Haber’s convictions drove his chemist-wife to suicide, and his poison gas led the soldier-poet Wilfred Owen to lament “the old lie” told to British schoolboys: “ Dulche et decorum est pro patria mori” (“It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country”)-a piece of poetry, incidentally, that presses the need in education for the humanities to help ensure that the sciences are humane. “In times of peace, humanity in times of war, the Fatherland,” was Haber’s point of view-the sort of conviction that, in the words of Richard Rhodes, contributed to “the long grave, already dug” that received the dead of World War I and of the years leading up to Hiroshima. Years before Hiroshima, Nobel Prize-winning German chemist Fritz Haber did wonders with nitrogen-based fertilizers but also put his genius to work on gas warfare. Indestructible plastics now clutter the seas, and the opioid crisis makes us wonder if, sometimes at least, scientists, or at least their employers, have been breaking bad. Peter Parker, bitten by a radioactive spider, is not the only one to have understood that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Whether scientists have always done the responsible thing is not so certain. Especially at this moment, the role of science also requires examination. We might note, too, with reference to today, that, for Takaki, Truman’s wanting to appear “manly,” and not weak, might also have played a role.īut racism and other closely related biases cannot be the sole topic of our reckoning. But in this moment of racial reckoning, we might at least reconsider historian and ethnographer Ronald Takaki’s argument, some twenty-five years ago, that Truman’s racism, shared with others and extending to the Japanese (recall the internment camps), likely contributed to a decision on which Truman never looked back-even if we are called upon today to do just that. Military leaders such as General Eisenhower did not think the bombing was necessary to end the war, and some involved in the Manhattan Project itself had grave moral misgivings about this new terrible weapon. We cannot say for certain just what tipped the balance in President Truman’s mind towards his morally questionable decision to drop the bomb. On the other hand, the Barack Obama Presidential Center may soon be nearby, an open book on community organizing, constitutional law, relations between races and nations, and more.īut Chicago geography aside, race, racism, and Hiroshima may not be far apart. Geographical proximity does not determine identity, but as we approach this 75th anniversary of Hiroshima with racial reckoning on our minds, it may aid our reflection to note that the Henry Moore commemorative sculpture, near East 57th and Ellis, is much closer to one-time redlined neighborhoods, food deserts, and the street where Laquan McDonald was struck down than it is to the fabled Fermilab. The first self-sustained nuclear reaction that day was a crucial step. On December 2, 1942, under the bleachers of the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field, where the “Monsters of the Midway” had played, Enrico Fermi and his Manhattan Project team were building a monster of another kind. The examination will be difficult, but, fortunately, it is “open book.” If we read the signs of the times and reread the past with humility and honesty, if we read or listen carefully to the words of others, we may find answers or at least clues regarding meanings, values, and actions-religious and otherwise-fit for troubled times and the days ahead. If Chicago is not now one of the epicenters for the pandemic, the city, including the university in Hyde Park that bears its name, could (and probably should) be an epicenter for what some call a “reckoning,” or what Socrates called “the examined life,” as we approach this year’s anniversary of the bombing. Still, it can be a moment of needed learning and even grace. With so much already on our divided minds-the pandemic, financial devastation for many, racism and policing, school openings (or not), and more-it may seem too much to think back on what took place seventy-five years ago in Japan. The Hiroshima death toll, immediate or in the bombing’s wake, reached 140,000-fewer than the current coronavirus death count in the United States, but more terrifying in detail. Nagasaki was similarly bombed three days later. On the morning of August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay dropped the first atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Martin Marty Center Dropdown for Martin Marty Center.Our Community Dropdown for Our Community.Research & Faculty Dropdown for Research & Faculty.Undergraduate Program in Religious Studies.
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