The Atomic Bomb and Hiroshima: The “least abhorrent choice”
Guest post by Michael Ezra
Few events in the history of the United States have been more controversial than President Harry S. Truman’s decisions in 1945 to use the atomic bomb against Japan. On August 6 of that year an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Three days later another bomb fell on Nagasaki. These cities were chosen for their military significance. As Henry Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War, who recommended the bombing, put it:
Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Japanese Army defending southern Japan and was a major military storage and assembly point. Nagasaki was a major seaport and it contained several large industrial plants of great wartime importance. [1]
While estimates of the number of casualties vary, the US Strategic Bombing Survey put the mid- estimate for Hiroshima at 75,000 dead, and for Nagasaki at 35,000 dead. These figures include the fallout from radiation. There is no doubt that most of the dead were innocent civilians. [2]
That some regard this decision as a war crime is understandable. It is also a simplistic view that ignores the horrors of the alternatives.
Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces on May 8, 1945. Japan did not. On July 26, 1945 the leaders of the United States, Great Britain and Nationalist China issued the Potsdam Declaration. This declaration called on Japan “to proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces… The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.” [3] Japanese Prime Minister Suzuki Kantaro announced the following the day that their government would “ignore” the Potsdam Declaration. The word he actually used was “Mokusatsu.” This word, as Sadao Asada comments, “has been variously translated as ‘withhold comments,’ ‘treat with silent contempt,’ ‘ignore with contempt,’ ‘unworthy of public notice,’ and even ‘reject.’”[4]
On December 7, 1941, Japan had attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor killing over 2,000 Americans and wounding many more. The Japanese later shelled an oil storage field near Santa Barbara and bombed Oregon. Moreover, nearly one thousand Japanese balloon bombs reached the United States and many more reached Canada.[5]
This was not the first Japanese aggression.
In 1931, Japan had ruthlessly taken control of Manchuria and by 1937, Japan had invaded the rest of China. One particularly horrific Japanese atrocity was the Rape of Nanking. Estimates of those massacred range from 45,000 to 350,000.[6] “By the beginning of 1945,” notes David Gordon, “the Japanese occupied more Chinese territory than at any time since 1937.”[7]
On the day of the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese had invaded Thailand.[8] The Japanese also attacked Malaya and the Philippines. Before the end of 1941 the Japanese had invaded Burma and Hong Kong. In 1942, Singapore fell and Japan attacked Australia.[9] Excluding American casualties, over 17 million deaths are attributable to the Japanese Empire between 1931 and 1945.[10]
By April 1945, the Japanese were anticipating an American invasion. Their strategy was to inflict as much damage as possible on American troops. In addition to ground troops, they had a kamikaze air strength totaling over 4,800.[11] The assault, known as OLYMPIC, was being planned for the southern Japanese island of Kyushu and was due to commence on November 1, 1945. As the military historian Edward Drea notes, US intelligence had decrypted countless messages from Japanese high command that “underlined Japanese determination to fight to the death.”[12] General MacArthur predicted 105,500 casualties in the first ninety days and a further 12,600 non-battle losses.[13] The Japanese army was estimated to be 5 million in size [14] and reinforcements were flooding into Kyushu, with an estimated 560,000 troops there by the beginning of August. There were also 773 kamikaze planes in Kyushu; naval authorities thought that these alone could sink 30-40 percent of the incoming convoy. The intelligence was clear.[15]
The potential loss of life was horrific. As Truman subsequently wrote to a correspondent, the use of the atomic bomb was “a means to end the war and save 250,000 men from being killed on our side, and that many on the Japanese side, plus twice that many being injured for life.” [16] Truman’s figures, frequently criticised as excessive, may have been underestimates. Former President Herbert Hoover had compiled a report predicting that the invasion would cost 500,000-1,000,000 lives.[17] A study by the Nobel laureate William Shockley had concluded:
the Japanese dead and ineffectives at the time of the defeat will exceed the corresponding number for the Germans. In other words, we shall probably have to kill at least 5 to 10 million Japanese. This might cost us between 1.7 and 4 million casualties including between 400,000 and 800,000 killed.[18]
In his definitive recent study, Richard Frank estimates the number of Japanese civilian and military deaths from a land invasion on Kyushu alone at between “580,000 and 630,000 at the very low end.”[19] The use of the atomic bomb averted this scenario. Moreover, as D. M. Giangreco and Kathryn Moore have pointed out, production of Purple Hearts for injured soldiers dramatically increased as the invasion approached. The end of the war meant that these were not required. The US ended the war with “The most wonderful of all its surplus: 495,000 unused Purple Hearts.”[20]
I agree with the words of Henry Stimson from 1947:
The decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over a hundred thousand Japanese. No explanation can change that fact and I do not wish to gloss over it. But this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice. The destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki put an end to the Japanese war.[21]
To those who argue that the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a crime, I reply: it would have been a greater crime not to use it.
End Notes
[1] Henry L. Stimson, “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” Harper’s Magazine, 194, February 1947 pp. 97-107. Available on line
[2] “United States Strategic Bombing Survey: The Effects of the Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” June 30, 1946. (Confidential File, Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri) p. 15. Available on line (N.B. Large file)
Barton Bernstein gives the range of deaths from the two bombs from 100,000 which he considers too low to 340,000 which he views as way too high. Barton J Bernstein, “Truman and the A-Bomb: Targeting Noncombatants, Using the Bomb, and His Defending the ‘Decision’”, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 3. (Jul., 1998), pp. 547-570. Richard Frank, gives a range of 100,000-200,000 dead in both cities. Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, (London: Penguin Books, 2001) p. 287
[3] Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War, Volume 6: Triumph and Tragedy, (London: Penguin Books, 2005) pp. 556-557
[4] Sadao Asada, “The Shock of the Atomic Bomb and Japan’s Decision to Surrender: A Reconsideration,” Pacific Historical Review Vol. 67, No. 4, (November 1998) pp. 477-512
[5] Clark G. Reynolds, “Submarine Attacks on the Pacific Coast, 1942,” The Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 33, No. 2. (May, 1964), pp. 183-193, John. E. Pike, Bruce G. Blair and Stephen I. Schwartz, “Defending Against the Bomb,” in Stephen I. Schwartz ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940. (Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 1998) pp. 269-326
[6] David M. Gordon, “The China-Japan War, 1931-1945,” The Journal of Military History Vol. 70 (January 2006) pp. 137-182.
[7] Ibid.
[8]Kenneth P. Landon, “Thai Non-Resistance: A Footnote to History,” Far Eastern Survey, Vol. 13, No. 23. (Nov. 15, 1944), pp. 220-222.
[9]Daniel Marston ed. The Pacific War Companion: From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima, (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2007) pp. 12-15
[10] Robert P. Newman, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995) p. 138
[11]Robert A. Pape, “Why Japan Surrendered,” International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2. (Autumn, 1993), pp. 154-201
[12] Edward J. Drea, “Previews of Hell: Intelligence, the Bomb, and the Invasion of Japan,” MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History Vol. 7 No. 3 (Spring 1995) pp. 74-81.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Henry L. Stimson, “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” op. cit.
[15] Edward J. Drea, “Previews of Hell: Intelligence, the Bomb, and the Invasion of Japan,” op. cit.
[16] Harry S. Truman to Mrs. Haydon Klein, Jr., August 4, 1964. (Post- Presidential File, Truman Papers, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri.) Available on line
[17] D.M. Giangreco, “‘A Score of Bloody Okinawas and Iwo Jimas’: President Truman and Casualty Estimates for the Invasion of Japan,” Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 72. No. 1 pp. 93-132
[18] D. M. Giangreco, “Casualty Projections For the U.S. Invasions Of Japan, 1945-1946: Planning and Policy Implications,” Journal of Military History, Vol. 61, No. 3, (July 1997), pp. 521-581. Available on line
[19] Richard B. Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, op. cit., p. 194
[20]D. M. Giangreco and Kathryn Moore, “Half a Million Purple Hearts,” in Robert James Maddox ed., Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism, (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2007) pp. 116-119
[21] Henry L. Stimson, “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” op. cit.
Comments
| 10 May 2008, 2:21 am |
An excellent and (obviously) well researched post, Michael. All I can say is I wish it hadn’t been necessary. But it was, for the reason you clearly illustrate.
I’d argue that this is a good reason to maintain an overwhelmingly superior (conventional) military force. Especially if you’re the good guys.
| 10 May 2008, 2:23 am |
Oh dear. Flanky’s blown a gasket. :D
| 10 May 2008, 2:27 am |
To those who argue that the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a crime, I reply: it would have been a greater crime not to use it.
That’s a remarkable sentence in itself.
Moral relativism, we are told, is bad thing. What is this then? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bad, possibly a crime, but okay, because we can think of a situation that may have been worse?
Well, that’s a lot of free rein you give to the higher ups! Prior to the invasion of Iraq, our political masters evoked visions of mushroom clouds.
And of course, in dropping these nuclear bombs the Americans only had pure, altruistic motives. Not for them the deadly game of realpolitik
Oh no. Perish the thought.
| 10 May 2008, 2:28 am |
To those who argue that the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a crime, I reply: it would have been a greater crime not to use it.
That’s a remarkable sentence in itself.
Moral relativism, we are told, is bad thing. What is this then? Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bad, possibly a crime, but okay, because we can think of a situation that may have been worse?
Well, that’s a lot of free rein you give to the higher ups! Prior to the invasion of Iraq, our political masters evoked visions of mushroom clouds.
And of course, in dropping these nuclear bombs the Americans only had pure, altruistic motives. Not for them the deadly game of realpolitik.
Oh no. Perish the thought.
| 10 May 2008, 2:37 am |
Michael Ezra has presented us with a mountain of evidence indicating it wasn’t a case of realpolitik. So yes, I will perish the thought.
| 10 May 2008, 2:39 am |
I think Flanker is wrong on the particulars (The question was about what Powers the Emperor would have after the surrender, I believe) but correct in his general point that the Japanese were willing to negotiate a conditional surrender.
The revisionism that makes Nagasaki and Hiroshima the crowning crimes of WWII usually defends the perogatives of the Emperor. Thats what ind of democrats these revisionists are.
Another favorite argument of this same school is that the USA provoked Japan’s attack upon Pearl Harbor. Much blather about the evil USA cutting off supplies of oil and raw materials. No talk at all about
Japan’s vicious conquests of Korea and China, and the millions they had already killed.
| 10 May 2008, 2:50 am |
“Prior to the invasion of Iraq, our political masters evoked visions of mushroom clouds.”
As though visions of mushroom clouds aren’t a relevant consideration, and as though Saddam was too much the humanitarian to aid and abet in any such effort.
Remember a once common anti-war argument: that Saddam was a rational actor and would do nothing so foolish as to bring about his own destruction? Why did that one get retired?
The possibility of a major Western city going up in a mushroom cloud
| 10 May 2008, 2:52 am |
I have a question for Michael. I heard somewhere that a “demonstration” detonation was considered. Perhaps in a sparsely populated area or even off the coast of Japan. Do you have any information on this?
| 10 May 2008, 3:17 am |
“I have a question for Michael. I heard somewhere that a “demonstration” detonation was considered. Perhaps in a sparsely populated area or even off the coast of Japan. Do you have any information on this?”
Civilian deaths would have been 0, so it is evident it was quickly discarded.
| 10 May 2008, 3:20 am |
Flanker is full of shit as usual as he distorts the record. What the Japanese Govt. was trying to do before Hiroshima was to have a limited “surrender” that would preserve “the Imperial System”, i.e. the form of Imperial govt that the militarists had controlled. What the Japanese wanted was to have the sort of settlement that Germany had gotten after WWI that basically left their war making capacity intact. The US was determined not to repeat that mistake which is why we insisted on Unconditional Surrender and full Allied Military Occupation of Japan in order to change its political, military & economic system so that it would not again threaten its neighbors.
While there has been a lot of criticism over the years of the use of nuclear weapons on the Japanese particulary in regards to civilian deaths, it is forgotten that the Fire bomb raids against Tokyo in March 1945 killed far more Japanese, about 100,000, then either Hiroshima or Nagasaki did. These and the fire bomb raids against other Japanese cities were devasting and caused the Japanese to start through third parties to send out feelers about ending the war. The Fire bomb raids brought Japan’s authoritarian govt part of the way to Unconditional Surrender. It would take both atomic bombs and Russia’s entry into the War to bring the Japanese govt. the rest of the way.
Note: Russia’s entry was important since they quickly overrun Japan’s main source of raw materials in Manchuria and threathen an invasion of northern Japan to go with the American invasion in southern Japan.
| 10 May 2008, 3:20 am |
Boogski - I have also read that, but I can’t find a source. The explanation I read was that this was rejected because it was judged that the USA had too little suitably enriched fissile material to be able to “afford to waste” it on such a demonstration. IOW, there were too few nukes to be able to back up the threat after the demonstration.
| 10 May 2008, 3:24 am |
Also it was thought that a demonstration in an unihabited area would not be impresive enough. Also there was the extreme difficulty, to put it mildly, of arranging such a demonstration that could be viewed by Japanese Offiicals in the middle of a World War.
| 10 May 2008, 3:31 am |
Good Post, Michael.
| 10 May 2008, 3:33 am |
“Flanker is full of shit as usual as he distorts the record. What the Japanese Govt. was trying to do before Hiroshima was to have a limited “surrender” that would preserve “the Imperial System”, i.e. the form of Imperial govt that the militarists had controlled. What the Japanese wanted was to have the sort of settlement that Germany had gotten after WWI that basically left their war making capacity intact. The US was determined not to repeat that mistake which is why we insisted on Unconditional Surrender and full Allied Military Occupation of Japan in order to change its political, military & economic system so that it would not again threaten its neighbors.”
Wrong dodo, The Japanesse were willing to surrender by around Yalta, only condition? to keep the emperor. What did the two nukes result in? them keeping their emperor…
“It would take both atomic bombs”
Fabrications made to justify genocide.
“Boogski - I have also read that, but I can’t find a source. The explanation I read was that this was rejected because it was judged that the USA had too little suitably enriched fissile material to be able to “afford to waste” it on such a demonstration. IOW, there were too few nukes to be able to back up the threat after the demonstration.”
Genocide is definitely an attention grabber.
“Also it was thought that a demonstration in an unihabited area would not be impresive enough. Also there was the extreme difficulty, to put it mildly, of arranging such a demonstration that could be viewed by Japanese Offiicals in the middle of a World War.”
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
| 10 May 2008, 3:39 am |
Samuel
The point is this: moral relativism, lesser evilism, often the scourge of the many here, is employed to support nuclear bombing. Not only moral relativism, but also regarding a supposed event. Nuclear bombing is okay because something worse may have happened.
Regarding Iraq, we all knew Saddam was a bad man. But not even Bush thought he could justify war purely on the basis of that. Hence the notion of threat had to be played up; thus stories of an imminent nuclear bomb, and other nasties, were fed to the pliant media.
Whatever one thinks of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the notion of justifying it on the basis of moral relativism based on a supposed event is suspect, and ultimately very dangerous.
Let’s also throw in Nanking, and the awful atrocities committed by the Japanese there. So, what an uncivilised lot they were. This can be fed into a general justification for the nuclear bombing of Japanese cities.
It’s a logical argument of course; moreover, you can comfort yourself with that thought as you pick and stumble your way through the piles of corpses that are the inevitable result of this logic.
No doubt this carnage continue.
| 10 May 2008, 3:52 am |
“The point is this: moral relativism, lesser evilism, often the scourge of the many here, is employed to support nuclear bombing. Not only moral relativism, but also regarding a supposed event. Nuclear bombing is okay because something worse may have happened.”
Not only that but even what “may” have happened is so unrealistically remote it is absurd, Japan would have surrendered, keeping their emperor and 0 civilian deaths, THAT was what MAY have happened. So yes Boogosky I got worked up, congratulations, I hate genocide, good day.
| 10 May 2008, 4:01 am |
Of course, I have heard Japanese atrocities against the Chinese, such as in Nanking (merely a particularly bad example of the carnage and mass killing of many millions of Chinese) used as a general justification for US actions in the war against Japan, most notably nuclear bombing.
There are many problems with that rationale, of course. One rather glaring one is that the US and UK did not care very deeply about the fate of the Chinese under the Japanese Empire; it was merely a case of choosing between the Communists and Nationalists (both suspect in there own ways) to fight the Japanese. But the justification for fighting the Japanese Empire was not about the atrocities of that empire per se.
Winston Churchill, in his history of the World War, barely mentions Nanking or the millions of Chinese dead under Japanese rule, despite this being an atrocity that rivals the Nazi’s. (The Chinese Communists, of course, committed atrocities on the scale of Nanking, or worse - and not against the Japanese!).
| 10 May 2008, 4:02 am |
Thanks guys. I can see the dilemma. Jeez. Can you imagine?
What an awful (however correct) decision to have to make.
| 10 May 2008, 4:14 am |
Benjamin: moral relativism, lesser evilism, often the scourge of the many here, is employed to support nuclear bombing. Not only moral relativism, but also regarding a supposed event. Nuclear bombing is okay because something worse may have happened.
This is not moral relativism. It is consequentialism.
| 10 May 2008, 4:22 am |
Whatever you call it, Jeff.
Certainly the tenor of the argument is not about stating that the nuclear bombing was a good thing per se. The bombing is, as they say, ‘regrettable’.
The justification for this sad event is that a sadder one was avoided. Hence, this supposed sadder event ‘cancels out’ Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As I discuss, it’s an interesting technique.
| 10 May 2008, 4:25 am |
I’m convinced that it isn’t the number of casualties that’s got some people upset but more the speed with which they were annihilated. What arrogance these Americans must have had to be as instantly destructive as only mother nature could up to that point. You just don’t do that. It’s not allowed.
| 10 May 2008, 4:33 am |
And the speed of the killing is the function of what? Nuclear weaponry: so far, in history of the military industrial complex, the most powerful single weapon it has produced. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are just the firecrackers of modern arsenals.
| 10 May 2008, 4:44 am |
You missed the point, Benjamin. It was mentioned upthread that some of the fire bombings were just as destructive if not more. But it was stretched out over time, not instantaneous.
| 10 May 2008, 5:25 am |
Thank you all for your comments so far. I shall try to deal with them in stages:
Flanker states:
Japan WAS willing to surrender BEFORE your exagerated [sic] invasion casualties took place ….Their only demand was that the emperor remain, and golly guess what? the emeperor [sic] did remain AFTER THE NUKES!!
These comments are completely ahistorical. I recommend that Flanker read the excellent essay by the distinguished Japanese historian Sadao Asada that I have referenced in endnote 4 of my main post. The essay, as well as being published in the Pacific Historical Review is reproduced in Robert James Maddox ed., Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism, (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2007) pp. 24-58. It is abundantly clear from that detailed essay based largely on Japanese sources that not only were the Japanese not willing to surrender, any “peace feelers” were substantially away from anything the Allies would have accepted and certainly much more than simply keeping their emperor. Sadao Asada states that the reason the terms of the Potsdam Declaration were unacceptable to the Japanese military was because of the following three conditions:
(1) Allied trial of Japanese war criminals; (2) demobilization and disarmament of Japanese forces by the Allies; and (3) an Allied military occupation of Japan.
In fact, the atomic bomb made it easier for the military leaders to surrender. Kido was the emperor’s most trusted advisor and he subsequently recounted:
If military leaders could convince themselves that they were defeated by the power of science but not because of lack of spiritual power or strategic errors, this could save their face to some extent.
Sakomizu who was the chief cabinet secretary confirmed this by recalling:
The atomic bomb was a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war. There were those who said that the Japanese armed forces were not defeated. It was in science that Japan ws defeated, so the military will not bring shame on themselves by surrendering.
Flanker is correct that the emperor remained after the atomic bombs were dropped and surrender agreed. The Potsdam Declaration said nothing about the emperor system but after the second atomic bomb was dropped, as Robert James Maddox reports in his book Weapons or Victory: The Hiroshima Decision (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004) p. 134, Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration, “with the understanding that the said declaration does not compromise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler.” Had the Japanese sent that message a week earlier they could have saved themselves from the fate of the atomic bombs, but they did not and it took two atomic bombs and Russia entering the war before they did so.
| 10 May 2008, 5:36 am |
Boogski states:
I have a question for Michael. I heard somewhere that a “demonstration” detonation was considered. Perhaps in a sparsely populated area or even off the coast of Japan. Do you have any information on this?
Boogski is quite correct that a demonstration was considered. Richard Frank explains in his book Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, (London: Penguin Books, 2001) p. 258 that US did consider a demonstration of the bomb on an unpopulated area but rejected it on May 31, 1945. As Frank states, there were several reasons for this:
There was still no guarantee the weapon would work, and a failure would have diametrically opposite effect from that sought; the Japanese might intercept the bomber; Japanese militarists might refuse to be impressed; or the Japanese might move Allied prisoners of war into the designated target zone.
I also suggest Chapter 4 (pp. 79-103) of Robert P. Newman’s book Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995). The chapter is headed “Why No Warning or Demonstration?” and it does go into further detail on the matter.
| 10 May 2008, 5:38 am |
Boogski states:
I have a question for Michael. I heard somewhere that a “demonstration” detonation was considered. Perhaps in a sparsely populated area or even off the coast of Japan. Do you have any information on this?
Boogski is quite correct that a demonstration was considered. Richard Frank explains in his book Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire, (London: Penguin Books, 2001) p. 258 that US did consider a demonstration of the bomb on an unpopulated area but rejected it on May 31, 1945. As Frank states, there were several reasons for this:
There was still no guarantee the weapon would work, and a failure would have diametrically opposite effect from that sought; the Japanese might intercept the bomber; Japanese militarists might refuse to be impressed; or the Japanese might move Allied prisoners of war into the designated target zone.
I also suggest Chapter 4 (pp. 79-103) of Robert P. Newman’s book Truman and the Hiroshima Cult, (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995). The chapter is headed “Why No Warning or Demonstration?” and it does go into further detail on the matter.
| 10 May 2008, 5:52 am |
Of course the whole notion of a land invasion is predicated on the notion that the Japanese would not have surrendered at all.
Even if it can be argued that the nuclear bombing speeded up surrender, that does not mean the alternative was land invasion. The third scenario is the Japanese surrendering at any point up to the dreadful scenario painted by Michael, but without the use of nuclear weapons.
To be so certain that the ghastly scenario that Michael posits would have taken place, so certain that it retrospectively justifies nuclear bombing, is an interesting assertion (that’s what it is, purely, without evidence, mere supposition) , and not one I share.
To me it smacks of after the fact convenience, not credible argument.
| 10 May 2008, 6:04 am |
It was a war crime. It also saved millions of lives. I would have made the same choice as Truman and I would have been willing to stand trial for warcrimes for doing so.
Do you think a war crimes tribunal would have convicted Truman? I very much doubt it.
| 10 May 2008, 6:21 am |
Even if it can be argued that the nuclear bombing speeded up surrender, that does not mean the alternative was land invasion.
It doesn’t mean it wasn’t, either.
Now what?
| 10 May 2008, 6:26 am |
Crap! The first sentence I’m quoting Benjamin.
Goddam motherfucking son of a bitch! Can we please, PLEASE have preview? Fuck!
| 10 May 2008, 7:11 am |
Flanker, a raving idiot and general insult to intelligence, cannot surely believe that Japan was willing to give up its huge slave colony in China. Absolutely no way. They were willing to stop fighting the western allies, even to return to those allies the asian colonies that they had taken, but, there is no doubt whatsoever that Japan considered China their own.
My Canadian Chinese neighbour and I discussed over a cup of joe the other day, how many millions of Chinese lives were saved by those two atomic blasts. He thought that it would have cost China ten million soldiers dead, because of their troops relatively poor armaments and training, to push the Japanese out, and that’s without considering that the retreating Japanese troops might have pulled a few more Nankings or just a consistent and indiscriminate slaughter throughout the countryside.
Thank goodness the Japanese agreed to surrender when they did; had they discussed it for a few more weeks, and thus gradually realized that there was no third and fourth atomic bomb to fear, the war would would have gone on and the death toll would have been massive, with the Chinese, and Japanese civilians, taking the brunt of it.
| 10 May 2008, 7:25 am |
In his post at 3:33am Flanker reiterates
The Japanesse [sic] were willing to surrender by around Yalta, only condition? to keep the emperor. What did the two nukes result in? them keeping their emperor…
I have dealt with this matter in my post of 5:25am. It can be pointed out that these claims of Flanker form the core of Hiroshima Revisionism. As Robert James Maddox points out, Hiroshima in History p.2 :
The fatal weakness of this thesis is that revisionists have been able to produce even shred of contemporary evidence that the Japanese government was prepared to surrender before the atomic bombs were dropped
Contrary to Flanker’s claims of Japan seeking peace, the United States had manage to decrypt both Japanese diplomatic messages (Magic) and the Imperial Army and Navy messages (Ultra.) As Richard Frank notes (Downfall p. 106 ) Whilst there was a “bare handful of messages in early 1945 that provided any evidence that Japan was contemplating peace ….a great many more messages portrayed Japanese determination to fight to the bitter end.”
| 10 May 2008, 9:12 am |
Holy crap, David t. Can we keep Michael Ezra? :D
| 10 May 2008, 9:12 am |
Whatever you call it, Jeff.
Precisely labels are welcome, but not so much important as is the knowledge there is a difference. Dismissing this suggests you ain’t really committed to a sensible dialogue, but are merely looking for ways to criticize one side.
I have heard Japanese atrocities against the Chinese, such as in Nanking (merely a particularly bad example of the carnage and mass killing of many millions of Chinese) used as a general justification for US actions in the war against Japan, most notably nuclear bombing.
Now that’s moral relativism.
| 10 May 2008, 9:18 am |
Keep him, Boogski?
| 10 May 2008, 9:22 am |
It’s just a figure of speech, Alec. Don’t read anything weird into it. And don’t taunt me. Or else I shall be forced to invite you to smell my dick. :D
| 10 May 2008, 9:28 am |
?????????
I meant we don’t need to keep someone who’s already here.
| 10 May 2008, 9:41 am |
Ah. What I meant was can we (or the hierarchy) entice him to stay.
Nothing sinister.
| 10 May 2008, 9:43 am |
It’s an endorsement, Alec.
| 10 May 2008, 9:53 am |
Oh. And a “kept” person is sometimes considered, well, you know. :D
But that’s not the meaning I intended. I just figured you were being your normal wise-assed self. :D
| 10 May 2008, 10:01 am |
Can we keep Michael Ezra?
Perhaps he doesn’t want to be kept? Perhaps he’s a wherever I lay my head is my home sort of guy.
| 10 May 2008, 10:11 am |
Nope. Hippies don’t have bibliographies in their posts, Benjamin. He’s either a history professor or one helluva history buff. :D
| 10 May 2008, 10:23 am |
Blimey, they don’t? But yes, very impressive. I thought the last sentence very weak though. It’s simply doesn’t stand up.
| 10 May 2008, 10:33 am |
Clearly not using nuclear weapons isn’t a crime, it can never be construed as one. The only question for many is whether the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima - be it criminal, or bad, or ‘regrettable’ - can be justified. If it’s seen to be justified, any moral argument is canceled out - it becomes simply necessary.
| 10 May 2008, 10:57 am |
Why am I thinking “The Atomic Bomb and Hiroshima: The “least abhorrent choice”” is really about “The Atomic Bomb and Iran: The “least abhorrent choice””. I think posts like this, and Kamm’s recent one are really about softening up the public to the idea of the US (or Israel) using nuclear weapons again. It will be painted as the least worst policy option. After all, a ground invasion is currently out of the question.
On the substance of the post, there is no convincing reason given for why, if we accept that the bomb was necessary to make Japan surrender (which I don’t), it had to be dropped on densely populated civilian areas. Michael quotes “If military leaders could convince themselves that they were defeated by the power of science but not because of lack of spiritual power or strategic errors, this could save their face to some extent.” This indicates that a demonstrative bomb would have done the trick perfectly. He also quotes “There was still no guarantee the weapon would work, and a failure would have diametrically opposite effect from that sought” but this is also logically incoherent, since the success of the bomb did not depend on whether it was dropped on civilians or not.
Another general criticism is that many of the sources in this post are from those directly implicated in the crime. That’s like citing Eichmann on the holocaust in an effort to demonstrate it wasn’t that bad.
So I find this and other arguments that nuclear bombs on civilian targets can ever be a least worst option to be thoroughly unconvincing. If what you do is worse than the evil you are doing it to prevent, it’s time to take stock.
| 10 May 2008, 11:06 am |
Why am I thinking “The Atomic Bomb and Hiroshima: The “least abhorrent choice”” is really about “The Atomic Bomb and Iran: The “least abhorrent choice””.
Because you’re a delusional, paranoid loonie pathologically obsessed with Israel?
| 10 May 2008, 11:12 am |
“The only question for many is whether the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima - be it criminal, or bad, or ‘regrettable’ - can be justified. If it’s seen to be justified, any moral argument is canceled out - it becomes simply necessary.”
I am not a philosopher, but I think that the “cancelling out” comes afterwards weighing the relative wrongs and goods of each (or every) alternative. In essence, that is the moral argument in action, and it is not “canceled out”, only solved some way or other. However, deaths do not dissapear afterwards like in a matematical equation.
What Benjamin says is wrong, because he thinks that after weighing the alternatives, the one you choose becomes “necessary” and therefore completely good and unblemished. That is not Michael Ezra’s argument at all.
| 10 May 2008, 11:15 am |
TheIrie: have you ended your denial of the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Arab lands yet? Your humanistic ethic concerns would be more credible if you had done so.
| 10 May 2008, 12:20 pm |
Here I deal with the moral issue about dropping the atomic bombs which Benjamin mentions.
It is certainly true that the action of dropping the bombs meant that innocent civilians would knowingly be killed and in large numbers. As I am sure you can imagine there have been a number of attacks on the use of the atomic bomb from a moral and ethical perspective. Two of the most famous ones include the one by Elizabeth Ansombe and the one by Michael Walzer.
Elizabeth Anscombe was a British philosopher at Oxford University and she opposed the honour that was proposed to award President Truman with a honourary degree. She wrote a pamphlet entitled, “Mr. Truman’s Degree” and you may be interested to know that the whole pamphlet has been copied on line.
Michael Walzer made his case in his book first published in 1977,Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations (New York: Basic Books, 1992)
Both Anscombe and Walzer have some serious flaws in their argument which I can deal with but I mention them because these are the two that are cited pieces by opponents of the atomic bomb from an ethical and moral stand point.
The best case from a moral and ethical standpoint of for the use of the atomic bombs is made in chapter 6 of Robert P. Newman’s book, Truman and the Hiroshima Cult (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1995) pp. 115-152. For obvious reasons of space and time, I cannot here recount all his arguments but I detail below some of them which should hopefully be sufficient:
1. Complaints by the Japanese that the atomic bomb was immoral are hypocritical. The Japanese themselves had an atomic bomb project and they would have used them on American targets had they been successful in producing them. Moreover, Japan had no problems experimenting with indiscriminate biological weapons against the Chinese.
2. Whilst the atomic bomb may be quantitatively more powerful than other weapons, they are qualitatively no different. Ralph McGill, the editor of the “Atlanta Constitution” argued that atomic weapons were “fully as moral as the shotgun, the spear, the ax … the tommy gun … the slingshot of David … or any other weapon of death.” Thomas Nagel noted, “Ordinary bullets, after all, can cause death, and nothing is more permanent than that.”
3. A.L. Goodhart, Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford asserted in 1940 that reprisals are morally justifiable: “It has occasionally been said that no acts of reprisals are morally justifiable because two wrongs cannot make a right. The answer is that one wrongful act can make the other one rightful. International law is therefore correct when it speaks of the RIGHT to reprisal. This right has been exercised by nearly all belligerents in nearly all wars, so that, whether we like it or not, we cannot close our eyes to its existence.”
4. The Japanese had no intent to surrender; they rejected the Potsdam Declaration that warned them by not surrendering their country would suffer “prompt and utter destruction.”
5. There were tens of thousands of Allied prisoners of war and the Japanese had threatened to fight to the death and take the Allied soldiers with them.
6. Had the war gone on numerous people would have died and likely substantially more than were killed by the atomic bombs. A blockade, for example, would have led to the starving of millions of Japanese as they were short of food.
7. Newman notes that during the 45 months between December 1941 and August 19454, “200,000-300,000 persons died each month at Japanese hands” and he estimates that “upwards of 250,000 people, mostly Asian but some Westerners, would have died each month the Japanese Empire struggled in its death throes beyond July 1945.” This monthly toll is greater than the combined deaths from both atomic bombs.
We can add to this that as I stated above, the purpose of the atomic bombs was to end the war and they achieved their aim. Conventional bombing of Japanese cities was just as indiscriminate. Richard B. Frank mentions in his definitive study Downfall: The End of the Japanese Empire (London: Penguin Books, 2001) pp.17-18 that in a single night between March 9 and March 10, 1945 between 90,000 and 100,000 Japanese people were killed by conventional firebombing of Tokyo.
Finally, and worthwhile mentioning, Newman quotes Albert Einstein from 1947:
It should not be forgotten that the atomic bomb was made in this country as a preventative measure; it was to head off its use by the Germans, if they discovered it. The bombing of civilian centers was initiated by the Germans and adopted by the Japanese. To it the Allies responded in kind – as it turned out with greater effectiveness – and they were morally justified in doing so.
In summary, there is no moral issue. The alternatives to dropping the bomb were invasion and/or blockade, each of which would have been equally indiscriminate and far bloodier.
Once you accept that the use of the atomic bomb was the quickest path to Japanese surrender then you would realise it would have been criminal not to use them.
| 10 May 2008, 12:44 pm |
With Benjamin’s comments about Nanking, and to that it is worthwhile adding the bombing of Pearl Harbor, it is worthwhile considering revenge as a possible motive for the dropping the atomic bombs. Robert Newman discusses this in Truman and the Hiroshima Cult and I copy below a section from pages 135-136:
The coolly practical men in the American War Department, and the politicians of Truman’s White House, were not significantly vengeful. Truman recoiled from the possibility of a third atomic bomb on Japan, and ordered that it not be scheduled without his express directive. And try as one might, it is impossible to paint the promises of the Potsdam Declaration as vengeful; disarmed soldiers were able to return home and resume productive lives, in contrast to Japan’s enslavement of conquered Europeans and Asians; freedom of speech, religion, and thought were offered; civilian industries would be permitted, and trade would be allowed on an equitable basis when a responsible civilian government was established. These are not the terms of a conqueror bent on vengeance.
Despite the “eye-for-an-eye” precept of the Old Testament, revenge does not seem to be a legitimate motive for dropping the bombs. The evidence that the bombs were necessary to force an early end to the war simply made revenge, whether legitimate or not, moot.
| 10 May 2008, 1:07 pm |
Why didn’t the US use nuclear weapons in Korea or Vietnam?
| 10 May 2008, 1:11 pm |
Why am I thinking “The Atomic Bomb and Hiroshima: The “least abhorrent choice”” is really about “The Atomic Bomb and Iran: The “least abhorrent choice””
Insincere-nutjob-antizionist-conspiracy-freaks who utterly lack a sense of humor should refrain from making comments like this.
| 10 May 2008, 1:12 pm |
“Why didn’t the US use nuclear weapons in Korea or Vietnam?”
RUSSIA!?
| 10 May 2008, 1:14 pm |
By the time Vietnam was along, Soviet nukes were too potent a threat, despite the wider agitation by the likes of Le Mey. MacArthur did, indeed, call for their use in Korea… and which point, Truman eventually removed the insubordinate fuck.
| 10 May 2008, 1:19 pm |
For goodness sake, MacArthur’s brother and father and grandfather were all call Arthur. Even as someone who’s known Donald MacDonalds and two generations of Alexander Alexanders, this takes the biscuit.
| 10 May 2008, 1:24 pm |
Michael I think your conclusions is basically correct but a couple of things popped up from the section of my brain labeled ‘pub quiz’. Firstly that Bill Shockly recieved the nobel prize for the transistor after the war and was not a nobelist at the time.
| 10 May 2008, 1:33 pm |
also Nagasaki was the alternate target for the second bomb, if you’re going to justify target selection, For completeness I’d liked to have seen all the targets that were on the list covered. There’d be some mileage in mentioning rejected targets too imo.
| 10 May 2008, 1:40 pm |
What was the primary target for the second bomb, Jon d?
| 10 May 2008, 2:01 pm |
‘In summary, there is no moral issue. The alternatives to dropping the bomb were invasion and/or blockade, each of which would have been equally indiscriminate and far bloodier.
Michael Ezra
Once you accept that the use of the atomic bomb was the quickest path to Japanese surrender then you would realise it would have been criminal not to use them.’
I think the point is that of course there is a moral issue.
Your Ex post facto arguments of the necessity of the use of atomic bombs ammount to a calculus of efficiency that seeks to dodge the issue of morality by reducing it to a utilitarian accounting excercise based on many ‘what if’ suppositions and estimates and hypothesese.
As you say the ‘use of the atomic bomb was the quickest path to a Japanese surrender’.
I would leave it at that.
Even if we accept that it was necessary, it remains always an Evil no matter how necessary.
A further point on necessity in avoiding a larger number of deaths.
At the point in the war at which the bombs were dropped japan was encircled and facing a land invasion.
The aliied deaths that were avoided (and on which calculus the decision was made) were military combatants.
The second world war allied strategy adopted aerial bombardment of civilian as well as military targets.
Clearly fire bombing (as in Tokyo) of Japanese civilian targets would have been a large part of any military invasion of Japan proper.
Perhaps many more civilian lives would have been lost as a consequence but they would have been mostly Japanese civilian lives.
The bombs were not dropped to prevent Japanese massacre of Asian civilians (these atrocities had already occured).
The bombs were dropped to minimise allied military losses in a final phase of the war that they knew they would win.
By putting issues such as the rape of Nanjing into the after the fact rational you are effectively adding a punitive or retaliatory justification for the bombing.
Furthermore the Atomic bombs were qualitatively as well as quantitatively different, this is perhaps the most egregious revisionism of your piece.
You seem to wish to equate all techniques of warfare whether strategic (the targeting of civilans vs strict engagement of combatants) or technological (fire bombs vs nuclear bombs) in some kind of normalisation excercise, where the only measure is one of relative numbers.
I am afraid your account reads more like a summary of two versions of a video game ‘the defeat of Japan’ than anacknowledgement of the unparalleled horror that fell from the skies ove Nagasaki and Hiroshima;
the vaporisations,
the shadows left where people once stood,
the radiation burns and the unknown radiation sickness that killed violently (and continued to kill for years) those who had thought they escaped
the after effects of fallout, the birth deffects, the cancers and wasting diseases that spead fear as a secondary contagion.
How can you say this was not qualitatively different?
The world changed that day and everyone knew it from The Japanese High command to teh Allied high command.
That was the day that human beings (in the shape of Americans through winning the contest first) used science to become Gods, and vengeful Gods at that to harness the elemental forces of the universe to destroy.
The bombs were also dropped because they had been developed as the ultimate endppoint in the rush for such awesome destructive power.
As you have used history mixed with a projective speculation of what might have been do you honestly not think that had Atomic bombs been available to the allies earlier in the war they would not have been used?
We can all think of examples where they may well have been used.
Then what would have been your ‘with hindsight’ justification for their use.
Your argument that it would have been a ‘crime’ not to drop them is glib and immoral (and uses a wholly perverse notion of crime).
This is shown up by the simple fact that as Atomic bombs have only been dropped once in circumstances that decades after the war it is arguable that this course of action was in retrospect the lesser Evil.
So the purpose of your article is what exactly?
I am afraid I have to agree with TheIrie that the only discernabble purpose is to create a seemingly plausible argument of the moral necessity of using nuclear weapons to prevent a,b,c in conditions x,y,z.
In other words you seek to argue for the pre-emptive and tactical use of Nuclear weapons in situations where either resources or the will for conventional military engagement are lacking .
Well maybe such a dreadful situation will come to pass but you will not convinve me that it is anything other than a terribl evil (even if unavoidable).
That you should try to argue that such an action could be not only morally right but that it would constitute a crime not to use nuclear bombs I find unacceptable.
| 10 May 2008, 2:23 pm |
And we didn’t bat an eye.
| 10 May 2008, 2:24 pm |
I think your selective quotation of Einstein on this rather misrepresents his views;
>>’Einstein’s greatest role in the invention of the atomic bomb was signing a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt urging that the bomb be built.
The splitting of the uranium atom in Germany in December 1938 plus continued German aggression led some physicists to fear that Germany might be working on an atomic bomb.
Among those concerned were physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner.
in August 1939 Szilard wrote a letter to President Roosevelt with Einstein’s signature on it.
The letter was delivered to Roosevelt in October 1939 by Alexander Sachs, a friend of the President.
Germany had invaded Poland the previous month; the time was ripe for action. That October the Briggs Committee was appointed to study uranium chain reactions.
But the Briggs Committee moved very slowly, prompting Einstein, Szilard, and Sachs to write to FDR in March 1940, pointing again to German progress in uranium research (Weart & Szilard, pg. 119+).
In April 1940 an Einstein letter, ghost-written by Szilard, pressed Briggs Committee chairman Lyman Briggs on the need for “greater speed” (Weart & Szilard, pg. 125+; Clark, pg. 680).
Research still proceeded slowly, because the invention of the atomic bomb seemed distant and unlikely, rather than a weapon that might be used in the current war.
It was not until after the British MAUD Report was presented to FDR in October 1941 that a more accelerated pace was taken.
This British document stated that an atomic bomb could be built and that it might be ready for use by late 1943, in time for use during the war (Richard Rhodes,
I knew it you cowards support genocide. (the willfull extermination of as many Hiroshimans and Nagasakians as possible)
“Hiroshima was the headquarters of the Japanese Army defending southern Japan and was a major military storage and assembly point. Nagasaki was a major seaport and it contained several large industrial plants of great wartime importance. [1]”
If this were the case then WHY WHERE THE CITIES UNTOUCHED? they were insignificant military targets and they were selected BECAUSE it was mostly civilian. (or else they would have nuked a port).
“On December 7, 1941, Japan had attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor killing over 2,000 Americans and wounding many more. The Japanese later shelled an oil storage field near Santa Barbara and bombed Oregon. Moreover, nearly one thousand Japanese balloon bombs reached the United States and many more reached Canada.[5]”
Ohhhh the Humanniittty.
Here is where your apologism falls apart, Japan WAS willing to surrender BEFORE your exagerated invasion casualties took place (The Tutsi were about to murder millions of Africans!!! thank god for the GENOCIDE!!) Their only demand was that the emperor remain, and golly guess what? the emeperor did remain AFTER THE NUKES!! It was evident Truman had his eyes on the USSR wiping the Japanesse army from Manchuria than on the negotiating table.