Ever since America dropped a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, , the question has persisted: Was that magnitude of death and destruction really needed to end World War II?
American leadership apparently thought so. A few days earlier, just 16 hours after the U. But even as Truman issued his statement, a second atomic attack was already in the works. According to an order drafted in late July by Lt. Leslie Groves of the U. Army Corps of Engineers, director of the Manhattan Project, the president had authorized the dropping of additional bombs on the Japanese cities of Kokura present-day Kitakyushu , Niigata and Nagasaki as soon as the weather permitted.
Still, the effect was devastating: close to 40, people were killed instantly, and a third of the city was destroyed. Not only did the bombs end the war, the logic goes, they did so in the most humane way possible.
However, the overwhelming historical evidence from American and Japanese archives indicates that Japan would have surrendered that August, even if atomic bombs had not been used — and documents prove that President Truman and his closest advisors knew it.
The allied demand for unconditional surrender led the Japanese to fear that the emperor, who many considered a deity, would be tried as a war criminal and executed. A study by Gen. Allied intelligence had been reporting for months that Soviet entry would force the Japanese to capitulate. Truman also knew that the Soviet invasion would knock Japan out of the war.
Fini Japs when that comes about. The Soviets invaded Japanese-held Manchuria at midnight on Aug. They could not fight a two-front war, and the threat of a communist takeover of Japanese territory was their worst nightmare. Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki explained on Aug. This would destroy the foundation of Japan. We must end the war when we can deal with the United States. While a majority of Americans may not be familiar with this history, the National Museum of the U. Faced with the Japanese refusal to surrender, President Truman had little choice.
His decision was mainly based on the estimate of half a million Allied casualties likely to be caused by invading the home islands of Japan. There was also the likely death rate from starvation for Allied PoWs and civilians as the war dragged on well into What Truman did not know, and which has only been established quite recently, is that the Imperial Japanese Army could never contemplate surrender, having forced all their men to fight to the death since the start of the war.
All civilians were to be mobilised and forced to fight with bamboo spears and satchel charges to act as suicide bombers against Allied tanks. Japanese documents apparently indicate their army was prepared to accept up to 28 million civilian deaths. Antony Beevor is a bestselling military historian, specialising in the Second World War. The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was justified at the time as being moral — in order to bring about a more rapid victory and prevent the deaths of more Americans.
However, it was clearly not moral to use this weapon knowing that it would kill civilians and destroy the urban milieu. Militarily Japan was finished as the Soviet invasion of Manchuria that August showed.
Further blockade and urban destruction would have produced a surrender in August or September at the latest, without the need for the costly anticipated invasion or the atomic bomb. As for the second bomb on Nagasaki, that was just as unnecessary as the first one. It was deemed to be needed, partly because it was a different design, and the military and many civilian scientists were keen to see if they both worked the same way. There was, in other words, a cynical scientific imperative at work as well.
I should also add that there was a fine line between the atomic bomb and conventional bombing — indeed descriptions of Hamburg or Tokyo after conventional bombing echo the aftermath of Hiroshima. To regard Hiroshima as a moral violation is also to condemn the firebombing campaign, which was deliberately aimed at city centres and completely indiscriminate. But it is possible to imagine greater restraint. The British and Americans had planned in detail the gas-bombing of a list of 17 major German cities, but in the end did not carry it out because the moral case seemed to depend on Germany using gas first.
Restraint was possible, and, at the very end of the war, perhaps more politically acceptable. Richard Overy is a professor of history at the University of Exeter. A bloody invasion and round the clock conventional bombing would have led to a far higher death toll and so the atomic weapons actually saved thousands of American and millions of Japanese lives. The bombs were the best means to bring about unconditional surrender, which is what the US leaders wanted.
Only this would enable the Allies to occupy Japan and root out the institutions that led to war in the first place. The experience with Germany after the First World War had persuaded them that a mere armistice would constitute a betrayal of future generations if an even larger war occurred 20 years down the line.
It is true that the radiation effects of the atomic bomb provided a grisly dividend, which the US leaders did not anticipate. I believe that it was a mistake and a tragedy that the atomic bombs were used. Those bombings had little to do with the Japanese decision to surrender.
The evidence has become overwhelming that it was the entry of the Soviet Union on 8 August into the war against Japan that forced surrender but, understandably, this view is very difficult for Americans to accept. Once the USSR entered the war, the Japanese military not only had no arguments for continuation left, but it also feared the Soviet Union would occupy significant parts of northern Japan.
Truman could have simply waited for the Soviet Union to enter the war but he did not want the USSR to have a claim to participate in the occupation of Japan. Another option which could have ended the war before August was to clarify that the emperor would not be held accountable for the war under the policy of unconditional surrender.
US secretary of war Stimson recommended this, but secretary of state James Byrnes, who was much closer to Truman, vetoed it. By dropping the atomic bombs instead, the United States signalled to the world that it considered nuclear weapons to be legitimate weapons of war.
Those bombings precipitated the nuclear arms race and they are the source of all nuclear proliferation. Dropping the bombs was morally preferable to any other choices available. One of the biggest problems we have is that we can talk about Dresden and the bombing of Hamburg and we all know what the context is: Nazi Germany and what Nazi Germany did. Bear in mind that for every Japanese non-combatant who died during the war, 17 or 18 died across Asia-Pacific.
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