{"id":48861,"date":"2024-08-09T19:10:23","date_gmt":"2024-08-10T03:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=48861"},"modified":"2024-08-09T19:10:23","modified_gmt":"2024-08-10T03:10:23","slug":"reflections-on-hiroshima-and-nagasaki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/08\/09\/reflections-on-hiroshima-and-nagasaki\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflections on Hiroshima and Nagasaki"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views<\/a> with the author\u2019s permission.<\/i><\/p>\n

Originally written in 2015 for the 70th anniversary; updated in 2020 for the 75th anniversary; reposted below along with a podcast<\/a> for the 79th anniversary.<\/p>\n

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It Should Never Be Done Again: Hiroshima, 75 Years Later<\/strong><\/p>\n

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August 6, 1945. \u00a0Hiroshima. \u00a0A Japanese city roughly the size of Houston. \u00a0Incinerated by the first atomic bomb. \u00a0Three days later, Nagasaki. \u00a0Japanese surrender followed. \u00a0It seemed the bombs had been worth it, saving countless American (and Japanese) lives, seeing that a major invasion of the Japanese home islands was no longer needed. \u00a0But was the A-bomb truly decisive in convincing the Japanese to surrender?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

President Truman\u2019s decision to use atomic bombs against Japan is perhaps the most analyzed, and, in the United States, most controversial decision made during World War II.\u00a0 The controversy usually creates more heat than light, with hardliners posed on mutually opposed sides.\u00a0 The traditional interpretation is that Truman used the A-bombs to convince a recalcitrant Japanese Emperor that the war was truly lost.\u00a0 A quick Japanese surrender appeared to justify Truman\u2019s choice. \u00a0It also saved tens of thousands of Allied lives in the Pacific (while killing approximately 250K Japanese).\u00a0 This thesis is best summed up in Paul Fussell\u2019s famous essay, \u201cThank God for the Atomic Bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even before Hiroshima, however, a small number of scientists argued that the A-bomb should not be used against Japan without a prior demonstration in a remote and uninhabited location. \u00a0Later, as the horrible nature of radiation casualties became clearer to the American people, and as the Soviet Union developed its own arsenal of atomic weapons, threatening the United States with nuclear Armageddon, Americans began to reexamine Truman\u2019s decision in the context of the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.\u00a0 Gar Alperovitz\u2019s revisionist view that Truman was practicing \u201catomic diplomacy\u201d won its share of advocates in the 1960s. (Alperovitz expanded upon this thesis in the 1990s.) \u00a0Other historians suggested that racism and motives of revenge played a significant role in shaping the U.S. decision.\u00a0 This debate reached its boiling point in the early 1990s, as the Smithsonian\u2019s attempt to create a \u201crevisionist\u201d display to mark the bomb\u2019s 50th anniversary became a lightning rod in the \u201cculture wars\u201d between a Democratic administration and a resurgent Republican Congress.<\/p>\n

Were the atomic bombs necessary to get the Japanese to surrender? \u00a0Would other, more humane, options have worked, such as a demonstration to the Japanese of the bomb\u2019s power? \u00a0We\u2019ll never know with certainty the answer to such questions. \u00a0Perhaps if the U.S. had been more explicit in their negotiations with Japan that \u201cunconditional surrender\u201d did not mean the end of Japan\u2019s Emperor, the Japanese may have surrendered earlier, before the A-bomb was fully ready. \u00a0Then again, U.S. flexibility could have been interpreted by Japanese hardliners as a sign of American weakness or war fatigue.<\/p>\n

Unwilling to risk appearing weak or weary, U.S. leaders dropped the A-bomb to shock the Japanese into surrendering. Together with Stalin\u2019s entry into the war against Japan, these shocks were sufficient to convince the Japanese emperor \u201cto bear the unbearable,\u201d in this case total capitulation, a national disgrace.<\/p>\n

A longer war in the Pacific \u2014 if only a matter of weeks \u2014 would indeed have meant higher casualties among the Allies, since the Japanese were prepared to mount large-scale Kamikaze attacks. \u00a0Certainly, the Allies were unwilling to risk losing men when they had a bomb available that promised results. \u00a0The mentality seems to have been: We developed it. \u00a0We have it. \u00a0Let\u2019s use it. \u00a0Anything to get this war over with as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

That mentality was not humane, but it was human. \u00a0Truman had a weapon that promised decisiveness, so he used it. \u00a0The attack on Hiroshima \u00a0was basically business as usual, especially when you consider the earlier firebombing raids led by General Curtis LeMay. \u00a0Indeed, such \u201cconventional\u201d firebombing raids continued\u00a0after<\/strong>\u00a0Hiroshima and Nagasaki until the Japanese finally sent a clear signal of surrender.<\/p>\n

Of course, an event as momentous, as horrific, as Hiroshima took on extra meaning after the war, given the\u00a0nuclear arms race, the Cold War and a climate represented by the telling acronym of MAD (mutually assured destruction). U.S. decisionmakers like Truman were portrayed as callous, as racist, as war criminals. \u00a0Yet\u00a0in the context of 1945, it\u2019s difficult to see any other U.S. president making a different decision, especially given Japan\u2019s apparent reluctance to surrender and their proven fanaticism at Iwo Jima, Okinawa and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

As Andrew Rotter notes in\u00a0Hiroshima: The World\u2019s Bomb <\/em>(2008),\u00a0<\/strong>World War II witnessed\u00a0the weakening, if not erasure, of distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, notably during LeMay\u2019s firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945 but in many other raids as well (Rotterdam and Coventry and Hamburg and Dresden, among so many others). In his book, Rotter supports the American belief that Japan would fight even more fanatically for their home islands than they did at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, two horrendous battles in 1945 that preceded the bomb. But he argues that Truman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson engaged in \u201cself-deception\u201d when they envisioned that the effects of the atomic bomb could be limited to \u201ca purely military\u201d target.<\/p>\n

A quarter of a million Japanese died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in the years and decades following. \u00a0They died horrible deaths. \u00a0And their deaths serve as a warning to us all of the awful nature of war and the terrible destructiveness of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

Hans Bethe worked on the bomb during the Manhattan Project. \u00a0A decent, humane, and thoughtful man, he nevertheless worked hard to create a weapon of mass destruction. His words of reflection have always stayed with me. \u00a0They come in Jon Else\u2019s powerful documentary, \u201cThe Day After Trinity: J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is what Bethe said (edited slightly):<\/p>\n

The first reaction we [scientists] had [after Hiroshima] was one of fulfillment. \u00a0Now it has been done. \u00a0The second reaction was one of shock and awe: What have we done? \u00a0What have we done. \u00a0The third reaction was it should never be done again.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

It should never be done again<\/strong><\/em>: Just typing those words here from memory sends chills up my spine.<\/p>\n

Let us hope it is never done again. \u00a0Let us hope a nuclear weapon is never used again. For that way madness lies.<\/p>\n

Here are two comments I made in response to previous comments on this article:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1. I think the comments once again show that no consensus is possible on whether the atomic bombs were decisive in ending the war sooner. Even well-informed people at the time disagreed.<\/p>\n

Again, I return to the context of August 1945. A war-weary America, facing the prospect of a delayed Japanese surrender, was using every weapon at its disposal to drive the Japanese into the ground. That included blockade, firebombing, and invasions (Iwo Jima and Okinawa). A longer blockade and more Japanese would have starved. More firebombing, more dead Japanese. More invasions, more dead Japanese, and of course Allied troops as well. The Japanese were well indoctrinated to fall in battle like cherry blossoms in the service of the emperor, whom they viewed as a god.<\/p>\n

How to get a Japanese leadership and people to surrender when they saw the very act as dishonorable to the warrior code of Bushido? How to persuade a military that was already committing suicide on a massive scale in Kamikaze attacks against Allied ships to capitulate and live on with the shame of defeat?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear from the evidence that Truman believed the atomic bomb would shock the \u201cbeast\u201d of Japan (\u201cbeast\u201d was Truman\u2019s word, a description that Allied soldiers and other Asian peoples who suffered at the hands of Japan, e.g. the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Koreans, would have agreed with). It surely did shock them. Profoundly. Was it sufficient? Was it necessary?<\/p>\n

Again, there is no alternate reality in which the atomic bomb wasn\u2019t dropped, and thus no way of knowing whether in that other reality, the Japanese would have agreed to surrender on August 15th.<\/p>\n

2. My reading of the evidence is that impressing the Soviets was a factor, but not THE factor, in the decision to use the bomb. Ending the war as quickly as possible was the driving factor. If the bomb had been ready in December 1944, it would have been used against Nazi Germany as the Battle of the Bulge raged. But the bomb wasn\u2019t ready until July 1945, when the Germans had already surrendered.<\/p>\n

Iwo Jima and Okinawa were fresh in the minds of everyone. Though the Japanese had extended peace-feelers, others in Japan were hardline and didn\u2019t wish to surrender on any terms. Faced with a war that could last weeks or months longer, perhaps into 1946 if an invasion of the Japanese home islands had been necessary, the US leadership decided the bomb could be the shock that would force the Japanese to capitulate. And so it seemed, after the fact.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very complicated question that I\u2019ve read a lot about, and written about as well. Many people at the time simply saw the bomb as a \u201cbigger\u201d bomb, not as something world-changing. Only a few people truly grasped the horror of atomic weapons.<\/p>\n

I know this probably isn\u2019t convincing, but again this is my reading of the evidence. Certainly, Nagasaki was completely unnecessary \u2014 it came far too quickly for the Japanese to process what had happened at Hiroshima.<\/p>\n

William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He taught history for fifteen years at military and civilian schools. He writes at Bracing Views<\/a>. <\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reprinted from Bracing Views with the author\u2019s permission. Originally written in 2015 for the 70th anniversary; updated in 2020 for the 75th anniversary; reposted below along with a podcast for the 79th anniversary. It Should Never Be Done Again: Hiroshima, 75 Years Later August 6, 1945. \u00a0Hiroshima. \u00a0A Japanese city roughly the size of Houston. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-48861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":"\"It Should Never Be Done Again\""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/290"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48861"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48873,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48861\/revisions\/48873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48861"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=48861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}