Eric Michael Johnson: Intimidating the Soviets: A Hiroshima Anniversary Memorial
On August 6, 1945 the United States dropped "Little Boy," the first of only two nuclear bombs ever used in warfare, on the Japanese civilians at Hiroshima. In an instant an estimated 140,000 people were either incinerated or suffered an agonizing death that lasted several days. The standard mythology is that President Truman dropped the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (three days later on August 9) in order to avoid having to send half a million American soliders to their deaths in a ground invasion of Japan.
The problem with this narrative is that military estimates at the time (later found to be exaggerated) came nowhere near that level. Furthermore, it has since been revealed that Japanese officials had approached US representatives to consider their surrender on two conditions: that the Emperor be allowed to remain and that some territory be retained by the Japanese.
Writing in the conservative foreign policy journal Diplomatic History, J. Samuel Walker discounts the idea that Truman was thinking of American servicemen in his decision to use nuclear weapons:
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. . . It is certain that the hoary claim that the bomb prevented one-half million American combat deaths is unsupportable.
Barton J. Bernstein, writing in the same journal, held that the United States had no intention of allowing this powerful new weapon, which they had already spent millions of dollars developing, to go to waste:
In 1945, American leaders were not seeking to avoid the use of the A bomb. Its use did not create ethical or political problems for them. . . They did not regard it as profoundly immoral, they were largely inured to the mass killing of the enemy, and they also looked forward to the A-bomb's international-political benefits - intimidating the Soviets.
This in spite of the fact, as Bernstein reveals, that there were numerous peace offers from Japanese officials that could have been pursued:
During the summer, Japanese middle-level diplomats and military attaches in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe approached intermediaries and American officials to try to move toward a surrender. In June, one Japanese group proposed continuation of the emperor and retention of Korea and Formosa as the main terms for surrender.
These overtures were ignored and one of the greatest war crimes in history was perpetrated. However, as bad as the initial attack was, the resulting nuclear Cold War with the Soviet Union put the planet itself in peril. As I related in my recent post The Population Bomb, Nuclear Winter and the Role of Science in Public Advocacy, the threat of nuclear war was not just one for those affected by the explosion itself. The radioactive fallout would continue to poison people for decades and smoke from the burning cities could radically alter the Earth's climate. Why would any rational nation risk such calamity? What is remarkable is that, to this day, there are some who still hold on to the erroneous idea that US planners were responding to a threat from Soviet aggression...
Read entire article at The Primate Diaries
The problem with this narrative is that military estimates at the time (later found to be exaggerated) came nowhere near that level. Furthermore, it has since been revealed that Japanese officials had approached US representatives to consider their surrender on two conditions: that the Emperor be allowed to remain and that some territory be retained by the Japanese.
Writing in the conservative foreign policy journal Diplomatic History, J. Samuel Walker discounts the idea that Truman was thinking of American servicemen in his decision to use nuclear weapons:
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. . . It is certain that the hoary claim that the bomb prevented one-half million American combat deaths is unsupportable.
Barton J. Bernstein, writing in the same journal, held that the United States had no intention of allowing this powerful new weapon, which they had already spent millions of dollars developing, to go to waste:
In 1945, American leaders were not seeking to avoid the use of the A bomb. Its use did not create ethical or political problems for them. . . They did not regard it as profoundly immoral, they were largely inured to the mass killing of the enemy, and they also looked forward to the A-bomb's international-political benefits - intimidating the Soviets.
This in spite of the fact, as Bernstein reveals, that there were numerous peace offers from Japanese officials that could have been pursued:
During the summer, Japanese middle-level diplomats and military attaches in Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe approached intermediaries and American officials to try to move toward a surrender. In June, one Japanese group proposed continuation of the emperor and retention of Korea and Formosa as the main terms for surrender.
These overtures were ignored and one of the greatest war crimes in history was perpetrated. However, as bad as the initial attack was, the resulting nuclear Cold War with the Soviet Union put the planet itself in peril. As I related in my recent post The Population Bomb, Nuclear Winter and the Role of Science in Public Advocacy, the threat of nuclear war was not just one for those affected by the explosion itself. The radioactive fallout would continue to poison people for decades and smoke from the burning cities could radically alter the Earth's climate. Why would any rational nation risk such calamity? What is remarkable is that, to this day, there are some who still hold on to the erroneous idea that US planners were responding to a threat from Soviet aggression...