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| Were the Atomic Bombings Necessary? by David Krieger July 30, 2012 |
On August 14, 1945, Japan surrendered and World War II was over. American policy makers have argued that the atomic bombs were the precipitating cause of the surrender. Historical studies of the Japanese decision, however, reveal that what the Japanese were most concerned with was the Soviet Union’s entry into the war. Japan surrendered with the understanding that the emperor system would be retained. The US agreed to do what Truman had been advised to do before the bombings: it signaled to the Japanese that they would be allowed to retain the emperor. This has left historians to speculate that the war could have ended without either the use of the two atomic weapons on Japanese cities or an Allied invasion of Japan.
The US Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that, even without the use of the atomic bombs, without the Soviet Union entering the war and without an Allied invasion of Japan, the war would have ended before December 31, 1945 and, in all likelihood, before November 1, 1945. Prior to the use of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the US was destroying Japanese cities at will with conventional bombs. The Japanese were offering virtually no resistance. The US dropped atomic bombs on a nation that had been largely defeated and some of whose leaders were seeking terms of surrender.
Despite strong evidence that the atomic bombings were not responsible for ending the war with Japan, most Americans, particularly those who lived through World War II, believe that they were. Many World War II era servicemen who were in the Pacific or anticipated being shipped there believed that the bombs saved them from fighting hard battles on the shores of Japan, as had been fought on the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. What they did not take into account was that the Japanese were trying to surrender, that the US had broken the Japanese codes and knew they were trying to surrender, and that, had the US accepted their offer, the war could have ended without the use of the atomic bombs.
Most high ranking Allied military leaders were appalled by the use of the atomic bombs. General Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces Europe, recognized that Japan was ready to surrender and said, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” General Hap Arnold, commander of the US Army Air Corps pointed out, “Atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse.”
Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, put it this way: “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. In being the first to use it, we adopted an ethical standard common to barbarians of the Dark Ages. Wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.”
What Truman had described as “the greatest thing in history” was actually, according to his own military leaders, an act of unparalleled cowardice, the mass annihilation of men, women and children. The use of the atomic bombs was the culmination of an air war fought against civilians in Germany and Japan, an air war that showed increasing contempt for the lives of civilians and for the laws of war.
The end of the war was a great relief to those who had fought for so long. There were nuclear scientists, though, who now regretted what they had created and how their creations had been used. One of these was Leo Szilard, the Hungarian émigré physicist who had warned Einstein of the possibility of the Germans creating an atomic weapon first and of the need for the US to begin a bomb project. Szilard had convinced Einstein to send a letter of warning to Roosevelt, which led at first to a small project to explore the potential of uranium to sustain a chain reaction and then to the Manhattan Project that resulted in the creation of the first atomic weapons.
Szilard did his utmost to prevent the bomb from being used against Japanese civilians. He wanted to meet with President Franklin Roosevelt, but Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. He next tried to meet with the new president, Harry Truman, but Truman sent him to Spartanburg, South Carolina to talk with his mentor in the Senate, Jimmy Byrnes, who was dismissive of Szilard. Szilard then tried to organize the scientists in the Manhattan Project to appeal for a demonstration of the bomb rather than immediately using it on a Japanese city. The appeal was stalled by General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, and did not reach President Truman until after the atomic bombs were used.
The use of the bomb caused many other scientists to despair as well. Albert Einstein deeply regretted that he had written to President Roosevelt. He did not work on the Manhattan Project, but he had used his influence to encourage the start of the American bomb project. Einstein, like Szilard, believed that the purpose of the U.S. bomb project was to deter the use of a German bomb. He was shocked that, once created, the bomb was used offensively against the Japanese. Einstein would spend the remaining ten years of his life speaking out against the bomb and seeking its elimination. He famously said, “The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.”
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Comments
But Kurtis, if the information in this article was widely available then yet has been suppressed or neglected since, how can we say "the issue is settled" or "they ended the war"?
Great points!
I recommend people read Masuji Ibuse's Black Rain. Although it is a novel, he used journals kept by people who lived through the bombing of Hiroshima to create the story. I always find it interesting to note that the old men, the home guard who were carrying around their bamboo spears in case of invasion, put those spears down after the Emperor's announcement on the radio that the war was over - NOT because of the bombing 9 days earlier.
This brings up another point, since we are always told is that there would have been a horrible battle to take control of Japan, and maybe that is true. We can't know what would have happened, and we do know that the Pacific battles up to that point had been some of the most horrific of the whole war. Still, I have to wonder how hard it would be for young, well-fed and well-trained troops to battle starving civilians armed with bamboo spears.
Since there is clear evidence that Japan was trying to surrender, however, it seems more likely the people only needed the Emperor's announcement to give up the fight.
Hey John, when I said, "new set of arguments", I meant the same available information is used to approach the issue with a different take. Again, if we hadn't used two bombs to end a war, hundreds would have been used to start the next war.
Its amazing!! Reading..re-reading some of the points again gave me goose pimples and further strengthened my resolve of abhorring war and the use of nuclear weapons! Thank you for reminding how precious each life is and the responsibility each one of us has.
Kurtis, you are likely right that the American military and civilian scientists had little solid understanding of the degree and longevity of the effect of radition on the people bombed in Japan. In addition to the military's strategy of ending war, the civilians were clearly being used as lab animals to determine the extent of radiation effects on the humans and the environment. I don't really see what you are arguing. The unprecedented blast effects of the A-bombs were very much recognized before they were dropped, as well as the firestorm effects.
So setting aside whether the U.S. knew in the '40s what it should have known about nuclear radiation, scientists and officials still accurately predicted that many, many thousands of civilians were going to die in the explosions, shock waves and the fires right after. The central question to debate remains, and it is one of morality, not scientific knowledge at the time: Was it right to willingly vaporize and burn thousands of women, kids, and non-combatants? I don't believe it was, yet you seem to be in search of justification of something that by ethics (not leaps of supposed logic) cannot be justified.
Bob, you're right, I am leaping over the ethics of "in the interest of the greater good". It seems a good bet the Japanese would have surrendered before the bombs were dropped had they been fully aware of the true devestastion our threats held. Just as important, nuclear weapons would have been easier to use had we not known the real-life blast effects on a populated city of human beings. The only reason no one has used nuclear weapons yet is because we know what they can do and we had to see that to make us not use them again. Ironic as it sounds, the survival of mankind has been at stake.
I have also written about this. Private Rationalization, Public Lies: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the /Birth of the Bomb in the Jul - Sept issue of Peace Magazine and maybe found on-line. As a psychiatrist I have written a psychohistorical piece about the role of rationalization both private and public in the creation of nuclear weapons, which are in the world today because of the United States.
Mark Leith
Bob, your argument that this was unethical because thousands of non combatants were harmed is ironic. Thousands of civilians were likely going to die during an island invasion. The Ketsu Go operation readied every man, women and child to defend and DIE for the country when it was invaded; children were even being trained at school how to use their spears. Another fact often overlooked is the fact that more people died from the Tokyo bombings than Nagasaki A-Bomb; the A-bomb just did more destruction with a single bomb. As for their surrender: while it is true that some of the Japanese government wanted to surrender, they still refused to do so and thousands of men were dying in every battle. The Japanese honor code did not allow for surrender. Japanese soldiers refused to be taken alive, and often killed their American POW’s. The Japanese were asked to surrender or the first bomb would be dropped. They refused. The bomb was dropped and again asked to surrender. They refused so the second was dropped. It was not until then, and the threat of a third (bluff) bomb that the Emperor finally surrendered. I believe an invasion of Japan would have cost more lives than the atom bombs.
Perspective- the battles for the islands: Okinawa and Luzon
110,000 Japanese were soldiers KIA/MIA in the battle for Okinawa and 192,000 Japanese soldiers KIA/MIA for Luzon totaling (for just two island battles) 302,000 Japanese lives.
Hiroshima’s top estimate of 166,000 and Nagasaki’s 80,000 killed totals: 264,000.
After my recent initiation to Oliver Stone's obviously biased and revisionist Untold History of the United States I am amazed at all the "experts" who magically know categorically such truths as that Japan would have surrendered without the bomb or that the U.S. has embarked on a campaign of terror since the end of WWII.
Such situations are rarely as simple as Oliver Stone and other like revisionist historians portray. As far as the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki it is easy to sit now and condemn those who made the fateful atomic bomb decision now, but the world was a diametrically different place in 1945. Different dictators in various parts of the world had been aggressively waging wars of conquest for some time. Hitler was determined to rule at least Europe, if not the world. Stalin, likewise, was a perpetrator of mass killings as was Mussolini, and the emperor of Japan. This is the same Japan that had decided that America was more like a sleepy country of fat cowards who could be bullied into submission starting with the insidious attack on Pearl Harbor.
By 1945 the US had poured its heart, soul, mind, and strength into fighting wars on two fronts, and the toll was deeply felt by every level of our society from the loss of life to the extreme sacrifice that every American felt. The Japanese were commiting kamikaze to stop us. Nobody wants to throw the worst bomb in history at a people, but the people of my parent’s generation were sick and tired of being bullied and having to go around the world to stop these inhuman wars of conquest.
This is not what I read in a book as much as it is the account of my parents, especially my father who spent years in France and Germany fighting for our country as well as his own life. He never thought any part of that war was glorious, and was only thankful that it was finally over, even if it was by atomic bombing.
And, as for disarmament in general, to completely disarm is to ignore the lessons of WWII. It is utter foolishness to think that all countries will disarm, even atomically. Whether it is N Korea, or Iran, or some coalition of Islamic States or someone we don’t yet know, there will always be countries who will use what ever means they have to overcome others, and consequently, our country needs to maintain a strong defense with the most powerful technology available to deter those nations.
© Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
This issue has long been settled but every August we are subjected to a whole new set of arguments outlining the mistakes of using the nuclear weapons to end the war with Japan. Look, I'll make it short and sweet: It was infinitely better to use nuclear weapons to end a war than to start one. People tend to forget is how little we knew about radiation and its effects at the time. It is easy to second-guess after the fact, but our survival, then and now, has hinged on knowing first-hand the devastation of nuclear weapons.