archived: 4 - 10 Sep, 2005 Back Next
THE A-BOMB
Dr. Steven Jonas critical discussion of Pres. Truman’s use of the atomic bomb in Japan has sparked considerable commentary – all excellent. In framing his article, Dr. Jonas quoted, but did not attribute the quotes, from an email authored by Jay Greene, who believes Truman’s use of the bomb in Japan was justified.
Dr. Jonas has provided an addendum to his article which immediately follows. From Junkie’s perspective both articles frame the continuing historical debate very well. Therefore, following Dr. Jonas addendum, TPJ is republishing both articles.
Enjoy!
Dr. Steven Jonas: Addendum:
Just a note on the excellent article by my good friend Jay Greene on the Use-of-the-Atomic-Bomb controversy that appeared in TPJ two days ago (August 30, 2005). First of all, I felt badly that Jay was affronted by my use of his words on the matter without asking him for permission, even though I purposely did not use his name. I send him directly an apology when I first heard from him about the matter. In part, it was from laziness. I didn't want to spend the extra time that paraphrasing what I though was an excellent statement of the pro-bombing argument would have taken. Also, no paraphrase of mine could have put the position as well as Jay did.
Second, let me here apologize to Jay for incorrectly attributing to him the "revenge" motive. It was apparently on the minds of other defenders of the Truman decision, especially in the context of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. (I do not believe that too many Americans knew very much about the Manchurian War, the Sino-Japanese War or the Rape of Nanking.) By the way, on an interesting historical note, Pearl Harbor was not the first occasion of a Japanese sneak naval attack on an enemy before a declaration of war. They had done the same thing in their first war with a European Power in 1904. They attacked and destroyed the Russian Asian Fleet at Port Arthur on one day and declared war the next. Both the United States and the United Kingdom were then engaged (especially the British at that time) with the Russian Empire in the "Great Game" in Central Asia, a version of which reverberates down to our own time. On that occasion they both thought that a "surprise" (in those circumstances one doesn't use the word "sneak") attack was a fine idea. Given the role that the Russian defeat in that war, sealed by the loss the next year at the Battle of Tsushima Strait in which their European Fleet was destroyed as well, played in the Revolution of 1905, which lead directly to the Revolution of 1917, maybe that Japanese victory wasn't such a great win for the West after all. But that's another story.
Third, I will not retail the substantive arguments on either side. Mr. Greene states his well. I think (modestly enough) that I state mine well also. I have rebuttals for his points and I'm sure that he would have further rebuttals were I to put them forward here. Suffice it to say, interested readers can well look at both sides, and especially I should think at the documented arguments on my side as quoted in my article, and make up their own minds. Not that too many minds are going to be changed at this late date.
Finally, on Jay's last point about the Leahy quote, or the Eisenhower quote or the LeMay quote for that matter. Since Jay is giving military arguments among others to support his position, one would think that he might then side with the generals and admirals on this one, or at least give some considerable weight to them. Well in this case I do, anyway.
Dr. Jonas’ Article:
"SOME THOUGHTS ON THE ATOMIC BOMBING OF JAPAN"
The sixtieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Japan by the United States has brought out much discussion of the appropriateness and the politics of the decision to bomb, on both the Right and the Left in this country. (Around the rest of the world, there are few defenders of the decision left.) The standard US defense is well known: the bombings, both of them, had to be done in order to avoid an invasion of Japan by US ground force which might have cost upwards of blank-blank-blank US casualties (you fill in the number). (There never seems to be any mention of concern for casualties in the Soviet Army, which Stalin had already committed to the conflict. But what the hey, they were only Russians and what have you.)
That the standard defense of the US decision has been debunked many times over the years, with much evidence on the side of us debunkers, does not prevent the proponents of the company line from repeating it over and over again. Nor does it prevent them from engaging in name calling when what they call “evidence” in support of their position does not stand up very well under scrutiny. Having seen both some evidence debunking the standard defense of the US decision that I had not seen before, as well as a well-written repeat of that US-standard defense, accompanied by some of the usual name calling that often goes with it, I thought to revisit the issue myself.
In an email, a friend of
mine noted that “in her 1956 book [one with which I was not previously familiar]
entitled The Enemy at His Back, journalist Elizabeth Churchill Brown
supplied overwhelming evidence to counter the inaccurate views about the close
of the war. She wrote, ‘With this knowledge at hand, I quickly began to see why
the war with Japan was unprecedented in all history. Here was an enemy who had
been trying to surrender for almost a year before the conflict ended [emphasis
added].’ “For the latter statement, Brown supplied a huge stack of documentary
evidence, way back in 1956, no less.
In response to that email, taking the US-standard, another friend had this to
say, in part: “This ground has been plowed before. US casualties on Iwo Jima and
Okinawa convinced the US that Japanese resistance to an invasion of the home
islands [of Japan] would be equally bitter and drawn out and we would incur at
least 75,000 deaths. A demonstration bombing was suggested and rejected, on
grounds we had no assurance the Japs [sic] would attend a demo blast, or be
convinced if they did. Truman did not take Japanese casualties into
consideration, after the depredations of the Japanese in Manchuria and China
since 1931, the attacks on Pearl and Manila in 1941, and subsequent treatment of
US prisoners in the Philippines. The bleeding heart left merely makes itself
look silly as it resurrects this canard every year. This nonsense demonstrates
how universal is gullibility and devotion to doctrine.”
Sounds good, don’t it? Well, not so fast. Let’s look at some of the holes in
the argument. The battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, while resulting in
relatively heavy US casualties, consumed much of what was left of trained
Japanese troops after three years of brutal fighting in the Pacific. The US
still had plenty left. After the Philippine Campaign and the huge losses they
suffered in it, the Japanese no longer had a functioning Navy because of the
lack of ships as well as experienced sailors. They no longer had a functioning
Air Force because of the lack of trained pilots. That was one of the main
reasons they resorted to the Kamikaze attacks using barely trained youngsters at
Okinawa. (By the way, “kamikaze” means “Divine Wind,” referring to a
providential typhoon that broke up a potentially disastrous Mongol invasion of
Japan in the 13th century.)
The Japanese just might have attended a demonstration bombing if invited, but we will never know that. For the above defender of the US-standard revenge is apparently an appropriate motivation for a particular tactic of war. Also in that view it would appear that one dastardly sneak attack (Pearl Harbor) justifies another (or two). That one needs to engage in character assassination of critics of the US-standard also indicates some of the problems with the US-standard that this particular friend upholds. Of course, let’s assume for the moment that character assassination is okay in this kind of argument. Would the following personages qualify as “bleeding-heart liberals?”
“General Dwight D. Eisenhower said, "It wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." General Curtis LeMay [he of the Tokyo fire-bomb raid of March, 1945, that killed more people than the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined] declared that the atomic bomb had nothing to do with Japan's surrender. And Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to both Roosevelt and Truman, stated angrily that the "use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender ... in being the first to use it, we ... adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages (‘Bush and the Bomb,’ Marjorie Cohn, t r u t h o u t | Perspective, Wednesday 10 August 2005)." I guess that it all depends upon how you define “bleeding-heart liberal,” just as exactly what Cheney meant when he described the Iraqi insurgency as being in its “last throes” depends upon how you define the words, as he took pains to tell us.
Now looking further at
the reality of the time, I happen to believe Churchill Brown's version of the
events from mid-1944 onwards, that the Japanese were trying in one way or
another to arrange for a surrender, with which I was not previously familiar.
Her version is highly sourced. One position that supporters of the US policy
take is that “unconditional surrender” was the unified demand of the Allied
Powers, and Japan wanted to negotiate. Therefore the US had no choice, they
contend. But in the end, the US did negotiate with Japan on conditions, the
principal one being the preservation of the Imperial House, de-deified to be
sure. No one less than General Macarthur thought this was necessary if for no
other reason than to assure that a US occupation, given that the Emperor
publicly accepted it, would proceed unopposed by any force on the Japanese side.
And it was. If a negotiation on conditions could take place after the atomic
bombings, why could it have taken place before? During the summer of 1945, the
highly placed Prince Konoye, who was well-known to diplomats the US side, was
desperately trying to find someone to talk with about surrender. He found only
deaf ears.
Further still, even if none of that had occurred, Japan had six months oil
supply left. The US Unterseebooten, Wolfpack U-boat campaign against
Japanese shipping in the Pacific Ocean and China Seas was much more effective
than the German campaign against British-US shipping in the North Atlantic had
ever been. (Oops, sorry. That “U-boat/Wolf-pack” stuff was the work of the
dastardly Germans. Even though the US campaign relied heavily on tactics
learned from the Germans, especially in firing at merchant ships without
warning, I meant to say heroic US submariners risking their lives.) At any rate
the blockade was getting ever tighter. There were no more military targets left
to bomb in Japan, the conventional terror (oops, sorry, once again I'm using
words that are verboten when applied to the US side)/incendiary bombing
campaign had been highly effective. In fact, it killed many more people than the
atomic weapons did (an estimated 250,000 in the above-mentioned firebombing of
the then-paper city of Tokyo in March, 1945 alone). Further, to repeat, the US
could have done an atomic bomb demo. If it failed to explode (unlikely given the
testing) and the Japanese didn't bite, then a bomb could have dropped. Further
still, why not drop a bomb on open territory in Japan, say on the sparsely
populated island of Hokkaido, rather than on two cities, neither of which was a
military target. And so on and so forth.
You know, why do not the defenders of the US use of the Bomb just come out and
say it: the US dropped the bomb as the first strike in the Cold War (which it
was --- see Gar Alperovitz’ book The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb),
and have done with it. Fighting the commies was just as important as fighting
the fascists, wasn't it? And oh yes, if the real consideration was unconditional
surrender, which it obviously wasn't, wouldn't it have been worth it to explore
an agreement that we eventually agreed to anyway, to save a few hundred thousand
Japanese lives, regardless of what happened at Nanking (talk about the revenge
factor). But oh yes, doing so would have allowed Stalin to take over the whole
of the Korean peninsula and land troops on Hokkiado at a minimum. It also might
have allowed him to intervene directly in the Chinese civil war. Couldn't have
that now, could we?
Had the Bomb not been dropped, the entire geo-political history of our world
might have been different. For one thing, there likely would have been no nation
to date that had used the Bomb as a weapon. That the US did use it, once,
established a precedent that numbers of Right-Wing American politicians have
been tempted to follow right up to the present day (Dick Cheney [oh what a great
whipping boy], anyone?). Even more important however, there would have been a
precedent established that one country did have the Bomb, could have used it,
and didn’t.
Note: An earlier version of this column appeared at http://planetmove.blogspot.com/ as a “Dr. J’s Short Shot.”
Jay Green’s Article in Response:
“Further Thoughts on Use of the Atomic Bomb”
Those who have been in similar circumstances will recognize the surprise I experienced when reading Dr Steven Jonas' article in TPJ (08 25 05) words I had written privately to friends and had not intended for publication. Had wider circulation been contemplated my case would have been stated more fully. I shall do so now.
Every August, Truman's decision to employ atomic weapons against the Japanese in 1945, first against Hiroshima on August 6 and then Nagasaki three days later, in order to compel Japan's unconditional surrender, is revived and criticized anew. Each year the critique is the same and each year those who, like myself, believe it was a correct decision, argue that U. S. policy makers, and ultimately Truman, believed the logic of the situation led ineluctably to using what was then the ultimate weapon.
Any study of history causes the thoughtful reader to ask, "What should have been done; what could have been done?" Thoughtful readers, however, when speculating on wrong turns, years after the fact when the principals are dead and all that survives are primary sources, must seek to place themselves in the context of the time and weigh objectively the pressures on decision makers, and the assumptions under which they were working.
By the Summer of 1945, the U. S. appeared to have won the war against the Japanese. Almost all territory in the Pacific (but not China) occupied by Japan since 1941 had been retaken; Japanese merchant and naval shipping was sunk and the home islands blockaded; Tokyo and other cities were being bombed and the Japanese had no defensive air power to send up against American B-29s. With the conquest of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, U.S. air power was even closer to the home islands and the Japanese knew invasion was a certainty.
But Nippon would not surrender. Yes, there had been some overtures, some feelers, principally through Moscow (the USSR and Imperial Japan were neutral, officially, vis-a-vis each other, despite their membership in warring alliances). The Allied position with regard to peace feelers had been stated at Casablanca in 1943: unconditional surrender. Feelers which the US had reason to believe were authoritative were met with the response: very well, surrender. The Japanese said they would surrender if they could retain the Emperor. The Allies said, that is conditional surrender and we accept no conditions.
Were the US and Britain (and Dutch and French) simply formalistic sticklers, unreasonably refusing a chance for peace? That is the charge today. But for two years unconditional surrender was the firm policy of the Allies toward Germany and Japan. We held firm against Germany when it was argued our interests were better served by a separate peace with Germany, permitting them to continue fighting the USSR. Unconditional surrender could not be waived.
Why do not the Japanese leadership in the closing days of the war deserve the obloquy visited on Truman for failing to achieve peace and save the lives of many thousands of their citizens, victims of both the fire bombing of Tokyo and the atomic strikes? They rejected peace because they could not accept the possible dethroning of their Emperor. Why is there no criticism of Japanese irresponsibility in their insistence on preserving the Emperor's sacred status?
Those who defend Truman's decision will be forgiven if they see this annual hand wringing as another example of the belief by some that America is always wrong.
But back to the Summer of '45. Japan is on the ropes but won't admit it. The US is planning an invasion of the home islands in November. Based on the Iwo and Okinawa battles, the fighting will be desperate. The American planners know few individuals, military or civilian, will give up; they'll die gloriously for their Emperor. Surrounded, cut off, starved and without ammunition, they'll fight on to their last breath, taking as many Americans with them as they can. Bypassed and cut off pockets in areas of no strategic importance will persist for years as festering threats.
But what of Dr Jonas' argument: "The battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, while resulting in relatively heavy US casualties, consumed much of what was left of trained Japanese troops after three years of brutal fighting in the Pacific." True, but the Japanese still had many hundreds of thousands of fit and undefeated troops in China and Manchuria. How successfully could they be ferried home? Not very, but some would make it, bolstering homeland defense. Ah, but the USSR was pledged to declare war in Japan and their entry would have tied down those troops. Yes, and prolonged the war, with great loss of life on all sides. One can imagine Japanese resistance to the Soviets rivaling German resistance to the same foe - an enemy the Japanese had defeated handily forty years before.
It is to be doubted prospective Russian and Japanese casualties were factors in Washington's thinking of how to end the war; the point was, the longer the war went on, the greater the uncertainties and the number of American casualties. If the war could be ended quickly, and the bomb seemed the surest way to bring that about, use it.
The US considered conducting a "public" test of the bomb: invite Japanese representatives to attend an explosion of a bomb, so they could be suitably impressed and surrender in order to avoid the use of this fearful weapon. Suppose they refused to attend - what then?
Dr Jonas says they might have attended. And they might not have. There was no way to guarantee their attendance, or if they did, their drawing the appropriate lesson, and that is why the US rejected the idea of a test. Make an estimate of the likelihood they would attend; that they would be convinced; that they could convince others in Tokyo to come to the same conclusion. Weigh those "ifs" against the almost certain destruction of an entire city with a single weapon as a means of compelling a surrender. What would be your decision? Offer a test, or not?
With the November invasion in the offing and with every prospect fighting would be desperate, literally to the last ditch, planners estimated 75,000 US casualties. The Japanese refused to accept our terms. There was no responsible choice except to use the bomb. On Hiroshima, in hopes the Japanese would then give up. On Nagasaki three days later, in the absence of any Japanese response to Hiroshima.
Let's look at the "what if" posed by critics: suppose Truman withheld the bomb and the invasion went forward. Eventually we would have subdued the islands, effectively controlling them, although pockets of resistance would have held out for years, as had Japanese soldiers on islands we conquered or bypassed in the Pacific (the last man gave up in the Sixties, I believe). Eventual capitulation was certain. And what would have been the cost in lives? Significantly divergent from estimates on the US side? No one can know. And would Japanese civilian losses be more or less than those suffered at Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Can one argue plausibly they would be significantly less?
And if Truman had not ordered the atomic strikes, what would have been the effect at home, after tens of thousands of US deaths in the invasion, and the public learned Truman could have used a single bomb that would have ended the war without further American loss? It's been suggested he would have been impeached. Given the postwar vitriol directed at Truman by Republicans for far less cause, one can assume impeachment would have been probable.
Now isn't that too bad, critics will say - that a President loses his job because he did the moral thing and saved Japanese lives (while sacrificing American lives). Can you imagine how the political landscape would be affected for generations, with the charge that Truman could have ended the war and declined to do so because he cared more for Japanese lives than he did for American ones?
Dr Jonas does me a disservice by misconstruing one of my arguments as justifying revenge. He says "For the above defender of the US-standard revenge is apparently an appropriate motivation for a particular tactic of war. Also in that view it would appear that one dastardly sneak attack (Pearl Harbor) justifies another (or two)." The Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor and Manila, without a declaration of war, and the war crime that was the Rape of Nanking in 1937, and Japanese treatment of prisoners of war were very much on the minds of Americans in 1945. Americans, and Truman, can be forgiven in this context if they did not count expected Japanese losses for much in the cold calculation of American versus Japanese lives. It was not a lust for revenge, but rather a conscious willingness to rate Japanese civilian lives less highly than the lives of American troops, all in the context of Japanese barbarism toward those they had vanquished.
The Leahy quote is powerful. According to Jonas, he said the "...use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender . . . ." But it was not Leahy's decision to make in 1945; neither would he bear the consequences of the decision. He said they were ready to surrender. But they had not surrendered, had they? All the Japanese had to do in order to save Japanese lives would be to surrender. They did not, for the sake of their Emperor. So who bears the responsibility of unleashing this barbarous weapon?
Last Update: 03/23/2006