Ideal Time To Focus On Ensuring Future

The debate continues.

Every anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki whips up a fury of introspection, recrimination and defensiveness. This year is different only in its intensity. With 50 years of hindsight, the questions remain. Was it right? Was it necessary?

Here’s a radical question: At this point, does it really matter?

Certainly the profound loss of life throughout World War II validates the introspection. Fifty million people - Americans, Japanese, Jews, Chinese and others - died between 1939 and 1945, hundreds of thousands more were killed during 1945 alone. The lives of those people, and especially the veterans who fought in the Pacific, are worthy of thought.

But if the purpose of all the moral wrangling is to prove - five decades later - that Japan was deserving of its fate, or that Americans had a more sinister goal in dropping the bomb than ending the war and avoiding further deaths, the exercise is futile.

Americans will never be happy with Japan’s response to the war. The country has issued vague, defensive apologies, clinging to their version of events, just as Americans cling to theirs. The truth is all war is horrible, and the firebombing of Tokyo and Japanese atrocities in Asia - while not as technologically advanced as Little Boy - were every bit as devastating to innocent civilians.

Two generations have learned about World War II through school books and little else, no searing memories of pain and loss to shape their views on history’s most destructive war. To many of them, questions over the morality of dropping the atomic bomb are as relevant to their lives as the Pythagorean theorem.

What they do want to know is that their world is safe from complete annihilation. Castigating ourselves over a decision made by different people in a vastly different time serves little purpose for those generations or any other. It blurs the real issue: Now that we have these horrible weapons - and are fully aware of their power - how do we keep from using them again?

The United States can start by getting tough with France, which has announced its plans to resume nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific. The Senate should abandon plans to erect a missile defense system, a move that would unilaterally alter the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

And we can emphasize and build on our growing ties with Japan in trade, education and other areas, rather than demand an apology whose time has long since passed.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Anne Windishar/For the editorial board