Over Hiroshima and Nagasaki

He served as a CEO in Japan at Union Carbide. Father to three daughters who grew up privileged from their economic station as an American family in an executive position in post-WWII Japan, and the opportunity of international school without being uppity about it, he made it to the top office of his game when he came to Manila to turn his company to richer fields, save for one thing. He was in the Navy when the Manhattan Project baby exploded a new force of devastation over New Mexico, just before it dropped an alternative “little boy” brother over the skies of Hiroshima a few months later, vaporizing breaths in a flash, its radiation sending many into oblivion.

Navy tars assigned in New Mexico wore no protective gear. They did not know the capability of the instrument of mass destruction they were assigned to guard. The young salt who CEO’d in Japan did his duty but his body took the radiation. At 53, he mowed Maui Park grass in Hana, retired with an irreversible cancer that ceased his heartbeat not too long after.

I visited him and his wife, having shared household chores with them when he dragged his three girls and dogs to our communal experiment at secular monastic living in the late ’70s in Manila, only to find myself delivering the eulogy at his memorial service.

Two bombs exploded over Nippon’s population to subdue their veneration of the Emperor, heaven’s representative on earth, taming the pride of a nation gone awry, paying the price of its militant atrocities beyond its sovereign boundaries north and south of the equator in the Far East, marking the onset of the nuclear age in the process.

That was 70 years ago today when the misnomered “little boy” was assembled on Tinian at about the time I was gasping for natal breath in the plains of Central Luzon on the shadows of Mt. Arayat in Cuyapo, Nueva Ecija, six days earlier. The bomb unleashed a horrendous uranium fission over the skies of Hiroshima after the weather allowed the crew of the flying Superfortress Silverplate Boeing B-29 named Enola Gay deliver its untested load.

A sophisticated second bomb of implosive plutonium called “fat man” unloaded its terror three days later over the skies of Nagasaki, sparing the ancient castle town of Kokura, the primary target for the “fat man” and the secondary one for the “little boy” (the city lies between Hiroshima and Nagasaki). The B-29 found it shrouded with clouds on the 9th so Nagasaki got the cross hair, convincing Emperor Hirohito that his banzai forces had lost the mandate of heaven.

The nuclear bombs hastened the end of WWII in spite of Japan’s forces in Manchukuo (Dong Bei’s Manchuria) poised to move its soldiers from the region to defend the expected invasion of the home islands. The determined defense did not materialize despite of surviving Le May’s saturation bombing of Tokyo, ineffective as the defense was, for the bombs wiped out all buildings into smithereens! Japan sacrificed all for Emperor Showa (Hirohito was his name, but was called simply as His Majesty) while members of the royalty tried to get him to abdicate. Hirohito surrendered six days later after the two bombs were dropped.

Come now Shinzo Abe, the bouncy and effusive Prime Minister who resigned his office in 2007 due to health reasons but orchestrated a comeback to counter perceived ineffective leftists rule of the country, presiding over the resurgence of the Banzai spirit that stirred controversy in the proud but subdued nation.

To understand Abe and his nationalistic following that asserts its superiority in land and sea over Korea and China, one has to understand the Japanese soul. Nippon quietly transformed industrial technology to uplift living conditions in many parts of the world and had done so with the humility of a quiet servant (who nevertheless did not hesitate to make a quid in the process) and appeared apologetic over its wartime conduct more than half a century before.

Abe do not have any of that. Japan paid for its indiscretions, doing so dearly but the times have changed, and the sins of the fathers need not be visited on the innocence of the sons. Nippon reclaimed its soul, and not forever subservient to the West. After the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor disaster, with creature distortions appearing on land and sea, and humans, too, Japan had a lot of reflecting to do, for itself and its role on the world. Health-challenged Abe is understandably in a hurry. The U.S. watches his back.

Japan bashing long passé still focuses on aspects of Japan’s contrition but Nippon moves forward to redefine human relations toward tomorrow. Abe, like Bibi Netanyahu, may see it their role to drum up enthusiasm by testosterone-filled means, but they are understandable chauvinistic hiccups rather than breathing norms.

Meanwhile, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, neither active combatant in the last war, survived and flourished, and are forgiving of a vengeful world.

Domo arigato guzaimasu!