Dealing with the Bomb, and an Unstable Post-War World

[After observing the friendliness of Japanese prisoners of war and noting that “practically all the people in this world like to be nice and get along with each other,” my father makes his first journal entry about the arrival of atomic bombs on the world scene. He isn’t too optimistic about the prospects for the U.S., or the world at large, to do a good job of managing this new destructive power. Nor does he expect a victorious U.S. to seriously address the inequities among nations in the post-war period, despite the emergence of a modern world that “is too small to exist as a group of jealous and sovereign states.”]

December 6, 1945 (Okinawa, Japan)

… All along the roads here on Okinawa, as we go rumbling along on our truck, we pass Okinawan men, women and kids, trudging along singly or in groups, most of them carrying bundles of junk they’ve picked up from the dumps. It just takes a wave of the hand and a smile to get a wave and a smile in return. Some of them even make the first gesture.

Up at the dump where we took our load of scrap field wire there were some Jap PWs unloading trucks, little wiry fellows, very inoffensive-looking, who work rapidly and efficiently. On the way back we passed a truck with a couple of PW’s in the back. As we drew alongside, one of them saluted me smartly and grinned. “You know, Siggie,” I said, “practically all of the people in this world like to be nice and get along with each other.”

“Sure, that’s right,” Siggie said. “They all like to be liked.”

Not all of them, of course. A lot of people are like those Canadians I was just reading about in TIME who want to get all the Jap “rats” out of Canada, even though they may have been born there. For one reason or another, people are taught to hate certain groups of other people who happen to differ from them in color, religion, race, occupation, or social standing. But who promotes these hatreds, and why? Well, it looks like one group pitting itself against another; until a whole mythology of grievances and prejudices is built up to justify the often inhumane measures which each group practices to protect its own special interests, and finally there evolves a false morality based almost solely on power. And though this development is nothing new in human society, the new technology which produces the modern implements of power has brought us to the critical points where the largest groups, or nations, are capable of annihilating each other.

Critical people generally, and TIME magazine notably, in my limited reading of recent weeks, have been pointing up the revolutionary terror which the atomic bomb has let loose in the world. They also take the average people to task for failing to wake up and do something about it. Do what? Keep it an American secret? We sense that would be fine, if it were possible, but the troublesome fact arises that the secret is really no secret at all. Russia, we are told, will be able to produce atomic bombs in two to five years.

Well, then, how about releasing everything we know to an international commission, and leave it to the commission to control atomic research for the good of the world? To some people that makes a good deal of sense, and probably a good many people who don’t believe such beneficent control possible wish that it were. And still other people see the bomb simply as the culmination of man’s age-old, ironic lust for power, – ironic in the sense that he has been feverishly searching for the instrument which will assure his own destruction. And now he’s found it. So what the hell?

I confess that at the present time I’m pretty much of a mind with this third group. And though I recognize that such an attitude must be considered cynical by people who don’t share it, I don’t consider myself cynical for holding it. I like people, and I don’t normally enjoy seeing them get hurt. I can’t derive any satisfaction from seeing the German and Japanese people suffering the starvation and misery now which they so recently imposed upon other peoples. There was a time when I believed that somehow the common suffering of this war would lead men of all nations to put into practice what is almost universally admitted in theory, – that the modern world is too small to exist as a group of jealous and sovereign states. It may be too early to be disillusioned, but then, too, it may have been too late to hope.

My aunt Eva has for several years been trying to sell me on the Bahai group, which is but one of many groups propagating the old Christian faith in the brotherhood of man and its practical realization on earth. With the faith I am in complete accord, but of its realization I remain unconvinced. Human organization, which is always as much against something as it is for something, inevitably seems to corrupt no matter how noble its original purpose. The only true brotherhood of man occurs in the earliest years of infancy. As soon as I begin to talk and understand, I’m an American, and Hans is a German. “My country, right or wrong” expresses an attitude which honest and just people may often deplore, but which only the rarest of martyrs can ever deny. Even when one’s country is flagrantly wrong, treason remains a crime universally abhorred. But millions of men can be made to look upon murder as a virtue when the victim is an enemy of one’s country. The appeal to patriotism almost always drowns out the voice of conscience. Many Americans can feel perfectly righteous about insisting on raising their own already comfortable standard of living while millions of Europeans and Asiatics are facing a winter of freezing and starvation. Yet they would be unspeakably indignant and bitter if the scales were suddenly shifted to the opposite extreme. They can’t see how they are doing any wrong now, but if they had to change places, they would certainly feel that they were being wronged.

The funny thing is that though I understand all this, I don’t intend to do much of anything about it. I, too, look forward to enjoying the comforts of American life, even though I can’t partake of whatever further pleasure there may be in the feeling of self-righteousness.

The old cry of “Let’s set our own house in order first” will soon regain sufficient strength to kill our present feeble and fumbling attempts to set in order a world house in which our own country is but one of the rooms. We’ll go ahead with a lavish job of redecorating our own room, and then won’t we be surprised when it’s ruined by the rest of the house falling in on it!

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The Case for An “Elitist” Foreign Service, and a Restrained Congress

[In this final segment of his long July 22 entry, my father shows both his idealism and his naiveté by making a case for Congress to leave the details of foreign policy to the “technicians and experts.” He knew that such a proposal would be considered “revolutionary and destructive to democratic principles” by many, but it’s hard to argue with the logic of his position. Nowadays, my father’s perspective — indeed, his overall intellect and world view — would be branded as “elitist” by many in the conservative political camp.

Were he still alive, my father would have little but disdain for the current denizens of Congress, who make their 1940’s counterparts seem like intellectual giants and world-class statesmen. It’s probably just as well that he also missed out on observing today’s “Sam Jones,” as represented by the Tea Party zealots. These deficit-obsessed and mean-spirited partisans bring a whole new meaning to  the “erratic and uninformed public opinion” that so concerned my father in 1945.]

July 22, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.), con’t.

… Well, Sam, what do you want? A steak dinner today, and a rifle for your son tomorrow? Sam will object that this is a loaded question. Just give him the steak today, and he’ll worry about tomorrow when it comes. We’ve always taken care of ourselves in the past.

Sure, that’s the good old American way. Happy-go-lucky. Binge tonight and hangover tomorrow. But it’s an irrational way, it’s a dangerous way to conduct foreign policy in one of the most powerful nations in the world. In the long run it can be a suicidal way for American government.

The only solution I can see to this problem will be called revolutionary and destructive of democratic principles by many Americans. And there, probably, it will die in a deluge of awe-inspiring words which are meaningless to the people who use them most glibly. But at least I can speak my mind, and let my suggestions stand public examination, whatever the final verdict on them may be.

In the first place, the conduct of foreign affairs, like the regulation of interstate commerce, is a job which demands the full time attention of a picked group of technicians and experts. These men should be appointed by the President on the basis of their ability to do the job, and not because they possess the means to support themselves in an underpaid and mistakenly glamorous profession. The pay should be sufficient to attract men of no private means whatsoever.

Next, Congress should vote to abolish its obsolete treaty power. As long as the Senate clings to its prerogative of the two-thirds vote for approval, it will be bypassed on every possible occasion by such devices as the executive order, whereby President Roosevelt handed over the destroyers to Britain with[out] waiting for Senate approval. Our treaties should be drawn in terms of general objectives only, and be ratified by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress in joint session. Sam Jones has no way of knowing how many shiploads of wheat the people of Greece need this winter, and consequently he shouldn’t vote yes or no on such specific measures through his elected representatives. Enough for him to say whether or not the American people should assume responsibility for keeping the Greek people from starving to death. On such a clear-cut issue as this he may be expected to know where his own interests lie.

It should be up to the technicians and experts to determine such questions as the adequate relief quotas for destitute countries. And then they, through the State department, should have the power to see that those quotas are met on time. Congressional committees should have the right to investigate such State Department activities, but they should not have the power to refuse the appropriations which make such activities possible. The State Department, like the War and Navy Departments during this war, should be granted a lump-sum appropriation, without being required to itemize its proposed expenditures. War and Navy are coming in for accusations of unforgivable extravagances these days, but their primary task was to wage a successful war, and they are accomplishing that task admirably. The State Department’s task might be called to wage a successful peace. If it made a continuous record of accomplishing this task, we should not have to worry any more about the extravagances of war. But it will never get to first base as long as its officials can be hamstrung by an erratic and uninformed public opinion.

If we leave things in their present muddled state, we can certainly expect to do no better than muddle along. The Russian government, whatever its deficiencies, has a foreign office which can act with speed and decision, can apparently make spot commitments in administrative situations with the assurance that they will be carried out. In the gigantic task of restoring Europe to law and order, we’re making a very poor showing, for the reason that our officials can’t make spot commitments, and have little confidence that even their most urgent requests will be met after running through the time-consuming mill of red tape. Thus if we’re surprised to see even the Western European democracies turning to the left, to Russia, we shouldn’t be. Either we shall soon learn to assume the responsibility for the wise exercise of our power, or we shall retire again to the sidelines and wait to be forced into another war which we could have prevented.

 

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