A little background.

Infamy (Merriam-Webster)

1 : evil reputation brought about by something grossly criminal, shocking, or brutal

2a : an extreme and publicly known criminal or evil act

b : the state of being infamous

 

On December 7,1941 Japanese warplanes carried out a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor, HI; a little over 2000 people, mainly sailors, were killed. The next day, in a speech to the US Congress, President Roosevelt labelled Dec 7 as a date which will live in infamy. The US declared war with Japan and the other Axis powers

The Bombing of Tokyo, (March 9–10, 1945), fire-bombing raid (codenamed “Operation Meetinghouse”) by the United States on the capital of Japan during the final stages of World War II, often cited as one of the most destructive acts of war in history, more destructive than the bombing of Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki. Although the precise death toll is unknown, conservative estimates suggest that the firestorm caused by incendiary bombs killed at least 80,000 people, and likely more than 100,000, in a single night; some one million people were left homeless. The Japanese later called this the “Night of the Black Snow.” (Wikipedia).

April 12, 1945: Roosevelt dies, and Harry S. Truman becomes president.

Later in 1945, having devastated 67 Japanese cities by conventional and firebombing, President Truman decided to deploy the newly developed atomic bomb, nicknamed “Little Boy” on the city of Hiroshima. Up to 100,000 Japanese, mainly civilians were killed in the blast and many died later from acute radiation sickness. (Wikipedia).

Major General Curtis LeMay has said, “Killing Japanese didn’t bother me very much at that time. It was getting the war over that bothered me.”

 

What follows is an imaginary conversation between a disembodied voice and the pilot of the Boeing B29 Superfortress christened “Enola Gay”, that was about to lift off from Tinian Field in the Mariana Islands with Little Boy in her belly,

 

On August 6 1945, Paul was praying as he always did prior to take off; during a pause in his prayer he heard a voice which seemed to come from behind him; he turned round in his seat expecting to see one of the crew there, but there was no one to be seen.

“Hello.” Paul said, “who is there?”

“It is I, he whom you call Lord when you pray,” replied a disembodied voice

“It is you, Lord?” Paul said in an incredulous tone,” but I was just praying to you.”

“Yes, Paul, I heard you and I decided that the two of us should have a conversation, so here I am beside you.”

“But it is my co-pilot who is beside me”

“Not an old man with a grey beard and wearing a white cloak, eh? Yes, I know what you are thinking, but I really am next to you; Joe is having a sort of siesta; but let’s not get bogged down in details, focus on the big picture, please Paul.”

“Er-rr, big picture?”

The big picture, Paul, is that you have been ordered by no less a person than Harry S Truman  to fly this silver bird to Hiroshima and there to release the newly built bomb, Little Boy, now resting in its bay, and explode it over the city. Am I correct?”

“Yes Lord, that is the situation.”

“What have you been told about the expected result of exploding this new weapon on Hiroshima?”

“I was briefed by a group of scientists who told me that they expected up to one hundred thousand persons to be killed outright, perhaps as many as perished in the fire-bombing of Tokyo last March; a similar number to be maimed and an unknown, but very large number to die of radiation sickness within a couple of years.”

“How many of these persons affected would be active military combatants?”

“No numbers are known, but it was expected to be a small percentage of the total.”

“So, a major fraction of those killed or maimed would be civilians, people going about their everyday business? Nothing short of an unspeakable horror.”

“Yes, Lord, so it would seem.”

“That is what it seems to me, and you are the person that is bent on perpetrating this horror, savagery many people would say. Do you feel to be a savage, Paul?”

“But Lord, I am only flying the airplane, obeying my orders.”

“Ah yes, your orders; from the President himself, so he is the savage and you are only an agent?”

“This is not how I see it, Lord, the President is trying to end the war as quickly as possible, to avoid unnecessary loss of life by American forces.”

“Well, Paul, he could end the war tomorrow by declaring a cease fire and a pullback of your buddies to American shores, thereby saving many, many lives, American and Japanese.”

“But would the Japanese also cease fire? If not, they would win the war.”

“So, this is all about winning and not about saving the lives of American boys?  Why would the Japanese not cease firing?”

“Lord, the Japanese are a sub-human race who decapitate American prisoners of war, how could they be trusted to honor a cease fire?”

“Paul, here is where you are entering dangerous philosophical territory, the Japanese people are my children, as are the American and all other peoples. In my eyes, all my children are equal and deserving of equal treatment. Your calling some of my children sub-human makes me shudder; admittedly in every racial group there are some members that behave anti-socially, shall we say. But to label the whole group as sub-humans is wrong and grossly unfair. They could point to the German people and call them sub-human for their horrific treatment of Jews, who were in turn labelled sub-human by the Germans who used that appellation as a reason for exterminating them. And now, look at you and your President, you are about to embark on a mission that will exterminate many, many thousands of innocent Japanese; will history put the same label on you?”

“Dear Lord, I think of myself as a good Christian, I pray and go to church regularly, and yet, here you are asking me if I am a sub-human savage.”

“Paul, praying and participating in churches activities are certainly necessary conditions for a good Christian life, but they are insufficient; you also need to demonstrate that you love and respect your fellows among God’s children.”

“But Lord, America is at war with Japan and I am a military pilot, I have been ordered to fly this mission and if I refuse now I shall surely be thrown into military prison and perhaps tried as a deserter or even a traitor for which I could be executed.”

“Yes Paul, I am sure that you are aware of the thousands of my children, your siblings, that throughout history have been hanged, stoned, shot, burned, disemboweled, and so on for standing up for their Christian beliefs; indeed the first of them was my own son who was crucified. Can you imagine, Paul, what pains he suffered whilst hanging there for hours from the nails through his hands and his feet? The story of Christianity is a continuous trail of torture and death of believers. The men and women who endured these grievous deaths were truly saintly in my eyes, if not in the eyes of the church’s leaders of the day. Paul, I ask you to unbuckle your harness and dismount from the plane and tell your supervisor that your Christian beliefs will not allow you to send a multitude of Japanese people to their deaths.”

Paul was silent for a couple of minutes, seemingly weighing his responsibilities. Finally, he said,

“No, Lord, I will not do as you ask. I regret to say that your voice is not enough, and even if you appeared to me in the flesh, as it were, it would still take a giant leap of faith for me to believe that you were God and not the devil pretending to be God in an effort to interfere in the plans of my President to end the war quickly. I understand your point about the Japanese and the German people, the enemies of America, are all God’s children, but their behavior over the past few years cannot be overlooked. My President has decided that this mission must be carried out and I have been selected to pilot Enola Gay. What you ask, whoever you are, is too much; my orders are clear, and I must follow them.”

“Yes Paul, you are just following orders. That defense has been used by everyone charged with heinous crimes over the centuries. You and your colleagues will assuredly hold the dubious honor of killing more people in a few milliseconds than anyone before you. The bomber pilots of World War II are in a league of their own, witness for example the destructions of London, Coventry, Dresden, Berlin and just recently Tokyo, but many pilots shared in those savage horrors, you are heading to become the supreme champion of all time. You, more or less alone, armed with a single weapon, are on your way to Hiroshima where you will cause the deaths of untold thousands of unsuspecting members of my family. Your President and generals and the military are of the opinion that to have a weapon that can exterminate thousands of my children in a few milliseconds and leave thousands more with a debilitating illness that will eventually lead to a lingering and painful death, is something to be proud of; medals will be given, promotions will be handed out, parades will be organized, children will be given flags to wave. But as the bodies pile up, I shall weep; for me it will be a huge step backwards in the advancement of civilization.”

“I can only repeat what I said earlier, Lord, I am a soldier, fighting in a war.”

“You know what I mean when I say Ten Commandments, Paul?”

“Yes, it is an ancient moral code passed from God to Moses that Christians adhere to.”

“And many non-Christians also. What is the sixth Commandment?”

“Thou shallt not kill; I know where you are going, but Lord, we are at war with the Japanese nation and without killing, war would be virtually meaningless.”

“So, you are willfully disobeying my sixth commandment?”

“Not really because during wartime the sixth is suspended, in a way.”

“Where did you learn this interesting information?”

“From the chaplain, Lord. He explained that killing an enemy soldier in a war is allowed by our church.”

“I see; and not only enemy soldiers but civilians, too, it would appear. I must have a word with the boss of the chaplains and explain that Commandments are not suspended during a war and that anyone who kills is guilty of sinning, and chaplains and the like do not have the right to state or imply that killing is absolved from sin in wartime.”

“The Japanese are also sinning then? What about Pearl Harbor, Lord? The Japanese killed more than 2000 Americans in that attack”

“Yes, some of them are sinning, but the attack at Pearl Harbor was an attack on a prime military target, battleships at anchor and airplanes on the ground at Hickam and Wheeler Fields. Those over 2000 persons killed that you refer to were military personnel, mainly drowning sailors, less than 100 were civilians. The Japanese were aiming to cripple the Pacific Fleet, not kill people going to school or to work or shopping as the US army air force did at Tokyo, or as you intend to be doing later today. Roosevelt called it a day that will live in infamy largely to divert attention from his having been caught with his pants down. The great US military juggernaut was sleeping off their Saturday night parties when the Japanese struck. Carrying out surprise attacks is surely part of military tactics, is it not? Don’t bother to respond, Paul, and I am done now. Since you are determined to go ahead with this evil deed, I will leave you and try my luck elsewhere.”

And so it came to pass that on August 6 and 9, 1945, an American president, a man of little significant accomplishment, heralded in the age of nuclear weapons with the murder of some 200,000 Japanese citizens in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an infamy relegating that of Pearl Harbor to the minor leagues. Pandora’s box was opened, and it was seen to contain limitless potential for the pursuit of killing.