Tomorrow will mark the anniversary of one of the most morally contentious events of the 20th century, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. And after 58 years, there's an emerging consensus: we Americans have blood on our hands.

There has been a chorus here and abroad that the U.S. has little moral standing on the issue of weapons of mass destruction because we were the first to use the atomic bomb. As Nelson Mandela said of Americans in a speech on Jan. 31, "Because they decided to kill innocent people in Japan, who are still suffering from that, who are they now to pretend that they are the policeman of the world?"

The traditional American position, that our intention in dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki was to end the war early and save lives, has been poked full of holes. Revisionist historians like Gar Alperovitz argue persuasively that Washington believed the bombing militarily unnecessary (except to establish American primacy in the postwar order) because, as the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey put it in 1946, "in all probability" Japan would have surrendered even without the atomic bombs.

Yet this emerging consensus is, I think, profoundly mistaken.

While American scholarship has undercut the U.S. moral position, Japanese historical research has bolstered it. The Japanese scholarship, by historians like Sadao Asada of Doshisha University in Kyoto, notes that Japanese wartime leaders who favored surrender saw their salvation in the atomic bombing. The Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up, so the peace faction seized upon the bombing as a new argument to force surrender.

"We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war," Koichi Kido, one of Emperor Hirohito's closest aides, said later.

Wartime records and memoirs show that the emperor and some of his aides wanted to end the war by summer 1945. But they were vacillating and couldn't prevail over a military that was determined to keep going even if that meant, as a navy official urged at one meeting, "sacrificing 20 million Japanese lives."

The atomic bombings broke this political stalemate and were thus described by Mitsumasa Yonai, the navy minister at the time, as a "gift from heaven."

Without the atomic bombings, Japan would have continued fighting by inertia. This would have meant more firebombing of Japanese cities and a ground invasion, planned for November 1945, of the main Japanese islands. The fighting over the small, sparsely populated islands of Okinawa had killed 14,000 Americans and 200,000 Japanese, and in the main islands the toll would have run into the millions.

"The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war," Hisatsune Sakomizu, the chief cabinet secretary in 1945, said later.

Some argue that the U.S. could have demonstrated the bomb on an uninhabited island, or could have encouraged surrender by promising that Japan could keep its emperor. Yes, perhaps, and we should have tried. We could also have waited longer before dropping the second bomb, on Nagasaki.

But, sadly, the record suggests that restraint would not have worked. The Japanese military ferociously resisted surrender even after two atomic bombings on major cities, even after Soviet entry into the war, even when it expected another atomic bomb — on Tokyo.

One of the great tales of World War II concerns an American fighter pilot named Marcus McDilda who was shot down on Aug. 8 and brutally interrogated about the atomic bombs. He knew nothing, but under torture he "confessed" that the U.S. had 100 more nuclear weapons and planned to destroy Tokyo "in the next few days." The war minister informed the cabinet of this grim news — but still adamantly opposed surrender. In the aftermath of the atomic bombing, the emperor and peace faction finally insisted on surrender and were able to prevail.

It feels unseemly to defend the vaporizing of two cities, events that are regarded in some quarters as among the most monstrous acts of the 20th century. But we owe it to history to appreciate that the greatest tragedy of Hiroshima was not that so many people were incinerated in an instant, but that in a complex and brutal world, the alternatives were worse.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/05/nyt.kristof/index.html

Personally I laugh at the revisionist historians' stance on the issue ... it's like somebody trying to take a panorama picture with horse blinders on. Plus I find it terribly ironic how they convenientely ignore conventional bombing conducted by participants in their moral case study. Oh well, thought the article was interesting to share.

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Last edited by occrider on Aug-05-2003 at 20:42

nice article, thanks

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If God is the answer, it must have been a very stupid question.

That was interesting. One rarely ever hears the Japanese point of view when it comes to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I guess the US could have come up with a less drastic measure to end the war.

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Intersting article, thanks !

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quote:

end the war early and save lives

i fail to realize how killing 100,000 civilians in an instant is saving lives

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Ugh, typical utilitarianistic moral pragmatism (see every US philosopher that ever lived - James, Dewey etc.). "Sure we killed 150,000 people, and caused radioactive poisoning and mutant births in the area for the next 30 years, but hey, it ended the war didn't it? If a terribly weakened Japan forced onto the defensive hadn't had those bombs dropped on it who knows how many deaths it may have caused? Therefore, we did the right thing."

I liked this line though:

quote:

And after 58 years, there's an emerging consensus: we Americans have blood on our hands.

It took 58 years?

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If the americans hadnt dropped the bombs on Japan, they would have kept on fighting, and the Soviet Union would surely have invaded Japan after having made short work of the Japanese army on the mainland.

The amount of people who died in Nagasaki and Hiroshima would have dwarfed in comparision to how many people would have been murdered in a Soviet occupation.

It's too bad that some people think we live in an ideal world.. We aren't! If you think you can end a war without a casualty you are an idiot. It's a pity that it took too many lives to end Japanese war, but the alternatives were even worse. Besides, if they didn't drop nuclear bomb on japan at the time, they would have surely dropped it 10 years from then(on Soviet Union maybe??), and it would've been much much worse.

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A couple of things confuse me about this, and if anyone could answer them I'd appreciate it. I'm not well-read on the subject so these questions are borne out of curiosity.

Firstly, regardless of the first bomb, was there any great need for the second bomb? The US only allowed 3 days for a surrender before dropping the second, that seems pretty short to me. 3 days is plenty of time to say you surrender, of course, but dropping an atomic bomb is a massive decision not to be taken lightly. At the time the US only had 2 bombs (to my understanding). She obviously wouldn't surrender after one, so why was the US so confident they'd surrender after two? What if Japan called her bluff (that they had more) and still didn't surrender - you'd have just dropped two atom bombs for nothing. Why were the US so confident that the second bomb would make them surrender when the first obviously hadn't??

Secondly, was a land invasion of Japan really the only alternative? Japan is an island with few natural resources, couldn't we have surrounded her and still have deprived her of her valiant last stand? She'd have withered away with no dignity, her troops with noone to fight.

quote:

Originally posted by rupert If the americans hadnt dropped the bombs on Japan, they would have kept on fighting, and the Soviet Union would surely have invaded Japan after having made short work of the Japanese army on the mainland. The amount of people who died in Nagasaki and Hiroshima would have dwarfed in comparision to how many people would have been murdered in a Soviet occupation.

Wow, Rupert and I agree on something? At any rate, I can argue this issue from a million standpoints. For one, how about total war? In a situation where an entire nation's GDP, economy, and resources is geared towards total war, there are no hold backs except for previously agreed upon rules of warfare ... of which I might add the Japanese did not even abide to. Every side engaged in total war, every side engaged in strategic bombing, and every side used every weapon in their arsenal except for chemical weapons as stipulated by the Geneva convention. And every side was seeking to harness the power of the atom I might add.

Secondly if you have studied any history of the pacific theater of combat operations you would know of the enormous number of lifes lost on the island hopping campaign ... especially Iwo Jima and Okinawa. In Okinawa something like 50,000 casualties were suffered by the Americans. Meanwhile the Americans inflicted 107,000 military casualties, and over 100,000 civilian casualties. In most cases, the number of Japanese who actually surrendered numbered in the low hundreds. The number who fought to the death numbered in the 10s of thousands. Now consider the Japanese civil defense programs designed to arm civilians age 16-65 with bamboo sticks to fight off an american invasion, not to mention a whole new realm of suicidal fanaticism to defend the homeland islands, and I think that you're going to see casualties numbering far greater than 100,000 Japanese. Simply read about operation Coronet ... the planned invasion of the homeland. US casualties alone were estimated to be 1 million men. Now consider the shore bombardments, strategic/tactical bombings, and artillery attacks used to ferret out the Japanese from caves, foxholes, etc., and I think you'll see Japanese casualties most certainly being in the millions. For christ's sake, there were Japanese that were still in hiding thinking the war was still going on who were discovered in the 70's AND the 90's!!! Just look at Berlin 1945 ... look how many casualties the Russians and Germans suffered. Look at the devastation and casualties in that city. Now picture that happening in eveyr single Japanese city.

That was one factor alone ... then consider the Soviet intentions to invade Japan as well in order to divide up Japan much like Europe. It was no coincidence the Soviets declared war and invaded Manchuria right after the dropping of the first bomb. The Japanese unconditional surrender enabled the sole occupation of Japan by America thereby limiting Soviet expansion into all of Eastern Asia.

Finally, I consider all the questioning about the entire issue due to its "levity" to simply be asinine.

Firebombing of Dresden: 135,000 casualties
Firebombing of Tokyo: 100,000 casualties
Hiroshima: 66,000
Nagisaki: 39,000

No seriously, I love how everybody likes to impose 21st century morality on 20th century total war . I bet a whoooole lot of people were crying about it being "wrong" in 1945 ... especially the Chinese in Nanking.

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Last edited by occrider on Aug-06-2003 at 15:45

quote:

Originally posted by evil_bastard A couple of things confuse me about this, and if anyone could answer them I'd appreciate it. I'm not well-read on the subject so these questions are borne out of curiosity. Firstly, regardless of the first bomb, was there any great need for the second bomb? The US only allowed 3 days for a surrender before dropping the second, that seems pretty short to me. 3 days is plenty of time to say you surrender, of course, but dropping an atomic bomb is a massive decision not to be taken lightly. At the time the US only had 2 bombs (to my understanding). She obviously wouldn't surrender after one, so why was the US so confident they'd surrender after two? What if Japan called her bluff (that they had more) and still didn't surrender - you'd have just dropped two atom bombs for nothing. Why were the US so confident that the second bomb would make them surrender when the first obviously hadn't?? Secondly, was a land invasion of Japan really the only alternative? Japan is an island with few natural resources, couldn't we have surrounded her and still have deprived her of her valiant last stand? She'd have withered away with no dignity, her troops with noone to fight.

Part of the reason was to bluff the Japanese into thinking that there were more atomic bombs. The idea was to push the Japanese military over the edge and convince them that more atomic bombs would continue to be dropped until they surrendered. Much like the article stated, they were very much so encouraged by that american pilot who told them that the Americans had hundreds of more bombs.

Secondly time was a factor, a hasty surrender of Japan was critical in order to avoid Soviet participation in an invasion of Japan. Do you think the Soviets would have sat on their asses while we blockaded the Japanese? Hell no, just look at the gusto with which they attacked berlin ... we said no thanks to that mess. Additionally there's no indication the Japanese would even surrender if they were starving ... if Truman had sat on his ass would he have been critisized for allowing the entire population to starve instead of ending the war with the atomic bombs?

Lastly, this is no Vietnam, Korea, Gulf war, war on terror, or anything close to what we've seen or experienced. We're talking about two countries engaged in total war. It is not the responsibility of the parties involved to give each other time to consider surrendering ... or to not use a bomb because it's too big, a rifle because it's too effective, a jet airplane that can murder bombers, etc. Every side engaged in unrestricted submarine warfare, every side strategically bombed, the Germans used their latest rocketry technology to launch V2s into England, the Japanese utilized kamikazee attacks, the Brits firebombed German cities, the Americans annihilated the Japanese civilian and military shipping industry .... this is not the same type of war any of us is familiar with, and it's ridiculous to look back with the mentality we have today to critisize some of the decisions made by wartime leaders back then. After losing 300,000 casualties by 1945, Truman would have been impeached if he didn't opt to save American lives.

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Very interesting and insightful commentary, Occrider. It's interesting to see some Japanese input on the matter that supports the author's point.

I remember talking about this subject ad nauseum many years ago. Given the circumstances, as well as Truman being the new guy in charge, I'm sure there were a few separate motives at work, however in the end Truman did what leaders do. He(along with whoever else he consulted) made the tough decision, but made the decision that was determined, at the time, to be the most effective and appropriate course of action to try and put an end to the war. I really don't think the U.S. wanted to be involved in a 2 front war any longer than necessary, so perhaps the use of overwhelming force was justified in that regard (it worked).

Should the U.S. have dropped a second bomb? While maybe there was some aspect of showmanship, I tend to believe that dropping 1 showed the U.S. had the means to stop the Japanese, while dropping the second one showed that she had the will to do what it took.

Perhaps the first one was to get their attention and the second one was a little bit of payback for Pearl Harbor. Perhaps not. Either way, it's easy to look back now and take a revisionis approach and criticise the U.S. as Occrider pointed out, but having the luxury of 50 years of post war perspective was not something that was available in the decision making process in 1945.

I tend to believe that after being deeply entrenched in a war for 5 years probably added a little conviction to the decision to put a swift and decisive end to the conflict. It was no doubt a dark and sad decision, but it would appear that the alternatives were, at best, no better than the solution that was implemented in the end.