{"id":300849,"date":"2025-08-11T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-11T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=300849"},"modified":"2025-08-09T04:51:03","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T03:51:03","slug":"the-satanic-nature-of-the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/08\/the-satanic-nature-of-the-atomic-bombings-of-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Satanic Nature of the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki"},"content":{"rendered":"

4 Aug 2025\u00a0<\/em>– \u201cThe greatest evil is not now done in those sordid \u2018dens of crime\u2019 that Dickens loved to paint\u2026But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.\u201d
\n\u2013 C. S. Lewis, author\u2019s preface, 1962, The Screwtape Letters<\/em><\/p>\n

US history can only accurately be described as the story of demonic possession, however you choose to understand that phrase. Maybe radical \u201cevil\u201d will suffice. But right from the start the US colonizers were involved in massive killing because they considered themselves divinely blessed and guided, a chosen people whose mission would come to be called \u201cmanifest destiny.\u201d Nothing stood in the way of this divine calling, which involved the need to enslave and kill millions of innocent people that continues down to today. \u201cOthers\u201d have always been expendable since they have stood in the way of the imperial march ordained by the American god. This includes all the wars waged based on lies and false flag operations. It is not a secret, although many Americans, if they are even aware of it, prefer to see it as a series of aberrations carried out by \u201cbad apples.\u201d Or something from the past. Most know nothing about it, for they have never opened a history book.<\/p>\n

Our best writers and prophets have told us the truth: Thoreau, Twain, William James, MLK, Fr. Daniel Berrigan, et al.: we are a nation of killers of the innocent.\u00a0 We are conscienceless. We are brutal. We are in the grip of evil forces.<\/p>\n

The English writer D. H. Lawrence said it perfectly in 1923, \u201cThe American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer. It has never yet melted.\u201d It still hasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

When on August 6 and 9, 1945 the United States killed 200-300 thousand innocent Japanese civilians with atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they did so intentionally. It was an act of sinister state terrorism, unprecedented by the nature of the weapons but not by the slaughter. The American terror bombings of Japanese cities that preceded the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki \u2013 led by the infamous Major General Curtis LeMay \u2013 were also intentionally aimed at Japanese civilians and killed hundreds of thousands of them.<\/p>\n

Is there an American artist\u2019s painting of Tokyo destroyed by the firebombing to go next to Picasso\u2019s Guernica,<\/em> where estimates of the dead range between 800 and 1,600?<\/p>\n

In Tokyo alone more than 100,000 Japanese civilians were burnt to death by cluster bombs of napalm. All this killing was intentional. I repeat: Intentional. Is that not radical evil?\u00a0 Demonic? Only five Japanese cities were spared such bombing. Sixty-seven cities were fire-bombed.<\/p>\n

As a conclusion to such bombings, in August 1945 the atomic bombings were an intentional holocaust, not to end the war, as the historical record amply demonstrates, but to send a message to the Soviet Union that we could do to them what we did to the residents of Japan. President Truman made certain that the Japanese willingness to surrender in May 1945 was made unacceptable because he and his Secretary-of-State James Byrnes\u00a0 wanted to use the atomic bombs \u2013 \u201cas quickly as possible to \u2018show results\u2019\u201d in Byrnes\u2019 words \u2013 to send a message to the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

So \u201cthe Good War\u201d was ended in the Pacific with the \u201cgood guys\u201d killing hundreds of thousand Japanese civilians to make a point to the \u201cbad guys,\u201d who have been demonized ever since. Shortly after, in September 1945 the U.S War Department made plans to wipe out the U.S.\u2019s ally, the Soviet Union, with a massive nuclear strike aimed at 66 major cities. Professor Michel Chossudovsky documents it here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Satan always wears the other\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

Many Baby Boomers like to say they grew up with the bomb. They are lucky. They grew up. They got be scared. They got to hide under their desks and wax nostalgic about it. Do you remember dog tags?\u00a0 Those 1950s and 1960s?\u00a0 The scary movies?<\/p>\n

The children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who died under our bombs on August 6 and 9, 1945 didn\u2019t get to grow up. They couldn\u2019t hide. They just went under. To be accurate: we put them under. Or they were left to smolder for decades in pain and then die. But that it was necessary to save American lives is the lie. It\u2019s always about American lives, as if the owners of the country actually cared about them.\u00a0 But to tender hearts and innocent minds, it\u2019s a magic incantation. Poor us!<\/p>\n

Fat Man, Little Boy \u2013 how the names of those atomic bombs echo down the years to the now fat Americans who grew up in the 1950s and who think like little boys and girls about their country\u2019s demonic nature. Innocence \u2013 it is wonderful! We are different now. \u201cWe are great because we are good\u201d; that\u2019s what Hillary Clinton told us. The Libyans can attest to that. We are exceptional, special. The 2020 election was said to prove that if we can defeat Mr. Pumpkin Head and restore America to its \u201ccore values,\u201d all will be well.<\/p>\n

Now that they were restored with Biden\u2019s support for the U.S. proxy war against Russia via Ukraine and the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, delusionary Trump 2024 voters might be learning that those core values are bipartisan. \u201cWe are great because we are good,\u201d goes the mantra. We kill, therefore we are. There is a straight line from the nuclear bombing of Japan to the arrant U.S. support for Israel\u2019s genocide of the Palestinians.<\/p>\n

Perhaps you think I am cynical. But understanding true evil is not child\u2019s play. It seems beyond the grasp of most Americans who need their illusions. Evil is real.\u00a0 There is simply no way to understand the savage nature of American history without seeing its demonic nature. How else can we redeem ourselves at this late date, possessed as we are by delusions of our own God-blessed goodness?<\/p>\n

But so many Americans play at innocence. They excite themselves at the thought that with the next election the nation will be \u201crestored\u201d to the right course. Of course there never was a right course, unless might makes right, which has always been the way of America\u2019s rulers. Today, as in 2016, Trump is viewed by so many as an aberration. He is far from it. He\u2019s straight out of a Twain short story. He\u2019s Vaudeville. He\u2019s Melville\u2019s confidence man. He\u2019s us. Did it ever occur to those who are fixated on him that if those who own and run the country wanted him gone, he\u2019d be gone in an instant? He can tweet and tweet idiotically, endlessly send out messages that he will contradict the next day or minute, but as long as he protects the super-rich, accepts Israel\u2019s control of him, and allows the CIA-military-industrial complex to do its world-wide killing and looting of the treasury, he will be allowed to entertain and excite the public \u2013 to get them worked up in a lather in pseudo-debates. And to make this more entertaining, he will be opposed by the \u201csane\u201d Democratic opposition, whose intentions are as benign as an assassin\u2019s smile.<\/p>\n

Look back as far as you can to past U.S. presidents, the figureheads who \u201cact under orders\u201d (whose orders?), as did Ahab in his lust to kill the \u201cevil\u201d great white whale, and what do you see? You see servile killers in the grip of a sinister power. You see hyenas with polished faces. You see pasteboard masks. On the one occasion when one of these presidents dared to follow his conscience and rejected the devil\u2019s pact that is the presidency\u2019s killer-in-chief role, he \u2013 JFK \u2013 had his brains blown out in public view. An evil empire thrives on shedding blood, and it enforces its will through demonic messages.<\/p>\n

Resist and there will be blood on the streets, blood on the tracks, blood in your face.<\/p>\n

Despite this, President Kennedy\u2019s witness, his turn from cold warrior to an apostle of peace in the final year of his presidency, remains to inspire a ray of hope in these dark days. As recounted by James Douglass in his masterful JFK and the Unspeakable,<\/em><\/a> Kennedy agreed to a meeting in May 1962 with a group of Quakers who had been demonstrating outside the While House for total disarmament. They urged him to move in that direction. Kennedy was sympathetic to their position. He said he wished it were easy to do so from the top down, but that he was being pressured by the Pentagon and others to never do that, although he had given a speech urging \u201ca peace race\u201d together with the Soviet Union. He told the Quakers it would have to come from below. According to the Quakers, JFK listened intently to their points, and before they left said with a smile, \u201cYou believe in redemption don\u2019t you?\u201d Soon Kennedy was shaken to his core by the Cuban missile crisis when the world teetered on the brink of extinction and his insane military and \u201cintelligence\u201d advisers urged him to wage a nuclear war. Not long after, he took a sharp top-down turn toward peace despite their fierce opposition, a turn so dramatic over the next year that it led to his martyrdom. And he knew it would. He knew it would when he gave his extraordinary American University Commencement Address on June 10,1963.<\/a><\/p>\n

So hope is not all lost. There are great souls like JFK to inspire us. Their examples flash here and there. But to even begin to hope to change the future, a confrontation with our demonic past (and present) is first necessary, a descent into the dark truth that is terrifying in its implications. False innocence must be abandoned. Carl Jung, in \u201cOn the Psychology of the Unconscious,\u201d addressed this with the words:<\/p>\n

It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses \u2013 and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster\u2019s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How can one describe men who would intentionally slaughter so many innocent people?\u00a0 American history is rife with such examples up to the present day. The native peoples, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, etc. \u2013 the list is very long. Savage wars carried out by men and women who own and run the country, and who try to buy the souls of regular people to join them in their pact with the devil, to acquiesce to their ongoing wicked deeds. Such monstrous evil was never more evident than on August 6 and 9, 1945.<\/p>\n

Unless we enter into deep contemplation of the evil that was released into the world with those bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we are lost in a living hell without escape. And we will pay. Nemesis always demands retribution, as the ancient Greeks said. We have gradually been accepting rule by those for whom the killing of innocents is child\u2019s play, and we have been masquerading as innocent and good children for whom the truth is too much to bear. \u201cIndeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one,\u201d Screwtape, the devil, tells his nephew, Wormwood, a devil in training, \u201cthe gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s the road we\u2019ve been traveling, as Trump\u2019s second term is showing us, as he facilely and recklessly talks of nuclear war and makes moves that make it more likely.<\/p>\n

The projection of evil onto others works only so long. \u00a0We must reclaim our shadows and withdraw our projections.\u00a0 Only the fate of the world depends on it.<\/p>\n

Revised and updated version of an essay from my 2020 book, <\/em>Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist….writer – beyond a cage of categories. His new book is <\/em>AT THE LOST AND FOUND: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope<\/a> (Clarity Press)<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 edwardcurtin.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Right from the start the US colonizers were involved in massive killing because they considered themselves divinely blessed and guided, a chosen people whose mission would come to be called \u201cmanifest destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":274660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[853,1347,70,875],"class_list":["post-300849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-atomic-weapons","tag-hiroshima-and-nagasaki","tag-usa","tag-wmd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300849"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300851,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300849\/revisions\/300851"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}