“Hiroshima:
Historians Reassess” by Gar Alperovitz, Foreign Policy 99 (Summer 1995)
Earlier this year, the nation witnessed
a massive explosion surrounding the Smithsonian Institution's planned Enola
Gay exhibit. As the 50th anniversary of the August 6, 1945, atomic bombing
of Hiroshima approaches, Americans are about to receive another newspaper and
television barrage
Any serious attempt to understand the
depth of feeling the story of the atomic bomb still arouses must confront two
critical realities. First, there is a rapidly expanding gap between what the
expert scholarly community now knows and what the public has been taught.
Second, a steady narrowing of the questions in dispute on the most
sophisticated studies has sharpened some of the only controversial issues in
the historical debate.
Consider
the following assessment:
Careful scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical ,questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman and his advisers knew it.
The
author of that statement is not a revisionist; he is L. Samuel Walker, chief historian
of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Nor is he alone in that opinion.
Walker is summarizing the findings of
modern specialists in his literature review in the Winter 1990 issue of Diplomatic
History. Another expert review, by University of Illinois historian Robert
Messer, concludes that recently discovered documents have been
"devastating" to the traditional idea that using the bomb was the
only way to avoid an invasion of Japan that might have cost many more lives.
Even allowing for continuing areas of
dispute, these judgments are so far from the conventional wisdom that there is
obviously something strange going on. One source of the divide between expert
research and public understanding stems from a common feature of all serious
scholarship: as in many areas of specialized research, perhaps a dozen truly
knowledgeable experts are at the forefront of modern studies of the decision to
use the atomic bomb. A second circle of generalists- historians concerned, for
instance, with the Truman administration, with World War II in general, or even
with the history of air power--depends heavily on the archival digging and
analysis of the first circle. Beyond this second group - authors of general textbooks
and articles and, still further out, journalists and other popular writers.
One can, of course, find many
historians who still believe that the bomb was needed to avoid an invasion.
Among the inner circle of experts, conclusions that are at adds with this
official rationale have . place. Indeed, as early as 1946 the U.S. Strategic
Bombing Survey, in Japan's Struggle to End the War, concluded that
"certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to I
November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not
been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion
had been planned or contemplated."
Similarly, a top-secret April 1946
War Department study, Use o Atomic Bomb on Japan, declassified during
the 1970s but brought to broad public attention only in 1989, found that
"the Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were merely looking for
sufficient pretext to convince the die-hard Army Group that Japan had lost the
war and must capitulate to the Allies." This official document judged that
Russia's early-August entry into the war "would almost certainly have
furnished this pretext, and would have been sufficient to convince all
responsible leaders that surrender was unavoidable." The study concluded
that even an initial November 1945 landing on the southern Japanese island of
Kyushu would have been only a "remote" possibility and that the full
invasion of Japan in the sprint of 1946 would not have occurred.
Military specialists who have
examined Japanese decision-making have added to expert understanding that the
bombing was unnecessary. For instance, political scientist Robert Pape's study,
"Why Japan Surrendered," which appeared in the Fall 1993 issue of International
Security, details Japan's military vulnerability, particularly its
shortages of everything from ammunition and fuel to trained personnel:
"Japan's military position was so poor that its leaders would likely have
surrendered before invasion, and at roughly the same time in August 1945, even
if the United States had not employed strategic bombing or the atomic
bomb." In this situation, Pape stresses, "Me Soviet invasion of
Manchuria on August 9 raised Japan's military vulnerability to a very high
level. The Soviet offensive ruptured Japanese lines immediately, and rapidly
penetrated deep into the rear. Since the Kwantung Army was thought to be
Japan's premier fighting force, this had a devastating effect on Japanese
calculations of the prospects for home island defense." Pape adds,
"If their best forces were so easily sliced to pieces, the unavoidable
implication was that the less well-equipped and trained forces assembled for
[the last decisive home island battle] had no chance of success against
American forces that were even more capable than the Soviets.”
Whether the use of the atomic bomb was
in fact necessary is, of course, a different question from whether it was
believed to be necessary at the time. Walker's summary of the expert literature
is important because it underscores the availability of the alternatives to
using the bomb, and because it documents that "Truman and his advisers
knew" of the alternatives.
Several major strands of evidence have
pushed many specialists in the direction of this startling conclusion. The
United States had long since broken the enemy codes, and the president was
informed of all important Japanese cable traffic. A critical message of July
12, 1945-just before Potsdam-showed that the Japanese emperor himself had decided
to intervene to attempt to end the war. In his private journal, Truman bluntly
characterized this message as the "telegram from (the] Jap Emperor asking
for peace."
Other intercepted messages suggested
that the main obstacle to peace was the continued Allied demand for
unconditional surrender. Although*the expert literature once mainly suggested
that only one administration official-Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew-urged
a change in the surr6nder formula to provide assurances for Japan's emperor, it
is now clear that with the exception of Secretary of State James Byrnes, the
entire top echelon of the U.S. government advocated such a change. By June
1945, in fact, Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of state, Edward Stettinius (who
remained in office until July 3); the undersecretary of state; the secretary of
war; the secretary of the navy; the president's chief of staff, Admiral William
Leahy; and Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall--plus all the members of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)-had in one way or another urged a clarification
of the surrender formula. So, too, had the British military and civilian
Leadership, including Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Along with Grew, the
Joint Chiefs in particular recommended that a statement be issued to coincide
with the fall of Okinawa, on or around June 21.
At that time, war crimes trials were
about to begin in Germany; the idea that the emperor might be hanged was a
possibility Tokyo could not ignore. Because the Japanese regarded the emperor
as a deity-more like Jesus or the Buddha than an ordinary human being-most top
American officials deemed offering some assurances for the continuance of the
dynasty an absolute necessity. The Joint Staff Planners, for instance, advised
the Joint Chiefs in an April 25, 1945, report that "unless a definition of
unconditional surrender can be given which is acceptable to the Japanese, there
is no alternative to annihilation and no prospect that the threat of absolute
defeat will bring about capitulation."
Secretary of War Henry Stimson took
essentially the same position in a July 2 memorandum to Truman. Moreover, he
offered his assessment that a surrender formula could be acceptable to the
Japanese, and stated, "I think the Japanese nation has the mental
intelligence and versatile capacity in such a crisis to recognize the folly of
a fight to the finish and to accept the proffer of what will amount to an
unconditional surrender."
As University of Southern Mississippi
military historian John Ray Skates has noted in his book, The Invasion of
Japan: Alternative to the Bomb, "[General] Marshall, who believed that
retention [of the emperor] was a military necessity, asked that the members [of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff] draft a memorandum to the president recommending
that the Allies 'do nothing to indicate that the emperor might be removed from
office upon unconditional surrender."'
The other option that seemed likely to
bring an end to the fighting concerned the Soviets. Joseph Stalin had promised
to enter the war against Japan roughly three months after the May 8 defeat of
Germany, which put the target date on or around August 8. Earlier in the war,
the United States had sought Russia's help primarily to pin down Japanese
armies in Manchuria and thus make a U.S. invasion of the home islands easier.
By midsummer, however, Japan's position had deteriorated so much that top U.S.
military planners believed the mere shock of a Red Army attack might be
sufficient to bring about surrender and thus make an invasion unnecessary.
As early as February 1955, Harvard
historian Ernest May, in an article in Pacific Historical Review, observed
that the "Japanese diehards ... had acknowledged since 1941 that Japan could
not fight Russia as well as the United States and Britain." May also
observed that because Moscow had been an outlet for various Japanese peace
feelers, when the Soviet declaration of war finally occurred it
"discouraged Japanese hopes of secretly negotiating terms of peace."
Moreover, in the end, "the Emperor's appeal [to end the war] probably
resulted, therefore, from the Russian action, but it could not, in any event,
have been long in coming."
The importance to U.S. leaders of the
"Russian shock option" for ending the war-which was widely discussed
even in the 1945 press-disappeared from most scholarly studies during the Cold
War. We now know, however, that as of April 29, 1945, the Joint Intelligence
Committee (JIC), in a report titled Unconditional Surrender of Japan, informed
the JCS that increasing "numbers of informed Japanese, both military and
civilian, already realize the inevitability of absolute defeat." The JIC
further advised that "the increasing effects of air-sea blockade, the progressive
and cumulative devastation wrought by strategic bombing, and the collapse of
Ger- many (with its implications regarding redeployment) should make this
realization widespread within the year."
The JIC pointed out, however, that a
Soviet decision to join with the United States and Great Britain would have
enormous force and would dramatically alter the equation: "The entry of
the USSF into the war would, together with the foregoing factors, convince most
Japanese at once of the inevitability of complete defeat." [Emphasis
added.]
By mid-June, Marshall advised Truman
directly that "the impact of Russian entry [into the war] on the already
hopeless Japanese may well be the decisive action levering them into
capitulation at the time or shortly thereafter if we land in Japan."
Again, Marshall's advice to Truman came almost a month before news of the
emperor's personal intervention was received and four and a half months before
even a preliminary Kyushu landing was to take place.
In July, the British general Sir Hastings Ismay, chief of staff to
the minister of defense, summarized the conclusions of the latest U.S.-U.K.
intelligence studies for Churchill in this way: "When Russia came into the
war against Japan, the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any
terms short of the dethronement of the Emperor."
On several occasions, Truman made
abundantly clear that the main reason he went to Potsdam to meet Stalin was to
make sure the Soviets would, in fact, enter the war. The atomic bomb had not
yet been tested, and, as Truman later stated in his memoirs, "If the test
[of the atomic bomb] should fail, then it would be even more important to us to
bring about a surrender before we had to make a physical conquest of Japan."
Some
of the most important modern documentary discoveries relate to this point.
After Stalin confirmed that the Red Army would indeed enter the war, the
president's "lose' Potsdam journal (found in 1978) shows him writing:
"Fini Japs” when that comes about." And the next day, in an exuberant
letter to his wife, Truman wrote that with the Soviet declaration of war,
"we'll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won't be
killed
It is also obvious that if assurances for
the emperor were put forward together with the Soviet attack, the likelihood of
an early Japanese surrender would be even greater. The JIC recognized this in
its April 29, 1945, report, observing that there first had to be a realization
of the "inevitability of defeat
which Ike JIC judged a Soviet declaration of war would produce. Once
"the Japanese people, as well as their leaders, were persuaded both that
absolute defeat was inevitable and that unconditional surrender did not imply
national annihilation, surrender might follow fairly quickly."
Many more documentary finds support the
view that top U.S. officials, including Truman, understood that use of the bomb
was not required to end the war before an invasion. However, as Robert Messer
observed in the August 1985 issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the
implications of Truman's diary and letters alone
“for the orthodox defense of
the bomb's use are devastating: if Soviet entry alone would end the war before
an invasion of Japan, the use of atomic bombs cannot be justified as the only
alternative to that invasion. This does not mean, of course, that having the
bomb was not useful. But it does mean that for Truman the end of the war seemed
at hand; the issue was no longer when the war would end, but how and on whose
terms. If he believed that the war would end with Soviet entry in mid-August,
then he must have realized that if the bombs were not used before that date
they might well not be used at all.”
Minimally,
the president's contemporaneous diary entries, together with his letter to his
wife, raise fundarnenw questions about Truman's subsequent claims that the
atomic bomb was used because it was the only way to avoid "a quarter
million," a half million," or "millions" of casualties.
Or consider the views of the late
historian Herbert Feis, who was for decades the voice of orthodox opinion on
the subject and a friend of Stimson's as well as an adviser to three World War
H--era cabinet secretaries. It is rarely noted that Feis recognized-and
emphasized-that by July 1945 there was a very good chance the war could have
been ended without dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had the
United States combined even the mere threat of
“Russian attack with assurances for the emperor. He wrote in his 1961
work Japan Subdued: The Atomic Bomb and the End of the War in the Pacific: "I
think it may be concluded that ... the fighting would have continued into July
at the least, unless ... the American and Soviet governments together had let
it be known that unless Japan laid down its arms at once, the Soviet Union was
going to enter the war. That, along with a promise to spare. the Emperor, might
well have made an earlier bid for surrender effective.”
Feis's
only reservation was that Stalin might not have wanted to signal his
willingness to join the war against Japan at this time, a rather odd idea that
many documents now available show to be illusory. In addition, if a mere
announcement of Soviet intentions might have forced a surrender, as the JIC
pointed out, the reality of the attack would have been even more powerful.
Related to this question is the fact that so many
World War II military leaders are on record as stating that the bomb was not
needed. Dwight Eisenhower, for instance, reported in his 1963 Mandate for
Change that he had the following reaction when Secretary of War Stimson
informed him that the atomic bomb would be used:
“During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. “
Historian Stephen Ambrose notes in
his biography of Eisenhower that he also clearly stated that he personally
urged Truman not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower's opinion in other public
statements in the early 1960s was identical: "Japan was, at that very
moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.'. . . It
wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."
Admiral William Leahy, President
Truman's chief of staff and the top official who presided over meetings of both
the JCS and the U.S.-U.K. Combined Chiefs of Staff, also minced few words in
his 1950 memoirs I W12s There: "The
use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material
assistance in our war against Japan.... [In being the first to use it, we ...
adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was
not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying
women and children."
The Army Air Forces commander, General
Henry "Hap" Arnold, put it this way in his 1949 Global Mission: "It
always appeared to us that atomic bomb or no atomic bomb the Japanese were
already on the verge of collapse." Britain's General Ismay said in his
memoirs that his initial reaction on hearing of the successful atomic test was
one of "revulsion' " He had
previously observed: "for some time past it had been firmly in my mind
that the Japanese were tottering."
The strong language used by
high-level military figures often comes as a shock to those not familiar with
the documents, memoirs, and diaries now avail- able. Defenders of the decision
sometimes suggest that such views represent only after-the-fact judgments or
are the result of interservice rivalry. However, in view of the traditional
unwillingness of uniformed military officers to criticize their civilian
superiors-and also the extraordinary importance of the historic issue- it is
difficult to explain so many statements, made with such force, on such grounds
alone.
All of these assessments also bear on
the question of the number of lives that might possibly have been lost if the
atomic bomb had not been used. Over the last decade, scholars of very different
political orientations, including Barton Bernstein, Rufus Miles Jr., and John
Ray Skates, have all separately examined World War 11 U.S. military planning
documents on this subject. These documents indicate that if an initial November
1945 landing on Kyushu had gone forward, estimates of the number of lives that
would have been lost (and therefore possibly saved by use of the atomic bombs)
were in the range of 20,000 to 26,000. In the unlikely event that a subsequent
full-scale invasion had been mounted in 1946, the maximum estimate found in
such documents was 46,000.
Even these numbers, however, confuse
the central issue: If the war could have been ended by clarifying the terms of surrender
and/or allowing the shock of the Russian attack to set in, then no lives would
have been lost in an invasion. Fighting was minimal in August 1945 as both
sides regrouped, and the most that can be said is that the atomic bombs might
have saved the lives that would have been lost in the time required to arrange
final surrender terms with Japan. That saving lives was not the highest
priority, however, seems obvious from the choices made in July: If the United
States' really wished to end the war as quickly and as surely as possible- and
to save as many lives as possible-then, as Marshall pointed out as early as
June, the full force of the Russian shock plus assurances for the emperor's
future could not be left out of the equation.
Moreover, if we accept Stimson's
subsequent judgment that "history might find" that the decision to
delay assurances for the emperor "had prolonged the war," then, as
historian Martin Sherwin noted in the October 19, 1981, Nation, the
atomic bomb may well have cost lives. Why? Lives were lost during the roughly
two- month delay in clarifying the surrender terms. Many historians believe the
delay was caused by the decision to wait for the atomic test at Alamogordo, New
Mexico, on July 16, and then, the bombs' use on Japan in early August. Several
thousand American soldiers and sailors died between Grew's initial May 28
proposal to clarify the "unconditional" terms and the final surrender
on August 14.
Some of the basic questions debated in
the expert literature concern why alternatives for ending the war were not
pursued. Little dispute remains about why the Soviet option was discarded,
however. Once the bomb was proven to work, the president reversed course
entirely and attempted to stall a Red Army attack. A week after the Alamogordo
test, for instance, Churchill observed that "it is quite clear that the
United States do not at the present time desire Russian participation in the
war against Japan' " Similarly, the diary of Navy secretary James
Forrestal indicates that by July 28 Secretary of State Byrnes was "most
anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in."
And the private journal of Byrnes's personal assistant, Walter Brown, confirms
that Byrnes was "hoping for time, believing [that] after [the] atomic bomb
Japan will surrender and Russia will not get in so much on the kill, thereby
being in a position to press claims against China." Meanwhile, every
effort was made to speed up production and delivery of the weapon. These
efforts were successful: Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, two days before
Russia declared war on Japan. Nagasaki was bombed on the 9th.
A traditional argument as to why the
surrender formula for Japan was not modified is that it was politically
impossible for Truman to alter the "unconditional" language, that to
do so would make him look soft on Japan. There is certainly evidence that some
people felt this way, notably Roosevelt's ailing former secretary of state, Cordell
Hull, and Assistant Secretaries of State Archibald MacLeish and Dean Acheson.
There is some evidence (mainly from the period after the bombings) that Byrnes
feared criticism if the rhetoric of unconditional surrender was abandoned.
However, it does not appear that the president himself was much worried about
such matters. Truman's views, as described in contemporaneous records, indicate
that he generally seemed to favor altering the terms, and there is little
evidence of concern about political opposition. Stimson's diary reports of July
24 and August 10, in particular, make it clear that neither Byrnes nor Truman
were at all "obdurate" on the question. And, of course, a few days
after the bombings the Japanese were given the assurances they sought: Japan
would still have an emperor.
Moreover, many leading newspapers at
the time were pressing for-rather than resisting-a clarification of terms. The Washington
Post, for instance challenged the "unconditional surrender, formula
head on in a June 11, 1945, editorial titled "Fatal Phrase":
"President Truman, of course, has already stated that there is no thought
of destroying the Japanese people, but such assurances, even from so high a
source, are negated by that fatal phrase." The Post stressed that
the two words
“remain a great stumbling block to any propaganda effort and the perpetual trump card of the Japanese die-hards for their game of national suicide. Let us amend them; let us give Japan conditions, harsh conditions certainly, and conditions that will render her diplomatically and militarily impotent for generations. But also let us somehow assure those Japanese who are ready to plead for peace, that, even on our terms, life and peace will be better than war and annihilation.”
Similarly, recent research has
indicated that far from pushing the president to maintain a hard line, many
leading Republicans urged him to modify the terms to get an early surrender,
preferably before the Soviets entered the war. Former president Herbert Hoover,
for instance, went to see Truman about the issue in late May, and on July 3,
the Washington Post reported that "Senator [Wallace] White [Jr.] of
Maine, minority leader, declared ... that the Pacific war might end quickly if
President Truman would state specifically just what unconditional surrender
means for the Japanese."
Martin Sherwin has suggested that the
atomic bomb was used because it was "preferred" to the other options.
Although it is sometimes thought that sheer momentum carried the day, there is
no doubt that it was, in fact, an active choice. When Truman and Byrnes cut the
critical assurances to the emperor out of paragraph 12 of the draft Potsdam
Proclamation, they did so against the recommendation of virtually the entire
top American and British leadership. Truman and Byrnes had to reverse the
thrust of a near-unanimous judgment that the terms should be clarified.
Truman's journal also indicates that he understood that the proclamation in
final form- without the key passage-was not likely to be accepted by Japan.
If the Soviet option for ending the
war was shelved for political and diplomatic reasons-and if the political
reasons for not modifying the surrender formula no longer look so solid-is
there any other explanation for why the Japanese were not told their emperor
would not be harmed, that he could stay on the throne in some innocuous
position like that of the king of England? Some historians, of course, continue
to hold that the bomb's use was militarily necessary--or perhaps inevitable
because of the inherited technological, bureaucratic, and military momentum
that built up during the war. Others suggest that because huge sums had been
spent developing the weapon, political leaders found it impossible not to use
it. Still others have probed the intricacies of decision-making through an
analysis of bureaucratic dynamics.
Of greatest interest, perhaps, is
another factor. The traditional argument has been that solely military
considerations were involved in the decision to use the bomb; increasingly,
however, the once controversial idea that diplomatic issues- especially the
hope of strengthening the West against the Soviet Union-played a significant
role in the decision has gained widespread scholarly acceptance. Although
analysts still debate exactly how much weight to accord such
factors, that they were involved is now well established for most
experts.
Modern research findings, for instance,
clearly demonstrate that from April 1945 on, top American officials calculated
that using the atomic bomb would enormously bolster U.S. diplomacy vis-a-vis
the Soviet Union in negotiations over postwar Europe and the Far East. The
atomic bomb was not, in fact, initially brought to Truman's attention because
of its relationship to the war against Japan, but because of its likely impact
on diplomacy. In late April, in the midst of an explosive confrontation with
Stalin over the Polish issue, Secretary of War Stimson urged discussion of the
bomb because, as he told Truman, it had "such a bearing on our present
foreign relations and ... such an important effect upon all my thinking in this
field'"
Stirnson, for his part, regarded the
atomic bomb as what he called the "master card" of diplomacy toward Russia.
However, he believed that sparring with the Soviet Union in the early spring, before the weapon
was demonstrated, would be counterproductive. Before a mid-May meeting of a
cabinet-level committee considering Far Eastern issues, Stirnson observed that
"the questions cut very deep and [were] powerfully connected with our
success with S-1 [the atomic bomb]." Two days later, he noted in his diary
that
“I tried to point out the difficulties which existed and I thought it
premature to ask those questions; at least we were not yet in a position to
answer them .... It may be necessary to have it out with Russian on her
relations to Manchuria and Port Arthur and various other parts otnorth China,
and also the relations of China to us. Over any such tangled weave of problems
the [atomic bomb] secret would be dominant and yet we will not know until after
that time probably ... whether this is
a weapon in our hands or not. We think it will be shortly afterwards, but it seems
a terrible thing to gamble with such big stakes in diplomacy without having
your master card in your hand.”
Stimson's argument for delaying
diplomatic fights with the Soviet Union was also described in another mid-May
diary entry after a conversation with Assistant Secretary of War John N4cCloy:
The time now and the method now to deal with Russia
was to keep our rnouths shut and let our actions speak for words. The Russians
will understand them better than anything else. It is a case where we have got
to regain the lead and perhaps do it in a pretty rough and realistic way ....
This [is] a place where we really held all the cards. I called it a royal
straight flush and we musn't be a fool about the way we play it. They can't get
along without our help and industries and we have coming into action a weapon
which will be unique. Now the thing is not to get into unnecessary quarrels by
talking too much and not to indicate any weakness by talking too much; let our
actions speak for themselves.
Stimson’s files indicate that Truman had
come to similar conclusions roughly a month after taking office. Quite
specifically—and against the advice of Churchill, who wanted to early meeting
with Stalin before American troops were withdrawn from Europe—the president
postponed his only diplomatic encounter with the Soviet leader because he first
wanted to know for certain that the still-untested atomic bomb actually worked.
Stimson’s papers indicate the president’s view was that he would have “more
cards” later. In a 1949 interview, Truman recalled telling a close associate
before the test, “If it explodes as I think it will I’ll certainly have a
hammer on those boys” (Meaning, it seemed clear, the Russians as well as the
Japanese.)
Evidence in the Stimson diaries suggests
that the broad strategy was probably secretly explained to Ambassador Averell
Harriman and British foreign minister Anthony Eden at this time. Scientists in
the field also got an inkling that there was a link between the Potsdam meeting
with Stalin and the atomic test. J. Robert Oppenheimer, for instance, later
testified before the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that “I don’t think there
was nay time where we worked harder at the speedup than in the period after the
German surrender.”
The timing was perfect. The first successful
atomic test occurred on July 16, 1945, and Truman sat down for discussions with
Stalin the very next day. Stimson’s diary includes this entry after a full
report of the test result was received:
Churchill told me that he had noticed at the meeting of the [Big Three] yesterday that Truman was evidently much fortified by something that had happened and that he stood up to the Russians in a most emphatic and decisive manner, telling them as to certain demand that they absolutely could not have and the US was entirely against them. He said, “Now I know what happened to Truman yesterday. I couldn’t understand it. When he got to the meeting after having read this report he was a changed man. He told the Russians just where they got on and off and generally bossed the whole meeting.
The July 23, 1945, diary entry of Lord Alanbrooke, chairman of the United Kingdom Chiefs of Staff Committee, provides a description of both Churchill’s own reaction and further indirect evidence of the atomic bomb’s impact of American attitudes.
“The prime minister had absorbed all the minor American exaggerations and as a result, was completely carried away . . . We now had something in our hands which would redress the balance with the Russians. The secret of this explosive and the power to use it would completely alter the diplomatic equilibrium, which was adrift since the defeat of German. Now we had a new value which redressed our position (pushing out his chin and scowling); now we could say, “If you insist on doing this or that, well..And then where are the Russians?”
There is no longer much dispute that ending the war with Japan before the Soviet Union entered it played a role in the thinking of those responsible for using the atomic bomb. There is also evidence that impressing the Russians was a consideration. Scholarly discussion of this controversial point has been heated, and even carefully qualified judgments that such a motive is “strongly suggested” by the available documents have often been twisted and distorted into extreme claims. It is, nevertheless, impossible to ignore the considerable range of evidence that now points in this direction. Particulary important has been research illuminating the role played by Byrnes. Although it was once believed that Stimson was the most important presidential adviser on atomic matters, historians increasingly understand that Byrnes had the president’s ear. Indeed, in the judgment of man y experts, he fairly dominated Truman during the first five or six months of Truman’s presidency.
Byrnes, in fact, had been one of Truman’s
mentors when the young unknown from Missour came to the Senate. In selecting
the highly influential former Supreme Court justice as secretary of State,
Truman put him in direct line of succession to the presidency. By also choosing
Byrnes as his personal representative on the high-level Interim Committee—which
made recommendations concerning the new weapon—Truman arranged to secure
primary counsel on both foreign policy and the atomic bomb from a single
trusted adviser.
There is not much doubt about Bynes’
general view. In one of their very first meetings, Byrnes told Truman that “in
his belief the atomic bomb might well put us in a position to dictate our own
terms at the end of the war.” Again, at the end of May, Byrnes met, at White
House request, with atomic scientist Leo Szilard. IN his 1949 A Personal
History of the Atomic Bomb, Szilard recalled that
“Mr. Byrnes did not argue that it was necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war.. .Mr. Byrnes’ . . view [was] that our possessing and demonstrating the bomb would make Russia more manageable in Europe.
Stimson’s friend Herbert Feis judged a
quarter century ago that the desire to “impress” the Soviets almost certainly
played a role in the decision to use the atomic bomb. On the basis of currently
available information it is impossible to prove precisely to what extent Byrnes
and the president were influenced by this consideration. Nevertheless, just as
the discovery of new documents has led to greater recognition of the role of
diplomatic factors in the decision, research on Byrnes’ role—and the
consistency of his attitude throughout this period—has clarified our
understanding of this motive. Writing in the August 18, 1985, New York Times,
Yale historian Gaddis Smith summarized this point: “It has been demonstrated
that he decision to bomb Japan was centrally connected to Truman’s
confrontational approach to the Soviet Union.”
Quite apart from the basic judgment as to
the necessity of and reasons for the bombs’ uses the issue of why the public is
generally ignorant of so many of the basic facts discussed in the expert
literature remains. For one thing, the modern press has been careless in its
reporting. During this year’s Enola Gay controversy at the Smithsonian, few
reporters bothered to seriously consult specialist literature, or to present
the range of specific issues in contention among the experts. Instead
historians who still remain unqualified defenders of the decision as dictated
solely by military necessity were often cited as unquestioned authoritative
sources. Many reporters repeated as fact the myth that over “a million”
Americans would have perished or been wounded in an invasion of Japan. Only a
handful wrote that among the many historians who criticized the Smithsonian for
its “cleansing” of history were conservatives and others who disagreed about
that specific issue, but begged for an honest discussion of the questions
involved.
Emotional issues were also at work. Time
and again the question of whether dropping the atomic bomb was militarily
necessary has become entangled with the separate issue of anger at Japan’s
sneak attack and the brutality of its military. The Japanese people have an
ugly history to confront, including not only Pearl Harbor but also the bombing
of Shanghai, the rape of Nanking, the
forced prostitution of Korean women and the horror of the Bataan death march,
and systematic torture and murder of American and other prisoners of war. Even
so, the question of Hiroshima persists.
Americans also have often allowed
themselves to confuse discussion of research findings on Hiroshima with
criticism of American servicemen. This is certainly unjustified (as the
comments of military leaders like Eisenhower, Leahy and Arnold suggest). The
Americans serving in the Pacific in 1945 were prepaed to risk their lives for
their nation; by this most fundamental test, they can only be called heroes.
This is neither the first nor the last time, however, that those in field were
not informed of what was going on at higher levels.
Finally, we Americans clearly do not like
to see our nation as vulnerable to the same moral failings as others. To raise
questions about Hiroshima is to raise doubts, it seems to some, about the moral
integrity of the country and its leaders. It is also to raise the most profound
questions about the legitimacy of nuclear weapons in general. American’s
continued unwillingness to confront the fundamental questions about Hiroshima
may well be at the root of the quiet acceptance that has characterized so many
other dangerous developments in the nuclear era that began in 1945.