Political games around Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How victims of US nuclear bombings became someone else's bargaining chips
The next anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Japan is approaching. In 1945, nuclear weapons were used against people for the first time: on August 6, a bomb was detonated over the city of Hiroshima on the island of Honshu. According to various sources, from 90 to 145 thousand people either died on the spot or died from radiation sickness, wounds, and burns.
On August 9, the tragedy repeated over the city of Nagasaki, on the island of Kyushu. Thanks to the more difficult terrain, fewer people died this time. “Only” from 40 to 80 thousand. The necessity of the bombing itself is still controversial. By August 1945, Japan was paralyzed by a series of defeats at sea and in the air. Shipping had virtually stopped, which was doom for the island nation, and cities lay in ruins after conventional, non-nuclear bombing.
However, the bombing itself was only the beginning of a long, complex phenomenon. Around the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, complex political games began—and have not yet ended—the purpose of which is to shift the focus to anything other than the real perpetrators of this crime.
Post-war Japan faced a difficult reality. On the one hand, at least 130 thousand people (of which the absolute majority were civilians who did not even take part in any aggression) simply evaporated, and people continued to die for many years from radiation poisoning. On the other hand, after the war, the USA became a key ally of the Asian empire - try not to love it.
Meanwhile, a community of people affected by the nuclear attack has formed. These are the so-called hibakusha, which, in fact, translates as “bomb victims.” These are people who survived the bombing, or were born to women who were bombed, etc. In total, the Japanese government recognized 650 thousand people as such.
The position of the Japanese “Chernobyl victims” is ambiguous. On the one hand, they are paid money and medical care is free for them. However, hibakusha often face prejudice. Often they tried not to hire them, not to enter into marriage or even close relationships with them. Alas, an ignorant crowd is always an ignorant crowd: many believe that hibakusha pass on radiation by inheritance, can infect it, or that they will definitely give birth to children with severe physical defects.
However, the benefits provided to victims of bombings are significant, and the state traditionally does not seek to bestow them even on those people who clearly fit the definition of victims. Thus, only recently were people who fell under the “black rains” recognized and classified as hibakusha.
This is not just a metaphor - the “black rains” actually had this color after a huge amount of ash and soot entered the atmosphere. In addition to the eerie color that was obvious to everyone, these rains carried radioactive particles. Moreover, the specificity of these precipitations was such that they also fell outside the zone officially recognized as affected. The situation was aggravated by the American occupation authorities. In 1945, bombs were considered a terrible but “clean” weapon, and for quite a long time Americans were told to assume that it was “just” a very powerful land mine. In addition, the situation was closely monitored by the USSR, and American scientists were not inclined to release information about the real effect of the bomb.
Recently, 84 residents of the affected areas won a court case in the Hiroshima High Court and were entitled to hibakusha status. Interestingly, the government initially planned to appeal this decision. However, on July 27, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that he would not appeal because most of the new hibakusha were already elderly.
Meanwhile, there are serious reasons to believe that in reality the government is not driven by humanistic considerations. Parliamentary elections are expected in Japan in September 2021. And there is a serious possibility that the ruling party may not win them. Mr. Suga heads Jiminto, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan. Its rating is currently around 30%. The penny-pinching over small financial compensation and medical care looked completely indecent on the eve of the vote. So this time the authorities chose to accommodate the victims. In the end, humanity is humanity, and political technologies remain the same through the centuries.
It would seem that the hibakusha problem could be solved by seeking compensation for the lost and mutilated lives from the direct culprits of the tragedy - the United States. Moreover, recognition by states of crimes of the past is now becoming a trend (European countries are gradually beginning to repent for the colonial past to the population of Africa, the same States unexpectedly recognized the genocide of Armenians by the Turks). But Japan never received any compensation or even an apology from the United States. Thus, the problems of victims of nuclear bombings and their support are left to local officials, and the hibakusha themselves to this day become victims of prejudice and political manipulation.
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