Hiroshima: The Trajectory and Promise of History
This is the revised text of a public lecture held in
Hiroshima on 24 March 2013

Winston E. LangleyWorld War II and its immediate aftermath yielded some impor­tant lessons, institutions, and promises for and to human beings; italso highlighted certain lessons or meanings, many of which one of yourmost distinguished moral leaders, Dr. Diasaku Ikeda, has unfailingly
sought to bring to our individual and collective attention. Under the
profound moral aura of this city, I would like to share some views withyou, respecting those lessons, institutions, promises, and meanings.

The Usual Narrative
The usual narrative of World War II and developments immediately
following, most often observe the fact that the War itself was a killingfield; that during its conduct, we had the worst case of genocide, inmodern times; and that very important institutions, such as the United
Nations and its specialized agencies, came out of the War, with the U.N.
itself representing a structure as well as a spectrum of values, whichwere designed to avoid slaughter of the kind human beings faced during
the war.
One cannot disagree, apart from its incompletion, with that thatnarrative, especially if one associates oneself with the more “progressiveview” of the United Nations, its origins, and its intended evolution andbehavior. According to this progressive view, the U.N. was created toserve certain common ends, among them that of international peace andsecurity. This is most compellingly codified in article 2 (4) of theCharter, which requires that states “shall refrain in their international
relations from the threat or the use of force against the territorial
integrity or political independence of states…”1 Likewise, while
expecting that conflicts would continue between and among states, thisexpectation was specifically accompanied by the textual commitment touse pacific modes of conflict resolution (mediation, arbitration, and154

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adjudication, for example) to accommodate international differences.
This is what is embodied in Chapter VI of the UN Charter.2 Only, as asad, last resort would recourse to the use of force (provide for in Chapter
VII of the Charter) be allowed, in dealing with differences. And, in thecase of this last resort, it would be through a world-wide body.3
The progressives go further. They observe that long-term international
peace and security, through the UN and its members states, were seen as
closely linked to the removal of certain social and economic privations
provided for in articles 55 and 56 of the UN Charter, relevant articles in
the International Bill of Human Rights—constituted by the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, and International Covenant on Civil andPolitical Rights—and the special work of the United Nations Educa­
tional, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
In the case of the Article 55, it calls for the creation of “conditions ofstability and well-being, which are necessary for peaceful and friendly
relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal
rights and self-determination of peoples.”4 Those conditions include:“higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of eco­nomic and social progress and development; solutions of international
economic, social, health, and related problems and international culturaland educational cooperation; and universal respect for, and observanceof, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all…” Article 56 goeson to recite that all [author’s emphasis] member states of the UN“pledge themselves to take joint and separate action in cooperation with
Organization [UN] for the achievement of the purposes set forth in
Article 55.”5
The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (and we will use
this instrument to re-present the International Bill of Human Rights) has
been seen as one expression of this “joint and separate action,” in thearea of human rights; and the creation of UNESCO has also been seen
as an important expression of like action in the field of cultural andeducational cooperation.
The work of UNESCO is particularly significant, progressives havecontended, because it represents a form of full recognition of the deeper,
underlying causes of the War and has sought to deal with those causes.
Those causes, the Constitution of UNESCO contends, revolve around“ignorance of each other’s ways and lives,” which has been a “common
cause throughout the history of mankind,” of “suspicion and mistrust
between the peoples of the world,” and which, in turn, have occasioned“differences [that] have all too often broken into war.”6

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In the case of the human rights regime, focus has been on that
regime’s bringing of individuals into full subjecthood under internation­
al law, rather than having them remain as mere extensions of the state,
as well as establishing associated norms, such as the right to a freepress, to free speech, to conscience and religion, among others. In short,the War, despite its admitted brutalities and general moral degeneration,is also linked with an improvement in human consciousness, expressedin the creation of the UN itself, in the notion of collective defense, in theapparent commitment to engage in the use of force to deal withinternational differences, only as a sad, last resort, in the espousing ofinternational peace and security as important values, in the emphasis onsocial and economic improvement, for all, and in the creation of
UNESCO to help root out suspicions we harbor about one another.
I will not here seek to dispute the position of progressives, the viewsof whom are to be admired and respected. I will simply say that there ismuch, much more to the War and its indicated aftermath. This “more”
bears largely on the then goings-on in Asia, and particularly this city,and their impact and meaning for the world at large.

Another Narrative
World War II was not simply the war which took more lives than any
other war; implicated more of the people of the world than at any othertime before; and wreaked more savage cruelty than any other like seriesof combat among nations. It was also that, despite the changes it seemed
to have wrought in expanding human consciousness through science,
religion, and human contact, the War brought to the habit of organizedviolence, the habit of using force—force on the part of the state—toresolve differences between states, and to the habit of national security
and national loyalty, the highest levels of destructiveness that humans
are capable—that of the extinction of the species itself.
From the time of the Iliad and the Gita, among other like narratives(East and West, North and South) the focus on war has had an objective,
other than the security of the nation-state, the city-state, or the empirestate. (After all, neither has had any security from its wars). It has had
an unspoken or little spoken about objective—that of reducing humanbeings to the status or condition of “a thing,” what one may safely callthe “thingification” of human beings, that is, not only reducing them toanimate inanimate objects to be controlled, possessed or owned, and be
disposed of, but ultimately, to make a corpse of them.7 The means
employed are often blunt, coarse, and even crude, but they can behiroshima: the trajectory and promise of history

157“refined” as well.
Hiroshima (and when I reference Hiroshima, one should understandthat it includes Nagasaki, also) represent the consummation of a long,cruel road in the process of thingificiation of human beings; and in thecase of Hiroshima, it was made possible the replacement of the use ofhuman and animal muscle power with the harnessed inanimate forces ofnature which, in fact, “dwarf the physical power of any living creature inboth potency and scale.”8
The creation of the UN and its specialized agencies, along with theirassociated values (some of which are important to understandHiroshima) did not rid the world of the habit of national security, thesovereignty of states, national loyalty (or the ego of self, a collective
self, which the state ostensibly embodies). Indeed, the UN Charter isbased on all these values. Article 51 of the Charter, in fact says that:“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent [emphasis is
the author’s] right of individual or collective self-defense9; and, in article
2 (7) of the very Charter states that nothing contained in the Chartershall “authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which areessentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state” (for example,
to determine the size of armies or lethality of weapons it may elect topossess.)
In the case of UNESCO itself, the same values just mentioned,
continue to obtain, despite the work of that agency. One finds, forexample, that one of the labeled , “most enlightened statesman” of ourday, former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in an article “A Battlefor Global Values,” divides humanity into “we” and “they,” “ours” and“theirs.”10
A feature of the thingification of human beings, of the use of might,
force, violence to resolve international differences, is that human beings
have had an history of human vulnerability to other human beings, andto help “cure” that vulnerability or mitigate it, they have sought topursue a politics that tries to create a scarcity of capacity on the part ofothers to use force, while augmenting that capacity for themselves. So
societies have striven to “increase their power in absolute terms in order
to avoid a perilous diminution of their power in the only terms that havemattered throughout history: the relative terms of ‘who has more?’”.
This has been the history of all arms races between and among
countries; it was the central element of the Cold War, as strategies of“mutual assured destruction,” between the United States and the former
Soviet Union, aptly embodied “who has more?”
In a system or culture where power is both indispensable and scarce,

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people learn to see political and other collective interactions (sometimes
even interpersonal ones) not in terms of co-operation and mutuality, but
as a zero-sum game.11 Dr. Ikeda, in his joint work with Dr. Joseph
Rotblat, A Quest for Global Peace,12 deals with the psychology of zerosum game, during the second half of the twentieth century.
With respect to the human rights regime, it did and does provide forrights such as that to free speech (as said before), to property, toconscience and religion, and even to health and education. But the mostimportant elements of that regime are not the specific rights it
encompasses; rather, they are other elements: the idea of the essential
dignity of all human beings, which is actually the source of the rights
people like to mention, and the other is the elimination of moral scarcity,
through article 2 (2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That
section reads: “Every one is entitled to the rights and freedoms set forthin the Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, color,
sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social
origin, property, birth or other status.”13
Together they—the inherent dignity of all human beings and the ideathat everyone is entitled to all the rights recited in the Declaration—mean that the human rights regime, at its most fundamental, must be
understood to have eliminated the zero-sum game of who has more,created a single moral community, for all human beings, with states
pledging to co-operate with the UN in promoting universal respect forand observance of human rights.

What Past Do We Elect to Recall?14
The alternative narrative just presented does not complete the meaningand significance of World War II and its immediate aftermath. First,
merely referring to the textual rendition of common standards for all
human beings does not say much about commitments, as so effectively
shown by Jonathan Glover in his book, Humanity: A Moral History of
the Twentieth Century15, which sees that century, including its second
half, as the most brutal in the history of human beings.
This is so, because we cannot have a commitment to a single moral
community, without accepting the inherent dignity of all human beings;
and we cannot accept the inherent dignity of all human beings, and,then, focus on preparing to engage in warfare, the object of which is thethingification of humans, reducing them to corpses—the very antithesisof dignity. This has been the fundamental to Dr. Ikeda’s focus on
dialogue. And this brings us to Hiroshima.

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159

As said before, the dropping of the bomb on the city (and one has but
to look at the photographs, before and after) was the ultimate inthingification and the ethic of “who has more”? In his dialogue with Dr.
Ikeda, Dr. Joseph Rotblat (who worked on the Manhatten Project, which
ultimately produced the bomb, but who opposed the use of the bomb
against Japan) said that, assuming the bomb was successfully created, “I
still hoped that the Americans would tell the Japanese, ‘Look! We havethis super weapon’ [we have more] and then the war would be over.”16
There was no such discussion with the Japanese, of course, but theunderlying thinking explains, in part, the use of the weapon—the
Japanese would come to know, first-hand, the utter destruc­tion resulting
from the bomb and would seek to avoid complete destruc­tion. This iswhat Emperor Hirohito said to the Japanese people, in his surrendermessage, after the bombing of Nagasaki. With, as reported by RadioTokyo, “practically all living things, human and animal…literally seared
to death,” the Emperor said that the “enemy now possesses a new andterrible weapon with the power to destroy many innocent lives and do
incalculable damage. Should we continue to fight, not only would it
result in the ultimate collapse of the Japanese nation, but also it would
lead to the total extinction of human civiliza­tion.”
We had “become death,” as Oppenheimer, taking his instructions
from the Gita, is reputed to have said, in his reaction to the bomb. Thisis the ethic, which governed the construction of the Security Council of
the United Nation; is the weakness out of which the veto principle wascreated, for certain members of that organ; and is the weakness thatbegan and shaped the development of the Cold War. But Hiroshima,brought to ashes by the bomb, as if inspired, as Dr. Ikeda would say by
the experience of its suffering, also became the Phoenix-like site fromwhich the promise of the moral and intellectual solidarity, called for in
the Constitution of UNESCO, might be realized.
One finds part of that promise in Article 9 of the Japanese Constitu­
tion, which was inspired by the experience of the War, in general, butreally the encounter with the atomic bomb.
That article reads:
Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order,
the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of thenation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international
disputes. To accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea,
and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.
The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

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Japan, as the quoted article suggests, committed itself to foreswear theright to war, which until then has been seen as incident to the very statusof statehood, in the interest of inter-national peace. It would deny toitself the right to engage in the thingification of human beings, in theinterest of justice and order—social and moral order; and it rejected thenotion that out of weakness, out of vulnerability, it should gain, throughthe redoubling of effort, the development of weapons by which lives
could be vaporized, steel beams twisted into writhing ghoulish forms,
and “the puniness of human flesh and habitat”17 revealed with a clarity
and reverberating conviction never before known or thought about.
Japan rejected more: it denied itself the “right of belligerency”—aright which, since the emergence of the modern nation-state, had neverbeen before foresworn. This was not the Declaration of Paris, also
known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which in 1928 sought to havecountries renounce war as an instrument of policy, or the personalcommitment of Emperor Asoka. This is a constitutional commitment ofa society to repudiate the very definition of the modern state.
Were one to examine the terms of the Kellogg-Briand Pact,18 one
would discover, in the context of its ratification, that its meaning was
and is much less significant than what the language may initiallysuggest. The treaty had its signatories “condemn recourse to war for thesolution of international controversies, and renounce it as an instrumentof national policy”; second, the signatories pledged that “the settlement
or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or whatever
origin shall never be sought except by pacific means.”Please note: the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts ofwhatever nature or whatever origin shall never be sought, except bypeaceful means. Yet, in ratifying the pact, an act which makes its terms
binding, many reservations (qualifications) were made to the effect thatthe terms of the treaty applies to “offensive” wars, only, not to defensive
ones.
In the case of the US, it explicitly said that the pact did not impair its
right of self-defense, including the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine.
This is the same right of self-defense one finds in article 51 of theUnited Nations Charter, although article 2 (4) of that document has its
signatories pledging that they “shall refrain in their international
relations from the treat or use of force…” In short, since “defensive”
wars are included in the phrase “disputes of conflicts of whatevernature, it is clear that states that were parities to the 1928 pact did notintend to be bound thereby. And at a time when departments of “war”
were being changed to departments of “defense,” the use of the termhiroshima: the trajectory and promise of history

161“defensive war” lacked precise meaning, with few states, if any, willingto admit that it fights any war except defensive ones.

The Future We Seek
This is why the action of Japan is so significant. But its significance lies
elsewhere, also. The Japanese people, through their Constitution, said
they were going to set an example—an example that others mightemulate on the journey to a new moral order, one which would beco-extensive with the order of might, of war, especially the capacity tokill. Of course, when we are setting an example, we are also engaging inanother course of conduct—we are also “will-ing, we are also saying
that, in exercising our will to be part of a certain order, we want others
to will the same, to join in a common effort. (This, again, has been oneof the great burdens of Dr. Ikeda, as he has sought, through dialogue, toexpand common and joint actions for peace, urging people to become
examples).19
In this sense, what Japan did after Hiroshima should not be confusedwith what, in the Western tradition, may be called the Nietzscheanview,” which states that morality is but charms and spells, expressed in
dogma, that the weak invent to contain the strong; or the view ofThrasymachus in Plato’s Republic, as well as a dominant view in classi­
cal Marxism,that morality is but right and wrong which, respective­ly,aligns or misaligns with the interest of the strong.20 The action of Japanis nothing less than that of launching us, all human beings, on a journeythat invites us to deny ourselves some (if not all) of the deceits—national security, for instance—to which we are so unfortunately prone,
and look to our disfigured self that has been bequeathed to us by theculture of war, and see that most of our miseries are the offsprings ofwar; and that all of us are, in fact, “victims of the narrow limitations ourrespective societies [have] prescribed for us.”21 A return to that culture
is, therefore, counterproductive and ill-suited to the view that we canconsistently will against long-established habits. Hiroshima (or article 9)means more.
It does not simply mean that one rejects self-deceits; it also encom­
passes an affirmation of the very law of our being, something thatyearns for expression. It is that all human beings seek peace. For Dr.
Ikeda, it is a “natural feeling shared by people everywhere: the desire tolive in peace, the wish to protect those we love, the determination tospare the world’s children needless suffering.”22
That the truth of the latter statement has remained largely hidden, for162hiroshima: the trajectory and promise of history

so long, is a testimony to the effectiveness the deceitful decades (andcenturies) within which we have lived, and moved, and constructed ourbeing and becoming. It is also, however, due to the fact that the journeyto the truth that human beings yearn for peace is not one that can becompleted in any single act, however profound, event, or movement,
because it actually requires a certain moral growth, a certain moral
consciousness, among human beings, as well.
Likewise, it requires action, voices other than those which are
inchoately, symbolically, and, for those who understand it well, elo­quently voiced by Hiroshima and Article 9. Dr. Ikeda, again, has been at
the forefront of inviting people to raise their voices and take action tobuild a world-wide solidarity, on behalf of peace. His focus on promot­
ing human security and a culture of human rights in his 2013 Peace
Proposal is but the most recent in his commendable body of actions.23
Hiroshima and Article 9 anticipated, endorses, and affirms the Univer­
sal Declaration of Human Rights, which is based on the idea that theworld is a cosmopolis, a single moral community within which lives asingle human family. Basic to the idea of such a community is theconcept of the inherent dignity of every human being, and the call of the
Declaration for us to recognize its terms as a “common standard ofachievement for all peoples and nations”. As well, the Declaration urges“every individual and every organ of society” to strive by teaching andeducation to promote respect for the rights it contains and affirms.24
Part of the culture out of which the modern nation-state was created
and which, in turn, the nation-state has perpetuated is that which denies
the existence of a single moral community, despite the work of “great
religions” suggesting the contrary. Indeed, that culture argues thatnational societies constitute different moral communities, some ofwhich are superior to others, thus making it possible to isolate andobjectify some societies and peoples. There is also what may be called acertain moral skepticism, which governs the conduct of modern nationstates—a skepticism which questions whether a single moral community
is at all possible. The Declaration does not only say it is possible, butcontends that it exists by virtue of the above-mentioned, inherent dignityof every and all human beings. What we must do is to find ways ofrecognizing it, and, in all we do, promoting it.
Resorting to war as a means of settling international or intercommunal differences is therefore an assault and ultimately a rejectionof that dignity. Dr. Ikeda, in his 2013 Peace Proposal captures this con­clu­sion most aptly, in his focus on nuclear weapons: “the very existenceof these weapons represents the ultimate negation of the dignity of life.”hiroshima: the trajectory and promise of history

163

This is why in none of the instruments which compose the International
Bill of Human Rights is there any reference to war. Hiroshima andArticle 9 give expression to the spirit of human dignity, the singly moral
community, and the idea of the single human family. Again, they do
more.
Earlier, I indicated that giving up the right of belligerency means
giving up the nation-state, as we know it; that an entity which, so
territorially, culturally, politically, and populationally partial, should
presume to take humanity from a condition of non-war to one of war,with the possibility—because of the unpredictable dynamics of war—of
rendering, in the words of W. H. Auden (in his The Shield of Achilles)
human habitation bare, without feature, a blade of grass, or sign ofneighborhood; or should dare to confront humankind with the possi­
bility of its own destruction is unacceptable. In other words, we cannot
possibly accept the idea of a single moral community, a single humanfamily, and also accept the existing nation-state system with its right tobelligerency.
Article 28 of the Declaration recognized as much; so did a concurrent
resolution of the United States Congress, in 1949; and Europe is on its
way to giving expression to that recognition. In the case of Article 28, it
states that: “everyone is entitled to a social and international order inwhich the rights and freedoms set forth in the Declaration [the right todignity, to life, to liberty, to security, education, to work, equality before
the law, against torture and degrading treatment, against arbitrary arrest,
to freedom of thought, conscience and religion, for instance] can be
fully realized.”25
The drafters of the Declaration understood that the rights contained inthat document could never be realized within the then and current
international system or order. This is what Article 9 is saying to us; thisis what the Congress of the United States came to realize, during a brief
but important period, in 1949, when both the House of Representatives
and the Senate joined to pass Concurrent Resolution 64, the text ofwhich reads, in part, as follows:
Resolved by the House of Representatives, the Senate Concurring,that it is the sense of the Congress that it should be a fundamental
policy of the United States to support and strengthen the United Nations
and seek its development into a world federation, open to all nations,with defined and limited powers adequate to preserve peace andprevent aggression through the enactment, interpretation, andenforcement of world law.

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One can find fault in the phrasing of the resolution, but bringing its
terms into being would change the nation-state, as we know it; and thisis what the example of the Article 9 asks of us. This is also what Europe
is doing or attempting to do, through its emerging Common Security of
Defense Policy, which would contribute to human security rather than
the security of national borders, and would ensure the development of aregional federation that could serve as a model for global governance.
Article 9 (and Hiroshima) means that we are called to help remove
the greatest moral darkness, in modern times—that of taking steps tocorrect the wrong we have been required to participate in, for most of
our lives: in war. And here, I take special notice of Dr. Ikeda’s beginning
his work on “New Human Revolution,” on August 6th. It speaks to afaith in human possibilities, regardless of existing discomfort, pain, andsuffering, of the capacity of human beings to develop the speciesconsciousness, the species-identity, and the species-loyalty, to grapple
with the idea of humanity as a single family, and to extinguish the habitof warfare. It also speaks to the possibility of a “new humanism,”through which, people “mutually treasure human dignity,” as he offers
in his 2013 Peace Proposal, and become one with those who have,through their Buddha nature, come to know how not to respect theempire of violence, so that we can be fully free to love, be compassion­ate, and pursue the ends of justice.
Article 9 and Hiroshima invites us to transform the trajectory ofhistory, to create where we once destroyed, to hope where we once
despaired, to share what we once took, to seek unity and solidarity,
where we pursued division and disassociation, and to affirm andembody liberation where we once sought domination. They are thetruest spirits out of World War II.
In his poem, Prometheus Unbound, Percy B. Shelley’s final lines
capture what I think we have been touching on, and what Dr. Ikeda has
again and again said to us, in his instruction of the relationship between
human suffering and human best achievements.

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;hiroshima: the trajectory and promise of history

165

This, like thy glory Titan, is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;This alone is Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory.

May Article 9 and Hiroshima help to lead us to the victory of our single
human family and our single moral community, out of the moral wreckin which we find ourselves and out of which Hiroshima has hoped andbuilt. I dedicate this presentation, in due respect for his work on behalfof both this family and this community, to Dr. Ikeda.
Notes
See U.N. Charter
Ibid.
3
Ibid.
4
See Article 55
5
See Article 56
6
See Constitution of UNESCO
7This is the burden of Simone Weil, The Simone Weil Reader edited by George
Panichas (London: Moyer Bell, 1977) pp. 153–183
8
See Arnold Toynbee’s “Mechanization, Regimentation, and Boredom” in his Change
and Habit: The Challenge of Our Time (London: Oxford University Press, 1966) pp.
212–217
9
See U.N. Charter10
See tony Blair, “A Battle for Global Values” in Foreign Affairs vol. 86 #1 January/
February (2007) pp. 79–90
11
Ibid.
12
See Joseph Rotblat and Diasaku Ikeda, A Quest for Global Peace (London: I.B.
Taurus, 2007)13
Emphasis is the author’s
14This subtitle implies a link between past and future
15
Jonathan Glover Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century. (New haven:
Yale University Press, 1999)
16
A Quest of Global Peace, op., cit., pp. 18–19
17John Pina Craven, The Cold War Battle Beneath the Sea (New York: Simon andSchuster, 2001), p. 13
18
Named after the leading negotiators of the treaty, Frank B. Kellogg, U.S. Secretaryof State, and Aristide Braind, the Foreign Minister of France
19
Two of his most recent statements may be found in his 2012 Peace Proposal(“Human Security and Sustainability,” and his 2009, “Building Global Solidarity
Toward Nuclear Abolition.”
20
Nietzchean” refers to Friedrich Nietzsche’s views, especially in his works, Beyond
Good and Evil, The Will to Power and the Antichrist.
21
John Lewis, Across The Bridge (New York: Hyperion Books, 2012) p. 125
22
Ikeda, op. cit., “Building Global Solidarity Toward Nuclear Abolition.”23
Ibid: see, also the 2013 Peace Proposal
24
See Preamble of the Declaration
25
See Article 28 of the Declaration
12