[BRIEF NOTE] More on Hiroshima
Aug. 9th, 2005 11:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldFrom the very interesting conclusion of Tsuyoshi Hasegawa's 2005 tome Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan (Cambridge and London: Belknap Press of Harvard, 2005), in reply to queerbychoice and gunlord:
Footnote 1 refers to the 1996 edition of Gar Alperovitz' The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. Footnotes 2 and 3 refer to Barton Bernstein's paper "Compelling Japan's Surrender without the A-Bomb, Soviet Entry, or Invasion: Reconsidering the U.S. Bombing Survey's Early-Surrender Conclusion," published in the June 1995 issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies 18.2, pages 101 to 148. I lack access to this journal article, unfortunately, as I'm no longer an academic. Can someone still so blessed oblige me with an e-copy?
Hasegawa argues that Truman wanted to avoid Operation Downfall, the two-stage invasion of mainland Japan projected to produce millions of casualties, and saw the atomic bomb as the best way to force Japan to surrender. He also notes that Truman didn't believe that Japan was truly interested in surrendering, and that the expense put into Los Alamos almost required the bomb's usage. Finally, the atomic bomb wasn't nearly so threatening to Japan as the Soviet Union's invasion of the Japanese empire, since this invasion not only threatened metropolitan Japan and removed the last glimmer of a possibility that the Soviets were interested in mediating a surrender peace. If the United States had waited, Japan might well have faced the unenviable situation of a Soviet occupation of Hokkaido, bloody American invasions of Kyushu and the Kanto Plain, and the casual American use of nuclear weapons not as war-ending devices but rather as heavy artillery.
In conclusion, he notes that "[a]lthough much of what revisionist historians argue is faulty and based on tendentious use of sources, they nonetheless deserve credit for raising an important moral issue that challenges the standard American narrative of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (300). It is true that the role of the atomic bomb in the Japanese government's desire to surrender is debatable, but the decision to use the atomic bomb seems to have been a defensible policy choice that did save American lives and, indirectly, many more Japanese lives. The ethics of total war remain debatable as always, but the argument that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed on a whim doesn't seem to be supportable.
Without the atomic bombs and without the Soviet entry into the war, would Japan have surrendered before November 1, the day Operation Olympic was scheduled to begin?
The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, published in 1946, concluded that Japan would have surrendered before November 1 without the atomic bombs and without Soviet entry into the war. This conclusion has become the foundation on which revisionist historians have constructed their argument that the atomic bombs were not necessary for Japan's surrender (1). Since Barton Bernstein has persuasively demonstrated in his critique of the Survey that its conclusion is not supported by its own evidence, I need not dwell on this supposition (2). The main objective of the study's principal author, Paul Nitze, was to prove that conventional bombings, coupled with the naval blockade, would have induced Japan to surrender before November 1. But Nitze's conclusion was repeatedly contradicted by the evidence provided in the Survey itself. For instance, to the question, "How much longer do you think the war might have continued had the atomic bomb not been dropped?" Prince Konoe answered "Probably it would have lasted all this year. Bernstein introduced numerous other testimonies by Toyoda, Kido, Suzuki, Hiranuma, Sakomizu, and others to contradict the Survey's conclusion. As Bernstein asserts, the Survey is "an unreliable guide" (3).
The Japanese leaders knew that Japan was losing the war. But defeat and surrender are not synonymous. Surrender is a political act. Without the twin shocks of the atomic bombs and Soviet entry into the war, the Japanese would never have accepted surrender in August (294-295).
Footnote 1 refers to the 1996 edition of Gar Alperovitz' The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb. Footnotes 2 and 3 refer to Barton Bernstein's paper "Compelling Japan's Surrender without the A-Bomb, Soviet Entry, or Invasion: Reconsidering the U.S. Bombing Survey's Early-Surrender Conclusion," published in the June 1995 issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies 18.2, pages 101 to 148. I lack access to this journal article, unfortunately, as I'm no longer an academic. Can someone still so blessed oblige me with an e-copy?
Hasegawa argues that Truman wanted to avoid Operation Downfall, the two-stage invasion of mainland Japan projected to produce millions of casualties, and saw the atomic bomb as the best way to force Japan to surrender. He also notes that Truman didn't believe that Japan was truly interested in surrendering, and that the expense put into Los Alamos almost required the bomb's usage. Finally, the atomic bomb wasn't nearly so threatening to Japan as the Soviet Union's invasion of the Japanese empire, since this invasion not only threatened metropolitan Japan and removed the last glimmer of a possibility that the Soviets were interested in mediating a surrender peace. If the United States had waited, Japan might well have faced the unenviable situation of a Soviet occupation of Hokkaido, bloody American invasions of Kyushu and the Kanto Plain, and the casual American use of nuclear weapons not as war-ending devices but rather as heavy artillery.
In conclusion, he notes that "[a]lthough much of what revisionist historians argue is faulty and based on tendentious use of sources, they nonetheless deserve credit for raising an important moral issue that challenges the standard American narrative of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" (300). It is true that the role of the atomic bomb in the Japanese government's desire to surrender is debatable, but the decision to use the atomic bomb seems to have been a defensible policy choice that did save American lives and, indirectly, many more Japanese lives. The ethics of total war remain debatable as always, but the argument that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed on a whim doesn't seem to be supportable.
