Further perspectives on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

I had thought to leave this topic as it stood in my earlier post, but the comments that it provoked prompted this one...

There is prevailing rationalisation for the use of the atomic bomb which asserts that it was less costly, to both sides, than a conventional invasion would have been. This position is so pervasive that I think most people who have ever given thought to this are swayed by it to some extent.

It is predicated, however, on largely unthinking assumptions which are in fact untrue, or at least questionable.

The first key assumption is that the dropping of the bomb and full scale invasion were mutually exclusive alternatives, and that one made the other unnecessary. Any reputable presentation of war plans shows that this was not the intention at the time. Both were actually part of the same planning from the time the bomb became available.

The second key assumption was the bomb demonstrated such awesome power that it, of itself, persuaded the Japanese government to surrender. That is not, strictly speaking, entirely true either. An associated assumption is that the US government actually expected that outcome. Again, not strictly true.

As the war came closer to the Japanese homeland, conceptual plans for invasion were drawn up. Early planning did not account for the atomic bomb, the project being top secret and known to a very few. As it became a reality, though, that changed...
General of the Army George Marshall considered using it.

To support the invasion - not instead of invasion.

At this time there was no single commander who held total military authority over the whole Pacific theatre. Command was shared among several men. There was a sharp divide between the opinions of the US Navy and the opinions of the US Army. Broadly speaking, MacArthur and the Army wanted invasion. Chester Nimitz and the Navy wanted a blockade. The Army said not invading would prolong the war indefinitely. The Navy said invasion would be too costly.
Political considerations gave the Army the edge, and planning moved to a thought process of how to defeat Japan quickly. The plan was called Operation Downfall, split into two sections, Operations Coronet and Olympic. Olympic would take Kyushu, the southern island. Coronet would take Honshu, the main island, via Tokyo Bay.

Marshall did not believe that dropping the bomb would make Japan surrender, and ordered work to begin on how they might be used tactically instead of strategically.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were "strategic" hits. Using them tactically meant dropping them on the areas they intended to deploy troops.

With the benefit of what we know now about the effects of atomic weapons, this idea is utterly appalling. Allied troops could have been in the effected areas in as little as 48 hours, meaning that after a vicious ground war, surviving veterans would have been falling down dead years later from the effects of radiation. The operational plan probably would have come unstuck very fast as massive numbers of forces committed to the invasion fell sick immediately, in a land where nearly 30 million Japanese civilians had been indoctrinated to fight as irregular military. An irradiated nightmare of a battlezone.

MacArthur was confident and believed Japanese resistance would not be as strong as reports suggested. Nimitz on the other hand had grave doubts. Marshall looked to Truman and fretted that the latter would not greenlight the invasion. Projections of Allied casualties ran as high as 4 million, and Truman could not support that politically given the deleterious effect it would have on civilian morale.

The first two atomic bombs were dropped. Japan did not immediately surrender and invasion plans continued apace.

However on August 9th 1945, the emperor, Hirohito, was advised the Soviets had declared war on Japan. What ran through the mind of a man told from infancy that he was a living god and inseparable from the material and spiritual existence of his country is hard to say, but he authorised surrender to the Allies - with the one condition that the Soviets would absolutely not have agreed to: the continuance of the throne. Earlier it had even been hoped by Hirohito that the Soviets would mediate as neutrals.

Fact: If that condition was not met - or Hirohito had believed it would not be met - it was his stated intention to continue the war. He said so. Another dozen bombs could have been dropped and the war would possibly have continued still.

Had he been killed, there would have been no surrender, for it was the office of the emperor, and his voice heard for the first time on public radio, that was the transcendent authority in Japan, their one way out, their sole means of processing total national catastrophe, the only thing that would make them "endure the unendurable".

The question is not what 'made' Japan surrender. The question is how they came to choose to surrender.

A large part of the latter 20th century spun on the whim of this one man, and the catalyst for his choice was not some dreadful new weapon, it was the choice between the Soviets or the Allies. I know who I would have chosen.

A few other related considerations:

Australia wanted Hirohito hanged. Cooler heads in Washington resisted.
Retention of the emperor enabled what was probably the most benign occupation of a former enemy in the history of the world. With the only use of atomic weapons in anger still within living memory, Japanese today by and large nonetheless regard the United States as Japan's one true friend - an extraordinary reversal. This in a world where there are peoples nursing murderous grudges over things done to them by other peoples generations or centuries earlier.

Footage of the effects of the bomb were suppressed in both the United States and Japan for more than 20 years. In occupied Japan the reasons are obvious. In the US the reasons are less clear.

In a 1944 poll 13% of Americans wanted Japanese exterminated (the source cited for this is here). However, attitudes flipped dramatically in the years after the war. While enmity persisted, common images of Japan went from subhuman adversary to a land of paper houses and tinkling kimonos. By 1959 there was a Broadway play, "A Majority of One", adapted to a 1962 film, wherein the mother of a American killed in the war is romanced by a Japanese widower aboard a cruise ship, to the consternation of the woman's daughter.

Perception is endlessly mutable. Truth is not.
The atomic bomb did not force capitulation so much as the emperor's authority enabled it, inspired by self-preservation under the shadow of the Soviets.

It was not a case of "use the bomb OR invade". It was "use the bomb TO invade". Active assumptions in Washington were that the first two detonations would NOT result in capitulation.

Finally.. let's call a filthy cruel weapon a filthy cruel weapon - not a silver bullet for peace. We are still, all of us, living in danger of these things today. At any time a city in the US, Europe or elsewhere could be leveled by nuclear terrorism. These things are not a solution and never were.

By the way the segment below is a scene from The Bridges at Toko Ri. My intention here is not to be cute, but to contrast this with the above mentioned poll, taken just 10 years earlier....



Thanks for reading.