Today is the 62nd anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima

Nobody is really sure how many people died due to the dropping of an atom bomb on Hiroshima. The number was probably around 80,000 killed immediately or who died within two months. but the total death toll may be as high as 140,000, when you include people who died in later years due to the longer term effects of the bomb.

Virtually all of these people were civilians.

There is no way to morally justify a deliberate attack on non-combatants. The argument that it was done to shorten the war and save lives is specious. First, who knows if it shortened the war? But more importantly, if you can justify a mass attack on civilians, then anything can be justified, including terror attacks. We never have the right to target innocent people, and that’s just what we did.

In 1995, on the 50th anniversary, I was arrested along with two dozen other people in Manhattan for protesting the bombing. Probably about 125 people took part in the protest, including Fr. Dan Berrigan who was also arrested. It doesn’t require someone being a pacifist to recognize the gross immorality of using weapons of mass destruction.

The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen said that with the exception of slavery, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the worse acts in U.S. history.

Here’s an excerpt from a good editorial of a couple of years ago in the National Catholic Register, with a famous quote by Sheen –

ZNet |Japan | Was Hiroshima and Nagasaki a Sin?

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in his series of talks titled "What Now America?" said that, by our tacit refusal to recognize the evil of the atomic bomb, Americans became susceptible to a new notion of freedom — one divorced from morality.

"When, I wonder, did we in America ever get into this idea that freedom means having no boundaries and no limits?" he asked. "I think it began on the 6th of August 1945 at 8:15 am when we dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. … Somehow or other, from that day on in our American life, we say we want no limits and no boundaries."

Shortly before becoming Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger said much the same thing.

"There no longer exists a knowing how to do separated from a being able to do, because it would be against freedom, which is the absolute supreme value," he said in his talks about the crisis facing Europe.

He put this misunderstanding of freedom at the heart of the use of the atomic bomb, and of many contemporary problems.

"Man knows how to clone men, and so he does it," he said. "Man knows how to use men as a store of organs for other men, and so he does it; he does it because this seems to be a requirement of his freedom. Man knows how to build atomic bombs and so he makes them, being, as a matter of principle, also disposed to use them. In the end, terrorism is also based on this modality of man’s self-authorization, and not on the teachings of the Koran."

Why did I take part in a "useless" protest on August 6th, 2005? After all, a small group getting four paragraphs of coverage buried deep in the NY newspapers – not very influential right?

Probably true. My main reason for taking part in that sort of demonstration – and in other similar demonstrations I’ve participated in – has been to remind myself that things are not the way they ought to be in our world. It’s part of a process of self-criticism, conversion, and my own renewal. It’s not enough to say, "it’s wrong" and then go about my business. That’s how evil spreads! At least by doing something, I remind myself that I have to be on guard against quiet compliance with other evils going on right now, in our day, our society, our world.