If you can’t look forward, at least look back
- Admin
- Sep 9
- 4 min read
I don’t know why reporters love anniversaries, but they do, especially when they end in a five or zero. Case in point: this past month, the world marked the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The two other related anniversaries, the bombing of Nagasaki and the actual surrender ending World War II, oddly didn’t get much play.
Never mind that the end of WWII lit the dawn of a new American era in the Pacific, if not globally.
Given the fact that the U.S. is entering a strange new chapter in the Pacific—one that is marked by extreme uncertainty despite its tepid engagement so far—what is the purpose of an anniversary?
Let me start with some place-dropping.
I’ve been to both ends of Hiroshima. The glass-enclosed pits where Little Boy and Fat Man waited for their fateful voyages to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Revving my rental car down Runway Able and swerving to avoid a dead cat, the atomic bomb dome and the trees that survived the blast propped up around Hiroshima Castle. It’s little wonder why the region insisted on being nuclear-free. We’ll leave aside the question of whether it is.
In Micronesia, such a sight is not unique; it’s like seeing the Washington Monument while in Washington, D.C. If you're in the region and want my travel advice, I recommend checking out Tinian before the U.S. military takes it back.
Tinian was part of the Pacific campaign of WWII. The Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, was stationed on Tinian during the war. It was from this island that the Enola Gay took off on Aug. 6, 1945, to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
Anniversaries don’t change anything.
The fact that 80 years have now passed—as opposed to a year ago when only 79 had—has not altered anything about nuclear powers, be it energy, weapons, or membership in the club of nations that possess them.
Is bombing a civilian population justifiable? Does doing it with an atomic or nuclear bomb make it worse than conventional weapons when the death toll is equal? What about ancient tactics that every generation finds a new use for, like starvation? Were Hiroshima and Nagasaki worse than the firebombing of Tokyo or the bombing of Dresden? Do nuclear weapons create such fear of destruction that they end up creating peace?
The roots of the controversy can cause us to reflect and be introspective, but none of the questions are new. Any urgency never went away.
Sure, the political battles interpreting the bombings’ place in history have grown more intense. And it did just that earlier this year when the Trump administration tried to censor any mention of “Gay” in Enola Gay. When the Smithsonian first proposed putting the plane on display 30 years ago, similar battles erupted. As a parody, someone reported that certain Republican senators wanted to rename the aircraft the “Enola Heterosexual.”
For the record, Enola Gay was the name of the pilot’s mother.
Even America’s at-best ambivalent presence in the Pacific did not suddenly gain more of an imperative because, like all days, Aug. 5, the day before the commemoration, morphed into Aug. 6, the day of the commemoration.
Regardless of the date, these moral quandaries and military victories remain.
As American giddiness over its wartime accomplishment grew into determination in the shadow of the Cold War, the wartime trusteeships grew into the Compacts of Free Association as a permanent strategic buffer, an extended backyard to keep rivals at bay."
A few weeks ago, The Washington Post ran a piece titled “The U.S. military is investing in this Pacific Island. So is China.” It was about Palau, and how shadowy figures linked to vast networks of Chinese gangsters have set up shop on the island, running internet gambling parlors.
Fujian Province came up, notable for the Fuzhou Police Service, named
after its capital city. They popped up overseas, along with the idea that gangsters and orderly society tend not to be friends. In China’s case, they can also conveniently advance the national interest, primarily through undermining the government in countries where China seeks greater influence.
Equally alarming was the property purchases overlooking the port, which raised concerns about maritime spying right under the nose of U.S. radar. Pardon my naiveté, but isn’t this what the Compact is for? Notably, American companies were not investing in or developing the region’s economies from the start. Questionable investment conditions, perhaps?
As America and the current administration try to sort out their interests in the Fluid Indo-Pacific (courtesy of the East-West Center), from protecting itself to dismantling so many of the soft-power industrial complex arms, Voice of America and USAID come to mind. It might be worth remembering where it all started.
But let’s not pretend that an anniversary means anything.
Gabriel McCoard is an attorney who previously worked in Palau and Chuuk State. Send feedback to gabrieljmccoard@hotmail.com.
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