Hiroshima:
Historians Reassess
by Gar
Alperovitz
Foreign
Policy (Summer 1995) No. 99: 15-34.
Copyright 1995 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Contents:
Page
1 of 5
Introduction
Earlier this year, the nation witnessed a massive media explosion
surrounding the Smithsonian Institution's planned Enola Gay
exhibit. As the 50th anniversary of the August 6, 1945, atomic
bombing of Hiroshima approaches, Americans are about to receive
another newspaper and television barrage.
Any
serious attempt to understand the depth of feeling the story
of the atomic bomb still arouses must confront two critical
realities. First, there is a rapidly expanding gap between
what the expert scholarly community now knows and what the
public has been taught. Second, a steady narrowing of the
questions in dispute in the most sophisticated studies has
sharpened some of the truly controversial issues in the historical
debate.
Consider
the following assessment:
"Careful
scholarly treatment of the records and manuscripts opened
over the past few years has greatly enhanced our understanding
of why the Truman administration used atomic weapons against
Japan. Experts continue to disagree on some issues, but critical
questions have been answered. The consensus among scholars
is that the bomb was not needed to avoid an invasion of Japan
and to end the war within a relatively short time. It is
clear that alternatives to the bomb existed and that Truman
and his advisers knew it." (Emphasis added.)
The author
of that statement is not a revisionist; he is J. Samuel Walker,
chief historian of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Nor is he alone in that opinion. Walker is summarizing the
findings of modern specialists in his literature review in
the Winter 1990 issue of Diplomatic History.
Another
expert review, by University of Illinois historian Robert
Messer, concludes that recently discovered documents have
been "devastating" to the traditional idea that using the
bomb was the only way to avoid an invasion of Japan that might
have cost many more lives.
Even
allowing for continuing areas of dispute, these judgments
are so far from the conventional wisdom that there is obviously
something strange going on. One source of the divide between
expert research and public understanding stems from a common
feature of all serious scholarship: As in many areas of specialized
research, perhaps a dozen truly knowledgeable experts are
at the forefront of modern studies of the decision to use
the atomic bomb. A second circle of generalists--historians
concerned, for instance, with the Truman administration, with
World War II in general, or even with the history of air power--depends
heavily on the archival digging and analysis of the inner
circle. Beyond this second group are authors of general textbooks
and articles and, still further out, journalists and other
popular writers.
One
can, of course, find many historians who still believe that
the atomic bomb was needed to avoid an invasion. Among the
inner circle of serious experts, however, conclusions that
are at odds with the official rationale have long been commonplace.
Indeed, as early as 1946 the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey,
in its report Japan's Struggle to End the War, concluded that
"certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability
prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even
if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had
not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned
or contemplated."
Similarly,
a top-secret April 1946 War Department study, Use of Atomic
Bomb on Japan, declassified during the 1970's but brought
to broad public attention only in 1989, found that "the Japanese
leaders had decided to surrender and were merely looking for
sufficient pretext to convince the die-hard Army Group that
Japan had lost the war and must capitulate to the Allies."
This official document judged that Russia's early-August entry
into the war "would almost certainly have furnished this pretext,
and would have been sufficient to convince all responsible
leaders that surrender was unavoidable." The study concluded
that even an initial November 1945 landing on the island of
southern Japanese island of Kyushu would have been only a
"remote" possibility and that the full invasion of Japan in
the spring of 1946 would not have occurred.
Military
specialists who have examined Japanese decision-making have
added to the modern understanding that the bombing was unnecessary.
For instance, political scientist Robert Pape's study, "Why
Japan Surrendered," which appeared in the Fall 1993 issue
of International Security, details Japan's military vulnerability,
particularly its shortages of everything from ammunition to
fuel to trained personnel: "Japan's military position was
so poor that its leaders would likely have surrendered before
invasion, and at roughly the same time in August 1945, even
if the United States had not employed strategic bombing or
the atomic bomb." In this situation, Pape stresses, "The Soviet
invasion of Manchuria on August 9 raised Japan's military
vulnerability to a very high level. The Soviet offensive ruptured
Japanese lines immediately, and rapidly penetrated deep into
the rear.
Since the
Kwantung Army was thought to be Japan's premier fighting force,
this had a devastating effect on Japanese calculations of
the prospects for home island defense." Pape adds, "If their
best forces were so easily sliced to pieces, the unavoidable
implication was that the less well-equipped and trained forces
assembled for [the last decisive home island battle] had no
chance of success against American forces that were even more
capable than the Soviets."
Whether
the use of the atomic bomb was in fact necessary is, of course,
a different from whether it was believed to be necessary at
the time.
Walker's
summary of the expert literature is important because it underscores
the availability of the alternatives to using the bomb, and
because it documents that "Truman and his advisers knew" of
the alternatives.
Several
major strands of evidence have pushed many specialists in
the direction of this startling conclusion. The United States
had long since broken the enemy codes, and the President was
informed of all important Japanese cable traffic. A critical
message of July 12, 1945--just before Potsdam--showed that
the Japanese emperor himself had decided to intervene to attempt
to end the war. In his private journal, Truman bluntly characterized
this message as the "telegram from [the] Jap Emperor asking
for peace."
Other
intercepted messages suggested that the main obstacle to peace
was the continued Allied demand for unconditional surrender.
Although the expert literature once mainly suggested that
only one administration official--Undersecretary of State
Joseph Grew--urged a change in the surrender formula to provide
assurances for Japan's emperor, it is now clear that with
the exception of Secretary of State James Byrnes, the entire
top echelon of the U.S. government advocated such a change.
By June 1945, in fact, Franklin Roosevelt's secretary of state,
Edward Stettinius, (who remained in office until July 3);
the undersecretary of state; the secretary of war; the secretary
of the navy; the president's chief of staff, Admiral William
Leahy; and Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall--plus
all the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)--had in
one way or another urged a clarification of the surrender
formula. So, too, had the British military and civilian leadership,
including Prime Minister Churchill. Along with Grew, the Joint
Chiefs in particular recommended that a statement be issued
to coincide with the fall of Okinawa, on or around June 21.
At
that time, war crimes trials were about to begin in Germany;
the idea that the emperor might be hanged was a possibility
Tokyo could not ignore. Because the Japanese regarded the
Emperor as a deity--more like Jesus or the Buddha than an
ordinary human being--most top American officials deemed offering
some assurances for the continuance of the dynasty an absolute
necessity. The Joint Staff Planners, for instance, advised
the Joint Chiefs in an April 25, 1945, report that "unless
a definition of unconditional surrender can be given which
is acceptable to the Japanese, there is no alternative to
annihilation and no prospect that the threat of absolute defeat
will bring about capitulation."
Secretary
of War Henry Stimson took essentially the same position in
a July 2 memorandum to Truman. Moreover, he offered judgement
that if the Japanese were offered such a definition, stating,
"I think the Japanese nation has the mental intelligence and
versatile capacity in such a crisis to recognize the folly
of a fight to the finish and to accept the proffer of what
will amount to an unconditional surrender."
A University
of Southern Mississippi military historian John Ray Skates
has noted in his book, The Invasion of Japan: Alternative
to the Bomb, "[General] Marshall, who believed that retention
[of the emperor] was a military necessity, asked that the
members [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] draft a memorandum
to the president recommending that the Allies `do nothing
to indicate that the emperor might be removed from office
upon unconditional surrender.'"
The
other option that seemed likely to bring an end to the fighting
concerned the Soviets. Joseph Stalin had promised to enter
the war against Japan roughly three months after the May 8
defeat of Germany, which put the target date on or around
August 8. Earlier in the war, the United States had sought
Russia's help primarily to pin down Japanese armies in Manchuria
and thus make a U.S. invasion of the home islands easier.
By mid-summer, however, Japan's position had deteriorated
so much that top U.S. military planners believed the mere
shock of a Red Army attack might be sufficient to bring about
surrender and thus make an invasion unnecessary.
As
early as February 1955, Harvard historian Ernest May, in an
article in Pacific Historical Review, observed that the "Japanese
die-hards . . . had acknowledged since 1941 that Japan could
not fight Russia as well as the United States and Britain."
May also observed that because Moscow had been an outlet for
various Japanese peace feelers, when the Soviet declaration
of war finally occurred it "discouraged Japanese hopes of
secretly negotiating terms of peace." Moreover, in the end,
"The Emperor's appeal [to end the war] probably resulted,
therefore, from the Russian action, but it could not in any
event, have been long in coming."
The
importance to U.S. leaders of the "Russian shock option" for
ending the war--which was discussed even in the 1945 press--disappeared
from most scholarly studies during the Cold War. We now know,
however, that as of April 29, 1945 the Joint Intelligence
Committee (JIC), in a report titled Unconditional Surrender
of Japan, informed the JCS that increasing "numbers of informed
Japanese, both military and civilian, already realize the
inevitability of absolute defeat." The JIC further advised
that "the increasing effects of air-sea blockade, the progressive
and cumulative devastation wrought by strategic bombing, and
the collapse of Germany (with its implications regarding redeployment)
should make this realization widespread within the year."
The
JIC pointed out, however, that a Soviet decision to join with
the United States and Britain would have enormous force and
would dramatically alter the equation: "The entry of the USSR
into the war would, together with the foregoing factors, convince
most Japanese at once of the inevitability of complete defeat."
By
mid-June, Marshall advised Truman directly that "the impact
of Russian entry [into the war] on the already hopeless Japanese
may well be the decisive action levering them into capitulation
at the time or shortly thereafter if we land in Japan." Again,
Marshall's advice to Truman came almost a month before news
of the Emperor's personal intervention was received and four
and a half months before even a preliminary Kyushu landing
was to take place.
In
July, the British general Sir Hastings Ismay, chief of staff
to the minister of defence, summarized the conclusions of
the latest U.S.-British intelligence studies for Churchill
in this way: "[W]hen Russia came into the war against Japan,
the Japanese would probably wish to get out on almost any
terms short of dethronement of the Emperor."
On
several occasions, Truman made it abundantly clear that the
main reason he went to Potsdam to meet Stalin was to make
sure the Soviets would, in fact, enter the war. The atomic
bomb had not yet been tested, and, as Truman later stated
in his memoirs, "If the test [of the atomic bomb] should fail,
then it would be even more important to us to bring about
a surrender before we had to make a physical conquest of Japan."
Some
of the most important modern documentary discoveries involve
this point. After Stalin confirmed that the Red Army would
indeed enter the war, the president's "lost" Potsdam journal
(found in 1978) shows him writing: "Fini Japs when that comes
about." And the next day, in an exuberant letter to his wife
(made public in 1982), Truman wrote that with the Soviet declaration
of war "we'll end the war a year sooner now, and think of
the kids who won't be killed!"
It
is also obvious that if assurances for the Emperor were put
forward together with the Soviet attack, the likelihood of
an early Japanese surrender would be even greater. The JIC
recognized this in its April 29, 1945, report, observing that
there first had to be a realization of the "inevitability
of defeat," which the JIC judged a Soviet declaration of war
would produce. Once "the Japanese people, as well as their
leaders, were persuaded that absolute defeat was inevitable
and that unconditional surrender did not imply national annihilation,
surrender might follow fairly quickly."
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