflection on the atomic bombings and would sometimes attack even those who were sympathetic to him. In response to a historian (sympathetic with dropping the bomb), who nonetheless said that the bombing did not end the war and that the Japanese would have surrendered within a few months even without the bomb, Truman wrote one of his most vitriolic letters, which he never sent. He says, “You write just like the usual egghead. The facts are before you but you would like to garble them. The instruction of July 25th, 1945 was final. It ended the war. Now if you think of any other, ‘if’ ‘as’ and ‘when’ eggheaded contemplations bring them out. It is a great thing that you or any other contemplator ‘after the fact’ didn’t have to make the decision. Our boys would all be dead.”[10] Truman did not appreciate “egg heads” or “contemplators,” and never considered deep deliberation a quality he wanted to be known for. He wanted to be seen as a man of action who makes decisions. Deep reflection of any kind may slow down masculine action. His famous sign, “The Buck stops here,” conveyed that he decided.

As Secretary of Commerce Henry Wallace noted, “Truman was exceedingly eager to agree with everything I said. He also seemed eager to make decisions of every kind with the greatest promptness. Everything he said was decisive. It almost seemed as though he was eager to decide in advance of thinking.”[11] Even in his own self-reflection he wanted to do away with doubt or hesitation. He consistently limited the flow of information, which his own advisors were already surreptitiously doing. Knowledge of the destructiveness of the bomb, that it was actually a chemical weapon and not just another standard weapon (as he often said), were things he knew, and resisted. He cut off the flow of information, in his own mind, so that he acted and spoke quickly, on less knowledge than he was aware of. He knew of radiation sickness, he knew the Japanese were ready to surrender, he knew of the moral issues at hand, but these were not things he wanted to contemplate too deeply.

Truman was more complicated than he may have wanted to either appear or be. He had grown up surrounded by women, with a protective mother, and close female friends. This did not make him openly sensitive, but eager not to be seen as a “sissy” or a “crybaby” (his favorite put downs). As a child, due to his bookishness, his piano playing, his refusal of sports due to his thick glasses, he was, in his own estimate, “a sissy.” His closest friends, two female cousins and his mother, doted on him and his mother had hoped he would be a girl, and seemed to instill that wish. Due to his eye trouble, she had bred caution into him. Truman, says, “I was afraid my eyes would get knocked out if there was too much of a rough and tumble play.”[12] The child that admittedly ran from fights, and who considered himself a sissy, became overly pugnacious, in constant pursuit of a felt lack of masculinity. “He was bedeviled by the image of being just a ‘little man’ who could not be expected to act significantly on the world, and he needed to see himself as acting quickly, boldly, and above all, decisively.”[13]

Alonzo Hamby, in his biography, presents Truman as an overachiever, who spent his life attempting to demonstrate a confidence, he did not possess. He was insecure and his pugnacious exterior was meant to cover that.[14] He was unsure of himself, as a sickly child, and certainly as a new president, following the God-like Roosevelt. Military endeavor and then political success were his dream, by means of which he could put off this perceived inadequacy. He read military history and thought of himself as a military hero after serving in WWI. His female cousins, his best friends, referred to him as Horatio. Mostly, however, he was engaged in a war with himself, as is expressed in one of his characteristic statements: “I want peace and I’m willing to fight for it.”[15] The peace that eluded him, he sought to bring about through greater success and power. He wanted to be seen as a decisive leader, and the metaphor of not losing sleep was part of the image he sought to portray, one of being in control. He found crybaby eggheads, moralists, sensitive types, as repulsive.

The scene from the film about Robert Oppenheimer, when the scientist confronts Truman about his own guilty conscious captures this. When Oppenheimer and Dean Edgerton (Under Secretary of State) came to the oval office in November 1945, Oppenheimer wanted to convey his agitation about the atomic danger. He blurted out, “Mr. President I have blood on my hands,” at which he started wringing his hands, as if to get the blood out. Truman had him quickly escorted out of his office, and tells Dean Atchison to never bring that “crybaby” around again. He would repeat the story on several occasions, mocking Oppenheimer’s weakness, wringing his hands in imitation. This sort of eggheaded-emotion was exactly what he could not stand and wanted nothing to do with. He would refer to Oppenheimer thereafter, as the “crybaby scientist.”[16] He would take responsibility, he would be the one with “blood on his hands” to save the nation. The sacrifice was great, but he was willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands. Truman was eager to distance himself from Oppenheimer and his troubled conscience, or his cross-bearing responsibility. He preferred outward performance, moving up and away, from even the possibility of thinking about such things.

It is little wonder that he felt “jubilant” or “elated” with the biggest bomb ever made and he felt a new confidence in negotiating with Stalin. One of his advisors describe Truman and Churchill, upon receiving news of the bomb at Potsdam, “Like little boys with a big red apple secreted on their person.”[17] The Japanese seemed to recede as a threat, and he began to realize Stalin and the Russians, were the real threat. Observers noted he began, even at Potsdam, to move from military, to political imagery, in regard to the bomb. He said of the Russians, “I’ll certainly have a hammer on those boys.” He was now confident of exercising control over the Russians. The war was won in his mind, as he felt a new capacity to control events with Japan.

According to Lifton and Mitchell, “To keep the self functional a man like Truman needs power surges. He received just that when he gave his first presidential speech to Congress and mentioned his commitment to unconditional surrender.”[18] He felt it again with the bomb. He considered it the “greatest thing in history” and when news reached him of the destruction of Hiroshima, he said it was the “happiest” announcement he ever made.[19] As the psychologist Lifton indicates, killing is the greatest feeling of empowerment, serving feelings of immortality and even omnipotence. Killing hundreds of thousands might explain Truman’s descriptions of absolute “happiness,” and “elation.” “His fears combined, strangely and tragically,” with what Lifton and Mitchell refer to as a “bomb centered omnipotence.”[20] Truman, like many connected to the project, felt the power of the bomb.

For Truman it was the solution to the war, to his political success, and to his personal struggle. The bomb seemed to “enable one to do everything – to solve and transcend all immediate problems, bring about instant victory as well as control of the future, and offer those who used it a deity’s dominion and immortality.”[21]  That Truman would use the bomb became evident as he was drawn to its power. Omnipotent-like power as opposed to a seeming weakness, which he feared more than anything, must have played into his decision. As he said, this was “the greatest thing in all of human history,” and he had unleashed it. Of course, he could sleep comfortably, so long as he did not stop to consider the source of his new happiness. To think of the moral responsibility, which Truman did on occasion, was to lose his happiness.

As he saw evidence of the destruction in Hiroshima, he spoke of “the terrible responsibility that such destruction placed upon us here and himself.”[22] He went from elated awe to self-doubt and feelings of dread. His life-long headaches returned. On August 10th, the day they decided on surrender terms, he told Henry Wallace he “had bad headaches every day.” Wallace asked, “Physical or Figurative?” Truman said, “Both.”[23] In spite of his supposed good sleep, Truman suffered and would agonize over this decision for the rest of his life, which only points to his humanity.

Truman had several coping mechanisms to avoid being overwhelmed with guilt. His “good sleep,” his supposed decisiveness, were not simply a public ploy, but a personal mode of surviving self-condemnation. He was not hesitant to lie to himself and to others. When a friendly Democratic politician asked if “jubilation” over the death of innocents was appropriate, Truman immediately falsified his response, to say he meant he was jubilant over Russia having entered the war. Later when asked about his glib answer over any feelings of guilt, Truman also revised the nature of his not lost sleep. He said, “I lost plenty of sleep but not over saving Japanese lives. I lost sleep worrying about our boys and it broke my heart when just one of our soldiers, sailors or marines died.”[24] The metaphor breaks down, but so does Truman’s various answers. He would lose sleep and get emotional only on the right topic, and the loss of Japanese lives was not usually that topic.

The problem is that Truman’s good sleep meant, as he reiterated many times, that he would do it again. “A favorite phrase was. ‘I’d do it again’ (1956) or ‘I would not hesitate to drop the A-bomb again’ (1965).” Deep sleep meant no reconsideration but commitment to a correct decision. Dropping bombs was justified and might be the way to go in the future. He said as much in connection to Korea, where he considered dropping the bomb again. No president, other than Dwight Eisenhower, has questioned the decision, so that being president can now be equated with a ready willingness, when necessary, to use the nuclear option. The people of Hiroshima, those peace activists attempting to stop nuclear proliferation, were more disturbed by this unthinking response than by the original decision to drop the bomb. “As much as they deplored the weapon and viewed it as criminal some expressed understanding of how it might be used under the pressure of war. But to speak more or less detachedly of using it again was to dismiss what victims had been subjected to and reject human lessons of the weapon.”[25] Sleeping soundly through future deployment of the weapon seems inhumanly callous, yet that is also implied in his good conscience. He did it once and would do it again.

Atomic diplomacy, on the order of Truman, is now the background to any international conflict. At this moment Donald Trump, who has threatened the use of nuclear weapons and is engaged in a war in Iran to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, is acting in the wake of this story. Truman’s good sleep has meant entry into the cold war and nuclear proliferation to at least nine countries, with others eager to obtain their own weapons. Those nations who have the weapon feel empowered to act unilaterally. Putin, Netanyahu, Kim, and Trump, embody the Truman doctrine in regard to the atomic option. The willingness to commit genocide, or perhaps bring on world destruction by deploying nuclear arms, is now the unspoken qualification for the highest office. Truman was not unaware of this possible legacy.

In his farewell speech from the presidency, he spoke of the “stakes in our search for peace,” as they’re “immeasurably higher than they have ever been before” and that we are in danger of digging our own grave and that of our own society in this new age of destructive power. He describes “the war of the future would be one in which man would extinguish millions of lives at one blow, demolish the great cities of the world, wipe out the cultural achievements of the past and destroy the very structure of a civilization that has been slowly and painfully built up through hundreds of generations.” He concludes that “such war is not a possible policy for rational men.”[26] But his words came too late, and his actions in allowing unfettered testing and deployment are irreversible.

The problem with his overstated confidence, his sound sleep, is more than his personal issue, as this simple-minded decision making is the light in which nuclear arms proliferated. If the primary concern is to cut short the destructive understanding which has gripped the world, there is a great deal at stake in seeing through the façade, not just of Truman, but of the decision he made. By seeing through the “inevitable nature of it,” the seeming lack of choice, and realizing there were many choices, many possibilities, this may open up deeper consideration of present options. Many elements went into creating what many still cannot clearly see for what it was. Racism, vengeance, self-righteousness, lack of empathy or even its possibility, created a blindness, and the next time we are thrust into this situation we can expect the same blindness to recur. If we can examine the cause of the blinding scapegoating, recognize it when it comes over us, and seek a larger or different perspective, that may be all that can be asked. But if we are comfortable in our self-justifications, in not losing sleep, then we are doomed.

[1] The question as to whether he said he never lost any sleep, is not debatable, in spite of Clifton’s strong reaction. He had in fact said something like this many times. It is true there are versions of it that he may not have said, (he apparently never said, I slept like a baby, which was the way the press summarized his usual statement) but his standard line was in regard to sleep.

[2] Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima: Fifty Years of Denial (Diane Publishing Co, 1995) 176.

[3] Robert H. Ferrell, INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY, XCII (June, 1996). 0 1996, Trustees of Indiana University.

[4] Fifty Years of Denial, 176.

[5] Fifty Years of Denial, 178.

[6] Fifty Years of Denial, 184.

[7] From the Diary of Eisenhower, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/38.pdf.

[8] Diary.

[9] https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/38.pdf

[10] Fifty Years of Denial, 178-179.

[11] Fifty Years of Denial, 126.

[12] Fifty Years of Denial, 196.

[13] Fifty Years of Denial, 199.

[14] Alonzo Hamby, Man of the People  (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

[15] Fifty Years of Denial, 199.

[16] Fifty Years of Denial, 168.

[17] Fifty Years of Denial, 154.

[18] Fifty Years of Denial, 199.

[19] Fifty Years of Denial, 169.

[20] Fifty Years of Denial, 161.

[21] Fifty Years of Denial, 161.

[22] Fifty Years of Denial, 169.

[23] Fifty Years of Denial, 152.

[24] Fifty Years of Denial, 175.

[25] Fifty Years of Denial, 175.

[26] Fifty Years of Denial, 192.

Watching Oppenheimer with Bulgakov: American Prometheus or American Adam

The lesson of Genesis 3, proven in human history, is that knowledge of the good or the depth of insight into God’s good creation, is tied to evil manipulation of this insight. More than this, as in the original deception, the knowledge of good and evil was and is taken as spiritual insight (a step toward becoming god). Through the elements of the world man presumes he can ascend to deity, but the “fruit” of this insight is deadly. The fundamental elements are used by Cain to bludgeon his brother to death so that he might displace Abel in the spiritual hierarchy. Having penetrated the depths of the knowledge of good and evil he descends into the world, imagining he is ascending to deity. As Sergius Bulgavov describes the fall: “Thus the deception of Satan was a grandiose ontological provocation,” in that material means are presumed to gain spiritual ends and spiritual death is presumed to be entry into spiritual life.[1]

This might be illustrated in the history of war and science. The course of human history has been shaped by warfare (with some historians claiming history can be written in terms of decisive battles) and warfare has been shaped by technological and scientific innovation. Mathematics, engineering, metallurgy, astronomy, chemistry, navigation, have each contributed simultaneously to civilization and to warfare, with progress in the former being synonymous with the latter. This is clearly illustrated in the case of physics.

Three-hundred years of research into physics revealed in the past century that the physical universe is relative to an observer, that there is an uncertainty principle or the sense in which the universe is not a determinate structure, but is impacted by observation. The universe is not a machine, and the laws of the universe are open, pointing to atomic freedom. The indication is that there is an incompleteness to the atomic world and that there is room not only for human manipulation, but divine care. On the other hand, the culmination of three hundred years of physics, and the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics, resulted in the atomic and hydrogen bomb.

The list of those working on innovation in theoretical physics is nearly synonymous with those who turned to working on the bomb, while those who refused this work can be counted on one hand (including, Austrian physicist Lise Meitner, who discovered nuclear fission, and Isidor Rabi, who served in a limited way at Los Alamos and was Robert Oppenheimer’s close friend). This raises the question of the connection between good and evil, in that those who peered deepest into the truth and goodness of the universe, instead of developing deep moral and spiritual sensitivity, were responsible for creating weapons of mass destruction.

We recently saw the film, Oppenheimer, about Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb,” who oversaw its production or invention at Los Alamos New Mexico, and its explosion at Alamogordo. The book, upon which the film was based, is entitled American Prometheus, and both the book and film convey the moral contradictions and struggle faced by Oppenheimer (brilliantly portrayed by Cillian Murphy). Maybe one of the premiere intellects of his generation, not only an outstanding scientist, but cultured and well read in a number of fields, nevertheless he may not have resembled Prometheus so much as the first man, Adam. Prometheus, the god that would civilize man by sharing fire from the sun, may be the wrong image, as Oppenheimer fails to break the bureaucratic and moral prosaicness (the whisperings of the earth-bound serpent) by which he is grounded.

As Bulgakov writes,

Prometheus symbolizes the struggle with metaphysical “petit-bourgeois” mediocrity, (this is man with a conservative imagination) with the self-satisfaction of this world. He misses the higher principle of life, the kingdom of God. The usual Luciferian “petit-bourgeois” interpretation of this symbol reduces it to the level of a struggle for the immanent empirical values of this world, whereas it actually summons man to a higher vocation, to the kingdom of God. It is this “petit-bourgeois” (conventionalism, conservatism) spirit that perpetuates good and evil in their interdependence as the sole path of life and ascent. The fallen state of man with the possibilities that it contains is therefore considered to be the supreme and unique state.[2] 

Rather than struggling against the petit-bourgeois values of his contemporaries (Bulgakov’s picture of Prometheus’ symbolism), Oppenheimer displays “satisfaction” with “immanent empirical values.” As Bulgakov notes, “Evil first presents itself before man in the guise of the natural world.” The serpent arises from the earth to engage the humans in an earthy, earth bound, and return to the earth dialogue. They confuse this earth-wisdom for spiritual insight. “The beginning of evil in man is therefore connected not with revolt or usurpation, but with misunderstanding, naivete and ignorance. Our progenitors did not know how to recognize or to terminate the poisonous conversation with the serpent.” [3] The serpent arises from the earth and speaks and returns to the earth, the earth seems to indicate he can serve as his own deity. There is a gullibility and curiosity – yet the knowledge of good and evil – continues to raise its head.

Oppenheimer is content to filter his scientific genius into building a bigger rock or larger weapon. He thus perpetuates the conventional spirit of “good and evil in their interdependence as the sole path of life and ascent.” This one, we might expect to be among the spiritually enlightened and morally adept, channels his imagination along the rut carved out by the progenitors of the race. Like Adam and Cain, Oppenheimer would employ the elementary particles to play god (as one of his contemporaries accuses). Rather than breaking free of the dance between good and evil, Oppenheimer embodies and proves the principle. Who, more than the father of the atomic bomb, demonstrated that human fallenness is as good as it gets in the petit-bourgeois value system.

So, we might picture Oppenheimer, as the American Adam, rather than as Prometheus. The knowledge of the good, of God’s good creation, is tied by Oppenheimer and his generation of physicists, to the worst sort of conventional evil. Though Oppenheimer has his doubts, and will later lay moral responsibility on the politicians, he never hesitates in building the bomb and agrees the bomb must be used on Japan (even helping in the selection of targets, and despite the fact his colleagues questioned the decision). Instead of imagining total freedom, which is one of the implications of high energy physics, Oppenheimer and his generation pick up where Cain left off. Using the most fundamental elements of the world, they bludgeon their brothers (along with their children and their wives) to death.

Instead of an enlightened, intelligent, freedom, what we get is completely devoid of this freedom.  In man is born the thought that through the elements of the world he is capable of ascending to the highest levels of spiritual life and knowledge. His consciousness of his spirituality has grown dim and the equilibrium between his flesh and his spirit has been disrupted.[4]

The universe at its core indicates both a guiding intelligence and an atomic ground for freedom but this spiritual freedom is not through the elements of the world. The descent of modern physicists into apprehending the elemental particles, the stuff of the universe, while it provided insight it also demonstrated instability or the possibility of disrupting, splitting, or exploding the world with death. Man can interfere with the world at its atomic level, but what he finds is not ascent into the spiritual. He does indeed find a gap indicating the universe marks his presence. The observer is reflected in the observation. The experimenter has to take account of himself in the experiment. But this also introduces the possibility for splitting, implosion, chain reaction and the infection of all with mortality.

The great insight into physics which is tied to most modern innovations is also tied to the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the possibility of world destruction. The battle between good and evil, their necessary mutual implication is captured in Oppenheimer. The man is torn between the depth of insight into the good, and the recognition that with this knowledge he has the power of the sun – atomic power – to become the destroyer of the world. The image of the mushroom cloud over Alamogordo, and then duplicated over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bears with it the image of skin melting off thousands, and hundreds of thousands of victims. People are still dying of radiation poisoning and cancer in New Mexico, and surrounding states. And every year the number of dead killed by the atomic bombing in Japan continues to increase.

Man, Adam, has the capacity for depth of insight, but this capacity for truth comes with the simultaneous capacity for destruction. God called man to be fruitful and to multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it, and (to) have dominion (Gen. 1:28). But with this power to dominate and manipulate arises the power not only of good but of profound evil. The universe is such that humans can feed into it, manipulate it, control it, and destroy it. Where God brings forth the universe out of the nothingness of the Big Bang, we recognize humans can reverse the process. Man has the power to return the world to the nothingness from out of which it came, and nuclear explosion perfectly illustrates the point.

Thus, Oppenheimer’s reflection upon the success of the Trinity test is fitting: “I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad-Gita, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.” Oppenheimer, in the spirit of the first command, subdued the earth and took his place of dominion, but he too reduced it to thorns and thistles. The thorn of nuclear holocaust and the thistle of atomic power threatens to choke all life out of the world. The American Adam, like his progenitor, turned from the task of cultivating and extending the kingdom of God, to displacing it with the kingdoms of this world.

In this sense, the film Oppenheimer captures the biblical proportions of the human struggle enacted in Robert Oppenheimer and his race.

[1] Sergius Bulgakov, The Bride of the Lamb (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Kindle Edition) 162.

[2] Ibid, 189-190.

[3] Ibid, 162.

[4] Ibid, 162.

Theology After Hiroshima and Nagasaki

“I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad-Gita, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.”

J. Robert Oppenheimer (often called the “father of the atomic bomb”)

Today, seventy-five years ago, the first atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima and three days later the second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. Some twenty-five years ago we visited Hiroshima on a trip to Kyushu and on the return trip we drove to Nagasaki by way of the Gotō Islands in Nagasaki prefecture, which were strikingly different than any part of Japan we had visited. Several of the island villages were built around a Catholic church, and to see church steeples towering over a Japanese village was a bit jarring. Shūsaku Endō’s novel Silence, is set in these islands, in which Christianity took hold and survived during two hundred years of persecution. Endō’s portrayal, focused on the insecure faith of his characters, may not capture the enduring commitment of the islanders, even when threatened with torture and martyrdom. We knew as we made our way to Nagasaki and ground zero, that Japanese Christians had not only endured one of the longest and bloodiest persecutions but they would be the victims of a martyrdom never before unleashed on humankind.  Our first evening, we camped on the beach on Nakadori island before making our way into Nagasaki, and Erin (7 years old at the time), found a bag of kittens that a local farmer had failed to completely drown.

In the Dozaki Church, which had been converted into a museum, was a display explaining how Buddhist prayers offered by a priest downstairs would be redirected by Christians hidden above him upstairs. Hidden Christians venerated Mary by creating statues that could also be taken to represent the goddess Kannon, and they hid crosses inside Buddhist statues that could be used during Christian funerals. The tea ceremony was turned into a communion-like service, by turning the tea cup three times prior to drinking (to symbolize the Trinity) and by folding napkins in such a way as to indicate the silent recital of a prayer. (Considering that the tea ceremony may trace its origins to the communion service in the first place, this reconversion of the ceremony is fitting.)  

In Nagasaki we (6 cats, 2 children, and Faith and I) made our way to the Twenty-Six Martyrs Museum, itself a testimony counter to Endō’s notion of weak-willed Japanese Christians.  Twenty Japanese Christians and six foreign priests were hung on 26 crosses and as they were lanced to death, one of the priests, Paul Miki, preached to the crowd from his cross. The museum contains testimony to the impact Christianity had on Japan, with entire clans taking up the faith, and it indicates that there may have been some ten thousand martyrs of the faith.  But of course, it was the “Christian Nation” (the United States), which would martyr more Japanese Christians in a day than had been killed in the 200 years of persecution, which our next stop would symbolize. We could not convince Erin to leave the cats long enough to visit the museum, but maybe it was for the best.

About half the Catholic population of Japan, around 50,000 of a total of 110,000, lived in the Nagasaki parish and were concentrated in Urakami, which was ground zero of the atomic blast. Urakami Cathedral had been erected in 1895 on the very ground where citizens were forced to trample on fumie (images of Christ or the Virgin Mary) so as to expose those who were Christians. The church had been erected to honor the resilience of Japanese Christians and the twin bell towers, completed in 1925, made it the largest cathedral in East Asia.  The atomic bomb exploded about 500 meters from the church and incinerated the building. Parish priest, Saburo Nishida, entering the church to receive the sacrament of penance and reconciliation, Curate, Fusayoshi Tamaya, who was hearing confession, along with a dozen Christians inside the church were instantly incinerated. They were among some 10,000 Christians who made up the largest proportion of the 15,000 killed in the immediate vicinity of the blast. In other words, the United States wiped out the heart of the Catholic Christian population in Japan, and the Urakami Church, symbolic of 200 years of persecution, is also the marker of the atomic holocaust. Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who survived both atomic bombs (he was visiting Hiroshima during the first bomb and returned home to Nagasaki and experienced the second) thought the marble head of the Virgin Mary, which endured the Nagasaki blast, was emblematic of Christians destroying Christians. The eyes of the Virgin are black hollows and the side of her face bears the mark, which Yamaguchi thought looked like keloids, which appeared on victims of the blast.

It is all but established fact that the bombs played no role in Japan’s surrender. Historian Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, in his 2005 book Racing the Enemy, provides evidence from primary sources within the Japanese Diet that the War ended due to the entry of the Soviets into Manchuria. American intelligence, which had broken the Japanese codes, was conveying to Truman this same conclusion: the Japanese government wanted to negotiate surrender through Moscow. Truman already knew that the expected early August Russian declaration of war would end Japanese will to fight and American intelligence confirmed this to him. He also knew that assurances that Japan’s Emperor would be allowed to stay as a powerless figurehead would bring surrender, long before a projected November US invasion could begin. The destruction of two more cities made little difference to political and military leaders, after the destruction by fire bombing of the majority of Japanese cities. In the National Museum of the US Navy is a plaque that acknowledges: “the vast destruction wreaked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the Japanese military.” The Navy Museum acknowledges what Hasegawa proved and what Truman understood, it was Soviet entry into the war on the same day as the bombing of Nagasaki which moved the Japanese to surrender. Before this, Truman was being advised by most all of his generals the bomb was unnecessary.

William Leahy, President Truman’s Chief of Staff, wrote in his 1950 memoir that “the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . in being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”[1] The commanding general of the US Army Air Forces, Henry Arnold, indicated his views in a public statement only eleven days after Hiroshima was attacked. Asked on August 17 by a New York Times reporter whether the atomic bomb caused Japan to surrender, Arnold said that “the Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” According to Admiral William Halsey, “It was a mistake. . . . [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.” Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, stated in a public address at the Washington Monument two months after the bombings that “the atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military standpoint, in the defeat of Japan.” General Dwight Eisenhower,  stated in his memoirs that when notified by Secretary of War Henry Stimson of the decision to use atomic weapons, he “voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives.” He later publicly declared “. . . it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” Even the famous Major General Curtis LeMay, who had innovated new weaponry in the fire bombings of Tokyo, declared publicly a month after the bombing, “the atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.”[2] Truman’s political advisors overruled the military, and specifically Douglas MacArthur, who would retain the emperor despite the unconditional surrender.

Two Japanese Christian doctors who experienced the bombing of Nagasaki represent the two opposed reactions of Japanese Christians. Nagai Takashi (1908–1951), who would succumb to leukemia caused by the bomb’s radiation, spent his remaining years trying to comprehend the devastation. His wife had been killed instantly in the blast and he lived in a hut in the ruins of Nagasaki. I once heard a young preacher refer to the bright light of the atomic bombs as a light from God, which may be a perverse reading of Nagai but which reflects his attempt to account for the bombs as providential. “Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, slain as a whole-burnt offering on an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II?” Nagai asked.[3] Akizuki Tatsuichirō (1916–2005) a colleague of Nagai, devoted himself to treating survivors, many of whom were Catholics, but could not agree with Nagai’s seeming justification of the bombing. Akizuki would join the anti-nuclear peace movement and though he respected Nagai, he would not succumb to his silent submission. He received multiple prizes for his activities both as a doctor and as an outspoken witness against nuclear arms, and in spite of his sharp departure from the thought of Nagai, he was the first recipient of the Nagai Takashi Award. This dialectic between the two doctors, silent acceptance and angry protest is characterized by a saying which arises with the reactions from the two cities: Hiroshima rages, Nagasaki prays. Japanese Christians would be caught up with trying to reconcile these two extremes.

It was Japanese theologian, Kitamori Kazoh, who would develop the first Japanese theology which seems to reflect the peculiar suffering of Japan and the varied response of Japanese Christians. His book, The Theology of the Pain of God, not only refuses the Western notion that the Father does not suffer, but presumes pain is part of the essence of God, constituting the peculiar nature of the love of God. How can any but a suffering God truly love and how can there be true love apart from suffering? A key verse for Kitamori is Jeremiah 31:20: “Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still: Therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord” (KJV). Kitamori sees this verse as describing God in a state of turmoil, pain, and suffering. In Luther’s translation the verse describes God’s heart as broken. In the Japanese the phrase appears as, “my insides are in pain.” Kitamori concludes that there is a conflict in God between wrath and love and this produces the pain in which he embraces the sinner.

 In this he comes close to the Christ of Endō. In Silence, Father Rodrigues, is repulsed by the apostate coward, Kichijiro, and cannot imagine sharing communion with such a creature. But when he too is faced with death or stepping on the fumie, he realizes the true path to communion with Christ: “How his foot aches! And then the Christ in bronze speaks to the priest: “Trample! Trample! I more than anyone know of the pain in your foot. Trample! It was to be trampled on by men that I was born into this world. It was to share men’s pain that I carried my cross!”[4] The priest argues, “But you told Judas to go away: What thou dost do quickly. What happened to Judas?” Jesus answers, “I did not say that. Just as I told you to step on the plaque, so I told Judas to do what he was going to do. For Judas was in anguish as you are now.” As Christ explains, “There are neither strong nor weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong?” As Kitamori would put it, God does not reveal himself in power and glory but in forsakenness and suffering. Christ speaks to all, sinner and saint, faithful and faithless, as his grace is unilateral.5 Is he deterred by a mud swamp faith, which ebbs and flows with the tide, which comes and goes as circumstance demands and permits?

Theologian, Noro Yoshio, protests that Kitamori does not provide room to fight evil in our political and social life and seems to suggest a passive acceptance of evil and suffering.[6] Shoji Tsutomu, likewise concludes, Kitamori’s theology is confined to the psychological and personal and provides no basis for social praxis.[7] But the fate of two hundred years of unrelenting persecution, the helplessness felt before the power and seeming inevitability of the atomic bombs, may have marked Japanese Christianity with a sensibility of ontological suffering which Kitamori captures. It is the same sort of futility expressed by Endō and, I realize, it accounts for my own theological turn.

Where Christian faith and ethics have been made to accommodate violence, each holocaust, each murder, each slaughter of innocents, will have to be argued on the merits of the case. As with all arguments against the necessity of violence, the particulars of the argument against the justification or necessity of deploying the atomic bombs may fail to convince. The problem, as it should become evident, pertains to a faith that seems to require violence, no matter the argument. There is a form of the faith in the West that seems to require that it enact violence, much as there is a form of the faith in Japan that would accept the inevitability of being subject to suffering. An all-Christian bomber crew from an all-Christian administration guilty of vaporizing, incinerating, annihilating tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including a disproportionately large number of Japanese Christians, and choosing a/the Church for ground zero, shows up the meaninglessness of this form of religion. Of course, the Christian faith as it was practiced by these men seems not to have figured into the decision. Christianity did not cause Truman the Baptist, Byrnes the Catholic and one of Truman’s closest advisors, or Charles Sweeney (pilot of Bock’s Car) a devout Catholic, or any of the long list of Christian advisors and actors to pause or refuse. Truman reported sleeping soundly and never having a second thought. The faith simply served, it seems, to ease the consciences of its adherents. Though the image of Christian slaughtering Christian in genocidal proportions, as in Nagasaki, forever exposed the emptiness of the predominant form of the Western religion, it was precisely their faith that blinded many to this conclusion.

We made it home with our six kittens, but much like my shedding of my received understanding of the Western Christian faith, each of the kittens slowly died due to the substitute milk which provided no nourishment.  

[1] https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/why-the-us-really-bombed-hiroshima/

[2] Ibid. What was the point? Was it Truman’s attempt to intimidate Stalin? Secretary of State James Byrnes, we know, believed a demonstration of atomic power would help the United States dominate in the postwar era – and it was the Soviets, America’s ally, he was most concerned to impress. According to Manhattan Project scientist Leo Szilard, “[Byrnes] was concerned about Russia’s postwar behavior. . . [and thought] that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia.” In the event it did not work, as the bombs and Truman’s threatening distrust initiated the Cold War arms race. Truman, baffled by the science, assumed no one else could duplicate the technology. He told Oppenheimer the Soviet Union would never acquire the technology, though Oppenheimer presumed they would shortly have the weapon, which they did.

[3] The citation of Nagai’s passage was taken from his Nagasaki no Kane [The bells of Nagasaki] and is quoted from https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/4258.

[4] Silence, 171.

[5] Ibid, 191, quoted from Ethan Richardson https://mbird.com/2012/03/the-christ-of-silence-part-two-kichijiro-or-the-judas-everyman/

[6] Yoshio Noro. Impassibiliats Dei (Ph.D. dissertation, Union Theological Seminary, 1955), p. 99. Quoted from https://central.bac-lac.gc.ca/.item?id=NQ52205&op=pdf&app=Library

[7] Tsutomu Shoji, “The Church’s Struggle for Freedom of Belief– An Aspect of Christian Mission.” in Living Theology in Asia, Edited by John C. England New York: Orbis Books. 1982). p. 56. Ibid.