Reprinted from Yves Engler’s website.
Eighty years ago today the US Air Force dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima resulting in 140,000 deaths. Three days later they dropped a different type of nuclear weapon on another Japanese city. 40,000 were killed immediately in Nagasaki and tens of thousands more died in the aftermath.
Those who justify the bombings claim it saved US lives by quickly ending the war. But, Tokyo had already been devastated and had delivered multiple pleas for a surrender agreement. The bombings were largely a warning to the Soviet Union about US military capabilities amidst post-war negotiations.
Canada was not an innocent bystander in the nuclear bombing. Uranium from Great Bear Lake in the Northwest Territories was used in the bombs and Canada spent millions of dollars (tens of millions in today’s money) to help research the bombs’ development. Immediately after successfully developing the technology, the US submitted its proposal to drop the bomb on Japan to the tri-state World War II Combined Policy Committee meeting, which included powerful Canadian minister C.D. Howe and a British official. Apparently, Howe supported the US proposal. When the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Howe immediately praised the military action. “It is a distinct pleasure for me to announce that Canadian scientists have played an intimate part, and have been associated in an effective way with this great scientific development,” he told the press. (Reflecting the racism in Canadian governing circles, in his (uncensored) diary King wrote: “It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe.”)
Only a few years after the first atomic bomb was built Ottawa allowed the US to station nuclear weapons in Canada. According to John Clearwater in Canadian Nuclear Weapons: The Untold Story of Canada’s Cold War Arsenal, the first “nuclear weapons came to Canada as early as September 1950, when the USAF [US Air Force] temporarily stationed eleven ‘Fat Man’- style atomic bombs at Goose Bay Newfoundland.”
Canadian territory has also been used to test US nuclear weapons. Beginning in 1952 Ottawa agreed to let the US Strategic Air Command use Canadian air space for training flights of nuclear-armed aircraft. At the same time, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission conducted military tests in Canada to circumvent oversight by American “watchdog committees.” As part of the agreement Ottawa committed to prevent any investigation into the military aspects of nuclear research in Canada.
Canadian Forces also carried nukes on foreign-stationed aircraft. At the height of Canadian nuclear deployments in the late 1960s the government had between 250 and 450 atomic bombs at its disposal in Europe. Based in Germany, the CF-104 Starfighter, for instance, operated without a gun and carried nothing but a thermal nuclear weapon.
During the past 80 years Canada has often been the world’s largest producer of uranium. Ottawa has sold dozens of nuclear reactors to foreign countries, which have often been financed with aid dollars.
Canada provided the reactor (called Cyrus) that India used to develop the bomb. Canada proceeded with its nuclear commitment to India despite signals from New Delhi that it was going to detonate a nuclear device.
On the diplomatic front, Ottawa has long supported its allies’ nuclear weapons. In 1948 Canada voted against a UN call to ban nuclear weapons and in 1954 voted to allow NATO forces to accept tactical nuclear weapons through the alliance’s policy called MC 48, “The Most Effective Pattern of NATO Military Strength for the Next Few Years.”
In his 2006 book “Just Dummies”: Cruise Missile Testing in Canada John Clearwater writes, “the record clearly shows that Canada refuses to support any resolution that specifies immediate action on a comprehensive approach to ridding the world of nuclear weapons.”
Since then, Canadian governments have not changed direction. Stephen Harper’ government opposed a variety of initiatives to curtail nuclear weapons while Justin Trudeau was hostile to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). Canada was one of 38 states to vote against — 123 voted in favour — holding the 2017 UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination. Subsequently, Canada has refused to join the 90 countries that have already signed the TPNW.
On the 80th anniversary of the US’s monstrous bombing of Hiroshima the world should redouble efforts to abolish nuclear weapons.
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Yves Engler is the author of Stand on Guard for Whom? A People’s History of the Canadian Military and twelve other books.
