Every year during the first two weeks of August the mass news media and many politicians at the national level trot out the “patriotic” political myth that the dropping of the two atomic bombs on Japan in August of 1945 caused them to surrender, and thereby saved the lives of anywhere from five hundred thousand to 1 million American soldiers, who did not have to invade the islands. Opinion polls over the last fifty years show that American citizens overwhelmingly (between 80 and 90 percent) believe this false history which, of course, makes them feel better about killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians (mostly women and children) and saving American lives to accomplish the ending of the war.
The best book, in my opinion, to explode this myth is The Decision to Use the Bomb by Gar Alperovitz, because it not only explains the real reasons the bombs were dropped, but also gives a detailed history of how and why the myth was created that this slaughter of innocent civilians was justified, and therefore morally acceptable. The essential problem starts with President Franklin Roosevelt’s policy of unconditional surrender, which was reluctantly adopted by Churchill and Stalin, and which President Truman decided to adopt when he succeeded Roosevelt in April of 1945. Hanson Baldwin was the principal writer for the New York Times who covered World War II and he wrote an important book immediately after the war entitled Great Mistakes of the War. Baldwin concludes that the unconditional surrender policy
was
perhaps the biggest political mistake of the war….Unconditional surrender was
an open invitation to unconditional resistance; it discouraged opposition to
Hitler, probably lengthened the war, cost us lives, and helped to lead to
the present aborted peace.
The stark fact is that the
Japanese leaders, both military and civilian, including the emperor, were
willing to surrender in May of 1945 if the emperor could remain in place and not
be subjected to a war crimes trial after the war. This fact became known to
President Truman as early as May of 1945. The Japanese monarchy was one of the
oldest in all of history, dating back to 660 BC. The Japanese religion added
the belief that all the emperors were the direct descendants of the sun
goddess, Amaterasu. The reigning Emperor Hirohito was the 124th in the direct
line of descent. After the bombs were dropped on August 6 and 9 of
1945, and their surrender soon thereafter, the Japanese were allowed to
keep their emperor on the throne and he was not subjected to any war crimes
trial. The emperor, Hirohito, came on the throne in 1926 and continued in his
position until his death in 1989. Since President Truman, in effect, accepted
the conditional surrender offered by the Japanese as early as May of 1945, the
question is posed, “Why then were the bombs dropped?”
The author Alperovitz gives
us the answer in great detail which can only be summarized here, but he states,
We
have noted a series of Japanese peace feelers in Switzerland which OSS Chief
William Donovan reported to Truman in May and June [1945]. These suggested,
even at this point, that the U.S. demand for unconditional surrender might well
be the only serious obstacle to peace. At the center of the explorations, as we
also saw, was Allen Dulles, chief of OSS [Office of Strategic Services]
operations in Switzerland (and subsequently Director of the CIA). In his 1966
book The Secret Surrender, Dulles recalled that “On July 20,
1945, under instructions from Washington, I went to the Potsdam Conference and
reported there to Secretary [of War] Stimson on what I had learned from Tokyo —
they desired to surrender if they could retain the Emperor and their
constitution as a basis for maintaining discipline and order in Japan after the
devastating news of surrender became known to the Japanese people.”
It is documented by
Alperovitz that Stimson reported this directly to Truman. Alperovitz further
points out in detail the documentary proof that every top presidential civilian
and military advisor, with the exception of James Byrnes, along with Prime
Minister Churchill and his top British military leadership, urged Truman to
revise the unconditional surrender policy so as to allow the Japanese to
surrender and keep their emperor. All this advice was given to Truman prior to
the Potsdam Proclamation which occurred on July 26, 1945. This proclamation
made a final demand upon Japan to surrender unconditionally or suffer drastic
consequences.
Another startling fact about
the military connection to the dropping of the bomb is the lack of knowledge on
the part of General MacArthur about the existence of the bomb and whether it
was to be dropped. Alperovitz states,
MacArthur
knew nothing about advance planning for the atomic bomb’s use until almost the
last minute. Nor was he personally in the chain of command in this connection;
the order came straight from Washington. Indeed, the War Department waited
until five days before the bombing of Hiroshima even to notify MacArthur — the
commanding general of the U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific — of the existence of
the atomic bomb.
Alperovitz makes it very
clear that the main person Truman was listening to while he ignored all of this
civilian and military advice was James Byrnes, the man who virtually
controlled Truman at the beginning of his administration. Byrnes was one of the
most experienced political figures in Washington, having served for over thirty
years in both the House and the Senate. He had also served as a United States
Supreme Court Justice, and at the request of President Roosevelt, he resigned
that position and accepted the role in the Roosevelt administration of managing
the domestic economy. Byrnes went to the Yalta Conference with Roosevelt and
then was given the responsibility to get Congress and the American people to
accept the agreements made at Yalta.
When
Truman became a senator in 1935, Byrnes immediately became his friend and
mentor and remained close to Truman until Truman became president. Truman never
forgot this and immediately called on Byrnes to be his number-two man in the
new administration. Byrnes had expected to be named the vice presidential
candidate [to FDR] to replace [Henry A.] Wallace and had been disappointed when
Truman had been named, yet he and Truman remained very close. Byrnes had also
been very close to Roosevelt, while Truman was kept in the dark by Roosevelt
most of the time he served as vice president. Truman asked Byrnes immediately,
in April, to become his secretary of state but they delayed the official
appointment until July 3, 1945, so as not to offend the incumbent. Byrnes had
also accepted a position on the interim committee which had control over the
policy regarding the atom bomb, and therefore, in April 1945 became
Truman’s main foreign policy advisor, and especially the advisor on the use of
the atomic bomb. It was Byrnes who encouraged Truman to postpone the Potsdam
Conference and his meeting with Stalin until they could know, at the
conference, if the atomic bomb was successfully tested. While at the Potsdam
Conference the experiments proved successful and Truman advised Stalin that a
new massively destructive weapon was now available to America, which Byrnes
hoped would make Stalin back off from any excessive demands or activity in the
postwar period.Buy New $32.83(as of 07:16 EDT - Details)
Truman secretly gave the
orders on July 25, 1945, that the bombs would be dropped in August while he was
to be en route back to America. On July 26, he issued the Potsdam Proclamation,
or ultimatum, to Japan to surrender, leaving in place the unconditional
surrender policy, thereby causing both Truman and Byrnes to believe that the
terms would not be accepted by Japan.
The conclusion drawn
unmistakably from the evidence presented is that Byrnes is the man who
convinced Truman to keep the unconditional surrender policy and not accept
Japan’s surrender so that the bombs could actually be dropped, thereby
demonstrating to the Russians that America had a new forceful leader in place,
a “new sheriff in Dodge” who, unlike Roosevelt, was going to be tough with the
Russians on foreign policy and that the Russians needed to “back off” during
what would become known as the “Cold War.” A secondary reason was that Congress
would now be told about why they had made the secret appropriation to a
Manhattan Project and the huge expenditure would be justified by showing that
not only did the bombs work but that they would bring the war to an end, make
the Russians back off, and enable America to become the most powerful military
force in the world.
If the surrender by the
Japanese had been accepted between May and the end of July of 1945 and the
emperor had been left in place, as in fact he was after the bombing, this would
have kept Russia out of the war. Russia agreed at Yalta to come into the
Japanese war three months after Germany surrendered. In fact, Germany
surrendered on May 8, 1945, and Russia announced on August 8, (exactly three
months thereafter) that it was abandoning its neutrality policy with Japan and
entering the war. Russia’s entry into the war for six days allowed them to gain
tremendous power and influence in China, Korea, and other key areas of Asia.
The Japanese were deathly afraid of communism and if the Potsdam Proclamation
had indicated that America would accept the conditional surrender allowing the
emperor to remain in place and informed the Japanese that Russia would enter
the war if they did not surrender, then this would surely have assured a quick
Japanese surrender.
The second question that Alperovitz answers in the last half of the book is how and why the Hiroshima myth was created. The story of the myth begins with the person of James B. Conant, the president of Harvard University, who was a prominent scientist, having initially made his mark as a chemist working on poison gas during World War I. During World War II, he was chairman of the National Defense Research Committee from the summer of 1941 until the end of the war and he was one of the central figures overseeing the Manhattan Project. Conant became concerned about his future academic career, as well as his positions in private industry, because various people began to speak out concerning why the bombs were dropped. On September 9, 1945, Admiral William F. Halsey, commander of the Third Fleet, was publically quoted extensively as stating that the atomic bomb was used because the scientists had a “toy and they wanted to try it out.” He further stated, “The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment….It was a mistake to ever drop it.” Albert Einstein, one of the world’s foremost scientists, who was also an important person connected with the development of the atomic bomb, responded and his words were headlined in the New York Times: “Einstein Deplores Use of Atom Bomb.” The story reported that Einstein stated that “A great majority of scientists were opposed to the sudden employment of the atom bomb.” In Einstein’s judgment, the dropping of the bomb was a political-diplomatic decision rather than a military or scientific decision.
Probably the person closest
to Truman, from the military standpoint, was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff Admiral William Leahy, and there was much talk that he also deplored
the use of the bomb and had strongly advised Truman not to use it, but advised
rather to revise the unconditional surrender policy so that the Japanese could
surrender and keep the emperor. Leahy’s views were later reported by Hanson
Baldwin in an interview that Leahy “thought the business of recognizing the
continuation of the Emperor was a detail which should have been solved easily.”
Leahy’s secretary, Dorothy Ringquist, reported that Leahy told her on the day
the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, “Dorothy, we will regret this day. The United
States will suffer, for war is not to be waged on women and children.” Another
important naval voice, the commander in chief of the US Fleet and chief of
naval operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior
bombing of Japan in March of 1945 had rendered the Japanese helpless and
that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. Also, the
opinion of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, given in a press conference on
September 22, 1945, was reported as: “The Admiral took the opportunity of
adding his voice to those insisting that Japan had been defeated before the
atomic bombing and Russia’s entry into the war.” In a subsequent speech at the
Washington Monument on October 5, 1945, Admiral Nimitz stated, “The Japanese
had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the
world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the
war.” It was learned also that on or about July 20, 1945, General Eisenhower
had urged Truman, in a personal visit, not to use the atomic bomb. Eisenhower’s
assessment was, “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing….[T]o
use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting
[negotiations], was a double crime.” Eisenhower also stated that it wasn’t
necessary for Truman to “succumb” to Byrnes.
James
Conant came to the conclusion that some important person in the administration
must go public to show that the dropping of the bombs was a military necessity,
thereby saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, so he
approached Harvey Bundy and his son, McGeorge Bundy. It was agreed by them that
the most important person to create this myth was Secretary of War Henry
Stimson. It was decided that Stimson would write a long article to be widely
circulated in a prominent national magazine. This article was revised
repeatedly by McGeorge Bundy and Conant before it was published in Harper’s Magazine in
February of 1947. The long article became the subject of a front-page article
and editorial in the New York Times, and
in the editorial it was stated, “There can be no doubt that the president and
Mr. Stimson are right when they mention that the bomb caused the Japanese to
surrender.” Later, in 1959, President Truman specifically endorsed this
conclusion, including the idea that it saved the lives of a million American
soldiers. This myth has been renewed annually by the news media and various
political leaders ever since.
It is
very pertinent that in the memoir of Henry Stimson entitled On Active Service in Peace and War, he states, “Unfortunately, I have lived long
enough to know that history is often not what actually happened but what is
recorded as such.”
To
bring this matter more into focus from the human tragedy standpoint, I recommend
the reading of a book entitled Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of
a Japanese Physician, August 6–September 30, 1945, by Michiko
Hachiya. He was a survivor of Hiroshima and kept a daily diary about the women,
children, and old men that he treated on a daily basis in the hospital. The
doctor was badly injured himself but recovered enough to help others and his
account of the personal tragedies of innocent civilians who were either badly
burned or died as a result of the bombing puts the moral issue into a clear
perspective for all of us to consider.
Now that we live in the nuclear age and there are enough nuclear
weapons spread around the world to destroy civilization, we need to face the
fact that America is the only country to have used this awful weapon and that
it was unnecessary to have done so. If Americans would come to recognize the
truth, rather than the myth, it might cause such a moral revolt that we would
take the lead throughout the world in realizing that wars in the future may
well become nuclear and therefore all wars must be avoided at almost any
cost. Hopefully, our knowledge of science has not outrun our ability to
exercise prudent and humane moral and political judgment to the extent that we
are destined for extermination.
John V. Denson [send him mail] is a practicing attorney in
Alabama and an adjunct scholar at the Mises Institute. He is the author
of , and editor of and .
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/08/john-v-denson/the-hiroshima-myth-3/
