On July 10th, in a swift move, after lots of legal wrangling, the town of Charlottesville, Virginia quickly and quietly took down statues of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. Those two dismantlings went so swimmingly well, the city council met in emergency session, the same day as the first take-downs, to approve a motion taking down another statue of Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea. Three monuments in a single day.
The very next day, the University of Virginia hauled off a statue on campus of George Rogers Clark who slaughtered indigenous peoples while expanding colonial real estate. In fact, the statue shows him confronting the natives. It doesn’t get much worse than that. All four statues were dedicated in the 1920’s and, I would guess, had strong support at the time.
The city of Charlottesville is in quite a pickle about slavery. The identity of the community is centered around the University of Virginia. UVA was founded by an owner of 600 slaves: Thomas Jefferson. It is almost impossible to square the institution in 2021 with the founder. To be appropriately woke the Board of Visitors needs to demolish the famous lawn of the original campus and tear down The Rotunda, an iconic symbol of the south, and by extension, of slavery.
If the Board of Visitors wants to have a clean break with Jefferson, they must also rename the institution Sally Hemings University. Only then can the university move forward.
The city council of Oak Ridge is confronted with a similar troubled legacy of a monument on city property: The Friendship Bell. It is sometimes referred to by locals as the peace bell. With the 76th anniversary of Hiroshima this week and events in Charlottesville, it is a good time to reflect on the bell.
The bell was dedicated 25 years ago. The bell was highly controversial. Lots of letters to the editor and lots of meetings. A council motion to support the bell barely passed 4-3.
The images on the bell are strongly Japanese, as is the structure which suspends the bell and also too the landscaping around it. Much like the statues in Charlottesville, the Peace Bell is a relic from another time. To me it always felt like a slight taunt: reprimanding the community for its actions during the war under the subterfuge of a gesture of goodwill.
Today, not supporting the bell goes against local political correctness. Political correctness is when you utter something you know to be a lie. The lie? The bell is a good thing and is supported by the community. Plenty of Oak Ridgers I meet, in public places, do a 360 degree scan of the room, and then tell me in quiet tones, they agree with me about the bell.
The bell needs to come down and the community needs to ship it, as a peace offering, to the city of Hiroshima. Certainly, Japan will embrace the bell as the apology it is. It will vindicate their feeling they were deeply wronged by the bombings. They will skillfully use the bell in their ongoing campaign of victimization. A nation which slaughtered 15-20 million during the war are now victims. It’s a cute trick if you can pull it off.
I care little about the Japanese except for their total denial of their own atrocities during World War II. The list of atrocities is very, very long. A few examples. Let’s start with the 200,000 to 300,000 Filipino, Chinese and Korean comfort women(sex slaves) they abused during the war? Japan replies that it wasn’t that bad.
How about the six week assault of Nanking from December 13th 1937 to January 31st of 1938 where 300,000 Chinese were slaughtered? Japanese response? The deaths are exaggerated by the Chinese for reasons of propaganda. Can you imagine the international response if Germany claimed Jews inflated the holocaust numbers for their own propaganda?
The massacre in Manila in February 1945 killed 100,000 civilians over four days. Japan hasn’t commented on the massacre. Perhaps the numbers were too low to bother.
The Japanese offer terribly weak apologies wrapped in the veil of regret and remorse. They never offer responsibility for the slaughter they authored. And yet, every August the international community, led by the Japanese, wags its moral finger at the United States about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The hypocrisy stings.
Whenever I drive by the Peace Bell I imagine Oak Ridgers groveling and cowering at the feet of the Japanese, begging for the absolution of their sins at Hiroshima. The bell implies we are an evil people. It deeply offends me. It wounds a community which helped end the war. I imagine printing up t-shirts which say,
Oak Ridge helped bring
a swift end to World War II.
Sorry about that.
It has always baffled me that a community which helped end the war is ashamed by what it did. Pride isn’t the right emotion either, but there is something between shame and pride. I refer to remorseful gratitude. This is not a contradiction. You can be remorseful for the loss of life at Hiroshima and yet grateful too that Japanese surrendered nine days later. Ending war is always a good thing.
I hope the Oak Ridge City Council has the courage to the do the right thing. Council can either support the Japanese or support Oak Ridgers.