Unit XXIV THE ATOM BOMB

(See also Total War, "The War in Asia," ch. 21, pp. 851-8 73)

.:'~ On 6 August 1945 the Enola Gay dropped a uranium bomb of 14 kilotons (producing an explosion equivalent to 14,000 tons of TNT) on Hiroshima. On 9 August a plutonium bomb of 20 kilotons was dropped on Nagasaki. President Truman promised that the United States would continue to drop such bombs until Japan surrendered. On· 14 August the Japanese capitulated. There was almost universal support for the decision to drop the bomb. American lives were saved. The war was brought to a swift conclusion. There were a few protests, mainly from Racifists, clergymen and black leaders. Truman never had a second thought about a decision which marked the beginning of a completely new and terrifying epoch in the history of armed conflict.

By the outbreak of the war the international scientific community was facinated by a number of discoveries which indicated the effects of bombarding uranium atoms with neutrons to the point where they would split. In late 1939 a group of scientists informed President Rocsevelt that this process might be developed to create a bomb: they expressed the concern that the Germans might be the first to develop such a frightful weapon. But it was not until October 1941 that Roosevelt ordered an all-out research project on the bomb to be headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush, Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). In June 1942 the project was greatly expanded and placed under General Leslie Droves of the War Department. The "Manhattan Engineering District Project" was highly secret. Few members of Roosevelt's cabinet knew of its existence. On 19 · September 1944 at Hyde Park Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to continue excluding the Soviet Union from all information on the development of the' bomb. The two leaders raised the question whether the bomb might be used against the Japanese, but in the last few months of his life, the President never discussed the possibl.e use of the bomb.

On 4 May Stimson, having discussed the bomb with President Truman, appointed a select committee "for recommending action The to the executive and legislative branches of our government when Select secrecy is no longer in full effect (and also) actions to be taken by Committee the War Department prior to that time in anticipation of the postwar problems." Stimson chaired the committee with George Harrison the President of New York Life as vice-chairman. The

160 Committee included Vannaver Bush; James B. Conant, the President of Harvard; Karl T. Compton, president of MIT; Ralph Bard, Under Secretary of the Navy; William Clayton, Assistant Secretary of State; Byrnes, who was soon to become Secretary of State; three Nobel laureates: Enrico Fermi, Ernest O. Lawrence, and Arthur H. Compton; and lastly a brilliant young theoretical physicist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos laboratory. After what some later critics have felt was a somewhat perfunctory debate, the committee agreed that the bomb should be dropped on Japan as soon as possible, that it should be used against military installations and civilian housing, and that it should be dropped without any prior warning.

Some scientists at the Chicago laboratory were concerned about the effects of dropping the bomb on relations with the Soviet Union. They proposed a demonstration use of the bomb to threaten the Japanese and raised the possibility of international control of the bomb to counteract the harmful effects on · postwar international relations of dropping the bomb without warning. Stimson's committee discussed this suggestion, contained in the Franck Committee's report, and suggested that Britain, 'Russia, France and China should be consulted "as to how we can cooperate in making this development contribute to improve international relations", but insisted that there was no alternative to direct military use against Japan. At a further meeting of the Committee it was agreed that Truman should tell Stalin at Potsdam that the United States had the bomb and intended to use it against Japan.

Truman arrived at Potsdam on 15 July. The following day he was informed that the Alamogordo test was successful, and on 21 Potsdam July he was given a detailed report on the test. On 24 July Truman casually mentioned that the United States had a "new weapon", and Stalin mumbled that he hoped they would make good use of it. On 26 July the United States, Britain and China issued the Potsdam declaration which called for Japan's unconditional surrender. There was no guarantee of the position of the Emperor as Stimson and Grew, the Under Secretary of State, had wished. Nor was there any mention of the bomb. The Soviets were not invited to sign the declaration. The Americans knew from decoded messages that the Japanese were negotiating with the Russians to act as intermediaries for a peace short of unconditional surrender. The Russians did not follow up these Japanese. overtures and the Japanese would not accept the Potsdam declaration.

The American military were anxious to avoid the invasion of Japan which they knew would be a costly and bloody campaign. Avoiding Okinawa gave an unpleasant foretaste of what might be expected. an Invasion With widely dispersed industry and a highly concentrated civilian population Japan seemed an ideal target for area bombing. Terror bombing of this sort was des'igned to undermine the will of the

161 Japanese people to continue the war. The atom bomb was seen as an ideal terror weapon. Not only was it highly destructive it was also spectacularly frightful. Oppenheimer pointed out that "the visual effect of an atomic bombing would be tremendous. It would be accompanied by a brilliant luminescence which would rise to a height of l 0,000 to 20,000 feet". General Marshall and Stimson both stressed that the shock value of the bomb would be so great that the Japanese would be forced to surrender. If the shock value of the bomb was the key to its success a demonstration explosion was out of the question. Marshall argued: "It's no good warning them. If you warn them there's no surprise. And the only way to produce shock is surprise."

None of the key policy makers questioned the use of the bomb against Japan·. Eisenhower was the only leading military commander who forcefully objected on moral grounds to the use of the born b. Once Japan surrendered there, was agreement that the use of the bomb had speeded up the conclusion of the war by days, weeks, or even months.

Subsequent Questions

Although there was virtual unanimity that the bomb should be dropped the decision has become one of the most vigorously debated issues in recent history. An almost endless series of questions have been raised. Why did the United States not invite the Soviets to sign the Potsdam declaration? Did -the United States want Russian participation in the war against Japan? Why did Truman not give Stalin fuller details of the bomb? Why did the Americans not delay the dropping of the bomb until they knew more about the Japanese peace feelers? If victory by "conventional" means was so close why were the atomic bombs necessary? Why were the moral and political issues not discussed at greater length? Did the dropping of the bomb mark the true beginning of the cold war? Was the bomb used to impress the Russians and to win concessions from them at Potsdam?

The answer given by Truman and most of his senior associates is simple. The bomb shortened the war and saved thousands of American lives. This explanation was clear and simple. After all, the bomb worked. Japan surrendered and the world was at peace. But the question remained whether it was morally justifiable to murder a man on his death bed. Hanson Baldwin, the military analyst of the New York Times, wrote in 1950 that America was "branded with mark of the beast" by its use of the bomb, and thus won the war, but politically and morally lost the peace. This argument was taken up by other writers who agreed that since the bomb was not necessary for victory, its use was immoral, and that the postwar political consequences of the use of the bomb were disastrous.

162 The Bomb and the Cold War Other writers of what was to become known as the revisionist school went much further. They agreed that the use of the bomb was unnecessary and immoral, but they argued that it was aimed against the Soviet Union rather than Japan. The United States used the bomb as soon as possible in order to impress the Soviets, and thus were largely, or in some versions entirely, responsible for the onset of the cold war. "Atomic Diplomacy" (the title of Gar Alperovitz's influential book) was used to intimidate the Soviets and marks a radical break with Roosevelt's policy of accommodation with the Russians.

There is sufficient evidence to support at least part of the revisionists' position. It is clear that the American leaders felt that the bomb gave them a considerable advantage in negotiations with the Russians and that this was true not only of Truman but also of Roosevelt and that it lead to a hardening of the American position at Potsdam. But this does not mean that the primary reason for dropping the bomb was to scare the Russians. Nor did the Americans use explicit atomic threats against the Russians. The primary reason for dropping the bomb was to secure the speedy and unconditional surrender of Japan. A secondary effect was to stiff en Truman's attitude tow.ards the Soviet Union.

It is unlikely that there will ever be agreement over the central issues of why the bomb was dropped, whether it was used to frighten the Soviet Union, whether the Soviets really were impressed, and above all about the morality of the bomb. On one issue there can be little doubt: "Little Boy" and "Fat Man" changed the face of war. Vast military establishments now exist which should they ever be used will have failed. And the weapon which is said to have won the war in Japan can never again be used to win a war.

Course Reader Now read:

Barton J. Bernstein, "The Atomic Bomb and American Foreign Policy: The Road to Hiroshima" from The Atomic Bomb: The Critical Issues, pp. 94-120.

Harry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, "The Atomic Bomb and the Surrender of Japan" from Hiroshima: The Decision to Use the A Bomb."

163 Further Reading 1- ~ Alperovitz, G. Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam. New '·n-11 ~ York, I 965 • 1 Bernstein, B.J. The Atomic Bomb: The Critical Issues. Boston, •••• 1976. Keiko, G. The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-45. New York, I 968.

Maddox, R.J. The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War. Princeton, I 973.

Morton, L. "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb". Foreign Affairs, XXV. January, 1957.

Rose, L. After Yalta. New York, I 973.

Study Questions

l. Why was there so little discussion about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan?

2. Was it morally wrong to drop the atomic bomb?

3. What effect did the bomb have on great power diplomacy?

164 ,-.Juclear Power: The End of the War Against Japan Page 1 of 7

http://www.bbc.eo.uk/history/ Nuclear Power: The End of the War Against Japan

By Professor Duncan Anderson

Was it right for the Americans to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Conventional wisdom has it that the decision saved many lives in the long run, but this view has been frequently challenged.

A nuclear mushroom cloud rises above the city of Nagasaki Postwar Germany and Japan

Sixty years on, the end of the war against Japan is generally regarded by British historians very differently from the way they view the end of the war against Germany. Despite the firestorms in German cities, despite the murder and rape of millions of German women and children by the advancing Soviets, the defeat of Nazi Germany is still seen in terms that are morally unambiguous.

'There is no such acceptance of war guilt in Japan.'

In 1945 Hitler's regime was seen as the embodiment of human evil - and all the evidence that has emerged since that time has merely served to confirm that judgement. Any means that could bring Nazi rule to an end could be justified, which is why a statue of Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris now stands in Whitehall.

The vast majority of Germans today accept the guilt of the 'Hitler time', and are determined that nothing like it will ever occur again. Sometimes to non -Germans this national confessional even seems to go to an absurd extent - for example when the great furore erupted over the recent film depicting Hitler as an inadequate, demented human being, rather than the embodiment of Satanic evil.

There is no such acceptance of war guilt in Japan. It was only with the greatest difficulty that China managed to secure a grudging acknowledgement that 'regrettable' things may have happened in N anking in December 193 7, when Japanese troops went on the rampage - looting, raping and burning, and killing some 200,000 Chinese. Japanese school text-books still refer to the total war Japan waged against China between 1937 and 1945, in which some 20 million Chinese died, as the 'China incident'.

Similarly, the government of South Korea is making little progress in securing an apology from Japan

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Atomic bombs

The city of Hiroshima after the nuclear blast The key to understanding the difference between Japan and Germany, and attitudes towards Japan and Germany, is the way in which the war against Japan came to an end. On 6 August 1945 an American B- 29 bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. In a split second 100,000 people ceased to exist. Three days later another B-29 dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki, killing another 40,000.

' ... Americans and their allies could tell themselves that though the bombs had been terrible, they had obviated the need for an invasion of Japan.'

In vain would later apologists point out that the number killed -140,000 - was about the same as the number killed in the conventional B-29-created firestorm that devastated Tokyo-Yokohama on the night of 9 March 1945. There were two differences. First, the Tokyo-Yokohama raid required hundreds of aircraft delivering thousands of incendiary bombs in wave upon wave in very particular weather conditions. Hiroshima-Nagasaki required just two aircraft and two bombs, a quantum leap in destructive capacity.

Second, unlike those injured in conventional raids, about 100,000 of those people who had apparently survived in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in fact suffered radiation poisoning as a result of the bombs, and thus were condemned to a painful and lingering death.

Japan surrendered on 15 August, obviously as a result of the bombs, it was generally believed, and for a few months Americans and their allies could tell themselves that though the bombs had been terrible, they had obviated the need for an invasion of Japan. This had been scheduled for December 1945, and in it many hundreds of thousands of Allied servicemen would have been killed and wounded. But very soon doubts arose in many quarters.

First doubts

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General Douglas MacArthur at Japanese surrender ceremony on USS 'Missouri', 2 September 1945 The first Americans to reach Hiroshima and Nagasaki - servicemen, scientists and journalists - described in great detail the apocalyptic scenes they encountered. They saw a grey, blasted landscape, in which thousands of hideously burnt people were huddled in shanties, coughing up and urinating blood, with their hair falling out in clumps, waiting to die.

The writer and journalist John Hersey, one of the first to get to Hiroshima, wrote a powerful study of the plight of six of these survivors, and this was published in the New Yorker in 1946. Suddenly the talk of New York's literati, Hersey followed this up with a monograph, Hiroshima, published the following year, which was immediately a best-seller, and was translated into Japanese three years later.

At the same time as Hersey's article, the United States Army Air Force published a survey of the effects of strategic bombing on Japan. The Air Force argued that conventional B-29 attacks had all but brought Japan to its knees, and concluded,

' ... it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945 (well before the date of the invasion) Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped.'

Not to be outdone, the United States Navy produced its own assessment, stating that its submarine campaign had also brought Japan to its knees, that the Home Islands were on the verge of starvation, and that this alone would have produced surrender, thereby obviating the need for an atomic bomb, or an mvas10n.

And then the State Department added its assessment. Joseph Grew - America's last ambassador to Japan before the war started - claimed that Japanese diplomats had been trying to open surrender negotiations with the United States via the then still neutral Soviet Union. These were overtures that the Truman administration knew about, thanks to decrypts of Japanese diplomatic codes, but which they nevertheless chose to ignore. Grew added that if the United States had modified the demand for unconditional surrender, made on 26 July at Potsdam, if it had simply guaranteed the continuation of the imperial system in Japan, the Japanese would almost certainly have capitulated within days.

Growing criticism

By early 194 7 criticism of the decision to use the bomb had became so pervasive in the United States, that Secretary of War Henry L Stimson felt compelled to have an article published in Harper's magazine, defending the administration. He reminded Americans that if an invasion had proved necessary, up to a million American servicemen would have died. The bombs, then, were a necessary evil. But very soon other figures were discovered.

'By the mid 1960s historians ... had drawn up ... a belated indictment for war crimes.'

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General Douglas MacArthur's army headquarters in the Philippines, for example, had calculated that the maximum number of dead in the event of an invasion would be around 47,000. Bad enough, but perhaps not bad enough to justify the immolation and irradiation of tens of thousands of Japanese women and children. Such figures led people to believe that Stimson might have lied, and to wonder, if so, how many other lies the administration had told.

The emergence of the Cold War, the development of the hydrogen bomb, and American's involvement in Vietnam, saw the development of a sustained critique in American academia of the decision to use the bomb. By the mid 1960s historians such as Gar Alperovitz had drawn up what was virtually a charge sheet, a belated indictment for war crimes.

It went like this. When the successful test firing of the first atomic bomb took place on 16 July 1945, Truman, negotiating with the Russians at Potsdam, decided to demonstrate America's new power to the Soviets by bombing Japanese cities, even though he knew the Japanese were trying to surrender. To ensure the Japanese would not capitulate before the bombs could be used, he deliberately refused to guarantee the emperor's safety, the only condition which, Alperovitz and others argued, was a sticking­ point for the Japanese.

In the event, it was not the bombs that produced Japan's surrender - the Japanese military seemed willing to take them in their stride - but the Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 9 August. Truman and his administration, then, had been guilty of an act of callous, wanton brutality, the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of civilians, including innocent women and children, to no purpose other than to intimidate the Soviet Union and establish American hegemony.

Challenge to the critics

Versions of this argument were widely believed in the last decades of the 20th century, and not just by those to the left of the political spectrum, who were incapable of believing that the United States could be anything other than evil. However, during the 1990s and after the collapse of the USSR, discoveries made upon the opening of hitherto restricted archives, and the work of British- and American-educated Japanese historians, have caused many to challenge the Alperovitz thesis.

'... the Japanese were demanding ... a guarantee of no Allied occupation of Japan ... '

American scholars have shown that the Air Force's Strategic Bombing Survey was a tendentious piece of special pleading, designed to secure a large independent air force, which many believed would have been in danger if it had been shown that the atomic bombs alone produced the surrender. Similarly, the navy's assertions were exposed as over-exaggerations of the efficacy of the submarine blockade. Many Japanese were certainly starving, but it did not follow that the Japanese were therefore prepared to surrender.

The most damning research exploded the very low estimates of invasion casualties prepared by the army. These were shown to be the product of General MacArthur's desire that an invasion should take place, one that he would command, which did not take into account the actual casualties (49,000) suffered by US forces in the two-month battle (April-June 1945) for Okinawa. The army's real position was revealed in the discovery of a memorandum by Army Chief Of Staff General George C Marshall, advocating the use of atomic bombs to support an invasion.

The work by American historians has been reinforced by the labours of their Japanese counterparts. The Japanese peace feelers directed at the Soviet Union have been exposed as belated attempts to delay a

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Soviet entry into the war, not genuine attempts at negotiation. It has also been shown that the Japanese were demanding very much more than a guarantee of the emperor's safety, for example a guarantee of no Allied occupation of Japan, before they would consider serious negotiations.

Also thanks to the work of Japanese historians, we now know much more about Japanese plans in the summer of 1945. Japan had no intention of surrendering. It had husbanded over 8,000 aircraft, many of them Kamikazes, hundreds of explosive-packed suicide boats, and over two million well equipped regular soldiers, backed by a huge citizen's militia. When the Americans landed, the Japanese intended to hit them with everything they had, to impose on them casualties that might break their will. If this did not do it, then the remnants of the army and the militias would fight on as guerrillas, protected by the mountains and by the civilian population.

Japanese and American historians have also shown that at the centre of the military system was the Emperor Hirohito, not the hapless prisoner of militarist generals, the version promulgated by MacArthur in 1945 to save him from a war crimes trial, but an all-powerful warlord, who had guided Japan's aggressive expansion at every turn. Hirohito's will had not been broken by defeats at land or sea, it had not been broken by the firestorms or by the effects of the blockade, and it would certainly not have been broken by the Soviet invasion of Manchuria, something the Japanese had anticipated for months.

What broke Hirohito's will was the terrible new weapon, a single bomb which could kill a hundred thousand at a time. Suddenly Japan was no longer fighting other men, but the very forces of the universe. The most important target the bombs hit was Hirohito's mind - it shocked him into acknowledging that he could not win the final, climatic battle.

Growing consensus

There is a growing consensus among modern historians that the views as to the utility of the bomb held in August 1945 were correct. We now know that if the bomb had not been used, the invasion of Japan would have gone ahead. The best indication we have of the casualties that might have occurred are the actual figures for the eight-week campaign on Okinawa, in which 12,500 Americans died, and 39,000 were wounded.

'If we conduct the same calculation for an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, we arrive at a figure of at least two million Japanese dead.'

Fighting at the same intensity (it could not have been less) on Kyushu and Honshu, campaigns which would have lasted some 50 weeks, would have produced 80 to 100,000 American dead, and some 300 to 320,000 wounded. Are these casualties enough to justify Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

If morality is based on numbers, and in this case it must be, then perhaps not. But what is usually overlooked in this numbers game, is the number of Japanese killed on Okinawa, which amounts to a staggering 250,000 military and civilian, about 20 Japanese killed for every dead American. If we conduct the same calculation for an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands, we arrive at a figure of at least two million Japanese dead.

The losses in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were terrible, but not as terrible as the number of Japanese who would have died as the result of an invasion. The revisionist historians of the 1960s - and their disciples - are quite wrong to depict the decision to use the bombs as immoral. It would have been immoral if they had not been used.

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Find out more

Books

Truman and the Hiroshima Cult by Robert P Newman (Michigan State University Press, 2004)

Rain ofRuin: Photographic History ofHiroshima and Nagasaki by Donald M Goldstein, Katherine V Dillon, J Michael Wenger (Brassey's Inc, 1995)

Hiroshima in History and Memory edited by Michael J Hogan (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision by Robert James Maddox (University of Missouri Press, 2004)

Hiroshima by John Hersey (Alfred A Knopf, 1985)

Hiroshima: Three Witnesses edited by Richard H Minear (Princeton University Press, 1990)

Nagasaki, 1945 by Tatsuichiro Akizuki (Quartet Books, 1981)

The Bells ofNagasaki by Takashi Nagai (Kodansha Europe, 1984)

Related Links

Articles

• President Truman and the Origins of the Cold War - http://www.bbc.eo.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/truman_Ol.shtml • World War Two: How the Allies Won - http://www.bbc.eo.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/how_the_allies_won_Ol.shtml • GI Joe: US Soldiers of World War Two - http://www. b be. co. uk/history /world wars/wwtwo/us_soldiers_ 0 l .shtml • Japan: No Surrender in World War Two - http://www.bbc.eo.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/japan_no _surrender_ Ol .shtml • The Battle of Midway - http://www.bbc.eo.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/battle_midway_ O 1.shtml • The Burma Campaign 1941 - 1945 - http://www.bbc.eo.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/burma_campaign_Ol .shtml • War in the South China Sea: The Sinking of Force Z - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/battleships_ 0 l .shtml • Pearl Harbor: A Rude A wakening - http://www.bbc.co. uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/pearl_ harbour_0 l .shtml

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Historic Figures

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• BBC News: Hiroshima - http://newssearch.bbe.co. uk/onthisday /hi/dates/ stories/august/ 6/newsid_ 3 602 000/3 60218 9. stm • BBC Schools: Hiroshima and Nagasaki - http://www.bbc.eo.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/sosteacher/history/75598.shtml • BBC Leeds: Hiroshima Exhibition - http://www.bbc.eo.uk/leeds/culture/2004/05/hiroshima.shtml

External Web Links

• PBS: Victory in the Pacific - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/pacific/sfeature/index.html • Yale Law School: Hiroshima - http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/abomb/mp07.htm • Imperial War Museum - http://www.iwm.org.uk/

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Japan: No Surrender in World War Two

By David Powers

By the end of World War Two, Japan had endured 14 years of war, and lay in ruins - with over three million dead. Why did the war in Japan cost so much, and what led so many to fight on after the end of the hostilities?

Lieutenant Onoda

The end of hostilities

When Emperor Hirohito made his first ever broadcast to the Japanese people on 15 August 1945, and enjoined his subjects 'to endure the unendurable and bear the unbearable', he brought to an end a state of war - both declared and undeclared - that had wracked his country for 14 years.

He never spoke explicitly about 'surrender' or 'defeat', but simply remarked that the war 'did not turn in Japan's favour'. It was a classic piece of understatement. Nearly three million Japanese were dead, many more wounded or seriously ill, and the country lay in ruins.

To most Japanese - not to mention those who had suffered at their hands during the war - the end of hostilities came as blessed relief. Yet not everybody was to lay down their arms. Tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers remained in China, either caught in no-man's land between the Communists and Nationalists or fighting for one side or the other.

Other, smaller groups continued fighting on Guadalcanal, Peleliu and in various parts of the Philippines right up to 1948. But the most extraordinary story belongs to Lieutenant Hirao Onoda, who continued fighting on the Philippine island of Lubang until 9 March 197 4 - nearly 29 years after the end of the war.

'Lieutenant Onoda ... doggedly refused to lay down his arms ... '

Two years earlier, another Japanese soldier, Corporal Shoichi Yokoi, had been found fishing in the Talofofo River on Guam. Y okoi still had his Imperial Army issue rifle, but he had stopped fighting many years before. When questioned by the local police, he admitted he knew the war had been over for 20 years. He had simply been too frightened to give himself up.

Lieutenant Onoda, by contrast, doggedly refused to lay down his arms until he received formal orders to surrender. He was the sole survivor of a small band that had sporadically attacked the local population. Although one of them surrendered in 1950 after becoming separated from the others, Onoda's two remaining companions died in gun battles with local forces - one in 1954, the other in

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1972.

A worthy enemy?

After early attempts to flush them out had failed, humanitarian missions were sent to Lubang to try to persuade Lieutenant Onoda and his companions that the war really was over, but they would have none of it. Even today, Hiroo Onoda insists they believed the missions were enemy tricks designed to lower their guard. As a soldier, he knew it was his duty to obey orders; and without any orders to the contrary, he had to keep on fighting.

To survive in the jungle of Lubang, he had kept virtually constantly on the move, living off the land, and shooting cattle for meat. Onoda's grim determination personifies one of the most enduring images of Japanese soldiers during the war - that Japanese fighting men did not surrender, even in the face of insuperable odds.

' .. .Japanese fighting men did not surrender, even in the face of insuperable odds.'

Before hostilities with the Allies broke out, most British and American military experts held a completely different view, regarding the Japanese army with deep contempt. In early 1941, General Robert Brooke-Popham, Commander-in-Chief of British forces in the Far East, reported that one of his battalion commanders had lamented, 'Don't you think ( our men) are worthy of some better enemy than the Japanese?'

This gross underestimation can in part be explained by the fact that Japan had become interminably bogged down by its undeclared war against China since 1931. Since Japan was having such difficulties in China, the reasoning went, its armed forces would be no match for the British.

The speed and ease with which the Japanese sank the British warships, the Repulse and the Prince of Wales, off Singapore just two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor - followed by the humiliating capture of Singapore and Hong Kong - transformed their image overnight. From figures of derision, they were turned into supermen - an image that was to endure and harden as the intensity and savagery of fighting increased.

Total sacrifice

Although some Japanese were taken prisoner, most fought until they were killed or committed suicide. In the last, desperate months of the war, this image was also applied to Japanese civilians. To the horror of American troops advancing on Saipan, they saw mothers clutching their babies hurling themselves over the cliffs rather than be taken prisoner.

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Not only were there virtually no survivors of the 30,000 strong Japanese garrison on Saipan, two out of every three civilians - some 22,000 in all - also died.

The other enduring image of total sacrifice is that of the kamikaze pilot, ploughing his plane packed with high explosives into an enemy warship. Even today, the word 'kamikaze' evokes among Japan's former enemies visions of crazed, mindless destruction.

What in some cases inspired - and in others, coerced - Japanese men in the prime of their youth to act in such a way was a complex mixture of the times they lived in, Japan's ancient warrior tradition, societal pressure, economic necessity, and sheer desperation.

'The other enduring image of total sacrifice is that of the kamikaze pilot, ploughing his plane packed with high explosives into an enemy warship.' ·

When Japan began its military adventures in China in 1931, it was a society in turmoil. Less than 80 years previously, it had been forced out of two-and-a-half centuries of self-imposed seclusion from the rest of the world, when the Tokugawa Shogunate was overthrown, and Japan embarked on rapid modernisation under Emperor Meiji.

By the beginning of the 20th century, Japan was beginning to catch up with the world's great powers, and even enjoyed its own version of the Roaring Twenties, a period known rather more prosaically as Taisho Democracy.

But as shockwaves of the Great Depression reached Japanese shores at the end of the 1920s, democracy proved to have extremely shallow roots indeed. The military became increasingly uncontrollable, and Japan was gripped by the politics of assassination.

Bushido

Nationalists and militarists alike looked to the past for inspiration. Delving into ancient myths about the Japanese and the Emperor in particular being directly descended from the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, they exhorted the people to restore a past racial and spiritual purity lost in recent times.

They were indoctrinated from an early age to revere the Emperor as a living deity, and to see war as an act that could purify the self, the nation, and ultimately the whole world. Within this framework, the supreme sacrifice of life itself was regarded as the purest of accomplishments.

'Do not live in shame as a prisoner. Die, and leave no ignominious crime behind you.'

Japan's samurai heritage and the samurai code of ethics known as 'bushido' have a seductive appeal when searching for explanations for the wartime image of no SlllTender. The great classic of Bushido - 'Hagakure' written in the early 18th century - begins with the words, 'Bushido is a way of dying'. Its basic thesis is that only a samurai prepared and willing to die at any moment can devote himself fully to his lord.

Although this idea certainly appealed to the ideologues, what probably motivated Japanese soldiers at the more basic level were more mundane pressures. Returning prisoners from Japan's previous major war with Russia in 1904-5 had been treated as social outcasts. The Field Service Code issued by General Tojo in 1941 put it more explicitly:

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Do not live in shame as a prisoner. Die, and leave no ignominious crime behind you.

Apart from the dangers of battle, life in the Japanese army was brutal. Letters and diaries written by student conscripts before they were killed in action speak of harsh beatings, and of soldiers being kicked senseless for the most trivial of matters - such as serving their superior's rice too slowly, or using a vest as a towel.

But John Dower, one of America's most highly respected historians of wartime and post-war Japan, believes a major factor, often overlooked in seeking to explain why Japanese soldiers did not surrender, is that countless thousands of Japanese perished because they saw no alternative.

He argues that the attack on Pearl Harbor provoked a rage bordering on the genocidal among Americans. Not only did Admiral William Halsey, Commander of the South Pacific Force, adopt the slogan 'Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs', public opinion polls in the United States consistently showed 10 to 13 per cent of all Americans suppmied the 'annihilation' or 'extermination' of the Japanese as a people.

Kamikaze

Lieutenant Onoda, aged 78 It was a war without mercy, and the US Office of War Information acknowledged as much in 1945. It noted that the unwillingness of Allied troops to take prisoners in the Pacific theatre had made it difficult for Japanese soldiers to surrender. When the present writer interviewed Hiroo Onoda for the BBC 'Timewatch' programme, he too repeatedly came back to the theme 'it was kill or be killed'.

' ... the strategy behind the kamikaze was born purely out of desperation.'

The same cannot be said of the Special Attack Forces, more popularly known as kamikaze. Yet, even though nearly 5,000 of them blazed their way into the world's collective memory in such spectacular fashion, it is sobering to realise that the number of British airmen who gave their lives in World War Two was ten times greater.

Although presented in poetic, heroic terms of young men achieving the glory of the short-lived cherry blossom, falling while the flower was still perfect, the strategy behind the kamikaze was born purely out of desperation.

But to anyone who believes the kamikaze were mindless automatons, they have only to read some of the letters they left behind. The 23-year-old Ichizo Hayashi, wrote this to his mother, just a few days before embarking on what he knew would be his final mission, in April 1945:

I am pleased to have the honour of having been chosen as a member of a Special Attack Force that is on its way into battle, but I cannot help crying when I think of you, Mum.

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When I reflect on the hopes you had for my future ... I feel so sad that I am going to die without doing anything to bring you joy.

Selfless sacrifice, for whatever purpose, was present on all sides in the conflict.

Find out more

Related Links

Articles

• Pearl Harbor: A Rude A wakening - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/pearl harbour 01.shtml • The Soviet-German War 1941 - 1945 - http://www.bbc.co. uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/soviet german war O1.shtml • War in the South China Sea: The Sinking of Force Z - http://www.bbc.co. uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/battleships Ol .shtml • The Burma Campaign 1941 - 1945 - http://www.bbc.co. uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/burma campaign Ol .shtml

Multimedia Zone

• British Special Operations Executive (SOE): Tools and Gadgets Gallery - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/soe gallery.shtml • Gallery: Child Survivors of the Holocaust - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/holocaust survivors gallery.shtml • Hitler and the Jews Audio - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/genocide/hitler audio.shtml

Historic Figures

• Winston Churchill - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic figures/churchill winston.shtml • Adolf Hitler - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic figures/hi tier adolf.shtml • Franklin Roosevelt - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic figures/roosevelt franklin delano.shtml

Timelines

• World War Two Timeline - http://www.bbc.co. uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/ww2 summary O1.shtml • British Timeline - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/launch ti british.shtml

BBC Links

• On This Day: WW2 -

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/themes/conflict and war/world war ii/default.stm • BBC News: Japan Apologises for Wartime Suffering - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/46730.stm

External Web Links

• Imperial War Museum - http://www.iwmcollections.org.uk/ • World War Two Timeline - http://history.acusd.edu/gen/WW2Timeline/start.html

Published on BBC History: 2001-06-01 This article can be found on the Internet at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/japan no surrender 01.shtml

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6 of 6 5/1/2008 2:37 PM 'The Japanese Were Already Defeated and Were Seeking Peace' http:!/us 1O.campaign-archive l .com/?u=8c573daa3ad72f4a095 505b5 ...

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'The Japanese Were Already Defeated and Were Seeking Peace'

The April 15, 2016, episode of CounterSpin reaired excerpts from Sanho Tree's interview on the Hiroshima bombing, originally aired in August 1995. This is a lightly edited transcript of the rebroadcast.

Sanho Tree: "By and large, the mass media don't speak out, because they would essentially have to call the president a liar and challenge his official rationale." (image: Stuff)

Janine Jackson: Media reports noted that Secretary of State John Kerry was the highest-ranking sitting US official to visit the war memorial in Hiroshima. US ambassadors have shown their respects, and Jimmy Carter went there when he was out of office. But from non-blame-assigning references to "one of the most destructive acts of World War 11," as a New York Times article had it, to an obliviously ethnocentric focus on how these commemorations have, as the Times said, "long troubled American diplomats," nothing suggests that US media find much to grapple with.

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believed that the bombings were necessary to force Japan's surrender and to spare American lives"? That's why "any hint that the US was apologizing could prove highly damaging politically."

Well, corporate media have shown little interest in probing the official history on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Did you know, for example, that on August 9, 1945, Harry Truman declared falsely in a radio address:

The world will note that the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, a military base. That was because we wished in this first attack to avoid, insofar as possible, the killing of civilians.

On the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1995, CounterSpin spoke with military and diplomatic historian Sanho Tree, who had just collaborated with Gar Alperovitz on The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb and the Architecture of an American Myth. Sanho Tree is today the director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. We asked, first of all, about the key issues US media were discussing just prior to the bombing.

AP photo of the ruins of Hiroshima after the atomic bombing.

Sanho Tree: The first was the rapid deterioration of the Japanese war economy and military situation, that their navy was at the bottom of the sea, their air force was nonexistent, and that she was reduced to crashing kamikaze planes into ships. Their fighters were gone, the American planes were going over Japan unopposed.

Another point was unconditional surrender, that the Allied war aim of unconditional surrender was interpreted by the Japanese to mean the execution of the emperor, that he would be prosecuted and perhaps hung as a war criminal, and the Japanese regarded him as a deity. And all of Truman's advisors advised him, you know, you've got to tell them to keep the emperor or they'll

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A third point was the Russian entry into the war. The Soviet Union was neutral throughout this period, and was going to declare war on Japan in mid-August by common agreement with the United States and Great Britain. This was the secret agreement made at Yalta.

And the fourth was the peace feelers that were breaking out all over Europe and also in the Soviet Union, that the Japanese were trying to reach American emissaries to explain to them what terms they wanted for surrender. And the one term that always came up was the retention of the emperor.

JJ: Everything changed, though, after the bomb was dropped, including in the media.

ST: Throughout the media there was this pretty much a euphoria, oh thank God, the war is over. Many attribute this to the bomb, even though their own newspapers and their own magazines had reported that the Japanese were already defeated and were seeking peace. There are a few critics, people of conscience, the religious community continued to speak out. By and large, the mass media don't speak out, because they would essentially have to call the president a liar and challenge his official rationale.

And the people who do speak out, it's interesting, are the conservatives. The first decade and a · half, up until the 1960s, it's the conservatives and the right wing that keep up the steady drumbeat saying that Hiroshima was not necessary. And this is completely forgotten about today. The National Review, for instance, or Human Events or a far-right-wing journal called The Freemen, these were all journals that were saying that this was an atrocity. And the National Review headline was "Hiroshima: An Assault on a Beaten Foe." This is 1958, William F. Buckley's journal. And, of course, nowadays Buckley takes a completely different position, says they were necessary.

JJ: CounterSpin asked if it wasn't strange that contemporary complaints about a Smithsonian exhibit of the Enola Gay being too critical of the United States, for example, were labeling revisionist what had actually been an open position in the US media at the time.

ST: Absolutely. For instance, the Washington Post kept up the steady drumbeat throughout the spring and summer of 1945, saying you must change the terms of surrender, day after day, and every other day it seemed that they were having a different editorial trying to drive home this point, that the emperor must be spared, you know, that's the only way to get a surrender out of Japan.

And, of course, now the Washington Post ridicules all this stuff as revisionist. This is their own position. They were in fact so proud of their editorials, they published a booklet around 1946, and it was called Psychological Warfare: The Special Weapon That Had Japan Defeated and Ready to Yield 13 Days Before the Atomic Bombs Were Dropped. They were so proud of their role back then, and now they dismiss all of this as revisionist.

JJ: We asked Tree to describe the Washington Post's coverage of the controversy at the

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ST: The Washington Post, for instance, Ken Ringle, one of their key reporters on this beat, reproduced an erroneous quote in the Wall Street Journal, and this is in August of 1994, which touched off the firestorm in Washington. And the quote was attributed to the curators of the exhibit, and the quote read-it was describing the kamikaze pilots, and it said, "these youths, their bodies overflowing with life." And, of course, this was actually a caption that said this was said by another kamikaze pilot, describing his comrades. And this was a Japanese view. But the Wall Street Journal attributed it to the curators. Ringle repeated it the next day in the newspaper, in the Washington Post, and it becomes this political football at that point.

And, you know, suddenly it blows up in everyone's faces, and everyone goes running for cover. You will not see in the exhibit, for instance, quotes by General Eisenhower or Admiral Leahy, who was the chief of staff of the president and presiding officer of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Both of them had tremendously powerful quotes where they talk about how they didn't think it was necessary and advised so. And they called it-you know, Leahy calls it a "barbarous weapon," and it was of "no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." That's gone.

JJ That was San ho Tree, discussing media coverage of the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on CounterSpin in 1995.

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4 of 4 26/04/2016 11 :22 AM Was the US justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and ... about:reader?url=https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-wor...

historyextra.com

Was the US justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War? You debate

10-12 minutes

Was the US justified in dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? History Extra readers George Evans-Hulme and Roy Ceustermans debate ...

George: Yes, it was. The US was, like the rest of the world, soldiering on towards the end of a dark period of human history that had seen the single most costly conflict (in terms of life) in history, and they chose to adopt a stance that seemed to limit the amount of casualties in the war, by significantly shortening it with the use of atomic weapons.

It was certainly a reasonable view for the USA to take, since they had suffered the loss of more than 418,000 lives, both military and civilian. To the top rank of the US military the 135,000 death toll was worth it to prevent the "many thousands of American troops [that) would be killed in invading Japan" - a view attributed to the president himself.

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This was a grave consequence taken seriously by the US. Ordering the deployment of the atomic bombs was an abhorrent act, but one they were certainly justified in doing.

Roy: No, the US wasn't justified. Even secretary of war Henry Lewis Stimson was not sure the bombs were needed to reduce the need of an invasion: "Japan had no allies; its navy was almost destroyed; its islands were under a naval blockade; and its cities were undergoing concentrated air attacks."

The United States still had many industrial resources to use against Japan, and thus it was essentially defeated, Rear Admiral Tocshitane Takata concurred that B-29s "were the greatest single factor in forcing Japan's surrender", while Prince Konoye already thought Japan was defeated on 14 February 1945 when he met emperor Hirohito.

A combination of thoroughly bombing blockading cities that were economically dependent on foreign sources for food and raw materials, and the threat of Soviet entry in the war, would have been enough.

The recommendations for the use of the bomb show that the military was more interested in its devastating effect than in preparing the invasion. Therefore the destruction of hospitals and schools etc was acceptable to them.

George: The USA was more interested in a quick and easy end to the war than causing untold suffering. They had in their hands a weapon that was capable of bringing the war to a swift end, and so

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they used it.

The atom bombs achieved their desired effects by causing n:,aximum devastation. Just six days after the Nagasaki bombing, the Emperor's Gyokuon-h6s6 speech was broadcast to the nation, detailing the Japanese surrender. The devastation caused by the bombs sped up the Japanese surrender, which was the best solution for all parties.

If the atomic bombs had not had the devastating effect they had, they would have been utterly pointless. They replaced thousands of US bombing missions that would have been required to achieve the same effect of the two bombs that, individually, had the explosive power of the payload of 2,000 B-29s. This freed up resources that could be utilised for the war effort elsewhere.

Roy: After the bloody battles of lwo Jima and Okinawa, the death toll on both sides was high, and the countries' negative view of one other became almost unbridgeable, says J Samuel Walker in Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and The Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan. Therefore, the US created unconditional terms of surrender, knowingly going against the Japanese ethic of honour and against the institute of the emperor, whom most Americans probably wanted dead.

Consequently, the use of the atomic bomb became a way to avenge America's fallen soldiers while also keeping the USSR in check in Europe. The Japanese civilian casualties did not matter in this strategy. Also, it did not prevent the Cold War, as the USSR was just a few years behind on a-bomb research.

At the time, revenge, geopolitics and an expensive project that could not be allowed to simply rust away, meant the atomic bomb had to be hastily deployed "in the field" in order to see its power and aftermath - though little was known about radiation and its effects on humans.

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An atomic bomb survivor cries as he receives a treatment at temporary hospital at Shin Kozen Elementary School in August 1945 in Nagasaki, Japan. (Photo by Yasuo Tomishige/The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images) George: Admittedly, the US did use the atom bomb to keep the USSR in line, and for that it served its purpose. It may not have stopped the Soviets developing their own nuclear device, but that's not what it was intended for. It was used as a deterrent to keep the (sometimes uneasy) peace between the US and the USSR, and it achieved that. There are no cases of a direct, all-out war between the US and the Soviets that can be attributed to the potentially devastating effects of atomic weaponry.

The atomic bombs certainly established US dominance immediately after the Second World War - the destructive power it possessed meant that it remained uncontested as the world's greatest power until the Soviets developed their own weapon, four years after the deployment at Nagasaki. It is certainly true that Stalin and the Soviets tried to test US dominance, but even into the 1960s the US generally came out on top.

Roy: The price to keep the USSR in check was steep: the use of a weapon of mass destruction that caused around 200,000 deaths (most of them civilians) and massive suffering through radiation. However, it did not stop the USSR from creating the same weapon within four years.

It might be argued that, following the explosions, Japan virtually disappeared from the world stage while the USSR viewed the bombing as an incentive to acquire the same weaponry in order to retaliate in equal force if the atomic bomb was ever used again. Considering the tension between the two countries, a similar attack with tens of thousands of civilian casualties would have created a nuclear apocalypse.

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If the US had organised a demonstration, as they had briefly considered, the USSR would still have responded in the same manner, while Japan - which had made clear overtures for a (un)conditional surrender- could have been spared. Furthermore, by postponing the use of the bomb, scientists would have had time to understand the test results, meaning further anguish, like the Bikini Atoll [a huge US hydrogen bomb test in 1954 that had major consequences for the geology and natural environment, and on the health of those who were exposed to radiation] could have been avoided.

George: The large civilian death toll that resulted from the bombings can be seen as a small price to pay by the United States in return for their assertion of dominance on the world stage.

The USSR's development of an atomic weapon had been underway since 1943, and so their quest for nuclear devices cannot be solely attributed to the events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It should also be considered that the Soviets' rapid progress in creating an atom bomb was not exclusively down to their desire to compete with the United States, but from spies passing them US secrets.

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Postponing the use of the atom bomb would only have prolonged the war and potentially created an even worse fate for the people of Japan, with an estimated five to 10 million Japanese fatalities - a number higher than some estimates for the entire Soviet military in the Second World War.

Ultimately, the atomic bombs did what they were designed to do. They created such a high level of devastation that the Japanese felt they had no option but to surrender unconditionally to the United States, hence resulting in US victory and the end of the Second World War.

Roy: Of course civilian casualties of another nation would have been acceptable to the USA. Japan had made clear overtures to peace, but cultural differences made this nearly impossible (the shame of unconditional surrender goes against their code of honour).

The determination to use an expensive bomb instead of letting it rust away; the desire to find out how devastating it was and the opportunity to use the bomb as a strong showcase of US supremacy, made Japan the ideal target.

Obviously, the USSR would eventually succeed in creating the a-bomb. Therefore, making Hiroshima & Nagasaki the example of the tremendous power of the bombs would make it clear to the USSR that they too needed such weapons to defend themselves.

Moreover, other countries claimed the right of nuclear weapons to

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defend their citizens. Consequently, the tragic bombings became the example of an arm's race instead of peace.

Furthermore, since Japan was already on the brink of collapse the bombing was unnecessary, and peace talks would have taken place within a decent time frame (even after the cancelled Hawaii summit). The millions of deaths calculated by Operation Downfall [the codename for the Allied plan for the invasion of Japan near the end of the Second World War, which was abandoned when Japan surrendered following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] actually show that only desperation and honour stood between Japan and unconditional surrender.

George, from Wolverhampton, is currently studying for his A-levels, which include modern history, at Kenilworth Sixth Form in Warwickshire. He volunteers for the National Trust as a room guide at the Baddesley Clinton Estate. He has a passion for military and political history, and enjoys visiting historical sites across the UK.

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Roy, 29, from Belgium, has a master's degree in the history of the Catholic Church; an advanced master's degree on the historical expansion, exchange and globalisation of the world, and a master's degree in management. He has worked as a complaint manager for the city of Leuven, and is now an inspector for the Cadastre [tax office]. Last year during his honeymoon Roy visited the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. Photos taken immediately after the 1945 bombing have left a lasting impression on him.

This article was first published by History Extra in July 2014

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