Hiroshima 1995.

In August 1945 the end of war with Japan ushered in an era of peaceful American-japanese relations that has lasted for fifty years. An outcome so positive and enduring could hardly have been imagined after the fierce combat that brought the war to Japanese territory in the spring and summer of 1945, nor, indeed, after our use of the atomic bomb. At Iwo Jima and Okinawa Americans faced a Japanese force committed to victory or suicide (see Nancy Westerfield's account on page 30); the U.S. Air Force fire bombed Tokyo in March and then other Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians; finally two atomic bombs were dropped: August 6 on Hiroshima and August 9 on Nagasaki.

Despite military defeats on the Asian mainland, dire shortages of food and oil, a total naval blockade, and the loss of hundreds of thousands of soldiers, the Japanese military were resolute: victory or national suicide. This kamikaze spirit - fighting to the death at Iwo Jima and Okinawa - lent credence to warnings by U. S. military leaders that an invasion, scheduled for November 1, 1945, would be hard fought; the lowest estimates at the time were for 95,000 casualties in the first months alone, one-third of them deaths. The scenario of Japanese fanaticism and the militarization of the whole population, the potential American casualties, and war weariness have been used to justify the use of atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: They would save lives - American ones certainly, but Japanese as well. Bruce Loebs, in his account of the final days of the war (page 10), argues that it was the destruction of Hiroshima that finally brought Emperor Hirohito to confront the Japanese military and order the surrender of Japan.

The war with Japan ended - and the effort to write the history and debate the morality of the atomic bomb began. Loebs's moral analysis is not our own, but his history, we believe, is accurate in describing the last days of the war with Japan (see also, J. Bryan Hehir, page 9).

Of course, matters moral and historical are never simple - as the Commonweal editorial of August 24, 1945 (reprinted above), makes clear. The war against Japan was ended by immoral means - civilians were directly targeted. But the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not, as the editorial notes, the first occasion when the Allies bombed cities and targeted civilians, nor were they the last. German and Japanese cities bad been fire bombed, and the slaughter of civilians continued even as the Japanese agreed to surrender.

Many who focus solely on our use of atom bombs and who say that Japan would have surrendered without it overlook the immoral nature of fire bombing. A-bombs or fire bombs - the ends still do not justify the means. The Commonweal editorial was right: even before the advent of the A-bomb, the Allies had tragically adopted the practices of the enemy. Their "shame" was also our own.

Fifty years later, when the Smithsonian institution set out to create an exhibit that would remember the end of the war, it tried to raise these difficult questions. That effort was brought down by veterans' groups, the Air Force Association, and elements of the U.S. Congress. The passage of time has not changed the gruesome and awful facts of what the Japanese did in beginning and conducting the war and what Americans did to end it. Neither has the passage of time convinced most American soldiers and sailors slated to be part of the invasion forces that the atomic bombs and the fire bombing were not justified (see Brian Doyle, page 14). The moral restraints of the just-war tradition embodied in international law and violated by both incendiary devices and atomic bombs were not compelling for those destined to die in the war nor for the political leaders who controlled their fate. The collapse of the Smithsonian exhibit shows that even today we are, as a nation, loath to raise these necessary questions.

Still, this anniversary has been the occasion for further reflection, moral and political. Three writers, Thomas Powers (Atlantic Monthly, July 1995), Jean Bethke Elshtain, and Michael Walzer (both in Dissent, Summer 1995), who, like Commonweal, count themselves among the critics of the decision to drop the bomb, press various issues and we urge a full reading of their reflections. Though their analyses diverge, each points to the last fifty years and reminds us of one paramount fact and diabolical irony: After Nagasaki atomic weapons have never been used again.

Fifty years later, the cold war has ended, the United States and Russia are gradually dismantling a huge and varied stockpile of nuclear arms, and this past May, 179 nations signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty. That is small comfort in a time when conventional weapons are ever more savage and arms control rests on precarious international efforts. And yes, it is true: Though we can dismantle and bury pieces of atomic weaponry, we cannot bury the knowledge of such weapons. That is why Germans, Japanese, Russians, Americans, and British must "remember with horror the days of their shame." Perhaps that shame, too often unacknowledged and unexpressed, as much as the deterrent value of all our weapons has stayed the hand that would use such weapons again.