CNA\/EWTN News<\/a>).- The 70th anniversary of the US atomic strikes on Japan has prompted reflection, commemoration, and debate about the ethics of war and the world\u2019s nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s no winning in nuclear war,\u201d Maryann Cusimano Love, an international relations professor at the Catholic University of America, told CNA. Hiroshima and Nagasaki teach \u201chow horrific nuclear war is.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cMany folks are not aware of how many nuclear weapons remain with us today and how dangerous these arsenals are,\u201d she continued. \u201cThat is why the Catholic Church has continued to argue that we have to get rid of nuclear weapons, that the presence of these weapons is very dangerous for human life and very destabilizing.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tSeventy years ago, the only wartime use of nuclear weapons took place in the Aug. 6 attack on Hiroshima and the Aug. 9 attack on Nagasaki by the United States.<\/p>\n
\tThe Hiroshima attack killed around 80,000 people instantly and may have caused about 130,000 deaths, mostly civilians. The attack on the port city of Nagasaki killed about 40,000 instantly and destroyed a third of the city, the BBC reports.<\/p>\n
\tThe attacks took a heavy toll on all of Japan\u2019s population, but Nagasaki was a historic center of Catholicism since European missionaries such as St. Francis Xavier arrived in the 16th century. After Japan\u2019s rulers closed the country, in part due to fears of foreign domination, Japanese Catholics survived centuries of persecution before their freedom of religion was secured again in the 19th century.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cCatholics were actually worshipping in Nagasaki, in the cathedral, at the time the atomic weapon was dropped. All of the people in the cathedral were instantly killed,\u201d Love said.<\/p>\n
\tThe England-born Father Peter Milward, S.J., an emeritus professor of English literature at Sophia University in Tokyo, told CNA the atomic bomb strike on Nagasaki meant that \u201csome 10 percent of Japan\u2019s Catholics were suddenly wiped out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tMany Americans credit the atomic strikes with ending the Second World War that began for the United States with Japan\u2019s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. But Love said this interpretation is something that Americans should question.<\/p>\n
\tAnalysis of historical documents shows that Japanese leaders made no specific response to the atomic strikes, which were not much worse than the \u201chorrific\u201d firebombings that other cities such as Tokyo had endured. Many U.S. military and political leaders after the war also said the atomic strikes did not hasten the end of the war, Love said.<\/p>\n
\tThe entry of the Soviet Union into the war against Japan on Aug. 9 was what prompted Japan\u2019s surrender, she said. This fact faded from view during the Cold War, when U.S.-Soviet relations grew tense.<\/p>\n
\tLove said that the atomic weapons\u2019 use drew condemnation from the bishops of the time.<\/p>\n
\tIn August 1945 the Vatican\u2019s newspaper, L\u2019Osservatore Romano<\/em>, called the Hiroshima attack \u201ca catastrophic conclusion \u2026 to the war\u2019s apocalyptic surprises.\u201d The discovery of the weapon cast \u201ca sinister shadow\u201d on the future of humanity.<\/p>\n\t\u201cThe Catholic Church was one of the very few voices at the time that criticized the atomic bombings,\u201d Love continued. The Pope and the Vatican rejected the bombing, as did the bishops of the United States.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThey had the insight from the get-go that these weapons and their destructive power were a violation of our Church teaching and heritage.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThis teaching continues today in Pope Francis, whose words against nuclear weapons include a Dec. 7, 2014 message to an international gathering on the weapons.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cNuclear deterrence and the threat of mutually assured destruction,\u201d he said, \u201ccannot be the basis for an ethics of fraternity and peaceful coexistence among peoples and states.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLove said the use of nuclear weapons violates just war ethics.<\/p>\n
\tThe just war tradition, which is rooted in Catholic thought and has become largely enshrined in most international law, only recognizes the morality of a defensive war. It also governs strategy and tactics in war, barring violence against civilians and non-combatants, she explained.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cYou have to always protect the most vulnerable members of society,\u201d she continued. While soldiers are trained for war and have the tools and backup to protect them, this is not true of civilians.<\/p>\n
\tJust war ethics require \u201cdiscrimination and proportion in use of force.\u201d This includes a ban on weapons \u201cthat do not discriminate between combatants and civilians.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThere are some types of weapons that can never meet just war criteria. That\u2019s why we call them weapons of mass destruction,\u201d Love said.<\/p>\n
\tThese include atomic weapons, as well chemical and biological weapons. These ethics also apply to conventional weaponry deployed en masse, such as other bombing attacks in the Second World War.<\/p>\n
\tLove said nuclear arsenals still pose \u201ctremendous risks,\u201d and not only in a nuclear war. Many people have been harmed in the manufacture of nuclear weapons and by atomic tests. There is a risk of accidental detonation or theft by terrorists, with 100 thefts of nuclear materials every year.<\/p>\n
\tOn Thursday, the anniversary of the first atomic strike, the city of Hiroshima held a large memorial service with representatives from 100 countries, including the U.S.<\/p>\n
\tFather Milward reflected that he saw a difference in the \u201ccontrasting memory\u201d between Hiroshima and Nagasaki.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cThe bombing of Hiroshima was a deliberate target of the American bomb, and the people there are less willing to \u2018forget and forgive\u2019,\u201d he said. Nagasaki was an \u201calmost accidental\u201d secondary target chosen due to weather conditions. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\u201cPerhaps it is for this reason that the people of Nagasaki, under the influence of Catholicism, are more ready to forgive, if not to forget, than the people of Hiroshima,\u201d said Father Milward, 89, who has been in Japan since 1954.<\/p>\n
\tHe said the effects of the atomic strikes continue in the Japanese constitution, which severely limits its military.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI admire the Japanese for their love of peace, in contrast to their former bellicosity which led up to their participation in World War II, and I hope they maintain that ideal in spite of the increasing threats from China and North Korea. But I also hope that they maintain their gratitude to the United States for providing them with the necessary armed umbrella to enable them to uphold their ideal.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLove said the Church in Japan, because of its experience, has become \u201ca real moral witness for why this must never be forgotten, and how the world needs to move towards deeper levels of nuclear disarmament.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tShe recounted the story of Father Kaemon Noguchi, a Trappist monk who returned home to Nagasaki after the bombing. He visited the rubble of the cathedral and prayed to the Virgin Mary for a sign to help Catholics who might lose their faith in the wake of the attack.<\/p>\n
\tIn response, he felt called to go to a particular part of the rubble and dig down. There, he discovered the damaged head of a tall statue of the Virgin Mary\u2014the statue before which he had prayed for discernment in his vocation. Its face was intact.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIt\u2019s a very haunting image of both the destruction of this cathedral of Nagasaki but it\u2019s also kind of a symbol of how God endures and how faith endures through the intervention of the Virgin Mary, even in time of great suffering.\u201d
\n\t\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Denver, Colo., Aug 6, 2015 \/ 12:10 pm (CNA\/EWTN News).- The 70th anniversary of the US atomic strikes on Japan has prompted reflection, commemoration, and debate about the ethics of war and the world’s nuclear arsenal.<\/p>\n
\t“There’s no …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1031,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us"],"yoast_head":"\n
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