Bombed Out, Brother/Tony Harrison

[Eric Alan Weinstein, Centre For English Studies, University Of London]

     Reading this bomb material is making me sad.
Especially the defensive aspect of some of the things
which have been posted. Most of how I feel about 
man's proper relation to man I find in Buber's "I and 
Thou"---such a beautiful work, written between two 
horrible wars. Or Levinas. Or Jefferson.

    I'm not so happy to be putting in my tuppenny's 
worth, but I'll say what I believe to be true and 
the hell with it. 

     As I understand it, the United States A-bombs
which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians were
used mostly to end the war quickly enough so that Stalin
couldn't invade Japan, and thence interfere with US post-
war authority in that country. The old story that Japan was 
ready to fight on till the bitter end was just a story. They
were defeated, and knew it, but were holding out for decent
terms.  Admittedly, this process could have been a bit drawn
out, especially as initially the US didn't want the Emperor to 
remain (which in the end he did anyway.) If talks had gone on
for two or three months, which was possible, Stalin would
have invaded, and the US would have had to share out 
power over post-war Japan with him.

    Instead, Truman's people thought: "what the hell? We've 
gotta test this "baby" sometime! (I take no pleasure at all in 
the recklessness of that exclamation mark.) We'll end the war 
sooner rather than later, and see how well this sucker performs
 in the doing of it." 

    Truman himself later regretted having used the thing. "We 
didn't have to use that horrible thing on them" was what he 
was reported to say. All this garnered from BBC documentary
shown on A-bomb day.

      On A-bomb day,  there was also a very fine hour-length
television dramatisation of Tony Harrison's long poem about 
Hiroshima, and its 50-year commemoration of the A-bomb. 
I recommend Harrison's poem and the programme to anyone.
It is as interesting on modern Japan as on the ghosts of war.
It deals with cultural power and national selective forgetting,
the shallows and depths of public ceremonies,  the passage 
of time and the reoccurrence of private experience, our 
terrifying spectral presences, and the real absence that is 
pervasive.

Eric Alan Weinstein
Centre For English Studies
University Of London
E.A.Weinstein at qmw.ac.uk