Remembering Hiroshima

Yesterday marked the 65th anniversary of the exploding of the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The decision to send for the first time a United States delegation to the commemorating ceremony was admittedly complicated. It might have been less so had the delegation been dispatched by former President Bush, but it was complicated nonetheless and chiefly so because Japan has, since the end of World War II, become a reliable U.S. ally, a redeemed nation, peaceful to the point of passive. So, in spite of President Obama's penchant for doing so, an apology-less trip was promised and in this case, as the Japanese are at least our friends and not our adversaries, I'll assume a good will on the part of the Administration.

Nevertheless gestures such as this are tricky and can be confusing as the images serve to twist the history, as well as our memory of it. Tell me, at the ceremony, who will almost necessarily come off looking like the good guy and who the bad? Who the victim and who the perpetrator? So it's important that we remember correctly.

Even if you maintain that the decision to drop the A-bomb was unnecessary, wrong, or both, you cannot be allowed to remember it as a product of American vengeance, war lust, or imperial design. The facts simply won't bear that out. But if, in spite of this, you stubbornly insist on U.S. culpability, then you must be forced to remember as well the Rape of Nanking, Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, and a host of other atrocities committed by the Japanese.

Among the difficulties with a policy of turning the other cheek is that it can make you forget that in fact someone was unjustly slapped in the face. It can even make the one doing the slapping forget as well. Remember that.