Hiroshima and Nagasaki were crimes committed in the name not of US democracy but US barbarism

Currently showing in movie theatres the movie Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy, has attracted in the main rave reviews for its depiction of one of the most seminal moments in history — the development of the atom bomb and the decision to use it at the tail end of World War II against the Japanese is one of the great moral and ethical questions of human affairs.

As we mark the 78th anniversary of this event of world-historical importance, the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August respectively.

Almost completely elided from the movie is the humanity of the tens of thousands of predominately Japanese victims of what was and remains an act of unalloyed barbarism.

In the interests of justice, let us redress this imbalance going forward.

Exaltation of death

When the US B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, arrived over Hiroshima early on the morning of August 6, 1945 its nuclear payload symbolised the exaltation of death, destruction, and brute force as the summit of an Enlightenment that ushered into being the liberal values that underpin Western democracy. Those values were encapsulated most succinctly by famed painter Pablo Picasso, who said of the event: “The genius…