Hiroshima: necessary?

what does it say about our macho sensibilities that we wouldn't even consider peace without Japan totally capitulating? why not blockade japan let them rattle their bamboo spears? why wasn't humiliating their military and dismantling their empire enough to expiate pearl harbor?

so that's what's on my mind. who was it who said "it's not the future i'm afraid of. it's the past."

The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic explosion was certainly not necessary for a military victory by the allies (USA + British Empire + USSR) over Japan. By August of 1945 Japan was incapable of effective military resistance. However, it was, by most political measures, a very, very expedient act.

Its use was explained to the US public and to the world as necessary to save 'a million lives' during an invasion of the Japanese home islands. This is pure speculation and must ever remain so. The only important question about this speculation is whether it was believed by Truman or merely officially employed by him to justify morally an act that had too many political attractions to resist.

There is no way to know the answer to this question. Among other things, humans are capable of hiding the truth of their own motives even from themselves, and this inner evasion only grows stronger as time passes and all that is left of the action or decision is the residue of memory. By the time Truman died he may have firmly believed the truth of the 'million lives saved', even if he didn't especially believe it on the day he gave the order.

As a Canadian, I was always particularly displeased with this quote from then Prime Minister Mackenzie King:

It is fortunate that the use of the bomb should have been upon the Japanese rather than upon the white races of Europe.
-- William Lyon Mackenzie King (uncensored diaries) (I re-located that quote at http://dominionpaper.ca/original_peoples/2005/04/05/canada_rac.html , however I definitely had a page number from those diaries when I cited them in my paper)

Eisenhower:

in [July] 1945... Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan.... "During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude...

- Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380

In a Newsweek interview, Eisenhower again recalled the meeting with Stimson:

...the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing.

- Ike on Ike, Newsweek, 11/11/63

ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY
(Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman)

It is my opinion that 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 because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons.

The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.

- William Leahy, I Was There, pg. 441.

HERBERT HOOVER

On May 28, 1945, Hoover visited President Truman and suggested a way to end the Pacific war quickly: I am convinced that if you, as President, will make a shortwave broadcast to the people of Japan - tell them they can have their Emperor if they surrender, that it will not mean unconditional surrender except for the militarists - you'll get a peace in Japan - you'll have both wars over.

Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover, pg. 347.

On August 8, 1945, after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hoover wrote to Army and Navy Journal publisher Colonel John Callan O'Laughlin, "The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul."
Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 635

In early May of 1946 Hoover met with General Douglas MacArthur. Hoover recorded in his diary, "I told MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria."
Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 350-351

"...the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the [atomic] bombs." Barton Bernstein in Philip Nobile, ed., Judgment at the Smithsonian, pg. 142

GENERAL DOUGLAS MacARTHUR

MacArthur biographer William Manchester has described MacArthur's reaction to the issuance by the Allies of the Potsdam Proclamation to Japan: "...the Potsdam declaration in July, demand[ed] that Japan surrender unconditionally or face 'prompt and utter destruction.' MacArthur was appalled... Ironically, when the surrender did come, it was conditional, and the condition was a continuation of the imperial reign. Had the General's advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary."

William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964, pg. 512.

Norman Cousins was a consultant to General MacArthur during the American occupation of Japan. Cousins writes of his conversations with MacArthur, "MacArthur's views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed." He continues, "When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor."

Norman Cousins, The Pathology of Power, pg. 65, 70-71.

BRIGADIER GENERAL CARTER CLARKE

(The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables - the MAGIC summaries - for Truman and his advisors)

...when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.

Gar Alperovitz, The Decision To Use the Atomic Bomb, pg. 359.

From a study of the evidence and in particular the declassification of a lot of Truman's post-war NSC discussions and some of Eisenhower's remarks (like the ones posted up thread), I'd say it was militarily unnecessary.

well yes of course it's pure speculation. it was equally pure speculation that the a-bombs would bring about surrender. but speculation involves weighing things up, and the important thing is not just truman's moral qualms but whether the speculation was on balance right.

the idea japan had stopped fighting by summer 1945 is insane.

*i know of wherefore i speak

-- Millar (tmilla...), August 11th, 2003. (Millar)

maybe my favorite ILE post ever.

Your use of "you people" shows that you see this issue in black and white, and that it is you that have come to the table with predetermined ideas.

Did you read any of the quotes from any of the high ranking US military leaders who were opposed to the use of the bombs? They appear to fall under your description of "you people".

Similarly, 20 years on, when some of Lyndon Johnson's advisers objected that bombing North Vietnam's factories and rail lines would not do much harm to an agrarian country in which industry accounted for only 12% of its minuscule GNP, America's air-force chiefs argued that since its industrial sector was so small, the country was that much more dependent on it, and would suffer all the more if it were destroyed. In fact, the North Vietnamese responded to the bombing of their oil tanks and railways by dispersing fuel across the country in small drums and hauling supplies around on bicycles. But zapping railways, factories and oil tanks was something the air force knew how to do.

By that time bombing, whether effective or not, seemed much more attractive than sending in more troops. As America's ground forces in Vietnam found themselves increasingly impotent against an elusive and resourceful foe, the military commanders proposed endless variations on the same bombing strategy that had so far failed. Johnson one day dressed down the army chief of staff in front of his underlings: 'Bomb, bomb, bomb, that's all you know. Well, I want to know why there's nothing else. You're not giving me any ideas for this damn little pissant country. Now, I don't need ten generals to come in here ten times and tell me to bomb.' "

The following is a list of historians who signed a letter which challenges (to say the least) the "facts" displayed at the Smithsonian's original Enola Gay exhibit. The letter can be read at http://www.doug-long.com/letter.htm

List of signatories:

Kai Bird, co-chair of the Historians' Committee for Open Debate on Hiroshima

Martin Sherwin, co-chair of the Historians' Committee for Open Debate on Hiroshima

Walter LaFeber, Professor of History, Cornell University

Stanley Hoffman, Dillon Professor, Harvard University

Mark Selden, Chair, Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Binghamton

Jon Wiener, Professor of History, University of California, Irvine

William O. Walker III, Ohio Wesleyan University

Dr. E.B. Halpern, Lecturer in American History, University College London

John Morris, Professor, Miyagi Gakuin Women's Junior College, Sendai, Japan

Gar Alperovitz, historian and author of The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb

Stanley Goldberg, historian of science and biographer of Gen. Leslie Groves

James Hershberg, historian and author of James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age

Greg Mitchell, author of Hiroshima in America

Gaddis Smith, Professor of History, Yale University

Barton J. Bernstein, Professor of History, Stanford University

Michael J. Hogan, Professor of History, Ohio State University

Melvyn P. Leffler, Professor of History, University of Virginia

John W. Dower, Professor of History, MIT

Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Author and Fellow of the Russian Research Center, Harvard University

Bob Carter, Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Worcester College of Higher Education, England.

Douglas Haynes, Associate Professor of History, Dartmouth College

Bruce Nelson, Department of History, Dartmouth College

Walter J. Kendall, III, The John Marshall School of Law, Chicago

Patricia Morton, Assistant Professor, University of California, Riverside

Michael Kazin, Professor of History, American University

Gerald Figal, Asst. Professor of History, Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon

R. David Arkush, Professor of History, University of Iowa, Iowa City

Barbara Brooks, Professor of Japanese and Chinese History, City College of New York

Dell Upton, Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Eric Schneider, Assistant Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania

Janet Golden, Assistant Professor of History, Rutgers, Camden

Bob Buzzanco, Assistant Professor of History, University of Houston

Lawrence Badash, Professor of History of Science, University of California, Santa Barbara

Kanno Humio, Asociate Professor of Iwate University, Japan

Robert Entenmann, Associate Professor of History, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN

Mark Lincicome, Assistant Professor, Department of History, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA

Kristina Kade Troost, Duke University, Durham NC

Peter Zarrow, Assistant Professor of History, Vanderbilt University

Michael Kucher, University of Delaware

Lawrence Rogers, University of Hawaii at Hilo

Alan Baumler, Piedmont College

Timothy S. George, Harvard University

Ronald Dale Karr, University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Kikuchi Isao, Professor of Japanese History, Miyagi Gakuin Women's College, Sendai, Japan

Ohira Satoshi, Associate Professor of Japanese History, Miyagi Gakuin Women's College, Sendai, Japan

Inoue Ken'Ichiro Associate Professor of Japanese Art History, Miyagi Gakuin Women's College, Sendai, Japan

Yanagiya Keiko, Associate Professor of Japanese Literature, Siewa Women's College, Sendai, Japan

Sanho Tree, Research Director, Historians' Committee for Open Debate on Hiroshima

Eric Alterman, Stanford University

Jeff R. Schutts, Georgetown University

Gary Michael Tartakov, Iowa State University

W. Donald Smith, University of Washington, currently at Hitotsubashi University in Toky

"However," claims the Smithsonian, "the use of the bombs led to the immediate surrender of Japan and made unnecessary the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands." Presented as fact, this sentence is actually a highly contentious interpretation. For example, an April 30, 1946 study by the War Department's Military Intelligence Division concluded, "The war would almost certainly have terminated when Russia entered the war against Japan."[3] (The Soviet entry into the war on August 8th is not even mentioned in the exhibit as a major factor in the Japanese surrender.)

if they *had* mentioned the entry of the USSR, then they'd have to get into why the US government wasn't oh so keen on the USSR extending its sphere of influence over the pacific rim -- quite justifiably within the purview of washing dc circa 1945, however you feel about US puppet regimes there during the cold war.

Um... Huh??

Good one.

Decisions are black and white when you make them. It's everything that happens afterward that fucks it all up.

Exactly. That's why they sent it to the Smithsonian which was presenting its own interpretation as fact. These historians were arguing that a subject that is so controversial should not be exhibited as fact at a respected institute like the Smithsonian.

Talking about projected casualties from invasion vs. casualties from the bombs is not an argument for or against the decision that was made. That discussion is called "lessons learned;" and it would seem we've all learned a lot since not a single one has been dropped on any other people since.

tom i was under the impression that a- and h-bombs aren't being dropped/fired because of strategic wargame type issues, rather than a firm moral resolve that melting the flesh off children is not "the done thing" any more.

Plus it's bluff anyway since the abundant natural resources in the Middle East in general make nuking an economic no-no.

The reason why this debate occurs is that the answer to what Truman believed to be true is inaccessible. The fact that he said he believed it is not enough, since we all know that in such matters any leader would willingly lie about his motives. In light of this, there is no answer to this debate and can't be. Even hindsight is not always 20/20.

xpost

and as stated various times, "more died in tokyo" -- but anyway what's *your* estimate of US fatalities in an invasion of japan? if not half-a-million, perhaps a quarter-of-a-million. would a US president destroy a japanese city to prevent this? in mid-1945 yes he certainly would. innocent japanese and germans died in greater numbers for less direct purposes.

Talking about projected casualties from invasion vs. casualties from the bombs is not an argument for or against the decision that was made. That discussion is called "lessons learned;" and it would seem we've all learned a lot since not a single one has been dropped on any other people since.

How fortunate for you that your parents/grandparents were not Japanese civilians. How unfortunate for the Japanese civilians that "we" learned a lesson at their expense.

To paraphrase the character of William Parcher in "A Beautiful Mind" (one of the characters imagined by John Forbes Nash), your conviction, it turns out, is a luxury that can only be enjoyed by those on the sidelines.

I still feel that the link Tom posted is completely relevant to the thread, it's just that I see it as one that undermines the entire premise that the bombs were necessary to end the war.

Of course no one has an answer to this, nor do I need one. Since Truman is the one for whom "the buck stops here", and it was his decision that caused this debate, I believe the heavier burdon of proof to fall on the "yes" decision. Albert Einstein "said that he was sure that President Roosevelt would have forbidden the atomic bombing of Hiroshima had he been alive". So why is it that everyone wants to believe Truman's motives but not those of others like Eisenhower, Leahy, MacArthur, Zsilard and Einstein?