Photo: Site where Hiroshima bomb was assembled.
Today, the Department of Energy and Department of Interior signed a Memorandum of Agreement outlining how the two departments will administer the yet to be created Manhattan Project National Historical Park. The park is to be located at the location of three laboratories that were part of the research and development of the nuclear bomb: Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Hanford, Wash.; and Los Alamos, N.M.
The park will celebrate the program that developed the first nuclear bomb, known as The Manhattan Project. That same project created the two bombs that massacred over 200,000 unarmed civilian residents of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The death toll, close to a quarter million, does not include those who suffered and died of serious health effects as a result of the exposure to nuclear radiation. The U.S. is the only nation in history to ever use a nuclear weapon to kill civilians in the name of war.
Unlike in the U.S., where museums portray the nuclear bomb in a glorious manner and as the savior of humanity, the people of Japan, and those who survived the bombings, have mourned the anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as days of death and devastation. The world over has denounced this atrocity, and it is now widely acknowledged by countless scholars, including eight scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, that the dropping of the two nuclear bombs on a civilian populace constituted a war crime and a crime against humanity.
According to the book “The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945,” written by John Toland, a group of eight scientists that worked on the project submitted a report to the Interim Committee (which advised the president) in May 1945 dissenting against the use of such a weapon.
The reprehensible destruction and slaughter of life that took place on that day is almost unimaginable to most of those who were not there, but these events are forever burned into the memories of those who suffered through that tragedy. An eyewitness account of the bombing of Hiroshima, from the program “Hiroshima Witness” produced by the Hiroshima Peace Cultural Center and NHK, the public broadcasting company of Japan, states: “Many people on the street were killed almost instantly. The fingertips of those dead bodies caught fire and the fire gradually spread over their entire bodies from their fingers. A light gray liquid dripped down their hands, scorching their fingers. … I just couldn’t believe it. It was horrible. And looking at it, it was more than painful for me to think how the fingers were burned, hands and fingers that would hold babies or turn pages, they just, they just burned away. For a few years after the A-bomb was dropped, I was terribly afraid of fire.”
Only 20 years old at the time of the bombing, Akiko Takakura was within 300 meters of the epicenter of the bomb. It is despicable, tragic, and disrespectful for there to be a monument to the largest terrorist attack in human history, but this is not unlike much of the history that has been written by the rich elites who have the most to gain from death and war. There are many who have waged a struggle against the increased militarism and nuclear development, one of which is the Los Alamos Study Group, a New Mexico-based nuclear watchdog group that will be present this Wednesday to speak out against the planned celebration around the agreement.
According to Greg Mello, director of the Los Alamos Study Group, “The nuclear weapons industry is highly privatized and there’s not much that can be done to stop them.” Mello further added: “They control the narrative. This park will serve as a propaganda tool for the corporate military industrial complex.”
Since 2006, the Bechtel Corporation took over the contract to the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Bechtel is also the eighth-largest recipient of government military contracts and made a fortune in the wake of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
The agreement between both the Department of Energy and Department of Interior to create this monument of death was ushered in, and accompanied, by several other provisions that contribute to death and destruction of land and people. The agreement to establish the National park is part of a provision within the National Defense Authorization Act passed by the Senate today with an overwhelming majority vote of 98 to 3. The NDAA also provides $300 million in lethal military aid to the U.S.-backed, fascist-infested government in Ukraine, stops any attempt to shut or slow down Guantanamo Bay, and gives an Australian mining company land that is sacred to the San Carlos Apache Tribe and Yavapai-Apache Nation, known as Oak Flat.
Of course, it is never we the people who get to decide on such matters. Instead, these highly important matters are left up to our so-called representatives who came to office through their multi-million dollar campaigns.
Imagine if Japan created a national park honoring the Bataan Death March, or if Germany created a national park celebrating the Holocaust, what would the world think of such a thing? Of course, the blatant disrespect goes unacknowledged by the uncaring, arrogant rulers of this country.
What is there to celebrate with such a monument? The massacre of hundreds of thousands, the brutal humiliation of an entire nation, or the development of a real life doomsday machine? The rulers of this nation seem to delight in reminding the rest of the world that they have used nuclear weapons to achieve their goals before, and if anyone gets in their way they are willing to use them again, and they will even build monuments to it. That is the level of depravity that circulates among these warmongers.
