[00:00:00] Hi, everybody. Welcome along to the Friday Freebie episode of the Dispatchers podcast. It is great to be back with you again. My name is Brendan Malone, and today we've got a bit of a special episode for you. We're going to be replaying an episode that was previously only available to our five dollar monthly patrons. And it goes in depth about the issue of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the serious moral question surrounding those particular events. And the reason I thought it would be important to replay this particular episode now was about a week or so back, there was a media article that covered a public homily that was given by one of New Zealand's catholic bishops, Bishop John Adams of Palmerston north. And he was speaking to a group of catholic academics and students. And he said, New Zealand desperately needs to hear the catholic voice in the public square, and it has something important to offer the moral life of our society. And in that homily that he gave, he talked about and cited the example of Hiroshima, and in particular Elizabeth Anskim, who's a virtue ethicist. And she's actually featured in today's episode. I talk about her in quite a bit of detail in relation to these events. And in response to me posting that particular article on social media, there was some feedback that I received from people who don't seem to understand the full history of these events. And I'm not surprised by that at all, because the popular narrative really proclaims two things about these events. One is that this was a necessary evil, that there was no other way to save as many lives than by dropping atomic bombs on civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And secondly, that dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought an end to the violence of World War II. Now, both of those things are at best highly questionable. And based on the evidence which I'm going to present to you today in this particular episode, it's almost certain that they are not correct at all. And so we've lived with this narrative. I grew up with it as a kid for a very long time now. But it is a narrative that has some serious holes in it, and it's also a narrative that completely fails to take into account some important moral considerations about all of this. And so today's episode is an opportunity to be better informed about this and to delve a lot deeper into that particular issue. Now, if you want to enjoy all of these patrons only episodes, because we now publish a daily podcast, and Monday to Thursday, that daily podcast is exclusively available to our five dollar monthly
[email protected]. Left Foot media the link is in today's show notes, and on Friday, obviously we publish a free to ear episode. But these podcasts, and I don't mean to blow my own trumpet, I am a very flawed critter. I do my best to engage with the issues of our day, but the feedback that I'm receiving from people is that they are really enjoying the content and the fact that they are able to engage with current affairs and also hear about stories, particularly in the area of pro life issues, issues around bioethics and things like that, that the media doesn't actually provide any coverage of. And to be able to engage with these particular stories and to explore what the authentically conservative voice, the authentically conservative thought might be about these particular issues. So it's not simply repeating news stories. It is a matter of exploring and unpacking, looking at the philosophies that lie behind these particular incidents and events, what the authentically christian and conservative response might be, and if at all possible, how we might navigate and bring practical solutions or live accounter culture of goodness, truth and beauty when faced with these particular situations. To get access to that podcast, as I said, all you need to do is become a $5 monthly
[email protected]. Left foot media that's less than the price of a cup of coffee. So with all of that out of the way, please enjoy this free to air episode about the grave moral problems of HirOSHimA and NagasakI.
[00:04:25] Hi, my name is Brendan Malone, and you're listening to the dispatchers, the podcast that strives to cut through all the noise in order to challenge the popular narratives of the day with some good old fashioned contrarian thinking. You might not always agree, but at least you'll be taking a deeper look at the world around you.
[00:04:43] Today we have got one single issue that we are focusing on. It's a topic of conversation that I've been promising for some months now that we were going to have an episode on, and I wanted to do a bit of research and get all my ducks in a row before I did that. And so let's jump into today's topic of conversation, the grave moral problem of HirosHima and Nagasaki, the atomic bombings. And I think this is really, really important to talk about for a couple of reasons. But in a nutshell, here's the historical details that we will be expounding on. On the 6 August 1945, the US dropped an atomic bomb on the japanese city of Hiroshima. Then three days later on the 9 August, they dropped another weapon of mass destruction on the japanese city of Nagasaki. These bombings killed between 129,220 6000 people, according to what I consider to be the best estimates that we have. And most of those people who were killed were civilians. They were non combatants who were killed. And in fact, in Nagasaki, there were a lot of Christians who were killed. Nagasaki was a big center for ChristIaNitY. It was a catholic area in JApan. There is one particular region where the estimate is that of the 15,000 christians who lived there, 10,000 were killed by the atomic bombing of NagASAkI. These acts were truly confronting, and there's no denying or doubting the horrific nature of what an atomic weapon does to human persons. Now, earlier this year, and the reason why I started talking about the importance, I think, of understanding this and doing a podcast episode just on this topic was Oppenheimer, the film Oppenheimer was released, Christopher Nolan's latest movie, and it reignited this conversation about the dropping of the atomic bombs. Were they justified or were they a grave evil? Because as I said, there's no denying the horrific, the destructive evil of what an atomic weapon does to human persons. And there's no denying the reality that these were innocent civilians who had these bombs dropped on their heads, and tens of thousands were killed by these weapons. But of course, the claim that was made, the counterclaim, the prevailing, what you might call the pro atomic bombing narrative, is that in actual fact, these acts were justified. So the question, as I want to explore today, is, were they justified or were they a grave evil? And I think it's important to talk about this because there is a growing return, and we've seen this with the israeli Gaza conflict that's going on right now. People are returning back to that same consequentialist, that same utilitarian argument that says, well, in actual fact, certain actions that we would normally consider evil and unacceptable suddenly become acceptable things to do. If you believe the conditions are right and you believe you're justified in doing these things that normally we would say are grave evils, it's absolutely not acceptable to do this awful, torturous thing to a human person. It's not acceptable to target civilians. But the claim is that this was actually justified. And that sort of thinking, definitely. We've seen a lot of that around the whole Israel conflict ever since the start of October. And I think it's really, really important to understand this. I think the other thing to point out here, too, is that you can have a situation like World War II, which I think does actually satisfy the criteria for a just war. But at the same time, you can also have actions within that which actually violate the christian principles regarding just and moral warfare. So you can have a legitimate defense that is justified, where the use of military force in a situation is absolutely justified, but then you can proceed to engage in acts that are absolutely immoral, even if the overall military action is justified. So the pro atomic bombing narrative basically goes like this. And there's really sort of two planks to this. Number one is that the bombings were the lesser of two evils. The claim was that basically every japanese man, woman and child on the mainland, once the allies started the land invasion, would have fought to the death. And so the loss of american lives, and the claim was the loss of japanese lives that would have occurred in a land invasion of Japan itself, actually justified the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There's a certain perversity to this, but there is also a certain logic. In a sense, oh, we're saving lives by killing, know, saving through slaughter, in a sense. Here, the second plank of this argument is that while the proof is in the pudding, the US dropped the bombs, and then six days later, after the bombing of Nagasaki on August 15, the Japanese surrendered. So there you go, it worked. And look at that. All those lives were saved. But this is much like the COVID narrative that has now started to develop, that based on predictions and models, we are simply expected to believe that all of these lives were saved and that the worst case scenarios would have come to fruition, and so therefore the actions were justified. There's a certain sort of. In a sense, you don't really have to prove whether or not that initial claim, which is the essential justification that was given for the use of these atomic weapons, was actually true and accurate. And this is really, really important. But here's the thing. Even if this narrative is entirely accurate, so there's no questioning either of these two claims. There is still a really pressing question here, and this is something that I think often gets forgotten. And that is this. Is it morally acceptable to deliberately kill one group of innocent people in order to prevent a much larger catastrophe? Do the ends, the outcomes, justify the means, the methods, the things that you want to do to achieve that particular or those particular outcomes? Is this utilitarian, this consequentialist, where you look at the consequences and you say, well, a good consequence, which is really big and really good, justifies any action, or it is a justifier that actually will justify an action that under different circumstances. So let's say dropping the atomic bombs would have just killed a whole lot of people in those cities and wouldn't have actually brought the war to an end or more lives would have been killed in the long run. Well, therefore, it's not justified. Is that consequentialist approach actually a good and sound moral philosophy? Now, as I said, this has become quite important, and I think it's really important to explore this because of the current conflict between Israel and Gaza, because I'm hearing people making similar arguments here around the Israel Gaza conflict. There are people who are trying to make the extremely dangerous and false claim there are no innocent people in a war. That is simply not true. But we've heard that time and time again. We saw this utilitarian, consequentialist justification applied during the time of the Iraq invasion, where torture was justified, where Abu Ghrab and what happened in that particular prison, the institution okayed and went along with that because it was seen as justified. This was this new warfare. You had to fight this way because this is what the situation demanded to achieve the good outcome. And then, of course, Gitmo, Guantanamo Bay, and what was going on there and the way in which people were. No, no, you don't understand, Brendan. Don't be simple. Don't be antiquated. Don't cling to your old, outdated ways of thinking. You've got to recognize that this is, well, effectively. I hate to say it, but this sounded an awful lot like total creek, total war that the Nazis proclaimed. And by the way, on that point of the Nazis and total war and everything else along those lines, I am currently reading my way through the multi volume autobiography of Hitler. It's called Hitler, Spoiler Alert. The title gives the game away by Ian Kershaw. It is a phenomenal book, multi volume, probably the most comprehensive biography of Hitler that I'm aware of. And it's absolutely fascinating to read that and to see that sort of idea playing out. And there are sort of taints of it, hints of that in some of this sort of approach. No, we must have this total war.
[00:13:33] We must win out at all costs. And so it is a really, really important question now going back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in regards to the questions of the legitimacy of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The passage of time and new evidence now actually exposes some flaws in the narrative. It points to the fact that, a, there were questionable, ulterior, self serving motivations and actions undertaken by the US throughout all of this.
[00:14:03] B, the bombings did not cause the japanese surrender. There is compelling evidence that that is the case.
[00:14:12] And remember, that's quite important because that's one of the essential planks we have to do this to bring about the surrender in order to save lives. But what if you didn't have to do that and the surrender could have been brought about another way? And, of course, there are also indications that the US government knew that the bombs weren't necessary, months, not days, but months before they used them on japanese civilians. So it's not like the planes were in the air and they suddenly found out and they couldn't get a message through in time. They knew this months in advance. That's what the evidence now points to at the very least. There is now a very clear and competing narrative of the evidence. We have. We have a lot more evidence than what we did initially. And so things are now different, and there are some very clear challenges and questions that deserve to be answered and definitely don't. It's not all one way traffic. The original narrative that this was essential, this was the only way to win the war, and this would have saved all these lives, that this was a justified action that is now, as I said, at the very least, that can be questioned. And there is compelling evidence to question that. And by the way, on a little side note, something I've seen a bit of lately, for some reason, whenever conversations about Nagasaki, I saw some articles earlier this year around the time of Oppenheimer, was that people were putting forward this idea of, or highlighting the fact that opinion polls at the time showed really high us support for the use of atomic bombs at the.
[00:15:48] And like, in the immediate aftermath, people were know, should the bombs have been dropped? Oh, yes, absolutely.
[00:15:53] These opinion polls, they're actually kind of meaningless because, first of all, these need to be contextualized by the actual situation in America at the time thinking, when you ask know, do you think it was good that we dropped the bomb? In a sense, what you're really asking is, do you think that it's a good thing that the war is over?
[00:16:16] I guarantee you, probably a lot of people, that was their thinking, yeah, it is a good thing the war has ended. And thinking that it is good that the bombs were dropped is not the same thing as thinking that the war was ended. And I suspect a lot of people, that's what they were really meaning that, thank goodness this war is over, because this thing had been going on for years. A lot of american lives had been lost. It was a war that was taking a huge toll on the american people. And this was not something that they were just sort of sleepwalking their way through at all. A lot of young american lives had been lost and the toll on the american economy and the american people and the demands that were made of them and had been going on for many years now. So, yeah, you ask someone, do you think it's a good idea that we dropped that bomb and ended the war? What they're probably hearing is, do you think it's a good thing that we ended the war? Well, but even if that wasn't the case, and let's say, because none of us can read the minds of the people who supported those opinion polls, but even if this was unabashed support of dropping atomic weapons, this wouldn't mean it was, right. This still has no bearing on morality, because truth and goodness are not determined by a majority vote. Morality and democracy are not the same thing. In fact, often they actually collide and they are in opposition to each other. The most clear example of this was the democratic vote that was held and overseen at Pontius Pilate's courtyard, where he asked the crowd, do you vote for Barabbas or do you vote for Jesus? And they did not vote in favor of goodness and truth. So a majority vote does not determine goodness and truth. Majority voting. Democracy is not the same thing as morality. They are two different things. So even if these people were unabashed supporters of atomic weaponry being used on other people, that doesn't mean that their opinions and views were right. And in the world, for some reason, people think that you can sort of trot out an opinion poll and say, well, this is proof that it was okay to do a certain thing. Yeah, I'm sorry, that really isn't the case. And if you actually think that way, then really what you're effectively saying is, well, it's kind of okay what Hitler did then, because he did enjoy a lot of popular support for his actions at the time. After they started to create real problems for Germany, then that support waned in the lead up to him enjoying popular support. He was looked at rather cynically, and there was a lot of suspicion towards him. But there's no denying the fact there was a period where he enjoyed a lot of popular support. That doesn't really mean anything. I think that's important to point out. Now, here's five things, though, that get commonly overlooked, or maybe a lot of people are just completely unaware of. They might not be aware of these five important factors that I think really matter when you consider the moral questions in all of this. Number one, and this is really important, this is a historical fact, seven out of the eight United States five star army and Navy officers in 1945, this is important. 1945, when this happened, did not agree that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were justified. Generals Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Arnold and Admirals Leahy, Nimitz, King and Halsey are all on record stating that the atomic bombs were either militarily unnecessary, morally reprehensible, or even both in some cases. And this is really, really important because a key part of the claim here, remember, is that this was absolutely necessary. But here you have these top military advisors, the men who are leading this war, and they are saying seven out of the eight United States five star army and Navy officers are saying, no, this actually wasn't necessary. Leahy, in fact, who was Truman's chief of staff, wrote this in his memoir. 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. And being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the dark ages. So he didn't pull his punches there. Right. So that's Leahy writing in his memoir. This is a five star military leader who is saying this about their actions, the actions of his own military. And I remember reading this once, that one of the great debates, because one of the claims was that the japanese people had been propagandized into hatred and also fearful loathing of the Americans. They'd been told lies about what the Americans would do to them. Now, there are generals, I believe it was MacArthur who was saying, well, as you'll see in a second, that's not really so much of an issue, because there are other ways around that problem, as you'll see in these five important things that get overlooked. There were other reasons why that wouldn't have even been a factor. But there was debate about whether or not and how far this would actually extend to, like, practical warfare, because MacArthur, I think it was, who was on the record, was saying, look, they are also suffering from intense levels of hunger and food shortages, and you can't assume that these people are animalistic, even if you were wanting to assume they're animalistic, that they would have the ability to act in an animalistic way, unfettered and continually without food and essential supplies. So there was another way to actually do this, start cutting off access to things and also engaging in a way that's different, that actually they're not going to be able to do what you're claiming here. And also, there's probably in a sense. There is a sense of racism probably that's at play here, too, and hatred of the japanese enemy because the japanese enemy did. The Japanese are not forgiving to their own enemies. They looked down on you with shame for surrender and things like this, and they were awful, the way they treated their own prisoners. And so there's a hatred there, and there is probably also a racism at play here where they think, much less because this was the eugenic mindset of the time. They looked at asian and african people and they thought of them as being lower on the evolutionary ladder. And so in their minds, quite conceivably, they thought that these people would be mere beasts because they didn't really think they were much above that, in a sense, or a lot of them didn't. Anyway, the sort of the popular eugenic thought of the day. Now, the second important point that gets completely overlooked or commonly overlooked, or maybe even a lot of people are unaware of who talk about this and try and defend the standard popular narrative, is that the Soviets invaded Japanese held Manchuria, which is what we would call northeastern China today at midnight on the eigth of August, 1945. Now, if you've got a good memory for history, or you've just been listening in since the beginning of this podcast, you will know that that is two days after the bombing of Hiroshima and just hours before the atomic bomb is dropped on Nagasaki. And it didn't actually take the soviet army long when they invaded Japanese held Manchuria to destroy the celebrated japanese Kwantong army. And this is important because this really shocked the japanese leaders and it left them in a situation, because first of all, they thought their army would be superior, and then secondly, it left them facing their most feared nightmare, a two front war. And even worse than a two front war was their fear of a communist soviet takeover of Japan. And they were petrified of that outcome. The Japanese and the Soviets. The Russians had history here already that had been going on for many decades. And there was a real fear about what the communists, the Bolsheviks, how they would react or what they would do in a country that formerly had monarchical rule. They had a monarchy in Japan, and we know how things turned out in Soviet Russia with the Romanovs. And so they were all very aware of all of that as early as the 11 April 1945. So remember, the bombs were dropped in August. So this is several months before that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff's Joint intelligence Staff agency had predicted, and this is a quote, if at any time the USSR, so Soviet Russia should enter the war, all Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable. And so this is the US, the organs of the US government, their own government, war intelligence department. Right back in April 1945, the start of April, they are acknowledging that if the Russians joined the war, then the Japanese will realize that absolute defeat is inevitable. It's all over. And lo and behold, that's exactly what happens on the eigth of August 1945. Now, the famous Potsdam summit in Germany on July the 17th, following Stalin's commitment that the Soviets would be entering the fight against Japan right on schedule. Truman wrote in his diary. So they're at Potstam, and here's Stalin saying, don't worry, truman, old boy, we'll be there on time. We'll enter the fight against Japan now that we've defeated Hitler. Truman wrote in his diary, after that, he'll be in the Jap war on August 15. Finnie Japs, as in finnished Finney Japs when that comes about. So this is Truman saying, look, the Russians entered the war. It's game over for the Japanese. The next day, he assured his wife, so this is Truman talking to his wife now, and this is the quote, we'll end the war a year sooner now and think of the kids who won't be killed. So this is interesting. Not only is he acknowledging that they're going to end the war earlier, he's acknowledging that the cause will be the Russians, and he is acknowledging that lives will be saved and it's got nothing to do with the atomic bombs. And this is happening back in July. So this is now we are talking about, what, approximately a month? Just under a month. So several weeks before the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at that same Potsdam conference, Eisenhower had argued, and here's the quote, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing, quote unquote. And the awful thing that he is referring to, and that's at that same Potsdam conference, is the atomic bombs. Now, on August 13, 1945, and this is two days before they actually surrender, the japanese prime minister, Kintaro Suzuki, stated that Japan had to surrender quickly because, quote, unquote, the Soviet Union will take not only Manchuria, Korea, Karafuto, but also Hokkaido. This would destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war when we can deal with the United States. So in other words, here we are, August 13, two days before surrendering. And what is the japanese prime minister saying? He's saying that it's got nothing to do with the bombs, it's the Soviets and what they will do to our country and to our people, if they get control. And that control, that wrestling for control, that happened well after the japanese surrender, by the way, too, that carried on. There were some really risky moments there where it was kind of looking like Japan might end up going a bit the way of Germany with this divide between the two. There's some kind of hairy moments that went on there. We almost had a war between Russia and America that was a hot war after Japan fell, in fact. So there's some really hairy moments. And this threat is real. It's a real threat. The third thing that people commonly overlook, or maybe they are just not aware of in regards to this particular issue around the atomic bombings is this. The Japanese had suffered much worse death tolls in previous conventional bombing attacks on their cities. In fact, there are some reports that indicate that they were slow, the japanese government was slow to send officials to actually sort of understand and get a sort of handle on the damage, because not as many lives had been lost as they'd had in other incidents like the fire bombing, using conventional armaments that they'd previously been subjected to. And they had seen higher death tolls in a single night. And I think that's important because, remember, what we are often sold about this is that the atomic bombs were sold as a weapon of ore because of the mass destructive capabilities. But if these things are actually not killing as many people in one hit, that does challenge that, I think, a little bit, if not in quite a major way. And if the reports are to be believed, and remember, this is post wartime, and there's not as much that we do know about Japan. They're not, I guess, as studious in record keeping as, say, the Germans were. They're not as fastidious, perhaps, and there are some unknowns here, but it does seem there's evidence that they weren't, as, I guess, focused and engaged on finding out what's happened, what's happened, what's going on in Hiroshima, they just don't take it as seriously initially. Maybe they don't quite understand because the death toll is not as great. Number four thing that people either commonly overlook or maybe don't understand about all of this is that there was long term suffering and death that was inflicted on the japanese people. And I think this is really, really important because, in actual fact, the claim really, or a big plank of this claim, I think, resonates or rests on the fact, and it resonates with people because it's this idea. You do this thing, you drop a bomb, it's quick and it's over and you save all these lives. But what if you do more than just kill a whole lot of people to quote unquote, save a whole lot of people, and you actually end up inflicting ongoing suffering and trauma that, as I understand it, is still going on in the lives of those people who were there to witness the survivors who are still alive, who lived through that, the psychological trauma, let alone the ongoing physical things like birth defects and other things that went beyond just the killing and the bombing. And I think you've got to factor that in. You can't just sort of say, oh, it's lives for lives. Funnily enough, this is something similar, really, that happened around Covid too, right? We sort of had this very sort of blunt forced trauma type approach to, oh, we saved lives in the immediate. But what about if you actually look more long term? And what if you consider the impact of, say, lockdowns over a longer period and what that means over a longer time, for years that are taken off people's lives and all that kind of stuff? And so there's sort of something similar here. There's an arithmetic that's not quite right that goes on, I think. And it completely overlooks the long term suffering and the death and the carnage and the trauma that was inflicted upon the japanese people. That is different to what you experience with conventional warfare. So why did they do it? Now, don't panic. For those of you who are thinking, hold on, Brendan, you said there was going to be five things that are commonly overlooked or maybe people are unaware of. And all of this, you've only given us four. Has your ability to do basic maths and counting completely?
[00:32:22] No, it hasn't. Trust me. Number five is coming. But before I get to number five, let's talk about this question of why did they do it? And I think this is an important question to ask, because. What am I saying here? You're saying, Brendan, that basically that the american government were just sort of murderous warmongers who just hated the japanese people and they wanted to inflict this torture upon them. Well, no, it's not like that. Let's look at the complexities of all of this. First of all, we have documents from the archives which clearly show that the US were priming these particular japanese cities for months as potential test sites for the atomic bomb. I've actually been to Hiroshima and I've read some of these copies of these typewritten documents. They have them all on display in glass cabinets. And they are very, very clear in what they talk about, this whole notion of keeping these particular cities protected from regular warfare and conventional armament drops. And so using regular bombing raids on these cities, because they actually wanted to test and understand how much damage, how destructive an atomic weapon could be. So there's this sort of dodgy behavior already happening here. There's already this notion that, okay, sure, it might end the war, but this would also be quite an interesting test to see what would happen to human subjects if we dropped an atomic weapon on them and what would happen to their cities and how much carnage we could inflict. And remember, they didn't really either. At the same time, they didn't know the full scale of what this would mean either. There's great uncertainty about what this would actually do to people up close and to rivers and fields and a township, a city, what would happen if you did this to people. And so they were priming these places. They were keeping them free from conventional armament bombing so that they could actually see and have clarity about what would happen. And straight away, that should have our heckles sort of raised, and we should be saying, I remember reading that document and just thinking, uh oh, something's really not right here. This isn't good. Now, there's a guy called Edwin O. Reichauer who is a US army intelligence service officer, and he was apparently incorrectly said to have prevented the bombing of Kyoto, the japanese city of Kyoto. But in his autobiography, he specifically refuted this claim. And he said this, the only person deserving credit for saving Kyoto from destruction is Henry L. Stimpson. He was the secretary of war at the time, who had known and admired Kyoto. Have a listen to this. Ever since his honeymoon there several decades earlier. So, in other words, and I remember reading this and thinking, oh, my gosh, this is just madness. So, in other words, the reason that they did not drop an atomic bomb on Kyoto was simply because Stimson, the secretary of war, had honeymooned in Kyoto, and he had a soft spot for it. And so he said, let's drop it on one of the other targets instead.
[00:35:36] That is the arbitrary nature of what's going on here. You can't tell me that is a good and justified thing, that there's something good in all of this when this sort of behavior is happening around the dropping of the bomb. This is not consistent with the claims that this was an absolute act of desperation that needed to happen. There was no other way out to save lives. No, there was careful preparation. There were arbitrary decisions going on around all of this, that this was not. We got to do this. We've got no other way out. That's not what was going on here. Secondly, and this is important, in fact, I think this is really key, the US knew that an actual real world demonstration of an atomic weapon would give them proven military supremacy over the Soviets, and they desperately wanted it.
[00:36:27] This weapon was accompanied with a delusional but genuinely held belief that this weapon would end all wars. There was real belief and a fervent belief on the part of some people. They were celebrating this, thinking that this would be the end of all wars. But of course for that to happen, it would have to be held by the magnanimous and all good and knowing united States only.
[00:36:58] And of course for that also to happen, you have to have the Soviets understanding that you're not just full of talk, that you actually have a weapon that you could drop on their heads, for example, if you wanted to. If they actually got out of line and there was a real issue here already, the US knew that they were going to have to prepare themselves for a coming conflict with Stalin and the Soviets. That was already a reality. They were already preparing for that fact. And this atomic weapon was seen as the solution. It would give them the power they desperately wanted. And they rather naively believed themselves in this sort of delusional utopian way that they were capable of wielding, being the sacred wielders of this new sword, this atomic sword, to keep the world in order. In fact, the way in which the Soviets obtained the information to build their own bomb is just a whole fascinating event in and of itself. The way in which they had people who were leaking information and who were actively supplying this and willing to supply and to spy for the Soviets because they were fervent in their belief and they were. I guess in a sense there's maybe, I don't know. Could you say there's a wisdom in this because atomic weapons are an awful thing. But they understood that this weapon was far too powerful for one nation to possess all by itself. They knew the threat. They understood the threat. And so there were active machinations to get the information to the Soviets. People were more than willing to do that. And yes, there were spies who infiltrated. In fact, December last year, the Biden administration posthumously voided the previous US Atomic Energy Commission's 1954 decision to revoke Oppenheimer's security clearance. They claimed the Biden administration did that. That process was biased and unfair. I've read conflicting accounts about whether that is the case or not, but the point is that at the time in 1954, the US Atomic Energy Commission pinned the blame, or they pinned a lot of blame on Oppenheimer, saying, well, because he'd been involved with marxist politics earlier in his life, that he had willingly leaked to the Soviets. There's strong evidence that questions that and whether that's the case or not, but there's no doubting that there were others and the Soviets had a very successful spying campaign. But there's also no doubting that probably. Well, not probably, but in actual fact, a huge motivator for people was the awareness of the real danger of one nation only wielding this kind of power. But that's what the US wanted. But they needed a demonstration. The demonstration was essential. It's not enough just to have some bomb dropping in a desert. The demonstration of how quickly and how brutally and efficiently you could destroy a city and a group of people. That was an essential aspect in all of this. And this is part of that ulterior motive that was at play. So you've got that factor, and then, of course, you've just got the factor of, you get these blind forces that just start driving towards an outcome. You get this falsely imposed efficiency. We see this in a much smaller way today in all sorts of areas where you have, like, bureaucratic committees and they set for themselves these arbitrary deadlines.
[00:40:20] We've got to meet this deadline and they impose efficiency as the main goal and not the good outcome. So a good outcome might require you to take your time, but no, we can't, because efficiency is the new God and we've set a deadline and we've got to meet the deadline, otherwise we won't be efficient. And so you end up with an inferior result because they prioritize efficiency, and that's a blind force at work and it overrides reason and it drives an emotional sense of obligation that actually isn't grounded in common sense or virtue or goodness or any of those kinds of things. It's just you're being emotionally driven towards this outcome, and it's quite conceivable that what you also have is that going on for other people. They are being emotionally driven towards the sense of, no, we must do this. We must drop this. And there's this whole false belief about this is the only way out of the war that's also at work as well, in all of this. Which leads me to number five, the point that you've all been eagerly awaiting the most overlooked factor of all, in all of this. In June 1956, one of the greatest female minds of the last 150 years, philosopher and virtue, ethicist Elizabeth Anskim gave a speech to her colleagues at Oxford University. The university was planning at that time to award an honorary doctorate to President Truman. So this is now, what, eleven years after he has dropped the atomic weapons on the civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And here's the great and prestigious Oxford University looking to give him an honorary doctorate award. Now, she considered, though, Truman, this is Elizabeth Anskim. She considered Truman to be a murderer because he was the one ultimately responsible for dropping the atomic bombs on japanese civilians. And so she gives a speech in which she implores her fellow Oxford academics to support her motion, which would have prevented an honorary doctorate from being awarded to Truman. In that speech, she said this, if you do give this honor, what Nero, what Genghis Khan, what Hitler or what Stalin will not be honored in the future? And ironically, there was something very prophetic about that question, actually, because as the post war years went on continually, we saw America more and more willing to do deals with the devil, with all sorts of dictators, because they believed it would suit their aims and their outcomes. And so she was talking about, well, in the know, will you give an award to someone like a Hitler or a Genghis Khan? But in actual fact, this is exactly who America was starting to and was more than willing to start doing deals with. And this policing of the world, this keeping of order and this defense of the liberal order in the world, this false belief that enlightenment liberalism brought to the world, that if you just, at the end of a gunpoint, if you just destroyed the dictator, then people would return to their natural state of freedom and human reason would take over, and everyone would reason their way to this belief that they wanted enlightenment liberalism, they wanted the secular enlightenment of the west. And we know that this is absolutely untrue. The latest example of this, of course, is what's gone on in Afghanistan, where this war, years of warfare and killing and bloodshed, and the belief that this would make the world better, it would liberate the people of Afghanistan, and it completely failed, because it turns out that, in actual fact, a lot of people look at the west and they. No, no, hold on. You guys have abandoned tradition. You've abandoned religious belief. Family life has absolutely crated communities, destroyed perversions of rife. We don't want that. They're afraid of that. So the whole enlightenment liberalism ideology, it turns out, wasn't correct, but that became the norm. So here she is, though. She's pleading with her Oxford academics, her fellow academics. Look, we can't give this guy an award because of what happened at Hiroshima in Nagasaki. Now, her efforts there met with failure because only a handful of other faculty members were willing to join her in dissenting against this particular honour being awarded to Truman. But then she also went on to publish a written pamphlet which outlined her moral arguments against the bombings and the awarding of the honorary doctorate. And it was titled Mr. Truman's degree. So the honorary degree that he actually received. Now, before we look at that, though, just a side note about Anskim. She is a phenomenal minder, a really, really sharp lady. She's not a pacifist, though, and I think this is important to point out, Anskim was not a pacifist. So her opposition is not all war is bad, and therefore he's a bad man because he was involved in leading a military conflict on one side of the conflict. That's not her argument. She was a Catholic Christian who held to the christian principles regarding just war. And interestingly, she actually did publicly oppose World War II in a pamphlet that she co authored in 1939. But here's the thing, again, don't mistake this for pacifism. She opposed on very specific grounds. She's actually a virtue ethicist. Very, very sharp mind, this lady, and she is not just given to sort of flights of emotional fancy. She opposed World War II on the grounds that she thought the british plan to target civilians was a violation of just war principles, and she would not have opposed it if that hadn't been part of the plan. So the targeting of civilians, she said, is a morally unjust and wrong thing to do. And it does. It clearly violates the principles of just war, where you can only target combatants.
[00:46:24] Now, at the same time, though, she believed military action against Hitler was necessary, but she opposed the british plan to target civilians, as it violated the christian just war principles. So she's not some blind, pacifist, amazing lady. Actually, she, incidentally, she's also responsible for causing the sharpening of C. S. Lewis's argument against philosophical materialism, against atheism. She had a very famous debate in the Oxford debating club, where the moot would be drawn, the topic would be drawn, and you'd be given a side, and you'd have to debate against each other. And she didn't believe philosophical materialism. She is a very faithful catholic, christian woman, but she draws the side of the debate where she has to argue against Lewis on this point, and he's defending his argument. And she's a very, very clever mind. She's an aristotelian virtue ethicist and she was able to dismantle some key flaws in C. S. Lewis's original form of that argument. And what that did was that caused him to go away and to contemplate more deeply. And he came back with a new and popularly published, subsequently was published in a popular work of his version of the argument, which was actually much stronger as a result. She was also a very committed pro lifer. She was once arrested for blocking the doorway of an abortion facility in Britain. Because she was staunchly committed to the pro life cause. And there's these other funny stories about her as well. She had a certain eccentricity about her. So she studied and would work in Rome. And apparently there were places that you would go in Rome where the rule was women had to wear a skirt or a dress, and they were not allowed to wear pants. And she was quite fond of slacks. I guess it's a very british thing, right? British woman. Wearing slacks was a very common thing. She was really quite fond of the slacks. And so there's one story I heard about her where it was quite common for her to be wandering around Rome, and she basically had, like, a skirt that was tied up around her waist. And then there would be certain areas of Rome where you'd walk through one area where the skirt or the dress was required, and she would pull a little drawstring, and the skirt would drop down over her slacks, and she'd walk through. And then when she got to the places she was going where it wasn't required anymore, she would pull the skirt back up again and tie it up around her waist, and she was back in her slacks. There was another famous incident, apparently, that happened at a rest restaurant. And she was sitting at a cafe, I think it was, and the waiter or the owner of the establishment approached her and said, madam, you can't be here with those slacks on. You must be wearing a dress or a skirt. And so she proceeded to then stand up and start taking off her pants completely. And they're like, oh, no, stop. It's okay. It's okay. I made them. You sit it down again.
[00:49:08] She was quite eccentric, and she's a feisty lady. And she was also, just, as I said, absolutely a phenomenal. One of the greatest female minds of the last 150 years. And her philosophical mind. One of the great philosophers of the last 150 years. Amazing woman. Very, very smart thinker. As I said, this is not just emotional pacifism. She's not just saying, oh, I hate war. War is bad. I feel emotionally bad. I feel turmoil about war. So don't give Truman an award. But anyway, leaving all that aside, her key argument, then, against Truman is not an emotional one. Her key argument against Truman is a very, very important one. And she is arguing against the atomic bombs based on a really important principle that normally gets completely overlooked. I have heard very few people actually talk about this important contribution that Anska made to this particular moment in history. And she said this, that Truman's demand for unconditional surrender on the part of the Japanese was, quote, unquote, the root of all evil. And this is really important because one of the conditions of just war, one of the principles of just war, is that actions that you undertake must not be excessive or contribute to worsening of a situation or to greater harms like prolonged warfare, et cetera. And in actual fact, we know that this is exactly what this stipulation, this demand for total unconditional surrender on the part of the US. We know that that's exactly what happened. It made things worse, because the demand for unconditional surrender caused the Japanese to fear that the emperor, who had the status of a deity, would be put on trial as a war criminal and then executed. And the Japanese were deathly afraid of that.
[00:51:20] You really got to understand that the way they viewed the emperor, or the way they treated the emperor at least, was like he was a walking God, a deity. There was a study that was commissioned by General MacArthur's Southwest Pacific command, and in that study, they compared the emperor's execution to the, quote, unquote, crucifixion of Christ and what we would think of that. So how we in the west, or they in the west at that time, would have thought of someone crucifying Christ. That's how they would think about the execution of the japanese emperor. In fact, japanese ambassador Naotaki Sato was in Moscow on the twelveth of July, 1945, trying to convince the Soviet Union to MEDiaTe, to act as a go bEtween, to negotiate acceptable surrender terms with the allies on behalf of Japan. And while he's there, the japanese foreign minister, Shiganori Togo, sent him a telegram in which he stated the following. Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace. Let me say that again. This is a direct quote from Togo. Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace. This is the thing that was preventing the end of the war. It wasn't this stubborn refusal of the Japanese to surrender, and they would fight to the death. Remember, I said earlier there was a way to solve that problem, even if it was true that they had this propagandized sense of fear, and they would literally fight like savages to the death. Even if that was true. In actual fact, here are the leaders, you know, the obstacle to peace here is this unconditional surrender. And if you change the terms of the surrender, we will surrender. That's what they're saying here. There's no need to drop the atomic bomb. General MacArthur, in fact, later wrote to former president Hoover stating that if President Truman had followed Hoover's quote unquote wise and statesman like advice to modify its surrender terms, so Hoover had told him to do this as know, tone down these terms of surrender and tell the Japanese they could keep their emperor. Here's what MacArthur said to Hoover. The Japanese would have accepted it, and gladly, I have no doubt. So this is an important factor, and not a lot of people actually talk about this or seem to understand this. That that clause in there demanding absolute surrender was really quite an important sticking point because of the deathly and very serious fear that was associated with it. So what we have is this indication that in actual fact, it's the SovietS entering the war, which is the determining factor. It's not the atomic bombing. And even though they were petrified of the unconditional surrender, they were even more fearful of unconditional surrender to the Soviets because of their anti monarchal stance.
[00:54:20] What they feared would have happened and what they would have done to the emperor. The Soviets were brutal. It's almost certain the Japanese would have heard the reports of what the Soviets were doing to the Germans as they made their way into the heart of Germany and the defeat of Hitler's regime happened and the awful rapes and atrocities that were going on there, the brutalities and the barbarism of those russian soldiers, they would have heard about all of that. And the actual turning point for them, it seems, is when the Soviets enter the war.
[00:54:56] Now, here's the problem with all of this. Even if we take it as red, even if we say, okay, there's no questioning the popular narrative. The Japanese wouldn't have surrendered. The only way to save lives was to drop the bombs. And dropping the bombs was the cause of the surrender. It was the only cause. And dropping the bombs and that surrender saved untold more lives that would have been lost if you hadn't done that thing. There is still a problem here, because what you are saying is that it is morally okay to kill one group of people, innocent civilians. Remember, these are non combatants. It is morally okay to kill a group. Let's say it was just one. What if we dropped an atomic bomb on just one japanese person, you'd be arguing then it's morally okay to deliberately kill one innocent human person in order to save thousands of other lives, or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, however many lives you are claiming you will save. So it's okay to kill some people, innocent people, in order to save other innocent people. The problem is that is a truly awful and barbaric moral philosophy. Because there's a problem here with this consequentialism, this utilitarianism. It displays a clear and obvious failure to respect human dignity.
[00:56:23] It doesn't care about human dignity. It's okay to actually kill, do the ultimate evil in this life to another innocent human being. It's a complete violation of human dignity. If you claim you can get a good outcome out of it. It's totally arbitrary as well, because even grave evil becomes permissible if you can find a suitable justification. So if you can say, look, look, it's actually okay to murder a whole lot of innocent civilians with an atomic weapon, because trust me, we will get a really good outcome out of this. Now, once that is the moral equation, then as long as you can show a really, really desirable outcome will come about from your actions, anything potentially becomes permissible. It would be okay to just randomly kill people, carve them up, donate their organs around the countryside to multiple people because, hey, look, we've got a really desirable outcome. We've saved all of these lives of people who desperately need organ transplants. And guess what? With just one person we kill, we can save multiple lives. So it's even better than one for one. If we do it this way, this is a really good outcome. We've got this massive shortage of organs, so why is that not permissible? Well, the thing that stops that from happening is not consequentialism. It's not utilitarianism, because these things are just purely arbitrary. If you've got the power and you think that would be a good idea, and you can convince people to go along with you and do that thing, then guess what? That thing will start happening. But what stops that from happening is that christian vision of the sacredness of the human person and the human dignity that they possess, that they are born with. It's inherent to them. They don't have to earn it, and they never lose it. They can never lose it, and it must always be respected. That's the fundamental difference. That's the thing that says, no, it's not okay to do this to another human person. The other thing about this utilitarianism and this consequentialism is. It's asking us to do the impossible, something that we are just not ever capable of doing. No one has this power. What it's asking us to do is to look into the future. When we are faced with two or more different choices about what action should we undertake, and to look into that future, and to know which choice in front of us, right here, right now, today, will bring about the greatest good. And usually they would say, the greatest good for the greatest number, what you call rule utilitarianism. So this general rule that can be applied across all society. So which action of the ones in front of you will bring about the greatest good for the greatest number? Here's the problem. No one is capable of answering that question.
[00:59:09] We don't have the mind of God. The future is not present to us like the present is right now, in this moment. We do not know the answer to that question. We have no ability to look into the future and with any accuracy. Say, I know which choice in front of me will bring about the greatest good for the greatest number. Now in the Talmud and the emotional draining drama and trauma and everything else of an ongoing multi year world war, it might seem really obvious to you that dropping these atomic bombs will bring about the greatest good for the greatest number. Especially if you're being fed a constant stream of probably propagandized intelligence reports, or mistaken intelligence reports that are making claims about what will happen if you don't do this thing. The pressure, I'd imagine, would really come on you to actually drop those bombs. Because some people look at this and they go, yeah, but look, it turned out okay for Japan. Look at them now as if somehow the slaughter of those civilians were somehow a really good thing because of the current situation they find themselves in. That's just a truly horrific moral outlook on the world. But let's say what if in 30 or 50 years from now, from today, when this podcast is being recorded, not from the dropping of the bomb, but 30 or 50 years from today, from this point right now, 2023, December 2023, 30 or 50 years from now, what if the actions that were undertaken at Hiroshima and Nagasaki result in some much graver evil and some far greater death toll being inflicted upon the US people? What if, 30 or 50 years from now, some leader takes power in Japan who is studied in history, and who understands the history and is fanatical at the same time and also is a bit unhinged, and they pin all of the woes that they perceive in Japan, upon the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And they decide to turn their arsenal of weapons against american people, and they end up killing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands more people than would have ever died, like us soldiers than would have ever died if they had actually mounted a conventional land based warfare campaign to take control of Japan back in 1945. That could happen, right?
[01:01:34] You can't say, oh, no, that'll never happen. Now, is it likely? I don't know. But that's the point. None of us know. That's the problem with consequentialism. It's asking us to try and predict the future, and we can't do that. We don't possess that power. None of us do.
[01:01:52] All we can do is look at the situation in front of us, and we can evaluate what we do know and then make the best and most moral decision we can with the information, the truth that we know for certain. And what do they know in 1945? Well, they had enough evidence in front of them to show them that the unconditional surrender clause was actually holding up the surrender of Japan. But leaving that aside, they had enough information to know that the japanese civilians are civilians. They are non combatants. They had enough information to know that dropping atomic bombs on people would do awful things to human persons. And there were also big unknowns about what the actual result would be if they did this. And they also had the ability to say, you know what? These are human persons. This is not a morally good thing to do to human persons. As Admiral Leahy was quoted as saying in his memoir, 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. And being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the dark ages.
[01:03:10] This was not a good thing because I used to believe the popular historical narrative. I thought it was true. I thought there was no other way out of it. I thought all the evidence backed it up. But in actual fact, I don't support those claims anymore at all, because my reading has led me to a different conclusion, that in actual fact, this wasn't justified. And what was done here was a grave evil, a serious evil was perpetrated against innocent persons. The problem was, though, and this goes back to something Elizabeth Anskin points out, that that evil had already begun with the british plan to target civilians with their warfare. And so, in a sense, there's a normalization that's already gone on, that's happened, and there's a desensitization, a moral desensitization. And so when the moment comes to target civilians with this even more extreme new weapon, it's a lot easier to do that. Let me finish this conversation by quoting directly from a plaque that is located in the National Museum of the US Navy in Washington DC, because this just tells the truth. The vast destruction wrecked by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the loss of 135,000 people made little impact on the japanese military. However, the soviet invasion of Manchuria changed their minds. Thanks again for tuning in, folks. And if I don't see you beforehand, have a blessed and holy celebration of Christmas. And don't forget, most importantly of all, live by goodness, truth and beauty, not by lies. And I will see you next time on the dispatchers us close.
