Ralph Gardiner: Bombs saved lives too

American Civil War soldier General William Sherman famously observed, "War is hell." No one would deny that consecutive nuclear explosions brought hell on Earth to the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. And the misery of the experience was amply portrayed recently by television news reporters, such as TV One's Charlotte Glennie.

But the problem for young people of today is that such reports did not even attempt to place those momentous events in the context of their times. We heard of the undoubted horror of the bombings. We were told emphatically it was the Americans who did these things.

But there was no explanation of why; no suggestion the Japanese nation had sown the wind; no indication America had allies (including us) who, at the time, were entirely grateful that the ghastly war was thus finally brought to an end.

It is not my purpose to embark now on a Noddy's history of World War II, but without some basic understanding of those vast events the Hiroshima/Nagasaki experience must seem little other than scientific genocide to young viewers of today.

So let me say just this. The war in the Pacific was initiated on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese nation, without prior declaration of war, attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbour and then set on the British, the Dutch, the Australians, to name but a few. Oh, and us. And for years, what Sherman had called "hell" was loosed upon the Asia Pacific region.

While it is fashionable and right to feel for those Japanese who died at Hiroshima and at Nagasaki, it is also right (but seemingly not fashionable) to feel for those millions who were murdered by the Japanese as that nation acted out its imperialist dreams of conquest.

As but one example, in early 1942, 16 American bomber aircraft flown off the aircraft carrier "Hornet" carried out a largely symbolic bombing raid on Tokyo. The aircraft could not return to the carrier. Instead they overflew Japan and headed for China.

All the aircraft crashed, most of the crews survived, were sustained by the Chinese, and most eventually returned to America.

The Japanese Imperialist Army, already in occupation of vast tracts of China, embarked on a three-month campaign of fury and fanaticism against the Chinese people as they hunted the escaping American aircrews. And in doing so, they killed more Chinese than the total victims of both the bombs of August.

But who now sheds tears, tinkles little bells, or floats cups on the river for those Chinese victims? Neither does Japan, still samurai proud, acknowledge or apologise for its past.

Eventually, time and tide turned against the Japanese.

But as surrender did not seem an option of choice for the knights of Bushido, they had to be winkled out island by island, from Tarawa all the way to Okinawa.

New Zealanders at that time were only too grateful to have the Americans do the bulk of the dying and fighting for them, and a walk around Waikumete cemetery in West Auckland today will demonstrate some small part of the blood that was sacrificed then by them for all of our tomorrows.

The predicted loss of Allied life, mostly American (little or any would have been our contribution) to successfully invade mainland Japan, was colossal. The bombs of August obviated the continuance of that, and hundreds and thousands of young men got to grow old, as we now here still do.

It is well that we remember how the big war ended, but not at the expense of forgetting that it also had a beginning and a duration.

It is well that we remember those who were lost at its ending, but not at the expense of forgetting those who were lost in bringing that ending about. It is also well to remember that those who sow the wind may reap the whirlwind.

* W.R.C. (Ralph) Gardiner is a retired labour relations practitioner and former chief of the Employment Tribunal.