The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the US at the end of WWII created one of the most violent episodes of the world’s history. The measure of the moral fiber of American society can be found in its willingness to seriously contemplate this event, the decisions that produced it, and its human consequences.
Hiroshima was bombed by the US on August 6, 1945.
140,000 people were killed instantly, of which the vast majority were civilians (of the total Hiroshima population of 250,000, there were 43,000 military personnel present). The scale of destruction resulting from a single weapon was without precedent. The US had brandished a secret weapon of unfathomable proportions. Yet this one use of this weapon was deemed insufficient.
Nagasaki was bombed three days later, killing 70,000 instantly.
At least 130,000 were to die in the next five years from radiation poisoning.
Why was it dropped?
Was it because, as Truman and Churchill would tirelessly repeat, the Japanese would have stopped at nothing, having internalized a ruthless ethos of suicide warfare, and needed to be subdued through extreme measures including the massacre of their civilian population? Was it to save half a million – wait, a whole million – American soldiers would have been killed in trying to invade Japan?
Or, as some have claimed, was the US merely using this as an excuse to test out its new weapon and to intimidate the world with its incredible potential for instant destruction? There is some evidence for this view. Were the Japanese already trying to surrender? Did the US even have plans to invade? Weren’t the Japanese on the verge of collapse anyway? Weren’t the Soviets already marching toward Japan and poised to invade it? And is there any evidence at all for those figures of “half a million” American lives, or are they just made up by politicians trying to justify their actions?
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Einstein would have been against the production of such a weapon, and he was thus not informed of the project (even though he was German Jew living who had fled the Nazis). General Eisenhower was also against it, since, as he would later assert, by any military estimation Japan was on the verge of collapse and had no hope of holding out when the Soviet army invaded.
Roosevelt had died, so it is not clear what he might have thought, but President Truman was keen to show his gumption and assert American military ruthlessness as part of a new world order. His diary entries show that he was aware the Japanese generals were actively seeking terms of surrender, and that Truman was keen to drop the bomb before time ran out – before the Soviets could invade (thus getting the credit and the historical boost of being the victors, as well as having an army physically occupying Japan and thus able to, say, put a base on Okinawa or any other such terrible thing that only America should have the right to do). And if Japanese generals were actively seeking, through diplomatic channels, terms of surrender with the Soviets, the bomb had to be dropped quickly before any surrender could be fully negotiated and announced.
Moreover, the cities to be bombed were to serve as test subjects for the new weapon – guinea pigs, if you like. The US military needed to find out what its effects would be on all sorts of things: did it knock down buildings, and in how large of a radius? Did it incapacitate industrial production? What effect did it have on agricultural production? Could it wipe out the productive capacity of an entire city? Did it effect people inside stone structures, or only wood ones? What did it do to skin? What did it do to immune systems? What did it do to hair? What did it do to children? What did it do to pregnant women? What did it do to innocent people? Would it also vaporize them?
Thus, the cities to be chosen were to be pristine, they could not be cities that had already been bombed by Allied forces, otherwise there would be no way of telling afterward which bombs created what destruction. Hence, Tokyo, an obvious choice, was out, since it had already been extensively bombed by the Allied forces, killing a cool one hundred thousand civilians. Hiroshima was deliberately spared as a target of bombing while the atomic weapon was being prepared – what was needed was a virgin city to destroy.
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It is clear that the bombing had nothing to do with winning the war or getting Japan to surrender. Telegrams had already been intercepted and decoded that showed Japan, months before, already trying to negotiate terms of surrender with Russia.
Russia was set to invade Japan. There had been a conference at Potsdam, where Roosevelt met with Churchill and Stalin, and they all agreed on a game plan against Japan.
Japan was clearly on its last legs. Subsequent interviews of its military commanders (conducted the just after surrender) have shown that even without any invasion or bombing Japan would have had to surrender by November or December of the same year (1945).
The bomb was rationalized post facto by the assertion that it had “saved American lives” – but this is a pure fiction. Truman states in a speech that it saved “half a million” American lives; Churchill “a million” allied lives – but these numbers are pulled out of thin air – there is nothing to support them. The best intelligence estimates at the time projected the possible loss of 40,000 American military lives if the US had decided to invade Japan.
But there was no need to invade Japan, which was crippled and knew it, and which was actively seeking terms of surrender. The sticking point was merely whether it would be an unconditional surrender or whether there would be some terms. The main term desired by the Japanese side was that they keep their Emperor symbolically in place.
But the US refused even this symbolic gesture, and insisted on an unconditional surrender – which we probably would have gotten soon enough, since Russia was set to march on Japan. With the Russians about to invade Japan, there was a rush to drop the bomb before Japan could surrender and before Russia could get any of the credit for defeating it.
The larger game being played out was at the level of the postwar global hegemony, and the US saw an opportunity to score points in advance against the Russians while testing out a new superweapon – many of the decisions about where to drop it revolved around which targets provided the best conditions for post-drop research.
So the bombs were dropped.
Here are some relevant citations:
General Eisenhower describes his meeting with Stimson, the head of the committee deciding whether to drop the bomb:
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.
US Strategic Bombing Survey (which interviewed high-level Japanese decision-makers immediately after the war):
Based on a detailed investigations of all the facts and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.
Transcript of a German diplomatic report from 5 May 1945, months before the bomb was dropped:
Since the situation is clearly recognized to be hopeless, large sections of the Japanese armed forces would not regard with disfavor an American request for capitulation even if the terms were hard.
Truman personal diary entry, before the bombs were dropped:
… the telegram from Jap emperor asking for peace…
Truman personal diary entry, prior to dropping bomb, regarding recent confirmation that Stalin’s Red Army was planning to march on Japan:
…fini Japs when that comes about…
Secretary of War Henry Stimson to Truman, just prior to Potsdam meeting
[the bomb, tested and ready to use] is a royal straight flush and we mustn’t be a fool about the way we play it.
Japanese Foreign Minister Togo’s wire to Ambassador Sato in Moscow, 13 July 1945, months before the bomb was dropped (intercepted and decoded by US):
Unconditional surrender is the only obstacle to peace. […] It is His Majesty’s heart’s desire to see the swift termination of the war.
Actor Richard Burton [describing his thoughts as he prepared to depict Winston Churchill in a film]:
I realized fresh that I hate Churchill and all of his kind. They have stalked down the corridors of endless power all through history. […] What man of sanity would say on hearing of the atrocities committed by the Japanese [military] […] “We shall wipe them out, everyone of them, men women and children. There shall not be a Japanese left on the face of the earth.”
Mississippi Congressman John Rankin, displaying a typical attitude of delusional racism and hatred toward Japanese, whipped up by the war propaganda machine and which prepared Americans for atrocities without regret against the Japanese :
I’m for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska, and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps. […] Damn them! Let’s get rid of them now!
Time magazine [sometime during the war]:
The ordinary unreasoning Jap is ignorant. Perhaps he is human. Nothing indicates […] it.
US government law, 18 September 1945, only weeks after having dropped the atomic bomb on hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians [the decree formally censored any image or other data about the atrocities in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from entering the US]:
“nothing shall be printed which might, directly or by inference, disturb [US] public tranquility.”
United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Pacific War), July 1 1946
[...] The first and crucial question about the atomic bomb thus was answered practically and conclusively; atomic energy had been mastered for military purposes and the overwhelming scale of its possibilities had been demonstrated. A detailed examination of the physical, economic, and morale effects of the atomic bombs occupied the attention of a major portion of the Survey’s staff in Japan in order to arrive at a more precise definition of the present capabilities and limitations of this radically new weapon of destruction. [...]
The duration of the flash was only a fraction of a second, but it was sufficiently intense to cause third degree burns to exposed human skin up to a distance of a mile. Clothing ignited [...]. Black or other dark-colored surfaces of combustible material absorbed the heat and immediately charred or burst into flames. [...]
Penetrating rays such as gamma-rays exposed X-ray films stored in the basement of a concrete hospital almost a mile from ground zero. Symptoms of their effect on human beings close to the center of the explosion, who survived other effects thereof, were generally delayed fro two or three days. The bone marrow and as a result the process of blood formation were affected. The white corpuscle count went down and the human processes of resisting infection were destroyed. Death generally followed shortly thereafter.
Some sources
Zinn, The Bomb
excellent summary of evidence and sources, and exposition of immorality of killing of civilians for political reasons
Alperowitz, Gar, Atomic Diplomacy
research into the papers of US political figures surrounding Truman,(including Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of Navy James Forrestal, personal adviser James Byrnes)
Takaki, Ronald, Hiroshima, Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb, 1995
Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings
Kuznick, Peter, “The Decision to Risk the Future: Harry Truman, the Atomic Bomb and the Apocalyptic Narrative”
excellent and well-documented account of the context of the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Dower, John, War Without Mercy, 1987
Seldong, Mark, “Remembering ‘The Good War’: The Atomic Bombing and the Internment of Japanese-Americans in U.S. History Textbooks”, 2005
Remembering ‘The Good War’: The Atomic Bombing and the Internment of Japanese-Americans in U.S. History Textbooks
http://www.japanfocus.org/-Mark-Selden/1943
Critical examination of 19 American history textbooks from 1958-2000, regarding their treatment of the US war with Japan during WWII, including treatment of the dropping of the atomic bombs, the forced interning of American civilians of Japanese descent, and the firebombing of Tokyo.
COLOR VIDEO Shot in the aftermath of the war, featuring appalling injuries to civilians, beginning with a woman who was carrying her child when the bomb went off. this material was long suppressed in the US, and to some extent still is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Medical_aspect,_Hiroshima,_Japan,_1946-03-23,_342-USAF-11034.ogv
These are the charred and twisted remains of a lunchbox that was being carried by a young schoolboy (or schoolgirl, the records I’ve seen aren’t clear) on his or her way to school on the day that the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
The Smithsonian was going to put this on display, but soon caved to pressure (from coercively patriotic Americans) and cancelled the exhibit. (See here, and here). According to some, the display of such items would leave upon Americans “strong emotional impressions” that were apparently contrary to the Truth of History as it ought to be perceived and narrated.
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[Noam Chomsky, 1967, in response to letter criticizing his position condemning the dropping of the bomb:] I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are “among the most unspeakable crimes in history.” I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on. Others have been less reticent. For example, the leading Asian representative on the Tokyo Tribunal, Justice R. Pal of India, stated in his dissenting opinion that the decision to use the atom bomb “is the only near approach” in the Pacific war to the Nazi crimes. And that “nothing like this could be traced to the credit of the present accused.” For what it is worth, I think that he is right, and that the bombing of Nagasaki, in particular, was history’s most abominable experiment. To argue this point, one would have to analyze the decision to use the bomb and the basis for demanding an unconditional victory in the first place. This is not the place for such a review, obviously, but I do think that an intensive study of this question is an inescapable task for any thinking person in the United States — specifically, for anyone who feels inclined to censure Germany for its failure to face up to the crimes of the Nazi era.
and
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/294914-1
and
http://vodpod.com/watch/15739602-hiroshima-one-year-after-a-bomb-video-wired?u=beautype&c=beautype
and, strangely
