This piece originally appeared at Pajamas Media
This past Wednesday morning at 8:15 AM in Hiroshima, Japan, it was partly cloudy and 78 degrees with light winds. Visibility was about 10 miles. A bell softly rang in the immaculately kept Peace Memorial Park, remembering the moment in 1945 when the atomic age was born. The anniversary is marked in a similar manner every year with tens of thousands of people from all over the world joining in the solemn ceremony.
The dwindling number of survivors come forward each year and tell their tales of horror about that day. It’s almost as if they are re-living something that happened just recently, so vivid and emotional are the memories. Most of the survivors (many refer to them as “victims”) were young children in 1945. Many lost their parents in the blast. They say they come to bear witness so that there will be no more Hiroshimas.
Exactly 63 years earlier, weather conditions were eerily similar when Colonel Paul Tibbets, commander of the 509th Composite Group and pilot of a plane he named after his mother—the Enola Gay—flew over Hiroshima’s Aioi Bridge and began to bank his aircraft.
Just as Tibbets started his turn, the B-29 lurched violently as 10,000 pounds of American technical, industrial, and scientific ingenuity fell out of the bomb bay almost exactly on schedule (navigator Captain Theodore Van Kirk’s calculations of time over target was 15 seconds off). Little Boy, they called it, in an ironic juxtaposition to its massive bulk. It was a gun-type nuclear bomb—a crude, primitive, inefficient device by our standards. And for all the effort, money, time, and brainpower that went into designing it, Little Boy was simplicity incarnate.
A hollow bullet of highly enriched uranium 235 was placed at one end of a long tube with a larger mass of enriched uranium at the other end. The larger cylinder of nuclear material was barely “subcritical”—that is, needing just a bit more in order to start a chain reaction and cause an explosion.
When Little Boy hit 1900 feet above Hiroshima (it had drifted about 800 feet from the target), the uranium bullet fired down the barrel and impacted the cylinder perfectly. For two millionths of a second, the mass that used to be Little Boy became as hot as the sun. This heat so thoroughly eliminated humans directly below the blast, all that could be seen afterwards were shadow-like outlines of people on the concrete.
The blast—equivalent to about 13,000 tons of TNT —literally scoured out the center of the city and the resulting fires took care of most of the rest. About 70,000 people perished within hours of the blast with another 70,000 dying before the end of 1945.
Three days later—63 years ago today—history would repeat itself over the city of Nagasaki. This time, a plutonium bomb was used, increasing the efficiency of the device dramatically. Due to some topographical quirks (there were no large hills as in Hiroshima to focus the blast effect), the casualty rate was lower. Still, Fat Man managed to kill more than 40,000 that day and another 40,000 before that fateful year faded into history.
How could we have done it? Much of the world to this day asks the question, “Wasn’t there another, less cruel way to end the war?”
The decision to drop the bomb will always be controversial because the answer to that question is yes, there were other ways we could have ended the war with Japan. Some would almost certainly have cost more lives than were lost at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Army Air Force Commander of Strategic Forces in the Pacific Curtis LeMay believed if given six months and freedom to target whatever he wished, he could bring Japan to its knees by completely destroying its ability to feed itself. Victory assured—at the cost of several million starved Japanese.
The navy thought a blockade would do the trick. Starving the Japanese war machine of raw materials and the people of food they were importing from occupied China would have the Japanese government begging for peace in a matter of six months to a year. Again, visions of millions of dead from starvation came with the plan.
The army saw invasion as the only option. A landing on the southernmost main island of Kyushu followed up by an attack on the Kanto plain near Tokyo on the island of Honshu. Dubbed Operation Downfall, the plan called for the first phase to be carried out in October of 1945, with the main battle for Japan taking place in the spring of 1946. Casualty estimates have been hotly debated over the years, but it seems reasonable to assume that many hundreds of thousands of Americans would have been killed or wounded while, depending on how fiercely civilians resisted, perhaps several million Japanese would have died in the assault.
But there were other plans to end the war as well. Undersecretary of the Navy Ralph Bard sat in the meeting room where the Interim Committee was meeting on June 1, 1945 to decide on where the atomic bombs should be used and how. And from his vantage point, he did not agree with the main conclusions of the committee to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki without warning. Later that month, he wrote a memo to his boss, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, where he tried to make the case for not using the device.
Ever since I have been in touch with this program I have had a feeling that before the bomb is actually used against Japan that Japan should have some preliminary warning for say two or three days in advance of use. The position of the United States as a great humanitarian nation and the fair play attitude of our people generally is responsible in the main for this feeling.During recent weeks I have also had the feeling very definitely that the Japanese government may be searching for some opportunity which they could use as a medium of surrender. Following the three-power conference emissaries from this country could contact representatives from Japan somewhere on the China Coast and make representations with regard to Russia’s position and at the same time give them some information regarding the proposed use of atomic power, together with whatever assurances the President might care to make with regard to the Emperor of Japan and the treatment of the Japanese nation following unconditional surrender. It seems quite possible to me that this presents the opportunity which the Japanese are looking for.
I don’t see that we have anything in particular to lose in following such a program. The stakes are so tremendous that it is my opinion very real consideration should be given to some plan of this kind. I do not believe under present circumstances existing that there is anyone in this country whose evaluation of the chances of the success of such a program is worth a great deal. The only way to find out is to try it out.
Was Japan ready to surrender in June? The cabinet had been wanting to give up at least since April. They had extended feelers to the Russians in hopes of using Stalin as a go-between in negotiations. But intercepts by our codebreakers released unredacted in 1995 clearly show that in addition to a demand to maintain the Emperor’s position, the Japanese would only settle for a “negotiated” peace with the army command structure still intact and no occupation. In short, an invitation to another war as soon as the Japanese recovered. Even that proved too much for many in the military who saw surrender as the ultimate disgrace according to bushido, their code of honor. When Stalin stalled the Japanese peace delegation, the military killed the tentative outreach completely.
Would warning the Japanese of the existence of the bomb have done any good? It may have. But the Interim Committee came to the conclusion that the Japanese were just as likely to move thousands of American prisoners of war to the target area. And a demonstration of what the bomb could do was out of the question. There was enough plutonium for two devices—the Trinity test “gadget” and Fat Man. After that, the supply was a question mark because of manufacturing problems at the Oak Ridge gaseous diffusion plant in Tennessee and Hanford reactor in Washington state.
Besides, after 82 days of the most brutal combat in any theater of the war, the battle for Okinawa was finally winding down. It is hard to grasp the wave of helplessness that descended on many in the civilian and military leadership as they watched the Japanese on Okinawa fight so fanatically and to the death. The prospect of invasion and continued combat throughout the Pacific was frightening. The gruesome toll of 100,000 Japanese soldiers dead and 50,000 American casualties weighed heavily on the Interim Committee in making their recommendations to President Truman.
Bard almost certainly discussed his memo with both Stimson and Truman. Stimson, an old world, old fashioned diplomat who said when disbanding the code breakers after World War I “Gentlemen don’t read other gentlemen’s mail,” was impressed by the arguments and even shared some of Bard’s sentiments but felt he had an obligation to abide by the Committee’s majority findings.
Truman, president for less than 3 months and in the dark about the Manhattan Project during his entire vice presidency, was being given advice from every corner on how to end the war. The decision to drop the bomb did not, he claims, initiate a great moral conflict within him. He accepted the recommendation of the Interim Committee and went off to Potsdam where the allies issued an ultimatum to Japan: surrender or suffer the consequences. The die was cast and the fate of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was sealed.
With no good plan to end the war without massive death and suffering, an intransigent Japanese government insisting on fighting to the bitter end, mounting casualties in the Philippines and Okinawa, a war weary public, the prospects of transferring millions of men who had just survived the horrors of the European battlefields to the Pacific, and his own belief that using the bombs would end the war quickly, Truman gave the go ahead in a handwritten note on the back of a July 31, 1945 memo from Stimson regarding the statement to be released following the bombing.
“Reply to your suggestions approved. Release when ready but not before August 2.
In the end, there were probably many calculations that went into the decision by Truman to drop the bomb. Other considerations probably included the effect it might have on the Soviets. For many years, this reason was considered by several historians to be the primary concern of Truman when he gave the go-ahead to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it no doubt was one factor in Truman’s decision, it appears now, thanks to publication of radio intercepts from the time, that the president’s primary focus was using a weapon he felt could end the war in days and not months.
Another factor was the advice given him by his good friend and confidante Jimmy Byrne, former senator from South Carolina. Byrne pointed out that spending $2 billion for a bomb that was never used, not to mention the chance that it could end the war and save lives, would anger the American people—especially those who lost loved ones because the bomb had not been tried. Some historians have pointed to this factor as an overriding one, but that almost certainly isn’t the case. Byrne’s political instincts were solid, but Truman would hardly have based his decision on what the voters would have thought after the war.
If all of this is went into deciding to use the bomb, why then does most of the rest of the world criticize us for using it?
The stories of survivors are harrowing—flames everywhere, people walking by whose flesh had been ripped off their bodies by heat and the blast, the inability to find loved ones. All the ghastliness of Dante’s Hell and a Gothic horror novel rolled into one. We pity them and ache for what they went through that horrible day.
But once—just once—I would like to hear the horror stories of the men and women of Pearl Harbor as counterpoint to the suffering of the Japanese and a reminder of who started the war and how they did it. I want to hear from those who can tell equally horrific tales of death and destruction. How Japanese aircraft strafed our men with machine gun fire while they were swimming for their lives through flaming oil spills, the result of a surprise attack against a nation with whom they were at peace. Or how the hundreds of men trapped in the USS Arizona slowly suffocated over 10 days as divers frantically tried to cut through the superstructure and rescue their comrades.
Perhaps we might even ask surviving POWs to bear witness to their ordeal in Japanese prison camps—surely as brutal, inhuman, and gruesome an atrocity as has ever been inflicted on enemy soldiers.
While we’re at it, I am sure there are thousands of witnesses who would want to testify about how the Japanese army raped its way across Asia. This little discussed aspect of the war is a non-event for the most part in Japanese histories. But the millions of women who suffered unspeakable mistreatment by the Japanese army deserve a hearing whenever the tragedy of Hiroshima is remembered.
Yes, no more Hiroshimas. But to take the atomic bombing of Japan totally out of context and use it to highlight one nation or one city’s suffering is morally offensive. The war with Japan, with its racial overtones on both sides as well as the undeniable cruelty and barbarity by the Japanese military, should have been ended the second it was possible to do so. Anything less makes the moral arguments surrounding the use of the atomic bomb an exercise in sophistry.
12:01 pm
Amen, Rick.
And to quote from Max Hastings’ recently published “Retribution,” a must-read on the Pacific war:
“Hitler set a standard of evil among those whom the Allies fought in the Second War War. Some historians, not all of them Japanese, argue that Japan’s leaders represented a significantly lesser baseness; and certainly not one which deserved the atomic bomb. Few of those Asians who experienced Japanese conquest, however, and knew of the millions of deaths which it encompassed, believe that Japan possessed any superior claim on Allied forbearance to that of Germany. Post-war critics of U.S. conduct in the weeks before Hiroshima seem to demand from America’s leaders moral and political generosity so far in advance of that displayed by their Japanese counterparts as to be fantastic, in the sixth year of a global war. Their essential thesis is that America should have spared its enemies from the human consequences of their own rulers’ blind folly; that those in Washington should have displayed a concern for the Japanese people much more enlightened than that of the Tokyo government.”
“...that those in Washington should have displayed a concern for the Japanese people much more enlightened than that of the Tokyo government.”
In a way we did. Think of the civilian casualties in an invasion and you can see that dropping the bombs was, if not merciful, at least cognizant of the fact that we were saving Japanese lives as well.
ed.
12:34 pm
“But once—just once—I would like to hear the horror stories of the men and women of Pearl Harbor as counterpoint to the suffering of the Japanese and a reminder of who started the war and how they did it.”
What are you talking about? These stories are everywhere. There are books and movies about it. Websites devoted to it. Television documentaries on the History channel. Hell, the abuse perpetuated upon China by the Japanese is legendary. Your piece reads like everyone simply ignores all of this so they can bash the United States. Some maybe, but come on. There are comparatively few people who vilify the US for doing what it did to end the war. I know I don’t.
My point wasn’t that those stories aren’t told – they are. My point is that the survivors of Hiroshima’s stories are meaningless without the counterpoint of Pearl Harbor, POW camps, and Nanking et al.
And you are wrong about the number of people who criticize our use of the bomb – not to mention the undercurrent of anti-Americanism at these rememberance ceremonies every year.
ed.
1:39 pm
Back in 1986, I was an exchange student living in Hiroshima. I attended the annual ceremony at Peace Park (which was about 1/2 mile from where I was living), and was greatly moved by the whole day, including the speeches from survivors and Bishop Desmond Tutu, as well as the tour of the Peace Park museum and standing under A-Bomb Dome (including seeing the concrete with the outlines of burned people – something I will never forget). However, during my time in Hiroshima, I had the opportunity to speak in private with several survivors of that day. What struck me at the time, and does still today, was their apparent lack of bitterness or hatred towards the United States for dropping the bomb. Almost to a person, each of the survivors that I spoke with expressed great grief and sadness over what had happened, and the loss of loved ones that they suffered, but they also expressed their understanding that the war had to be ended, and that any other approach taken would have greatly prolonged the war and cost countless more lives to be lost than were caused by the bomb. As you have pointed out in your article, history bears out this point of view. With Okinowa as an example, it was painfully evident what a full scale invasion of Honshu would have entailed. We knew it, the Emperor knew it, and Japanese people knew it. Yes, no more Hiroshimas. However, I think it can be safely argued that dropping the bomb was the only real option that we had at the time.
2:04 pm
Nice piece. Evenhanded and honest.
Don’t want you cities going up in mushroom clouds? Don’t make war on the United States.
2:05 pm
I do believe that Truman placed quite a bit of weight on what Americans might think if he didn’t use it. Imagine trying to explain to the people why several hundreds of thousands of Americans had to die in an invasion when we had another option.
8:28 pm
I agree with you Rick, I think the criticism of using the bomb must be considered in light of the brutality of the Japanese during that war.
The book “Tennozan” puts in perspective the use of the bomb following the battle for Okinawa which was unimaginably brutal. Each consecutive pacific battle was more brutal than the last.
I once knew a survivor of the Bataan death march who was, by then, a POW in Japan. He was convinced that the bombs saved their lives. My father, who was on Guam felt the same.
One other thing needs to be rememered as well. Before Pearl Harbor the majority of the American people didn’t want to get involved in a war that they considered as not their problem.
By 1945 they wanted it done (but unlike today they realized it had to be won). In a war where we had experienced more losses in one day as all in Iraq so far, the American people wanted it finished.
Another 50-500,000 losses in mainland Japan was just too high a price to finish a fight we did not start.
People may not like it but it was the correct choice.
8:41 pm
Japan had already started building the bunkers and moving some factories into mountains. They had also gotten jet technology from the Germans, along with a few other last, gasp goodies. An invasion by early 1946 would have faced swarms of suicide propeller driven aircraft, and then jet fighter/bombers.
The War Department fully expected to invade: they had Purple Hearts minted for the expected casualties.
We are still handing them out to this day and have not had to mint a new batch since 1945. Those were the days when you had to actually earn a Purple Heart, too, without modern medicine and wonder drugs.
That is real war with a million casualties expected on our side.
As it was the Japanese military nearly staged a coup before the surrender was given – it was a very near thing.
10:13 pm
From 60+ years later, it’s hard for me to see the night firebombing raids of Europe (starting with London) and Japan, and the daytime surprise attack on Hiroshima and subsequent single-plane attack on Nagasaki, as anything but war crimes. Though Geneva Four (“Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War”) wasn’t until 1949, Hague IV 1907 arguably applied.
I understand that the nighttime raids in Europe were initially primarily due to extremely inaccurate nighttime navigation methods, with errors literally measured in miles. The Allied anti-city raids were justified by arguing that they diverted German effort from the front lines to the defense of cities. But later on, they were wholesale attacks on urban civilian populations. We had the bombers, and the bombs, and in Japan at least, complete air superiority – the cities were essentially undefended, and their entire populations couldn’t just disperse to the countryside for the duration of the war.
Historical arguments that these attacks were justifiable in some ghastly utilitarian sense may be technically correct but are a little unsettling.
2:35 am
A thought provoking piece, however there is ample history available. Why Hiroshima and Nagasaki? They were essentially the two largest target cities that had not been substantially fire-bombed and largely destroyed. 63 years of history has supported Truman quite well. His decision saved many Allied lives as well as Japanese lives. War is Hell.
7:53 am
Thank you for the very intelligent, thoughtful piece. War is always an ugly enterprise, but sometimes absolutely necessary. The dropping of the atomic bomb was indeed horrific, but not any more terrible than the fire bombings of Tokyo or Dresden in results. And the simple historical fact is that if there had been no Pearl Harbor, there would have been no Nagasaki or Hiroshima.
While perhaps not politically correct today, the facts are that Japan waged a very dirty, ugly war. As you pointed out, the death toll of an invasion of Japan in 1945 would have been extremely high on both sides.
Selfishly, I own my existence to the last bombings of Japan. My father was scheduled to be one of the first few thousand American soldiers, who were told to expect 98-99% casualties. His stories of the Japanese tenacity in fighting on the islands of the South Pacific tell me plenty about what an invasion would have been like. The Japanese soldiers simply would not surrender, despite defeat. Dad told be about being on coral islands where the enemy were entrenched in coral caves and would not give up under any circumstances, leaving the U.S. forces to finally pour aviation fuel into the caves and igniting it, so it would explode and of course suck all of the oxygen out of the cave, ending the lives of the Japanese soldiers and the deaths of American soldiers.
With the passage of time, it is clear that the use of nuclear weapons must be avoided, but Truman did what he had to do in the context of the times. My heart goes out to survivors of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, but no more than the victims of Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, the Chinese comfort women and all others who suffered from Japanese atrocities.
12:08 pm
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the – Web Reconnaissance for 08/14/2008 A short recon of what’s out there that might draw your attention, updated throughout the day…so check back often.
3:46 pm
An excellent post!
In the end, however, we will continue to stock and make ready for use the more modern versions of nuclear weapons, in case of need. There may be no more Hiroshimas, which is much to be wished, but it is entirely possible that there will be other cities to feel the heat, if only in retaliation for a first strike on the US.
I do believe that the “triad” is still in service and available 24/7: that is, nuclear-armed bombers; land-launched missiles; and sea-launched missiles. Today, I suppose, the triad has been extended or elided to include nuclear-armed air, land, and sea-launched cruise missiles.
We must remain prepared to do what is necessary to defend our nation.
2:36 am
There is now ample evidence that Japan was developing nuclear weapons and they were extremely close to success. Using nuclear bombs as mines, they could have easily destroyed entire invasion fleets. Could you imagine the outcry in America if they used the bomb first and we had delay for purposes of “humanity”?
The peaceniks in 1945 and modern day revisionists would have us believe we could “wait out” the Japanese, clearly ignoring the Allied casualty rate of some 7000 soldiers every week. One historian says these, “would have been small”, clearly ignoring the families of each casualty. Hindsight by college historians becomes laughable in their ignorance.
Japan not only continued to wage war after the “bombs” but accelerated the beheading and execution of dozens of American aviators. Their intention to execute all POWS, if their homeland was invaded, was already known. The massacre of POWS on Palawan during the Philippine campaign was well known.
The bomb saved millions of Japanese lives and those who preach we are guilty of inhumanity ignore the millions who died as a direct result of Japan’s desire to rule all of Asia.
It is not history that repeats but human nature. Dictators and fanatics always seek control over others and, unless countered, they spread death and destruction.
4:12 am
Rick, wonderful, what can I see. You are on spot once again.
Thanks for enlightening me on daily basis.
4:13 am
Oops, what can I say. It’s 4:13 A.M. My new BP meds are messing with my sleep.
1:15 pm
What is your source on this? Is there anything more than the 1946 Snell story described in this WIKIpedia article and links?
The 1946 Snell story is weird, because the history and documentation also indicate an underfunded Japanese research program mostly going down dead-end research paths.
Perhaps it was an attempt to manufacture a justification for the U.S. use of the bomb, and other mundane theories also come to mind, e.g. a Japanese “curveball”.
Right, Bill. According to Richard Rhodes Pulitzer winning book “The Making of the Atomic Bomb” which was exhaustively researched, the Japanese were where we were in 1940 with atomic research. They had no large scale projects to enrich uranium to bomb grade levels indeed they had no plans for such enrichment facilities. To say the Japanese were “close” to getting the bomb is absurd.
ed.
9:50 pm
Rick, I was fortunate to have been born in 1951 to quiet, unassuming parents who both lived through the Depression and WWII. My dad served in the Navy and my mom worked in factories here at home. They were heroes and didn’t even know it… they believed in what they did and they believed America would prevail. With few exceptions, such as our current servicemen and women, my parent’s sacrifices and our nation’s goodness seem to be fading into the contemporary fog of a few lost generations trying to find an excuse for their own shortcomings… real and imagined. Japan’s loss of WWII to the America of my parent’s generation was a blessing… No other victor nation had the ability or inclination to forgive and rebuild their former foes.
5:38 am
John Curtis, what a thoughtful post and tribute to your great parents.
How utterly refreshing, thanks for you post and have a good day and God Bless you and your family.
10:41 pm
Exactly what makes the A bombs so terrible compared to the firebombing of Tokyo where far more people died? Were the deaths of two million German civilians during March and April 1945, when the Russians overran eastern Germany, somehow more acceptable than if an A bomb had been used?
Nuclear weapons may have prevented a clash between the West and the USSR saving what certainly would have been far greater casualties than occured in WWII.
8:29 am
War is bad no matter what, but dropping those two bombs ended the war and saved millions of lives. The world saw what happens. Maybe in a way that has keep it from happening again.
My dad fought in Okinawa. Those guys knew the next step was Japan and from his letter home they were not looking forward to it. He wrote a letter to his mom the day before Hiroshima telling her that he wished the Air Force would do more. He had no clue what was about to happen.
A few days letter another letter from a young marine to his mom “THE WAR IS OVER” it started out. That said it all.