Mind War

Seventy years ago on this date “the bomb” was dropped on Hiroshima. There have been many tons of bombs dropped in modern warfare, but none has come to the level of that one atomic bomb released from an American bomber on that summer day in Japan. Even today, the world has concern about keeping the nuclear club rather exclusive—the reason why the Obama Administration has negotiated an agreement to purportedly keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The deployment of the first atomic bomb was followed by a second, three days later, and a third atomic bomb was in transport to the east for use when the surrender of Japan was received. More recently, the United States has fought some wars only through the air, think the conflicts in the Balkans and Kosovo. Such warfare is more antiseptic—we lack direct contact with its results, and even better, to the general public and the politicians who order war, it involves little loss of American lives. Even though the bombs today can have a predetermined location there is still “collateral damage,” to use a military term. Euphemisms in our language attempt to down play aspects of terrible events.  But, war, regardless of how it is fought, is still hell.

Paul Tibbetts in the "Enola Gay"

I recently watched the movie “American Sniper” and two scenes in the movie gave pause to the main character. In providing cover for U.S. and allied missions in an area of terrorist activity replete with varied explosive devices and the use of suicide bombers, he sees a young boy next to his mother and the mother has her hands around her clothing, he realizes she is carrying an explosive device, he gets site of it and takes her out. The young boy takes the device and heads to the American soldiers gathered nearby. It poses a difficult choice for the sniper, and the viewer realizes the peculiar situation the sniper faces. He saves his fellow soldiers by killing the boy. You sense a moment of deep regret.  In the second situation, a man comes out to a corner of a building with a rocket propelled grenade launcher about to shoot it into a group of US soldiers.  the sniper takes the man out. A young boy enters the scene and he picks up the RPG, which is longer than he is tall, and balances it on his shoulder, and looking to pull the trigger toward the group of Americans. The sniper again faces an issue of conscience. What should he do, he does not really want to take out the young boy, perhaps thinking of his own son. He hesitates, and in the hesitation his dilemma becomes solved when the young boy puts the RPG down and runs away. At this moment the sniper realizes that the choices he makes have become too much for him, and he calls his wife and tells her he will be coming home. War is hell, and it can affect the mind and soul, but in ways that are invisible to the rest of us.

Cathedral in Nagasaki after the dropping of the Atomic Bomb

In an earlier post, I noted how Walter Miller, a member of the flight crew which bombed the abbey of Monte Cassino during WWII, converted to Catholicism, and would go on to write one of the better known post-apocalyptic novels of a nuclear war—A Canticle for Leibowitz. The effects of bomgbings was different for  Lt. Colonel Paul Tibbetts, who would retire as a general, was the pilot of the Enola Gay, named for his mother.  Tibbetts piloted the bomber which dropped the first atomic bomb, named “little boy.” Tibbetts would have no regrets about his actions, saying that he thinks of the lives that would otherwise have been lost during an invasion. Historians to this day debate the differences between use of the atomic bombs, which instantly killed 80,000 persons in Hiroshima, and three days later an additional 40,000 were killed. This contrasts with the Catholic Chaplain at the base in Tinian Island in the South Pacific, from where the Enola Gay was launched. He had blessed the crews prior to their mission. In an interview recounted recently by Tony Magliano, the Chaplain, George Zabelka, noted that it would be mortally sinful to allow a soldier to put a bullet through the head of a child, but yet he saw many planes that “went to Japan with the express purpose of killing not one child or one civilian but of slaughtering hundreds and thousands of children and civilians—and I said nothing.” He would say that he was brainwashed. That may not be too dissimilar to the line that Paul Tibbetts took to rationalize his dropping of the atomic bomb, so too did George Zabelka say that he followed the party line. Fr. Zabelka would say that atomic bomb was not the only issue. The Allies fire-bombing of Tokyo would kill 75,000 persons in one evening. Fr Zabelka, Magliano notes, would by 1975 go from a proponent of the Just War Theory to a total pacifist. He would, with Jesuit Fr. Jack Morris, arrange and participate in the Bethlehem Peace Pilgrimage which commenced at a nuclear submarine base in the state of Washington and concluded in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve in 1984.

Chaplain, Fr. George Zabelka

Fr. Zableka searched his soul and came to a conclusion that war is not the answer. Walter Miller would also become a pacifist and write his novel, before later taking his own life. The sniper searched his conscience and realized the difficult choices he had to make in whether or not to kill a child was not worth what it did to him. Paul Tibbetts rationalized his duty by how many persons would be saved from an invasion.  Each man found his own way to deal with the demons of war which would work their way into their mind.  The most unfortunate occurrence is that men are put in the position of having to make such choices. On second thought, perhaps the most unfortunate occurrence is a culture that uses suicide bombers and children to fight their wars. The mind war can be difficult to face and to explain.  War is hell and the hell is not limited to the destruction of our common home, or the visible wounds, but it also produces invisible wounds in the mind and in one’s soul.