NUKING JAPAN

: I've spent a lot of time in Japan over the years, mostly courtesy the US Air Force. I joined in 1993, and first chance it got it sent me packing to Tokyo, and there I noticed a peculiar fact: Japan loves the US. When I say that, I mean that the Japanese people love Americans, black, white, red, brown, whatever. Not only that, the Japanese love our culture, such that it is with its fast food and loud music and over-the-top movies. Spend any time at all in most Japanese cities, not just Tokyo, and you'll see what I mean.

During my Air Force time, I had the opportunity to deploy on the USS Blue Ridge for a cruise from Yokosuka Naval Base near Tokyo to Nagasaki. Blue Ridge was the flagship of the Seventh Fleet, the battle group charged with protecting Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the rest of Asia from various threats, and its visit to Nagasaki would be its first. That's why I, an Air Force reporter, was there--to chronicle the trip for the teevee audience back in Tokyo and, by extension, Blue Ridge's home port.

Now, Nagasaki has a certain history to it. At the end of World War II, President Truman ordered an atomic bomb dropped on it to hasten the end of that dreadful conflict. Few signs of the war remain in Nagasaki today. Apart from its atomic bomb museum, which is curiously devoid of context as though we Americans just decided to nuke our good buddies one day, there was little hostility to us. Sure, a few protesters showed up at the pier when Blue Ridge, her decks festooned with sailors in dress whites saluting the horizon, pulled in, but most of the cities' inhabitants welcomed the ship and her crew with open arms.

For instance, our first night there I remember wandering into a little sushi bar. My wife, Japanese born and raised, assured me that the freshest sushi in all Japan could be found in Nagasaki, so I had to find a good place to eat some. And I did--two of my new Navy buddies and I found this little place, took some seats and I commenced explaining what everything was. Well, an older gentleman from across the way had noticed our arrival, and I saw him start talking to the proprietor, who was serving up the fish that night. None of us was in uniform--we weren't allowed to walk the streets in military garb in Nagasaki--but it was obvious that we were connected with the grand ship that had pulled into the harbor. The proprietor came to us, and between his broken English and my awful Japanese, told us that the older gentlman wanted to buy us a round of drinks. At first, I refused on behalf of the group--it was the Japanese thing to do. But when the teevee hung on the wall near the kitchen door showed our arrival as part of the evening news, the older gentleman insisted. He wanted to show the young sailors and myself a good time in Nagasaki, and insisted on buying us the house's best bottle of sake. I don't drink, and sake is strong stuff, and by the time it was all over a couple other folks had sprung for more of the stuff for my Navy buds. At the end of the night, I had to drag a couple of drunken sailors back to their ship, else they get into mischief and ruin the goodwill the citizens of Nagasaki had shown us.

Why did these strangers buy us drinks? For the same reason that General Douglas MacArthur is one of Japan's most revered figures. That's right, the man that conquered Japan, who helped orchestrate the island-hopping campaign that drove them out of their imperial holdings in the Pacific, is today one of Japan's greatest heroes, a real legend. After he left, the people of Japan made his office in Tokyo a shrine, which it remained until a few years ago when (I think) the building it was in was torn down to make way for something new. I'm a little hazy on that part, but I remember the issue coming up while I lieved there.

So what's with all this Yankee love in a country we destroyed? I think it's due to two things. We won fair and square, and were gracious in our victory. When we won the war, we won clearly, in a way that left no doubt and didn't linger on as a guerilla war or a civil conflict of any kind. We dropped weapons on them that sealed their fate, and forced the surrender of a country for which the very concept was unthinkable. But in winning, we broke the tyranny of the emperor and gave them democracy, a free system and the rule of law. We didn't tell them "You must now be our friends," we just acted like friends, rebuilding and reorganizing a devastated country. At the same time, we made sure the Soviets and later the Chinese couldn't have their way with Japan while she struggled to stand on her own. And our military presence there, though it has at times been controversial, has kept the peace in that part of Asia for more than a half century.

So I have little patience for revisionists who say that Truman's decision to drop the bomb was evil. It wasn't--it was one of the few options available to him to end a terrible war, and likely the only one that prevented the loss of still further life on both sides. Most of the Japanese I know understand this--my father-in-law, who is old enough to remember the war, visited the Hiroshima bomb museum with me a few years ago, and he understands how and why the war ended the way it did. It's a shame that many Americans don't.