The Tribune

YESTERDAY a colourful photograph flashed across our computer screen. A powerful mushroom shaped cloud lit up the dark sky as its funnel stretched earthwards. It was “Little Boy”, the first atomic bomb to be dropped to end a war. Its target below was the plains of Hiroshima, Japan – August 6, 1945. The powerful bomb reduced four square miles of the city to rubble, killing about 80,000 people, followed by tens of thousands more in the months and years to follow– dead from the effects of radiation.

The next scenes were photographs of a demolished city – piles upon piles of rubble with a blackened mountain range in the background — the only land not flattened. This was Hiroshima, 1945.

The scene then fast forwards to Hiroshima – 67 years later.

A burgeoning metropolis – bright lights, skyscrapers, highways, waterways – from the air it could outstrip any US city in colourful architectural magnificence. Out of the rubble, through hard work and the ingenuity of its people, Hiroshima had been born again.

Once again the scene moves — this time to Detroit, USA, also 67 years later.

The two cities have since changed places. Today the once wealthy city of Detroit has been abandoned. No bomb has fallen, but neglect has reduced it to ruins. Man has left and nature is reclaiming what Man has surrendered.

The question was then asked: “What has caused more long term destruction — the A-bomb or government welfare programmes created to buy the votes of those who want someone to take care of them?

“On the other hand Japan does not have a welfare system – work for it or do without.”

These words were followed by the statement: “These are possibly the five best sentences you’ll ever read and all applicable to this experiment:

“1. You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity.”

Four more sayings followed, all on the same theme, but stated in different ways.

The contrast in achievement between Japan’s Hiroshima and Detroit, USA, 67 years later is startling. It is certainly a wake up call.

The person who sent the information to us added a simple message: Food for thought; an interesting perspective, he said.

It certainly was food for thought — a lot of thought. But for us the mention of Hiroshima brought many memories to the fore.

The ink had hardly dried on the Paris Peace Treaty in 1947 ending the European war, when we were packed off to a Belgian boarding school in Hertfordshire, England. It was the last sailing from New York of the Queen Mary as a troop ship, and we were the youngest passenger on the huge liner.

There were many interesting students at our high school, several from Europe’s war-torn continent, particularly Belgium. The continentals were there mainly to refine their spoken English.

However, among their number were two particularly interesting Eurasian sisters, both highly talented artists.

Their English father was in the intelligence service during the war, having married into a leading Japanese family and made his home in Japan. During the war two of his daughters were living with their English grandmother and going to school in England. However, the girls’ mother, their older sister, Mary, and their baby brother, David, remained in Japan while their father, because of his training and fluency in Japanese, was enlisted in the US secret service.

When the bomb fell on Hiroshima, Mary and David were killed. The mother was alone in Japan. The two girls at our school in England were having difficulty communicating with her as she neither spoke nor wrote English. In those days the only communication was by letter.

Settling back into family life in Japan after the war was particularly difficult for their father.

At every meal, he and his wife sat down to an empty table set for six — herself and her husband, the two girls at school in England and a place each for the two children killed by an American bomb. In two small vials strapped around the mother’s waist were the ashes of their two dead children.

The girls in England were suffering the agony of their father — working for American intelligence, family destroyed by an American bomb, and a traditional Japanese wife, who daily reminded him of his agony.

By the time we had left school the marriage had broken down. The world’s first atomic bomb had not only ground Hiroshima to dust, but had also shredded the lives of a once happy family.

But back to Detroit, USA. There are many reasons for the collapse of Detroit, one of America’s most prosperous cities — its wealth built on the auto industry. Labour unrest was not the sole reason for Detroit’s demise, but it was a major contributor. Detroit is a lesson in how militant unionism can in the end bring its own destruction. The first warning flags went up in 1941 when, post New Deal, Ford Motor Company workers decided to unionise. Ford was among the first to recognise that it had to plan to offset labour’s demands. A strike in their major plant could have closed their factory. As the unions pressed, the owners laid their plans to neutralise the threat. Among the many changes, the company introduced new technologies. This meant that staff would become expendable. What unions don’t understand is that their unreasonable demands in the end will cost them their jobs — machines have replaced them. A victory around the negotiating table, could lead to their defeat over the course of time.

Detroit is an interesting case history. It represents what automation can do to labour. At Ford’s major plant in the 1930’s the labour force at its peak was 90,000, by 1960 the work force had dwindled to 30,000 and by 1990 it was about 6,000.

“The pattern of the deteriorating city by the mid-1960s was visibly associated with the largely departed auto industry,” said one report. “The neighbourhoods with the most closed stores, vacant houses, and abandoned lots were in what had formerly been the most heavily populated parts of the city, adjacent to the now-closed older major auto plants.”

Eventually, Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

Today we see businesses in The Bahamas, reacting to warning signs, starting to consolidate. When contraction sets in, unemployment lines lengthen. Not a good sign for a country whose students are graduating with a D- average.