Bombing Christians ... Was it Okay Because They Were Japanese?

I don't want Obama running around the world apologizing for things. But, there you go. He's already apologized, bowed, scraped, on a global scale.

Now he's gone to Vietnam (and used the visit to lift a ban on the sale of weapons to that communist country) and will be traveling next to Japan.

Of course, the trip has made headlines for weeks as Obama's plans in Japan include a visit to Hiroshima. No other sitting president of the United States has visited the site of the first war-time, military use of an atomic weapon. There are many who are repulsed by the idea that Obama might apologize for the action authorized by America's only nuclear madman president, Harry Truman.

Maybe you think he should apologize? Those two bombings -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- targeted Japanese sites that did have military components, but, at the same time, those bombs were vastly destructive of civilian communities. At the time, and now, one might well argue that such targeting violated international treaties and covenants on the targeting of civilian populations.

Maybe you think he should not apologize? Those two bombings averted the need for a ground war in Japan, with the potential cost in military and civilian lives of an estimate of a million or more.

I'm going to ask your toleration of the following.

My dad fought in the Pacific Theater of WWII. He also fought in the Korean Conflict. He also served in the Vietnam Conflict. He was a "maverick." He started as an enlisted man. He ended as a full bird Colonel. After WWII, he graduated from law school, attended OCS and was commissioned as a Marine officer. He later became a Staff Judge Advocate, then a member of the intermediate Navy-Marine Court of Review, and finally, the senior judge of the Navy-Marine Corps' Piedmont District.

In our home, growing up, Pops didn't talk to me, or around me, about his wartime experiences with battle, with engaging the enemy. At most, he would talk about his interaction with Samoans when he was stationed there, and with generous host families on New Zealand, where he and other Marines took R & R during WWII. But, no, he didn't talk about engagement with the enemy. In my whole life, he never talked about shooting and killing a Japanese sniper in the south Pacific. After he died, I learned that he carried with him and kept for the rest of his life, three photographs that he took from the body of that dead sniper. But he never talked of it to us kids.

There was what seemed at the time to be the amusing anecdote that we would all recognize now as PTSD. He and Mother walking in downtown, I think Albuquerque, after he returned from the Korean Conflict. A car backfired loudly. Mother looked around and Pops was gone. When the explosive backfire occurred, he did what every sensible Marine did and hit the deck. Big laughs. Ha Ha Ha. Except, of course, now we understand how terribly damaging to the psyche war is, even if one counts themselves a fortunate survivor or even a victor.

As he approached second retirement -- he spent nearly two decades teaching police officers and other law enforcement personnel of the Commonwealth of Kentucky about the Constitution, criminal law, criminal procedure, and related topics at the Kentucky Police Academy -- he spent some time writing out some of his experiences in war, but still those recollections were mainly focused on the non-combat, non-lethal, sometimes amusing side of things.

He did write one letter, though. I've mentioned it on here before. As I understand the letter, he sent it only to his five sons, Paul Henderson, Dave Henderson, Joe Henderson, Tom Henderson, and me, Jim Henderson. He expressed regrets about choices he made in life, particularly once there was a family and children to be affected by how he pursued his military career. 

He also gave us each a book. That book embodied objective information about the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It was written by a Catholic physician who, until he also succumbed to leukemia likely the result of exposure to radiation from the Nagasaki bombing, worked to heal, help, and soothe those whose lives were savaged by that bombing.

Until I read the book and then further studied the bombing of Nagasaki, I had never really considered the most peculiarly unChristian nature of that particular bombing.

Francis Xavier is largely considered responsible for Christianity's first rise in Japan. He planted churches there, and before the persecutions of the Church and the declaration of being a Christian constituting a Capital crime, Christianity flourished in Japan and eventually, before persecution, the Catholic Christian population of Japan number in the millions.

With persecution, the numbers of Christians dwindled. 

There were pockets of Christianity that remained and persevered despite persecution. One of those communities flourished in Nagasaki. At the time of the bombing of Nagasaki, the baptized community of the Nagasaki cathedral exceeded 12,000.

There they were. Twelve thousand who followed Christ, and if faithful, did not worship the Emperor. Twelve thousand that, if properly catechized abhorred war-making and the idea of racial superiority so endemic in Japanese culture.

Yet, on the day of the bombing, those Christians, brothers and sisters of yours and mine in Christ, were set to fire like matches, reduced to ashes, or, were horribly disfigured and endowed with the ticking time bombs of massive radiation exposure. How did that come to be?

Let me step forward to today.

In the American evangelical community, there are a lot of popular concepts about "persecution." If Walmart changes its seasonal decorations and verbiage to "holiday" themes rather than "Christmas" ones, it's the war on Christmas. Ditto for the cancellation of public school Christmas pageants, etc. These, of course, have nothing to do with true persecution.

On the other hand, there are evidences of real persecution in America. When a person is targeted by the government of their State or their Nation because their religious beliefs compel them to refrain from certain behaviors, and the State or federal government coerces them to choose between surrendering their conscience or their liberties (including their economic liberties), that is, at least, the camel's nose of persecution under the tent flap.

During this present administration, it is becoming easier and easier for evangelicals to connect with the idea of persecution. As the definition of marriage has been changed by the Supreme Court in the Obergefell decision, as the definition of good health insurance has been changed by Obamacare to include the provision of mandatory provision of coverage for contraceptives, including those known to cause abortions rather than prevent conception, evangelicals are recognizing that there has arisen in this Nation "a king that knew not Joseph." [Exodus 1:8 "Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph"]

In a nation that, by history and common acclaim, "is a Christian nation," suddenly accepted notions of life and conduct are disputed. And stubborn adherence to those notions, more and more, has attached to it the risk of losing the right to participate in the economy, and the risk of losing life savings and the like. In fact, well-informed evangelicals who have followed the rapid progress of an agenda quite at odds with Christian teachings, and of the greater and greater frequency of conflict with that agenda, might reasonably conclude that what has actually happened is that American Christianity has been targeted by progressives due to the risks that a vigorous Christianity presents to progressive social agendas.

Now, such targeting might be viewed as the product of overly paranoid Christians. In fact, the Bill Mahers of the info- and edu-tainment set insist that is all that it is.

Not so the death and destruction of the Christian community of Nagasaki.

When the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, the bombardier used the steeple of the Nagasaki Catholic cathedral as his target. The airburst of that atomic bomb occurred over the heart of surviving Japanese Christianity. In its aftermath, it is estimated that the bomb caused the immediate death of 6,000 of Nagasaki's baptized Christians. Thousands more died, with the passage of time, and the ravages of either blast injuries or radiation exposure. "A Song for Nagasaki" recounts that Catholic physician's experience with the blast, and with the brief lifetime of care given to survivors.

Now, Obama will be visiting Hiroshima, not Nagasaki. He will not see the 1000 cherry trees planted on the hillside near the Nagasaki blast site, planted by the author of A Song for Nagasaki. Nor will he meditate on how an American military force, at the command of a Democrat President, waged war in a blinding blast, against Christianity in Japan, in the name of ending conflict with Japan. Of course, were he to meditate on the moment when Democrat Truman unleashed fiery hell from above on Christianity, I think he might, quite likely, allow himself a brief smile and entertain his own foul wish.

Quagmire vs Malaise: Do We Like Where We are, Where We're Heading?

Separate articles in the morning round-up today acknowledge:

• We are getting schooled by Iran; 
• Iraq is a "quagmire" (old enough to remember Vietnam being a "quagmire"?); and, 
• Americans have lost faith in nearly every identifiable public institution.

In the first article, Alan Dershowitz excoriates the Obama administration for its utter failure to play the role of dominant in reaching terms with the Islamic regime in Iran regarding nuclear proliferation. In the second, we learn that a senior military commander agreed to delete the word "quagmire" from his statement on circumstances in Iraq based on political advice, rather than facts. In the third article, we discover that recent opinion polling shows that institutions of this Nation -- private and public -- are suffering from substantial loss of trust by the public. Those institutions include the police, the press, churches and other religious enterprises, politicians.

What is going on?

Given that last news bite -- our national loss of trust, in Congress, in the President, in the courts, in the news media, in churches, in the police -- shouldn't we be deeply troubled? From the outside looking in, we must seem to be a nation in collapse.

How are we so overthrown by our own witless self-immolation? Is this time our opportunity to watch, to feel, the agonal breaths of a dying nation? I prefer to believe otherwise.

Looking Back

I was but a teen as the American malaise of the 1970s -- the product of a poorly explained war in Vietnam multiplied by the quotient of a paranoid president divided by a dangerously spiteful Democrat Congress -- reached its previous, in-my-life, all-time-high.

LBJ had doubled down on our involvement in Vietnam. Yet, as a child of a military family, as a Catholic student in parochial elementary and junior high school, as an American, I do not recall a pivotal moment when the reasoning for our involvement in Vietnam was put to us in the form of inspiration for which England's Winston Churchill was well renowned.

[In fairness to LBJ, it isn't that he never put the case forward for our involvement; the question is always, with political messages, how well has the message been communicated to the body politic. One example of his justifications for American involvement in Vietnam is the speech he gave to the National Legislative Conference in September, 1967. You can view a video of that speech here, and the full text of the speech is available from the LBJ Library's online sources here.]

In fact, my grasp that there was a deep evil to the communist subjugation of Vietnam came from extracurricular sources. Though just in seventh grade, I had read all three books -- Deliver Us from Evil: The Story of Vietnam’s Flight to Freedom (1956), The Edge of Tomorrow (1958), and The Night They Burned the Mountain (1960) -- written by Dr. Thomas Dooley, medical missionary and former Navy officer. Dooley had been a friend of my mom's from her day's as a student and as an instructor at St. Louis University. Had it not been for Dooley's short books, and for the anti-communist Marian publications to which my dad subscribed, I would not have been, even as a young adolescent, ideologically sure that we should stand with the Vietnamese and defeat the Vietcong.

For most of us, though, at best, the Vietnam conflict was vaguely connected with the worldwide threat of communist expansion. It was that expansion that JFK confronted and resisted with the embargo of Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis. The torture, barbarity and cruelty of it, in the name of ideology, was, in my experience, unspoken in class.

Johnson gave way to Nixon. Doubtless a skilled internationalist, Nixon's paranoia destroyed his administration. The deception he carried out to avoid detection and to insure his re-election after word of the break in at the Watergate Hotel made indefatigable Democratic Party attack dogs unrelenting. Consequently, the Executive Branch of our government was broken under the withering attacks of the Watergate Era. The following period -- the interregnum of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter -- seemed a time when we simply fell back and tried to gasp for collective air.

Then, I was a young adult when Ronald Reagan proclaimed "morning in America." We were still in the grip of Jimmy Carter's pitiful performance and recession when Reagan took office. By the time Reagan's term as President ended, we were awake, vibrant, and, literally, the only "superpower" remaining on the planet.

That flash that was Reagan's optimism and positivity eventually gave way to the more somber ministrations of George HW Bush. The elder Bush did not lie about taxes. Worse, he broke faith with us on taxes when he violated his express pledge, "No new taxes." The decade of the 90s ended with the low class Bill Clinton. Clinton's presidency will forever be symbolized by a black crepe dress, a used cigar, and unseemly images of Oval Office antics. Clinton's decision to take the favor of oral sexual gratifications from a young, impressionable intern, afforded Republicans the opportunity to repeatedly scour the President, at least until the Republican leadership of the House, itself, was discovered to have its own dirty laundry.

The first decade of the 21st Century provided us with 8 straight years of constant attack by committed progressives against the Republican President, George W. Bush. It also provided us with the terrible body blows of a coordinated terror attack on our home turf, and the loss of sons and daughters at war in Iraq and in Afghanistan. By the time 2008 rolled around, the "anybody but Bush" sentiment resulted in us not only getting "anybody but Bush," it got us, as his world apology tour proved, "everybody's butt."

Now for six years running, our Nation has been helmed by a man whose easily expresses esteem for other Nations, other ways of life, other forms of government, but who is hard-pressed to extol the virtues of this land, her generous heart, and her loving sons and daughters. Obama has, like Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz did, behaved as though his purpose is to crash the American enterprise on the mountain of his disdain for us.

Looking Around

The constant attacks -- on our Nation, on its contributions, on its value in our world-- has, I think, worn us down. We seem to be in a state of cultural battle fatigue.

The forgotten sacrifices of WWII -- by which our dead secured the remaining lives of concentration camp inmates, the borders and political integrity of European nations, and the peace of the world -- play no seeming role in temporizing the flagellation of the Nation by masochists within and sadists without.

The good of America, the opened arms of it, to the poor, to the oppressed, to the downtrodden, seemingly counts for naught. Just last week, we observed the anniversary of 130th anniversary of the arrival of the Statue of Liberty, that iconic gift of the French people which sprang then from their ready recognition of the welcoming greatness of our People and our Nation.

The rich soil of our land, both literally and economically, in which has sprung up the world's breadbasket and the world's technologies, is disregarded, and we are told that it is evidence of our shameful selfishness, as though a starving world has not suckled on the American teat of charity.

In fact, while a new son of our nation finds it in his heart to render appreciation, as Dinesh D'Souza did with his documentary, "America: Imagine the World Without Her," the sad reality is that so much of the good of the people of this land, the kindness of them, the strength of them, seems to be forgot.

Looking Forward

We are, without question, in a quagmire, we are being "schooled" by a listless economy, and we have, in fact, found that institutions on which we have reliably counted in the past, such as news media, the courts, the police, and most particularly, our houses of worship, have broken faith with us.

The question remains: Quo Tendimus? Where are we going?

Well, we are, at least for now, going into the undiscovered country, the future. I say undiscovered for the obvious reason, that we do not yet have a commercially available time machine. Yet, that future can be discovered, to some extent, by considering the past. The old saw, "he that does not learn from the past is condemned to repeat it," counsels us to the wisdom of understanding how the cycles of life and human interaction really do, with new casts, new sets, and sometimes new reasons for urgency, repeat themselves. For those that study, as the carved inscription at the National Archives advises, "Past is Prologue."

As Americans, we are accustomed to the quadrennial presidential election serving as a substitute for a stout episode of reflection and correction. Bush's election after the juvenile bacchanalia of the Clinton era reflected that pause and reconsideration. Obama's election after eight numbing years of war and loss did too. Neither Bush's election twice nor Obama's election twice accomplished for us, as a People, what Reagan's did, in lifting us up and moving us forward as did Reagan's terms in office. Instead, matters seem only more bogged down than ever.

I suppose at this point, I could begin to list the candidates, their virtues, their strengths, their weaknesses, as I see them currently. From that catalog, I could begin to build a case for another morning in America, another Ronald Reagan moment. But, frankly, none of the candidates to date, declared or undeclared, Republican or Democrat, have demonstrated the combined gifts and skills of Reagan or one like a Reagan. And we may not benefit from another Reagan as we did once.

As a longtime resident of Northern Virginia, I watched, with pain, as the Redskins sought to recapture the greatness of an earlier era by bringing Coach Joe Gibbs back to coach the team. Painful hardly describes the experience. Everyone I knew hoped the plan would work. Everyone I knew felt each body blow of disappointment as the plan failed. The times, the teams, and the game were different when Gibbs II sought to recapture the Redskins that had performed for Gibbs I.

More is at play, too, than just my frank acknowledgment that Clinton, Sanders, Biden, and Warren could never get my vote, because of their progressive policies, with statist inclinations, and their strident advocacy for unfettered abortion legalization. In fact, more is at play than my equally frank concession that Cruz, Rubio, Bush, Perry, Walker, Kasich, Carson, Fiorina, Trump, Jindal, Pataki, and Paul have not yet managed to state, in bold and clarifying terms, a reason that COMPELS my vote and support for them. Instead, a lifetime in the law has, I suspect, jaded me on the notion that real and enduring solutions come from, or survive well, in Washington, DC.

If you take me to mean that I will not be voting in November 2016, you have mistaken my meaning. I will address the candidates and issues as we move toward the election. I will cast a ballot, though I certainly pray that I have the opportunity to vote with both hands, rather than having to vote with one hand while holding my nose with the other.

On the other hand, if you take my meaning to be that the American malaise will not find real healing because of the outcome of the 2016 election, then you understand my mind.

Boorda, Clinton and Williams: The Decline of Honor and the Rise of Rascals

The Nation’s Capitol, and the Nation’s military services, were rocked by word that Admiral Jeremy Boorda had taken a gun from his home, stood in his front yard, and ended his life.  It was 1996.  Boorda had heard that Newsweek magazine was following a lead that that would accuse him of wearing two service medals reflecting Vietnam era service to which he had no proper claim. Although Boorda served in the Navy and was stationed within the Vietnam area on ship, his ribbons included the “V” for Valor a designation typically reserved for awards in the theater of combat. Boorda stopped wearing the “V” on his ribbons when a military historical group began seeking information on his Vietnam era service via requests made under the Freedom of Information Act. 

Conspiracy theorists will chasten me for not understanding how this was a murder and an act done to hide deeper, darker secrets.  I beg their indulgence, because the point here depends upon the accepted narrative.

Boorda’s raft of military ribbons and medals reflected the rise of an enlisted man to the highest rank in the United States Navy.  His, by available information, was a career of dedication and service to the Navy, and to the Nation. That a man would suffer under such pain of feared humiliation for the Navy, for his family, and for himself, that he would end his own life may be odd to some.

If you grew up -- as did I, my siblings and many friends -- in a military family, it makes perfect sense. 

Duty. Honor. Country. 

These were more than just words.  These were ideals very familiar to us.  We saw, then, our fathers doing their duty. By their service, both they and we sacrificed for our country.  By distinguished service, they honored themselves and the Nation they served. 

We also experienced the pain of seeing failings in these principles. 

Our dad, who retired as a Colonel, spent his last duty years as the Senior Courts Martial Judge for the Navy’s Piedmont District.  Never one to bring his war stories to the dinner table, by the time he served in that post, I was old enough to have awareness of the more notorious cases being over which he presided. Murders, assaults, drug dealing, the occasional “conduct not becoming an officer and gentleman” (my recollection is that charge arose when one officer conducted an affair with the wife of another officer while that second officer was deployed).

We had also, of course, followed the news coverage of the My Lai massacre’s aftermath, including the prosecution of Lt. Calley. So we had our understanding of duty, honor and country given full relief both by their exhibition and by their omission in the lives of the military men and women among whom we lived, by whom we were raised.

Duty.

Honor.

Country.

I think it likely that the high personal toll of those ideals weighed heavily on Admiral Boorda’s mind. I regret that the toll was so high. I acknowledge, however, his determination that the threatened exposure of an alleged false claim of entitlement to certain military honors could only be soundly answered by the act of suicide. Of course, he was wrong in that. Suicide was not the only answer, nor was it an answer at all. The Nation, one that then was prepared to tolerate a President using an intern for oral gratification in the Oval Office, would have embraced him forgivingly given an appropriate acknowledgment, resignation, and removing himself from the National stage.

As it turns out, we have a rather high tolerance for high jinx from persons of position, prominence and wealth. To prove the point, simply contrast Admiral Boorda’s wrong – wearing Vietnam era service ribbons to which he was not entitled – with the bold, and bald-faced, lies of Hillary Clinton and Brian Williams.

Brian Williams now seemingly pays the price for having enhanced his resume. Williamshad claimed that, during coverage of the war in Iraq, he was aboard a helicopterthat was forced to make an emergency landing after it was hit by enemy fire.

Williams' tale of danger enhanced an acknowledged danger that no one would have reasonably disputed. Iraqi forces might well have fired on US Military aircraft. There was no need to add the embellishment, or to misreport the fact of his near presence to such danger. Still, without any seeming necessity, he did just that.

His fall came suddenly, when one who knew the pertinent facts stepped forward and contradicted Williams’ established claim. NBC’s news division has suspended Williams without pay for six months. Wags and pundits predict that Williams will not return to his former position.

Then there is the curious case of Hillary Clinton.

On several occasions, Hillary Clinton embellished her telling of the tale of avisit she and daughter Chelsea made to Bosnia back in 1996. As the storygrew wings of imagination, Hillary recounted how she and Chelsea were forced to run from the plane that just landed bringing them to Tuzla, Bosnia,to ground cover.  This mad dash was, Hillary claimed, made necessary by the presence and actions of a nearby Bosnia sniperwho firing on them.

The story had a ring of plausibility to it.  After all, Bosnia, Serbia, we all sort of remember, was deeply involved in some crazy violence and fighting.  Who would doubt the specifics of such an instance when it was so well matched to the generally understood fact that life in these countries, during a time of significant national turmoil, was quite dangerous? Unfortunately for Hillary, witnesses, including the entirely objective witness of the camera, showed that hers was a tale of danger as entirely cut from whole cloth as any Nancy Drew mystery. Ultimately, she was compelled by obvious and overwhelming fact to walk the story back from the precipice of patent prevarication.

Unlike Williams, Clinton’s deliberate lie on a topic where a lie was completely disconnected from any claim of necessity did not result in swift dispatch from the public scene. No. The former First Lady and United States Senator became the Secretary of State under Barack Obama. Imagine the sniggering up the sleeves as foreign ministers underwent prep with their aides for meetings with Secretary Clinton. Just cogitate on what it meant to have this Nation’s international interests guarded by a reputed liar. How unreliable could any assurance she made be thought to be by those invited to place their trust, their nations’ futures, on so shaky a ground as Clinton’s veracity and memory.

So Admiral Boorda, in a terribly sad act, committed suicide as a way, as he understood it, to preserve the honor of military service. Brian Williams tendered a weak apology for his misremembering of the details of an incident due to the “fog of war.”  Hillary Clinton walked back the danger laden details of a trip to a war ravaged Nation.

In the end, our losses from the lies and dishonesty are disproportionate. Admiral Boorda need not have committed suicide, and could have remained a strong reminder of the equality of opportunity that military service in the United States provides, having risen from enlisted typist to Admiral. He could have continued to provide a resource of understanding about our Naval service, its organization and operations.  Instead, he died on his front lawn at the Navy Yard, and left only the sad legacy of a suicide.

Neither Clinton nor Williams appear so moved by notions of duty, honor and country that anyone appears concerned that a suicide watch would be necessary now, for Williams, or back in 2008, for Clinton. Clinton’s glide path to power appears undisturbed by her open exposure as a liar.  What becomes next of the meteoric Williams’ career will be revealed by time.

Our loss of Boorda is just that, a loss to the Nation. Our despatch of Williams into the Hall of Television Shame seems like no loss at all. That we might even have the opportunity to vote against Hillary Clinton despite her lies about Bosnia, when no need to lie existed, says much about how little honor, duty and country seem to matter any more.