Television Joins in A-Bomb Debate

Showtime’s “Hiroshima” has President Harry S. Truman joyously proclaiming about dropping the first atomic bomb that instantly killed at least 70,000 Japanese, most of them civilians: “This is the greatest thing in history!”

Coming near the end of this ambitious depiction, Truman’s line speaks to today’s enduring ambivalence over his decision to hit Hiroshima with the bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, and over the U.S. obliterating Nagasaki with a second A-bomb three days later.

Looking almost like a documentary, “Hiroshima” is often something very impressive to behold, symbolizing what looks like a commitment by Showtime to expand its catalogue of important original programming along the lines of its competitor, HBO.

“Hiroshima” arrives Sunday on the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the initial A-bomb. Knowing what we do about the blast’s devastating results, Truman’s folksy euphoria is jolting. How can a weapon that vaporizes a city and erases so many lives in an instant--to say nothing of causing thousands more casualties, lingering radiation sickness, hideous disfigurement and other agonies--evoke such delight?

Yet if that weapon spares thousands of American lives by helping end World War II and humble a nation then notorious for its aggression, brutal mass slaughters and atrocities, how can it not be celebrated?

Given this emotional tug of war, even an attempted scholarly reassessment of Truman’s approval of A-bombing Japan can be perilous. The Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington discovered that this year when plans for its exhibition expounding and examining this chunk of volatile history detonated a towering mushroom cloud of outrage from veterans’ groups and some politicians, who charged that it was un-American and insensitive to U.S. suffering at the hands of Japan during World War II. As a result, the museum’s director resigned and the now-open exhibition was diluted and delayed.

Meanwhile, the debate over Truman’s A-bomb decision continues via television, as does the dispute over censoring the Smithsonian.

“After all, freedom of discussion was one of the ideals that Americans fought and died for,” Peter Jennings said recently, asserting that the severely restricted Smithsonian exhibition does not tell “the whole story of Hiroshima” and thus “is not fair to history--or the rest of us.”

“World News Tonight” anchorman Jennings’ gutsy brief commentary came at the end of last week’s “Hiroshima: Why the Bomb Was Dropped,” an excellent, probing documentary that he co-wrote with Sherry Jones and narrated for ABC News.

Because the evil of the militarist Japanese regime’s warmongering is a given, the A-bomb’s use is a non-issue for most Americans, including the nation’s vast majority of surviving World War II vets, many of whom view it as their savior. Yet more than any other television program, “Why the Bomb Was Dropped” boldly went beyond the usual footage of city rubble to show the A-bomb’s human carnage and--with the help of historians and other observers--examined tough questions that have been raised about the justification for using the bomb even on such an enemy.

At issue, as always, is whether Truman should have used other possible options for forcing an already-defeated Japan to the peace table, options that some claim he had available to him. Also in dispute is the number of U.S. lives saved by the A-bombings. For example, how much stock should be placed in constantly changing projected casualty figures (250,000 to 1 million) mentioned at various times by Truman and others regarding a proposed U.S. invasion of the Japanese mainland? An invasion, by the way, whose likelihood of ever happening is itself in question.

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The ABC documentary and the Showtime drama bookend a slew of other TV programs chronicling the A-bomb decision and other components of the U.S.-Japanese conflict in the Pacific. Ironically, two of the most incomplete histories on the topic were aired last week on cable’s History Channel. One documentary, “Scorpions in a Bottle,” routinely rehashed the oft-told story about the bomb’s development, boiling down Truman’s decision to employ it thusly: “Pros outweighed the cons.” And another documentary, “Rain of Ruin,” recalled the Enola Gay’s mission over Hiroshima, mentioned the famous B-29’s display at the National Air and Space Museum and celebrated the bomb’s creation as representing “American intellect and ingenuity.” But it ignored the rain of ruin that flattened plans for a more comprehensive exhibit at the museum.

That significant controversy was cited in “Victory in the Pacific,” Thursday night’s middle-of-the-road “CBS Reports” survey of the U.S.-Japan conflict, co-anchored at various locations by Dan Rather and retired Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who seemed as much at ease reading a TelePrompTer as he was Gulf War maps.

Rather: “Next, the coming of the B-29s.”

Schwarzkopf: “And the arrival of a man named Hope.”

Although the CBS program offered some handy broad history, Schwarzkopf used it to advance the perhaps novel argument (presumably it was his own opinion) that using the A-bombs was merciful toward the Japanese. Relying on the disputed premise that Truman’s only options were to bomb or invade, he asked: “How many Japanese would have died if America hadn’t used the bomb and had to invade? There’s strong evidence the answer is far more than the number killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to say nothing of the additional men America would have lost.”

“Victory in the Pacific” also briefly covered two topics related to programs airing tonight. One is the tragedy of Peleliu, a blip of an island in the Pacific where U.S. Marines took catastrophic losses--while wiping out most of the estimated 12,000 Japanese defenders--in an unnecessary invasion of territory that had no strategic value.

That sad chapter is poignantly reprised by “Dateline NBC,” on which one Marine ruefully notes: “Old men make stupid mistakes, and young men have to die for it.”

The other topic is North America’s unconscionable internment of its citizens of Japanese heritage during World War II, done on the assumption that they were candidates for disloyalty. Instead of the United States, however, Canada’s British Columbia is the setting for most of “The War Between Us,” a nicely done drama about cultured, solidly middle-class Japanese Canadians in coastal Vancouver being trucked to the remote interior and forced to live in shantytowns amid relatively uncouth Caucasians.

Although racism and other predictable problems ensue, the center of this Canadian production is the strong bond ultimately forged between one of these Japanese Canadians (Mieko Ouchi) and one of her new neighbors (Shannon Lawson). Yet just when you think that goo will prevail, the story delivers a shrill wake-up call by turning even grimmer.

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Grimness is the epitome of “Hiroshima,” whose U.S. segments were written by John Hopkins and directed by Roger Spottiswoode and whose subtitled Japanese segments were written by Toshiro Ishido and directed by Koreyoshi Kurahara in a Canadian/Japanese co-production whose seamless juxtaposition of new sequences and old newsreels produces a black-and-white look of startling authenticity.

Adding to that is the interesting work of Kenneth Welsh as a sort of bumpkinesque Truman, Wesley Addy as an ambivalent Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Ken Jenkins as Secretary of State James Byrnes and Richard D. Masur as Gen. Leslie Groves, who appears to have amazing autonomy as military overseer of a team of physicists secretly working on the creation of an A-bomb in New Mexico. Although Truman approves the Hiroshima bombing, we hear him say that Groves could drop the second bomb “at his own discretion.”

The boorish Groves and career politician Byrnes come across here as Truman’s Haldeman and Erlichman, getting the President’s ear while lobbying hard for hitting Japan with the A-bomb that they euphemistically label “the gadget.” In this scenario, Byrnes sees the A-bomb mostly through a political prism, hoping its use will justify the program’s $2-billion cost and give the U.S. a wedge against the Soviets.

The narrative is slowed only by the device of having real-life talking heads periodically weigh in about the history they lived through. Otherwise, “Hiroshima” plays like a suspense story, ticking off the days, intrigues, private agendas and historical events that build toward Aug. 6.

That includes critical miscalculations and a futile peace move in Tokyo behind the backs of zealous militarists (the Japanese sequences are the most interesting) that would have cast as intermediaries the very Soviets who later, on the same day as the Nagasaki bombing, formally enter the war against the Japanese.

Although “Hiroshima” lists Truman’s options, its tone of inevitability creates the impression that the momentum toward A-bombing was unstoppable. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we can’t keep losing our boys like this,” Truman says after the sinking of a U.S. ship a few days before the Hiroshima blast.

Whether there were better ways to stop losing those boys is a question that will be argued perhaps indefinitely. But not, apparently, at the Smithsonian.

* “The War Between Us” airs at 9 tonight on Lifetime. “Dateline NBC” airs at 9 tonight on NBC. “Hiroshima” airs at 8 p.m. and 11:15 p.m. Sunday on Showtime.