During his visit to Hiroshima last week, President Barack Obama did not formally apologize for the nuclear bombing that ended World War II. That didn’t stop his harshest critics from calling it another stopover in his worldwide apology tour. But to those who are offended by admitting the tragic consequences of America’s mistakes, there is instructive value in how we’ve atoned for the harm done to our own citizens during World War II and the era of nuclear weapons testing that followed.
Although there is ample historical evidence to suggest the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki weren’t necessary to bring the war to an end, my intention isn’t to make that argument. Because either way, any kind of national apology is worthless if it’s not supported by a clear majority of the country’s citizens.
Unfortunately, we haven’t reached that point on many of America’s most serious transgressions. But consider two cases where we have.
The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan. It acknowledged that the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II was wrong. Similarly, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act signed by President George H. W. Bush accepted responsibility for the suffering our government caused to people who lived downwind from the nuclear weapons test sites in Nevada. With overwhelming support in Congress, formal apologies were offered in both acts.
But who was apologizing? And for whom?
The answer can be found in a speech where Bush called the internment a great injustice that must never be repeated.
“No nation can fully understand itself or find its place in the world,” he said on the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, “if it does not look with clear eyes at all the glories and disgraces of its past.”
The clear eyes he was speaking of were Americans living at the time he spoke. So these apologies were not made posthumously on behalf of the leaders who approved the internment or above ground nuclear tests. And while they contained recognition of what another generation had done wrong, they expressed sorrow and regret, not an inheritance of guilt.
This is the form of apology Alaskans sought from President Bill Clinton for the 1882 naval bombing of Angoon that killed six children and leveled much of the community. They received $90,000 in reparations from the Carter administration, but not an apology. The joint resolution asking for one, which was unanimously passed by our Legislature, wanted to help the people of Angoon bring closure to that past.
Obviously, apologies like these require an accurate interpretation of history. But that’s necessary anyway if we’re to avoid repeating mistakes of the past. And as Bush implies, we must not let concerns of shame or guilt interfere with an honest examination of our nation’s moral lapses.
Among those are slavery. But we can’t bring ourselves to apologize to the descendants of that abomination. And even though our government formally apologized for the near genocide of Native Americans, it was done in a tactless manner by burying it a defense spending bill.
Foreigners victimized by our warring acts, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are deserving of apologies as well. That includes the Vietnam War, where our reckless disregard for civilians led to the killing of between one and two million people. And the unexploded cluster bombs we dropped during the war have killed more than 40,000 since it ended.
Those cases are far worse than what’s happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet in these current wars, we’ve made over $6 million in “condolence payments.” These aren’t an attempt to buy forgiveness with money. It’s “welcome progress,” writes the Center for Civilians in Conflict, “as for too long the international community dismissed incidental civilian harm as an acceptable consequence of armed conflict.” Even military policy describes them as “an expression of sympathy toward a victim or his or her family.”
So why can’t we formally say that to the people of Japan and Vietnam? Or to Black Americans? And we should make a proper apology to all indigenous peoples of America, just as Australia and Canada have.
If Americans aren’t ready, it may be because of a tendency to associate guilt with apologies instead of relating it to sorrow for the misfortunes suffered by other people, their loved ones or their ancestors. We have the power to change that. And if we do, we might discover the more mature understanding of history we’ll need to avoid repeating its tragic chapters.
