Column: Playing God—Or, Playing with Gods (Letter from Japan, Part 7)

This spring Mr. Thompson is a visiting professor at Osaka University of Commerce. This is the seventh of his"Letters from Japan."

"If this thing fizzles, each of you can look forward to a lifetime of testifying before congressional investigating committees."-- General Groves to his staff, December 24, 1944. And, Merry Christmas.

“This one goes to heaven, this one goes to hell, this one goes to hell, this one goes to heaven.” I can just imagine the Calvinistic gods sorting through newly fertilized eggs and start-up embryos and deciding their life fates before they clear their first trimester, before any protections of life allowed by Roe v. Wade kick into gear. Just think, some force above telling us what our eternal destiny shall be before we get to take our first breath of air, take our first step, or voice our first words, let alone our first opinions on the matter.

So there they were in the Spring of 1945, the Calvinistic Wannabees in Washington’s White House, War Department, and Pentagon. “This town gets fire, this town gets radiation, this town gets life, this town gets hell.” Playing the god game, American political leaders pondered their targets—the cities of Japan. Populations of lives yet to run their full course, and lives yet to see the daylight of life.

The initial list included Kyoto, Hiroshima, Niigata, and Kokura. The Japanese love lists, there is a whole wall full of lists—the best mountains, the most popular men, the most beautiful women, the sumo champions, the top entertainers—in the Osaka Castle museum. So why not honor their traditions—make a list of their cities. Why these cities? They were big cities, they had factories? Who knows: The gods had suggested they wanted “fresh” embryos—that is “targets” that had not yet had their fates evaluated through “traditional” methods—ergo, by ordeal of fire from blockbusters or incendiary bombs. The list was to include only “clean” targets.

But can gods err? Or, is it OK for gods to change their minds, to reevaluate? Could a Calvinistic god perhaps be persuaded, “You know, that one over there, yes, that one who you gave a free pass to heaven to, that one. He has really turned out to be a bad a--. Maybe we should reconsider. He really acts as if he would be a lot more at home in hell.”

And so it came to pass that the gods of these matters did reconsider. It dawned upon them in one early morning’s Potomac mist, that one of the cities on their list of targets was itself a place full of many godly spirits. It wouldn’t be nice to be messing around with other gods, now would it? So what should they do about Kyoto? If they did remove Kyoto from the list, the list would be down to three, and they had to have four—that was their magic number—4. What city could replace Kyoto? They would have to move fast if they made a move, time was a wasting, this gestation stuff lasts only so long.

Gods gathered on May 30, 1945. That is, they were gathered at the order of Secretary of War. God Leslie Groves (general) was asked about the list. Henry Stimson (secretary) demurred. This could not do. Kyoto was the number one target? No, this could not be. Truman could not accept that. God Stimson exercised his godly veto, Kyoto had to be removed from the list at once. The heavenly city was not to be destined for hell. Stimson removed Kyoto from the list, in his words because it “was the ancient capital of Japan, a historical city, and one that was of great religious significance to the Japanese.” Stimson had visited Kyoto several times and was “very much impressed by its ancient culture.” Groves tried to counter with arguments about military plants in and about the city of over one million souls, but to no avail, Stimson was the Zeus on this decision.

This Japan visitor has to concur with Stimson that Kyoto was indeed a city of many gods and that gave primacy to the notion that Kyoto deserved salvation. Kyoto was the capital of Japan for over one thousand years, and the city has a legacy “of over 1600 temples, hundreds of shrines (Shinto), and countless national treasurers.” (Let’s Go, Travel Guide to Japan 2004, p. 392). Among its many many holy attractions, Kyoto has Japan’s tallest pagoda, a shrine dedicated to the spirits of the thunder god, and also an angry poet. It has the country’s oldest shrine dedicated to the harvest, and also a shrine for cupid. It has temples housing ashes of famous monks, another with the Buddha of healing, one for twelve sacred generals, another that is a nunnery, and one to house Buddhas that can come back to life.

Kyoto is also a religious festival town as it has Shinto ceremonies to prevent storms and epidemics, to calm the spirits of the dead, and to welcome back the spirits of ancestors recently deceased. Indeed this is a religious city in its symbols and its celebrations. It, especially so then, in 1945, a center of Shinto and Buddhist worship. So Kyoto was “saved” by an edict of Stimson (aka Zeus) on May 30, 1945 because of what it represented—Shinto and Buddhist faiths that were rendered “Verboten” in U.S. Military decrees less than seven months later.

Mysteries of gods are always to be mysteries. Perhaps gods decree that only so many souls can be saved. These gods of Washington, D.C., were into zero sum theology, save one, you have to condemn another. Shintoism and Buddhism saved Kyoto. Another city just had to be condemned in its place. All these though tough decisions (“the buck stops here decisions”), take something out of a god. Time was a wasting, so they had to rush to judgment. Nagasaki, join the list. Nagasaki had the requisite number of civilians in its population, a half million or so, Nagasaki had lots and lots of civilian houses which could help in measuring the “effect of the bomb.” They were at the tip of the nation and only a short distance from two other targets, you know, just in case. And, icing on the cake, Nagasaki had the Mitsibishi ship building plant, now wouldn’t it be great to lob one in on that baby.

Nagasaki violated a criterion used in making up the first list, but the gods did have to move quickly. Nagasaki had already suffered from several bombing raids from B-29s. Nagasaki was not a “fresh” target.

The selection of Nagasaki as the target to replace Kyoto suggests that Stimson and Truman seemed to have a decided bias in favor of the Shinto religion, the actions of their military commanders after the war notwithstanding. Nagasaki was every bit as religious a city as Kyoto was—perhaps more so. But there was one very big difference, one of the primary religious forces active in Nagasaki in 1945, and still a major force today, was Christianity. Nagasaki has been a Christian city to an extent much greater than found in any other Japanese city. At the same time Nagasaki has also been a home for Shinto, Buddhist, and Confucian faiths, all of which flourished—and in 1945 were flourishing, in the beautiful city of hills near a bay by the sea.

Among the notable sites in Nagasaki is the monument dedicated to the Twenty-Six Martyrs of Japan. In the sixteenth century political leader Toyotomi became fearful of Christians after the captain of a Spanish ship that crashed on Japan’s coast boasted about the authority that Christians were exerting in Japan. Toyotomi could not tolerate a challenge to his authority. He quickly sought out a group of Christians in Osaka and Kyoto. He had twenty-six arrested. They were ordered to march—ergo carry their crosses—to Nagasaki where other Christians were know to be practicing their faith. They marched 800 kilometers through the snow, arriving at their Calvary, Nishizaka Hill, in their Jerusalem, Nagasaki.

On February 5, 1597, they were crucified. In 1862 Pope Pius IX canonized the twenty-six. Pope John Paul II came to Nagasaki in 1981 to pay his respect to these saints of the faith and to name Nishizaka Hill “Blessed Hill.” John Paul II also officiated at an ordination mass at Urakami Cathedral. The Cathedral was the largest Christian place of worship in East Asia when it was first constructed, being finished after thirty years of work in 1925. There were 6,000 seats in the Cathedral which had served 12,000 parishioners. The Cathedral was only 500 meters from the hypocenter. Fewer than one third of its parishioners survived Stimson’s reconsideration. (No one was killed at the Mitisibishi factory—it survived unscathed.) Nagasaki also has another large Catholic Church, Oura Church. It was built by a French priest in 1865, after Christianity was permitted among the people following about three centuries of being banned. When the religion was reinstated, many peasants came to Nagasaki and professed a faith their families had secretly been following for all those--not lost--generations.

Nagasaki is a city of many religions. A Confucian shrine was built by Chinese residents in 1893. There are also four Chinese Buddhist Temples. In July each year Nagasaki hosts the Bon Festival which draws Chinese from all over Japan to come and worship and console the spirits of their ancestors. (“Your Guide to Nagasaki,” Nagasaki Interpreters Association, 2003). The entire museum and park system of Nagasaki is somewhat of a different tone than that in Hiroshima. Everything in Nagasaki emphasizes prayer. There is a Peace Room for prayers in the main museum. Throughout the parks, my English speaking guide, a Catholic Japanese woman, urged me to remain quiet as this place and that place were for prayers. The central statue in the Peace Park is of a seated man with eyes closed in prayer. The writing below the statues is a message from the Mayor (a government official). The mayor asks for prayers for peace and for the victims of Nagasaki. The place is a public place. The place is a religious place.

In my initial essays from Japan, I had lamented that Japan had seemed to have lost formal ties to religion as a consequence, if not as a direct result, of U.S. government policy—enforced by an army of occupation. I find myself now, five weeks later, having to partially reconsider that conclusion—I am human, I can err. Nagasaki is TODAY a religious city. It is a center for all religious faiths, but it remains a place where Christianity is outwardly noticeable. Twenty percent of all Catholics in Japan live in or near Nagasaki today. So I reconsider my initial human reactions and conclusions. I offer that other humans should also reevaluate matters. Maybe a congressional committee should make an investigation precisely because “fatman” did not “fizzle.” And not because the target was religious people, but rather because it was people, just human beings.

It is not a good game, that playing god stuff our leaders did. When you screw up at that game, you really screw up. And Nagasaki was one horrendous screw-up by our president and by our other political and military leaders, as well as our military troops in the sky, as it were. But then Hiroshima wasn’t exactly the best our gods could offer either.

Postscript--Lingering thoughts--I am now back in Osaka at the U-Community Hotel near the campus of the Osaka University of Commerce. There is a high school ping pong tournament taking place at the campus, and the hotel is quite a beehive of activity with kids in uniforms of all sorts running about here and there. I just sat across the dining room from a team of kids. Their uniforms read Niigata High School. I smiled at them, bowed a bit and said Konnichi-wa, Koban-wa, or something like that. They laughed and bowed back. They were having fun. Kids should have lives.