Remembering Hiroshima

Most choose to remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki in silence, but in Russia, Sergei Naryshkin, the speaker of the Duma has called for an international tribunal to assess the full impact of the bombings. I guess he figures if Russia continues to be held to blame for war crimes committed by the Soviet Union during World War II, then the US should be made to answer for its war crimes.

Of course, Oliver Stone did indict the United States for this cataclysmic event and many others in his "Untold History of the United States," but that didn't seem to generate a great amount of interest for the Showtime series a couple years back. In Stone's mind, Truman already had Japan at his feet and there was no reason to drop the bombs. The ulterior motive was to keep the Soviet Union out of Japan, the whole Pacific Rim for that matter, and what better way than to show the full fury of the United States arsenal.

Stone primarily cited American Prometheus, a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, who at one point advocated limited nuclear war, but came to regret it. Apparently, Oppenheimer had sold the Truman administration on the idea whether he wanted to or not. At the time, it was thought that fallout of radiation of one of the bombs would be quite limited. It was only after the bombing of Japan that scientists understood the full impact of an atomic bomb.

Of course, Japan was no saint itself during World War II. an estimated 15-20 million Chinese died, largely at the hands of Japan. The battle over Manchuria was brutal beyond belief, making the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima pale by comparison. Not that it necessarily factored into Truman's decision, but has been used to defend his action.

I don't know what good an international tribunal would do other than to reopen the many scars left by the war. In its own quiet way, Japan has come to terms with these bombings, which includes the fire bombing of Tokyo. and I don't think would be very anxious to re-open this subject. The US and Japan have become strong allies in the decades since. American presence is a sore point at Okinawa, but with ongoing tensions with North Korea is tolerated by the government.

For the Soviet Union, the surrender of Emperor Hirohito to the United States was a lost opportunity to expand its influence deep into the Pacific Rim. The USSR did influence events in China after the war, but even here fell into bitter conflict with the new communist government, resulting in tensions along the meandering border for decades. However, Russia has gone out of its way to repair ties with China in the years since the breakdown of the Soviet Union.

One cannot say the same for relations between Russia and Japan, which is why it is odd that Mr. Naryshkin would show so much sympathy for Japan's 70 year-old tragedy. Maybe it is a form or rapprochement, as Russia tries to counter the current negotiations going on between the US and Pacific Rim nations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. However, I doubt it has little to do with the tragedy itself.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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