（続）The actors are gone. The debate continues.

Atomic Bomb Victims Stand Alone
AUG. 13, 2014
Norihiro Kato

加藤典洋さんのコラムがニューヨークタイムズに載っていました。このブログで、広島に原爆を落としたエノラゲイの乗組員の一人であるセオドア・バンカークさんを取り上げましたが、彼もバンカークさんのコメントからこのエッセイを始めていました。

本題に入る前にこのコラムを訳されたマイケル・エメリックさんについての記事がありました。翻訳だけにとどまらず活躍の場を広げてらっしゃいますね。

将来の芥川賞も…米国人研究者が早稲田文学新人賞選考委員に　マイケル・エメリックさん
2014.7.23 11:00 （1/3ページ）

エッセイはニューヨクタイムズのバンカークさんの訃報の最後にあった部分から始まっています。

TOKYO — This newspaper’s recent obituary for Theodore Van Kirk, the last living crew member of the Enola Gay — the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima — closed with a quote from a 1995 interview with Mr. Van Kirk. “It’s really hard to talk about morality and war in the same sentence,” he was cited as saying. “Where was the morality in the bombing of Coventry, or the bombing of Dresden, or the Bataan Death March, or the Rape of Nanking, or the bombing of Pearl Harbor?”

Mr. Van Kirk was right. Everyday morality falls mute before the horrors of war. And yet I can’t help feeling that, from the perspective of the victims, the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are different: Something distinguishes those attacks from the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking, the bombing of Dresden or the Holocaust.

加藤さんはホロコーストの犠牲者と広島・長崎の被爆者とは立場が決定的に違うと主張します。 民族の虐殺や毒ガスの使用は国際法で禁止されているが、核兵器の使用は禁止されていないというのです。

The difference lies not in the atrocities themselves, but in the attitude the world has taken toward them. The international community has reached a consensus regarding all those other horrors: They violated international law; they never should have occurred in the first place; they must never be permitted to happen again. The few individuals who defend the Holocaust, for instance, are not only condemned but reviled.

The situation is completely different with respect to the atomic bombings. Even if most people around the world privately believe the indiscriminate killing of civilians with nuclear weapons is wrong, there is no shared public consensus to this effect. The international community has not prohibited the use of nuclear weapons, as it has done with the use of poison gas and other chemical and biological weapons.

コラムは国際社会からも日本政府からも見放されている被爆者がまさにAtomic Bomb Victims Stand Aloneとなっている状況を描いていきます。なかなか難しい話題です。今、この時期に日本で核兵器という存在の有効性を訴えるのは非常識に思えますが、核の抑止力が第三次世界大戦を起こるのを防いでいるという見方もあるようです。Newshourで第一次世界大戦を回顧しているトピックでNuclear weapons are major league forces for peace.と主張している方がいました。



JEFFREY BROWN: John Mearsheimer, when you’re thinking about great power situations today or the kind of global struggles we see today, are there lessons that you most look at from 100 years ago?
JOHN MEARSHEIMER: I think there are two fundamental differences between Europe today and Europe in 1914.
I think the first is that, in 1914, you had one country, Germany, that was especially powerful, yet fearful. And I think that that Germany, imperial Germany, was the principal cause of the war. Today, you have no power in Europe, whether it’s Russia or Germany, that has the power to dominate Europe.
So there’s no one country that can cause a lot of trouble. The second big difference is the presence of nuclear weapons. I think it would be almost impossible today to have World War III that looked like either World War I or World War II in Europe or in Asia or any other place on the planet, simply because of the presence of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons are major league forces for peace. But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t have a limited war. But, anyway, all of this is to say that I think the situation in Europe is much more stable today than it was before World War I, before World War II, or even during the Cold War.

よいコラムというのは今まで気付かなかったこと、見落としていたことを思い起こしてくれます。ショアーの犠牲者と被爆者を分つ決定的な違いの存在を今までまったく意識していませんでした。