66 years after atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, churches press for elimination of nuclear weapons - NCC

Sixty-six years ago today, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.
 
More than 80,000 people died instantly, and 60,000 more died shortly afterwards of injuries and radiation poisoning. Three days later an additional 80,000 died August 9, 1945, when a second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.

Each year on this anniversary, Christians and persons of faith around the world have united in prayer to ask God that the tragedy never be repeated.
 
Both the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, general secretary of the National Council of Churches USA, and the Rev. Dr. Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches, issued statements today calling for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.
 
While expressing gratitude for the U.S. Senate's ratification of the New SALT II treaty which sets limits on the number of nuclear weapons held by the U.S. and Russia, Kinnamon said both governments and other nuclear powers must press forward "to rid the world of this dangerous scourge."
 
Kinnamon cited a 17-word statement by the World Council of Churches that has been widely endorsed by churches around the globe: "The production and deployment of nuclear weapons, as well as their use, constitute a crime against humanity.”
 
"Such weapons," he added, "do not protect us from the enemy; they are the enemy. The very instruments devised to protect us from evil are the very embodiment of evil."
 
Tveit said in a statement released August 5, “For as long as nuclear weapons exist, each year brings us new reasons to build a world where such a tragedy can never happen again.”
 
The Federal Council of Churches -- the predecessor or the National Council of Churches founded in 1950 -- was among the first to express alarm about the use of nuclear weaponry. Immediately after President Truman announced the bombing of Hiroshima, Federal Council General Secretary Samuel McCrae Cavert wired the president.
 
"MANY CHRISTIANS DEEPLY DISTURBED OVER USE OF ATOMIC BOMBS AGAINST JAPANESE CITIES BECAUSE OF THEIR NECESSARILY INDISCRIMINATE DESTRUCTIVE EFFORTS AND BECAUSE THEIR USE SETS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS PRECEDENT FOR FUTURE ..." Cavert wrote on August 9, the day of the Nagasaki bombing.
 
In what some historians regard as ironic, Cavert told Truman that one of the church leaders preparing a statement criticizing the bombing was John Foster Dulles, later President Dwight D. Eisenhower's secretary of state.
 
President Truman's response was blunt.
 
"Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war," Truman wrote. "The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them. When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast. It is most regrettable but nevertheless true."
 
The decision to drop the atomic bomb was controversial from the beginning.
 
The way Harry Truman saw it in August 1945, there was a sickening possibility that the Second World War would end in a historic bloodbath. The only alternative to a mutual massacre of American and Japanese troops, he believed, was the Atomic Bomb that his scientists told him was ready to use.
 
Months earlier, in land battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa, U.S. forces suffered 75,000 casualties. On Iwo Jima, the president was informed, 21,000 Japanese troops fought fanatically to hold the island and 20,000 were killed. In July, as secret plans were underway for a U.S. invasion of Kyushu, the interception of Japanese messages indicated their military build-up on Kyushu was four times larger than earlier estimates. In Truman's estimation, the Japanese military government was prepared to fight on until every soldier was dead or wounded.
 
The atomic bomb, he said, was the only way to "end the agony of war." On his orders on August 6, an American B-29 dropped a bomb on Hiroshima killing 80,000 people. The total swelled to 140,000 as people injured and suffering from radiation poisoning succumbed. An additional 80,000 died August 9 when a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Whether the numbers fell short of projected deaths in an invasion of Japan has been the subject of debate for 66 years.
 
When Truman went on the radio to announce the use of the bomb, many Americans regarded it as a hopeful sign the war was about to end. But even hopeful Americans were sobered by the number of people, including civilians, women and children, who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and it was immediately clear that the world had entered a dark and uncertain age.
 
Until all nuclear weapons are dismantled, church leaders said on the 66th anniversary of the first atomic bomb, the darkness and uncertainty will continue.