I recently watched the BBC's “Days that Shook the World - Hiroshima”, a documentary that relives and reenacts the actions of those involved in destroying Hiroshima. I highly recommend watching it (it's on Google Video). The final scenes that cut between the euphoria of the mass celebrations stateside and the enormity of the mass carnage in Hiroshima are chilling.
Harry S. Truman, then President of the Unitied States of America, stated that he ordered the use of the atomic bomb to serve as an expression of awesome power. His stated objective was to shock the Japanese into surrender, thus bringing a quick end to the war and the saving of countless American lives. Revisionists/ Critics have suggested that Japan was on its knees and about to surrender. However, an article by historian Richard Frank, “Why Truman Dropped The Bomb”, highlights new evidence from secret radio intercepts that indicated the Japanese appeared ready to “fight to the death” to preserve their Imperial sovereignty. A concluding paragraph from the article states:
There are a good many more points that now extend our understanding beyond the debates of 1995. But it is clear that all three of the critics' central premises are wrong. The Japanese did not see their situation as catastrophically hopeless. They were not seeking to surrender, but pursuing a negotiated end to the war that preserved the old order in Japan, not just a figurehead emperor. Finally, thanks to radio intelligence, American leaders, far from knowing that peace was at hand, understood--as one analytical piece in the "Magic" Far East Summary stated in July 1945, after a review of both the military and diplomatic intercepts--that "until the Japanese leaders realize that an invasion can not be repelled, there is little likelihood that they will accept any peace terms satisfactory to the Allies." This cannot be improved upon as a succinct and accurate summary of the military and diplomatic realities of the summer of 1945.
Nevertheless, even if this was what the American leaders believed, Truman’s actions were still wrong. After Japan declined to surrender under the terms of the Potsdam Declaration, Truman should have informed them of the existence of the atomic bomb and its potentially cataclysmic power. Failing that, a demonstration of the bomb should have been arranged. It has been argued that as the United States only had two uranium bombs, and they had never been tested (the Trinity test of July 16th 1945 used a plutonium bomb of an entirely different design), the demonstration might have failed and needlessly exhausted their entire arsenal of atomic weaponry. To counter this, I quote physicist Leo Szilard:
“It is easy to see, at least in retrospect, how an effective demonstration could have been staged. We could have communicated with Japan through regular diplomatic channels - say, through Switzerland - and explained to the Japanese that we didn't want to kill anybody, and therefore proposed that one city - say, Hiroshima - be evacuated. Then one single bomber would come and drop one single bomb.”
and
“It is quite true that at the time of Hiroshima we had only two bombs, but it would not have been necessary to wait for very long before we would have had several more.”
Of course, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki also had the benefit of keeping the Soviet Union out of Japan and the Far East, which must have been a strong motivation for Truman. Others have argued that Japan’s “total war” approach (civilians were deeply embedded in the war effort) justified the targeting of civilians – a sick, farcical argument when one considers the countless innocents that were exterminated, such as the four-year old boy buried with his molten tricycle as described in the BBC documentary.
Photo: The exhumed tricycle from the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Museum.
Would more lives have been lost in a land invasion? A land invasion of Japan may well have turned into a nightmare worse than Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined - given the strength of the Japanese Imperial ideology and their "kamikaze" reputation. However, I think that if the proposed US atomic bomb demonstration had failed to elicit a Japanese surrender, a land invasion still would not have been necessary. Japan could have been contained with blockades and conventional bombing raids until enough uranium was scraped together to build another atomic bomb. Furthermore, the Japanese did not know that the Americans only had two atomic bombs, and, in retrospect, given the Emperor’s capitulation after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese willingness to “fight to the bitter end” may well have been over-estimated, particularly in light of the impending Soviet advance.
The consequences of Manhattan Project and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both profound and terrible. Thus began the “Nuclear Arms Race” and the concept of “Mutual Assured Destruction” which has left the world teetering on the edge of nuclear destruction. It has led to the sorry state of world affairs we have today (including the ongoing international tensions with North Korea and Iran), not to mention those of the past, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, where humanity very nearly came to an end. The consequences for the victims in Japan were horrendous – an estimated 130,000 immediate deaths that doubled by the end of 1945, followed by the mental retardation of those exposed to the radiation in utero and increased rates of cancer in survivors, as well as ongoing discrimination in marriage and employment opportunities against the survivors. Incidentally, there was one small mercy shown to Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the bombs exploded above ground (“air bursts”) thus limiting the extent of local radioactive fallout, which may have saved many future inhabitants of these cities from the terrible chronic effects of radiation exposure.
Truman’s decision to use the bomb seems to me to be a reflection of American war weariness and a desire to shut the Soviet Union out of post-war Japan. The end result was a horrific crime against humanity. Like Tibberts, Truman also claimed that he “never lost any sleep over that decision.” It is saddening that since the end of the Second World War president after president has walked in Truman’s shoes and threatened to repeat the same error, as described by Peter Kuznick quoting Daniel Ellsberg:
As Daniel Ellsberg has astutely argued, it is a mistake to say that the U.S. has not “used” nuclear weapons since Nagasaki. Ellsberg contends, “Again and again, generally in secret from the American public, U.S. nuclear weapons have been used, for quite different purposes: in the precise way that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head in a direct confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled.”
Photo: Dr. Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick, the classic portrayal of the madness of “nuclear deterrence”.
Relevant links:
- The Nuclear Files
- An excellent article from Japan Focus by Peter Kuznick: The Decision to Risk the Future: Harry Truman, the Atomic Bomb and the Apocalyptic Narrative
- The Wikipedia article on the debate over the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagaski.
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment