SHOULD THE UNITED STATES HAVE DROPPED TWO ATOMIC …



SHOULD THE UNITED STATES HAVE DROPPED TWO ATOMIC BOMBS ON JAPAN?

Total War

At the time, the United States was in the midst of total war against an enemy whose atrocities were well documented. The Japanese had slaughtered over 200,000 civilians in Nanjing, China, in 1937. The Japanese also started the war against the United States by bombing the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in 1941. By 1945, Japanese and American troops were fighting for control of the Pacific, island by island. In February, more than 6,000 U.S. Marines and 20,000 Japanese soldiers died fighting for the tiny island of Iwo Jima. Weeks later, 16,000 Americans and 110,000 Japanese were killed in the battle for the island of Okinawa. Though Japan had suffered costly defeats, officials predicted a fight to the finish. President Harry S. Truman was preparing to invade Japan, which could have cost tens of thousands of casualties. Then he was offered a new option—a bomb described as “the most terrible weapon ever known in human history.”

For Truman, dropping the bomb “was never any decision you had to think about,” he said. “It was my responsibility as President to force the Japanese warlords to come to terms as quickly as possible with the minimum cost of lives.” Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, a second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing another 79,000. Five days after that, Japan surrendered.

Critics have said that the bomb was not necessary. “The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons,” Admiral William Leahy, one of the war’s top military planners, wrote in 1950. Some U.S. strategists said later that the war would likely have ended in a few weeks anyway. Japan started to seek peace talks through other intermediary countries. But historians disagree as to whether Truman knew this at the time. In 1945, some officials argued for dropping the bomb on a military base instead of a heavily populated city. A group of leading scientists, including the bomb’s inventors, urged the government to invite Japanese officials to witness a test explosion in an unpopulated area to persuade them to surrender. Truman rejected these ideas. The U.S. had only two bombs then and no one knew for sure whether they would work. If a public test failed, his advisers argued, Japanese resistance could stiffen. And to the military, which had already bombed 66 Japanese cities, the atomic bomb was just one more bomb, Hiroshima just one more city. Meanwhile, hundreds of American soldiers were dying everyday.

Here are some facts to consider:

▪ President Roosevelt dies on April 12, 1945 (2 months before the end of war in Europe and 4 months before the bomb is dropped on Japan). Vice President Harry Truman becomes president. Truman knows very little about the research of the atomic bomb.

▪ On May 7, 1945, Germany surrenders; now, all U.S. troops can concentrate on defeating Japan.

▪ U.S. military plans an invasion of Japan for November 1945. The invasion is expected to last a year and at least one hundred thousand deaths and injuries are expected against U.S. soldiers.

▪ Japan is known for fighting hard and often refusing to accept defeat. Many U.S. troops are lost in battles on small islands nearly as big or important as Japan.

▪ When the war ends against Germany in Europe, Russia promises to invade Japan 3 months later. That date is August 7, 1945.

▪ A meeting of the Allied Powers is held in July 1945, at that point Japan is given the opportunity to surrender to the Allies. Japan refused because it wanted to keep its position of Emperor.

▪ On July 16, 1945, the U.S. atomic scientists set off an experimental atomic reaction in the desert in New Mexico. The experiment works and proves that an atomic bomb can be used.

American Survivors’ Statements from Japanese Imprisonment on Bataan in the Philippines

“The march of death began when thousands of prisoners were herded together...on Bataan at daylight on April 10, 1942 after their surrender. The Japanese slapped and beat them with sticks as they marched along without food or water on a scorchingly hot day.... Men recently killed were lying along the roadside, many had been run over and flattened by Japanese trucks.... At 3 o’clock on the morning of April 12, they shooed us into a barbed wire bullpen big enough to accommodate 200. We were 1200 inside the pen—no room to lie down, human filth and maggots everywhere.... Throughout the twelfth we were introduced to a form of torture which came to be known as sun treatment. We were made to sit in the broiling sun all day long without cover.... Many of us went crazy and several died....”

First Order to the Kamikazes (1944)

“The Empire stands at the crossroads between victory and defeat. The first suicide unit determined to triumph through the power of spirit will inspire, by its success, one unit after another to follow its example. It is absolutely out of the question for you to return alive. Your mission involves certain death.”

U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Harpers Magazine (February 1947)

“The strategic plans of our Armed forces for the defeat of Japan, as they stood in July [1945], had been prepared without reliance upon the Atomic bomb, which had not yet been tested in New Mexico. We were planning an intensified sea and air blockade and greatly intensified strategic air bombings, through the summer and early fall, to be followed on November 1 by an invasion of the southern island of Kyushu. This would be followed in turn by an invasion of the main island of Honshu in the spring of 1946. The total U.S. military and naval force involved in this...was of the order of 5 million men; if all those indirectly concerned are included, it is larger still. We estimated that if we should be forced to carry this plan to its conclusion, the major fighting would not end until the latter part of 1946, at the earliest. I was informed that such operations might be expected to cost over a million casualties to American forces alone. Additional large forces might be expected among our Allies, and, of course, if our campaign were successful and if we could judge by previous experience, enemy casualties would be much larger than our own.”

U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson (Summer 1945)

“In light of the alternatives which, on a fair estimate, were open to us, I believe that no man, in our position and subject to our responsibilities, holding in his hands a weapon of such possibilities for accomplishing this purpose and saving those lives, could have failed to use it and afterwards looked his countrymen in the face.”

U.S. President Harry Truman (August 6, 1945)

“The Japanese began the war from the air at Pearl Harbor. They have been repaid manifold.... We are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely every productive enterprise the Japanese have above ground in any city.... It was to spare the Japanese people from utter destruction that the ultimatum of July 26 was issued at Potsdam. Their leaders promptly rejected that ultimatum. If they do not how accept our terms they may expect a rain of ruin from the air....”

President Truman Defends His Decision to Drop the Atomic Bombs (August 1945)

“I realize the tragic significance of the atomic bomb. Its production and its use were not lightly undertaken....But we knew that our enemies were on the search for it. We know now how close they were to finding it. And we know the disaster which would come to this nation...to all civilizations, if they had found it first.... Having found the bomb we have used it. We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, against those who have abandoned the pretense of obeying international laws of warfare. We have used it in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.”

U.S. Admiral William Leahy

“It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of mo material assistance in our war with Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender....”

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander

“I told him [Stimson] that I was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hated to see our country be the first to use such a weapon.”

Scientists' Petition Against Use of the Atomic Bomb (June 1945)

“Nuclear bombs cannot possible remain a "secret weapon" at the exclusive disposal of this country for more than a few years. The scientific facts on which their construction is based are well known to scientists of other countries. Unless an effective internal control of nuclear explosives is instituted, a race for nuclear armaments is certain to ensue following the first revelation of our possession of nuclear weapons to the world....In the war to which an armaments race is likely to lead, the United States, with its agglomeration of population and industry in comparative few metropolitan districts, will be at a disadvantage compared to nations whose population and industry are scattered over large areas. We believe that these considerations make the use of nuclear bombs for an early unannounced attack against Japan inadvisable. If the United States were to be the first to release this new means of indiscriminate destruction upon mankind, we would sacrifice public support throughout the world, precipitate the race for armaments, and prejudice the possibility of reaching international agreement on the future control of such weapons.”

J. Gordon Arneson’s Notes of Committee Meeting (May 31, 1945)

“It was pointed out that one atomic bomb on an arsenal would not be much different from the effect caused by any Air Corps strike of present dimensions. However, Dr. Oppenheimer stated that the visual effect of an atomic bomb would be tremendous. It would be accompanied by a brilliant luminescence which would rise to a heigh]t of 10,000 to 20,000 feet. The neuron effect of the explosion would be dangerous to life for a radius of at least two-thirds of a mile. After much discussion concerning various types of targets and the effects to be produced, the Secretary expressed the conclusion, on which there was general agreement, that we could not give the Japanese any warning: that we could not concentrate on a civilian area; but that we should seek to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants as possible. At the suggestion of Dr. Conant the Secretary agreed that the most desirable target would be a vital war plant employing a large number of workers and closely surrounded by workers’ houses. There was some discussion of the desirability of attempting several strikes at the same time. Dr. Oppenheimer’s judgment was that several strikes would be feasible. General Groves, however, expressed doubt about this proposal and pointed out the following objections: (1) We would lose the advantage of gaining additional knowledge concerning the weapon at each successive bombing; (2) such a program would require a rush job on the part of those assembling the bombs and might, therefore, be ineffective; (3) the effect would not be sufficiently distinct from our regular air force bombing program.”

A Japanese Journalist Described the View from the Ground

“I was just wheeling out my bicycle...when there was a blinding flash—like lightning. At the same time, I felt scorching heat on my face and a tornado-like blast of wind. I fell to the ground and the house collapsed around me... When I looked out, there was a tremendous pillar of black smoke... with a scarlet thread in the middle... Hiroshima had disappeared.”

A Japanese Woman Describes the Effect of the Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki

“I tried to find my mother, but all I saw was a bunch of white ashes with one black spot, and a heap of charred bones. I then saw a young woman lying in the road with her two children. Her face was one big swollen blister, with the skin starting to peel off.”

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