Hiroshima: Historians Reassess
by Gar Alperovitz
Foreign Policy (Summer 1995) No. 99: 15-34.
Copyright 1995 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

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The Path Not Taken

Some of the basic questions debated in the expert literature concern why alternatives for ending the war were not pursued. Little dispute remains about why the Russian option was discarded, however. Once the bomb was proven to work, the President reversed course entirely and attempted to stall a Red Army attack. A week after the Alamogordo test, for instance, Churchill observed that "it is quite clear that the United States do not at the present time desire Russian participation in the war against Japan." Similarly, the diary of Secretary of Navy James Forrestal indicates that by July 28 Secretary of State Byrnes was "most anxious to get the Japanese affair over with before the Russians got in." And the private journal of Byrnes' personal assistant, Walter Brown, confirms that Byrnes was now "hoping for time, believing [that] after [the] atomic bomb Japan will surrender and Russia will not get in so much on the kill, thereby being in a position to press claims against China." Meanwhile, every effort was made to speed up the production and delivery of the weapon. These efforts were successful: Hiroshima was bombed on August 6, two days before the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Nagasaki was bombed on 9th.

A traditional argument as to why the surrender formula for Japan was not modified is that it was politically impossible for Truman to alter the "unconditional" language, that to do so would make him look soft on Japan. There is some evidence that some people felt this way, notably Roosevelt's ailing former secretary of state Cordell Hull, and Assistant Secretaries of State Archibald MacLeish and Dean Acheson. There is some evidence (mainly from the period after the bombings) that Byrnes feared criticism if the rhetoric or unconditional surrender was abandoned. However, it does not appear that the president himself was much worried about such matters. Truman's views, as described in contemporaneous records, indicate that he generally seemed to favor altering the terms, and there is little evidence of concern about political opposition. Stimson's diary reports of July 24 and August 10, in particular, make it clear that neither Byrnes nor Truman were at all "obdurate" on the question. And, of course, a few days after the bombings the Japanese were given the assurances they sought: Japan would still have an emperor.

Moreover, many leading newspapers at the time were pressing for--rather than resisting--a clarification of terms. The Washington Post, for instance, challenged the "unconditional surrender" formula head on in a June 11, 1945, editorial titled "Fatal Phrase": "President Truman, of course, has already stated that there is no thought of destroying the Japanese people, but such assurances, even from so high a source, are negated by that fatal phrase." The Post stressed that the two words

" remain a great stumbling block to any propaganda effort and the perpetual trump card of the Japanese die-hards for their game of national suicide. Let us amend them; let us give Japan conditions, harsh conditions certainly, and conditions that will render her diplomatically and militarily impotent for generations. But also let us somehow assure those Japanese who are ready to plead for peace that, even on our terms, life and peace will be better than war and annihilation."

Similarly, recent research has indicated that far from pushing the president to maintain a hard line, many leading Republicans urged him to modify the terms to get an early surrender, preferably before the Soviets entered the war. Former President Herbert Hoover, for instance, went to see Truman about the issue in late May, and on July 3 the New York Times reported that "Senator [Wallace] White [Jr.] of Maine, the minority leader, declared that the Pacific war might end quickly if President Truman would state specifically in the upper chamber just what unconditional surrender means for the Japanese."

Although White indicated he was speaking as an individual, the move by so important a political figure could hardly be ignored. Moreover, White's statement was immediately supported by Senator Homer Capehart of Indiana, who called a press conference the same day to state that "it isn't a matter of whether you hate the Japs or not. I certainly hate them. But what's to be gained by continuing a war when it can be settled now on the same terms as two years from now?"

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