It’s how you frame the question that often determines the answer you will receive.
Today is the 79th anniversary of the surrender of Japan. It is today, and not August 6th, when it is most appropriate to discuss whether dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was the correct decision.
The arguments are by this time well rehearsed. The opponents of the bombing answer that its use was not only unnecessary and gratuitous but immoral. They state that the Japanese were going to surrender anyway, shocked into submission given the declaration of war by the USSR, and the only reason Truman ordered the bomb’s use was to intimidate the now-menacing Soviets.
There of course was the remorse of the scientists, clergy, academicians, then and since, who denounced the death and devastation caused by the bombing. Many quoted Aquinas, others less eloquent pointed to moral failings of America and its people.
Supporters state that through the Magic and Ultra intercepts, Truman knew that the Japanese weren’t going to surrender, the Japanese Supreme Council was hopelessly deadlocked on whether to continue the war. In fact Hornfischer and Frank both make the point that it wasn’t just Hiroshima or Nagasaki that caused Japan to throw in the towel, but the perception that the Americans had many more such bombs.
As far as morality? Supporters of the bomb’s use point to the millions of lives, both Japanese and American, that would have been lost in an invasion, not to mention a similar Japanese death toll if a blockade was used. Make no mistake, the war was going to be brought to a decisive conclusion, the historical example of WW I and failed armistices dictated nothing less than unconditional surrender.
Why would then,the people of Hiroshima have a greater moral claim to life than the far more numerous of their countrymen, let alone Americans, who would die if the war continued?
Along these lines, Richard Frank in his book “Downfall” offers a similar argument but with a twist that cuts through the detached, yet passionate arguments of the intellectuals. He recounts sitting in a presentation where the speaker recited the typical litany of arguments against Hiroshima, providing specific numbers of causalities and graphic depictions of the devastation wrought. That presentation offended a Chinese historian sitting next to Frank, not because of what the bomb did to Hiroshima, but for what the bomb meant for the Chinese. As a Chinese student said to a colleague of Frank’s: “In China, we teach about the atomic bombs differently. When the atomic bombs are mentioned, the whole class stands up and applauds.”
Frank expands our view of the war, from one between the US and Japan in the Pacific, to one encompassing Japan and the many lands in Asia in which it fought. Frank points to the millions of Asian civilians who had already died — an estimated 8,000 were dying every day — and asks, in reference to our common humanity, why, while the deaths at Hiroshima were tragic, the residents of Hiroshima had any greater moral claim to life than did the many more civilians throughout Asia who would die if the war continued.
So when you are asked to justify Hiroshima in terms of morality, throw it back in their face and ask them in turn how would they have ended the war in the bomb’s absence, and whether they have yet counted all the dead.
25 thoughts on “Hiroshima and Counting All the Dead”
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Not the first time I have told this tale.
My father came to this country from China; 12 years old, alone, and not speaking English. This was just before Black Friday and the Depression hit. His legal status was far more complicated than immigrants now. Due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Page Act, and the Doctrine of Extraterritoriality forced on China by the Western Powers in the 1840’s; under American law he was not regarded as a human being nor was he protected by the law or the Constitution.
He learned the restaurant business and how to be a chef and restaurant owner. He also learned English, verbal and written. By 1943,even though not a person he was a food service supervisor at Lowry Army Air Force Base in Denver.
In 1943, for diplomatic reasons the US repealed the statutes cited AND the Extraterritoriality Doctrine thus making us Chinese legally people. By the way, the US was the last Western Power to repeal Extraterritoriality. He had a good job, was doing war work, and could have lived well. So what did he do? When we became people, he enlisted in the US Army. I note that he was about 30 years old at the time and that is bloody old to start being a soldier.
I got all the details of his military career by research for a book of family history I am writing. He never talked about his time in the Army with the family, like a lot of combat veterans.
The unit he ended up in was an elite unit, and ended up going through the exact same training as the 10th Mountain Division at Camp Hale, Colorado. Thence to Europe.
He did not land on D-Day, but a few days thereafter. His division was in Patton’s 3rd Army and he was a combat infantry squad leader throughout the European war. His unit was not the first to encounter the Russians, but it went farther east than any other Army unit in Europe. His battalion also liberated the last Nazi death camp in their hands [Gunskirchen sub-camp of Matthausen]. His service was such that after he got home he was granted citizenship.
They brought his division home, and the process they started was to re-equip with newer gear and get ready to invade Japan. The process was stopped by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
If they had not been dropped, there was a great likelihood that I, my children, my grandchildren, and my nieces and nephews who I am writing the history for would never been born because he would have died in Japan.
I come down on the side of dropping those bombs.
Subotai Bahadur
And don’t forget Ketsu-Go, the Japanese plan to mobile all civilians and fight to the death. A side point: The invasion of Okinawa was made to secure the airfield for the anticipated invasion of Kyushu/
I wrote about it – and the invasion that never came – some time ago
https://thelexicans.wordpress.com/2020/02/05/the-case-for-hiroshima/
The proprietor of Bookworm Room also has a personal connection to the atomic bombings:
https://www.bookwormroom.com/2013/08/08/its-not-too-late-to-honor-the-atomic-bomb-drops-on-hiroshima-and-nagasaki/
The comments of various AI researchers and entrepreneurs reminded me: Some of the Los Alamos scientists believed that the US should hand over control of nuclear weapons to the United Nations. OTOH, at least one (John von Neumann) thought the US should launch a preemptive strike on the Soviet Union while we still had overwhelming nuclear dominance.
I think it’s pretty clear in retrospect that neither of these would have been a good idea.
It is understandable…even praiseworthy..that those who have created a technology wuld have a feeling of responsibility for the way in which it is used. But that doesn’t necessarily means that they are best suited to determine that use.
Not many in the Philippines mourned the dead of Japan. Estimates are that a million Filipinos died in the recapture of Manila on top of all the other victims of the occupation.
Everywhere the Japanese went they left a huge trail of dead civilians. In the aftermath of the Doolittle raid they killed about 225,000 Chinese in reprisal for harboring the surviving crews.
My father was also headed to the invasion of Japan. He later was part of the team that reviewed the Japanese film from the Batan Death March. It was decided that they were too provocative to be declassified then and as far as I know have never been declassified in full. They were very graphic, including many decapitations and bayoneting of the already severely debilitated POW’s.
Cui bono?
Holding off on Hiroshima and Nagasaki wouldn’t have benefited the US, and ultimately wouldn’t have benefited the Japanese – but it WOULD have benefited the Soviet Union.
Also, the scientists who balked about A-bombing Japan had looked forward to A-bombing Berlin. Which likewise just coincidentally would have benefited the USSR if the Bomb had been ready earlier or the fall of Nazi Germany had been delayed.
Funny how McCarthyite and Birchist ‘paranoia’ about Soviet agents of influence keeps turning out to have a point.
In the Spring of 1987 at MIT, in our 8.02 lecture in 10-250, Professor Emeritus Phillip Morrison rolled his wheelchair into our class, and he would do from time to time. This time he had something very specific to say. Apparently some Manhattan Project scientists were having deathbed confessions where they claimed they were always opposed to using the Bomb, Oh the Humanity! Weep Weep.
Professor Morrison looked us in the eye and said directly, “They are lying.”
He told us that EVERY one who worked on the Bomb wanted to “SEE IT GO BOOM!” He told us that they were mostly young men who had a lot of collective guilt that they had spent the war safe in the desert while others were fighting and dying. They wanted to strike a blow. He mentioned the leaders there, mostly Hungarian Jews, and what they must have thought.
And he said something I will never forget.
He said that if a man will lie like that, lie to protect his reputation, lie to himself, lie to God, … then nothing that man has ever done can be trusted.
I thought of Prof. Morrison a lot during COVID.
Follow-up:
Oppenheimer was a douche. A good friend directed a play titled, “Louis Slotin Sonata”, about Slotin and the “demon core” and the last week of Slotin’s life as he died from the massive zorch of X-rays he had brought on himself.
The play is fiction, but based directly on lots of original mateiral and letters some unearthed by the playwright, Paul Mullin. It’s very good. I will never forget the scene where Slotin, starting to slip away physically and hallucinating some things, is visited by The Great Man Himself:
SLOTIN: “Hi Bob! Oh sorry, apparently it’s “J. Robert” now. So, BOB, I wanna ask you something…. “I am become death, the Shatterer of worlds”. ? C’mon, you DIDN’T REALLY SAY THAT, did you, BOB?!?! I mean, isn’t that a little … PRETENTIOUS, BOB? Do you really expect people are going to believe you just go around spouting sacred Hindu texts, BOB? Didn’t your PRESS SECRETARY actually write that, BOB?”
Bob was universally disliked and even loathed, it seems. Eff that guy.
Strange that there has never been comparable concern for the tens of thousands of people who died in the fire-bombing of Dresden — or in the fire-bombing of Tokyo, for that matter.
Part of the whining about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is typical of Lefties. They look at a historical situation and criticize it without ever considering that the alternatives would have been worse.
Putting on my tin-foil hat, keening over the dead in Hiroshima and Nagasaki has served the anti-human Lefties well. It has been a key component of holding back nuclear power, thereby reducing the quality of life for us peons.
I read that Oppenheimer’s brother, who was laying the observation trench next to Robert, remembered him as saying, ” My God, what have we done “? Which seems a lot more probable.
An interesting but never explored Time Traveler experiment. Don’t shoot Adolph, shoot Albert.
Of course somebody else would have come up with the concept that became the atom bomb. But if it could be managed, would the world in fact be a better place without the Doomsday Device?
If you were boarding ship for Operation Olympic, clearly no. If a shuffling, dementia ridden Soviet or American leader someday pushes the Red Button thinking its the one that brings that cute aide with the Ice Cream……..
Well, perhaps nobody would be left in this plane of existence to carry on the debate.
I also had an ancestor who would have invaded Japan. My paternal grandfather did essential war work for Chrysler up until late in the war, when he was drafted into the Army. My father was alive then, but not my uncles and aunts. At that point in the war, Grandpa would have gone to the Pacific. He was discharged during training because of the end of the war.
The Soviet Union didn’t declare war until Aug 8, after the Hiroshima bombing.
the real two minute hate began with alperovitz, who is a well known lefty academic but game this out, say Downfall launches and it doesn’t go to plan, Truman didn’t have a VP till the second term, so the Secretary of State Byrnes, might have been next, he was known as
an inveterate hawk, as well as an extreme segregationist, how might society have gone down from there, would King have been imprisoned sooner who would have risen in his place,
now Stalin might have annexed Northern Japan as well as part of the exercise,, In Europe the War would still have been going for a period, Attlee might have checked out at some point
The moment an invasion began, the Japanese planned to execute the 10,000 allied POWs who had been slave labor, some for 4 years.
Michael K
September 3, 2024 at 3:07 pm
Even if my dad had survived invading Japan, this would have affected me although I would not have known it. My oldest friend’s father [we met the summer between 6th and 7th grades] was a P-40 pilot in the Philippines for just one day after the war started. He was shot down, survived by bailing out, and was an infantry officer until the surrender of the Philippines. He was taken to Japan and was slave labor in the mines on Hokkaido Island. My friend, by the way, is a retired Navy Captain [O-6].
Subotai Bahadur
Bombing a couple of cities. I know of no SF novel depicting war either within a single solar system (“The Expanse,” to take a recent example) or among solar systems (“Hyperion”) in which the weapons make those of our own time seem childish.
When the numbers of people cross into the trillions the numbers of victims will number in the billions.
Can anyone believe that mankind will at last defeat its own nature to be peaceful?
“About four hundred years ago, the first atomic weapons annihilated two cities.”
“Two cities?! We would have sterilized the entire island chain.”
Tacitus @ September 3, 2024 at 9:14 am:
An interesting but never explored Time Traveler experiment. Don’t shoot Adolph, shoot Albert.
Einstein? He was not a nuclear physicist. His only connection to the development of the Bomb was to put his very famous name on the letter to Roosevelt composed by Szilard, Teller, and Wigner.
Szilard had already conceived the idea of uranium fission chain reaction. So had others, including some Soviet physicists. In 1942, Georgi Flyorov (for whom element 114 is named) wrote Stalin about the possibility of a uranium fission bomb. This eventually led to the Soviet nuclear-weapons program.
There were plenty of people who understood the science and saw the implications. The genie was coming out of the bottle regardless.
Rich
Of course.
Adolph vs Albert was just a tidy way to phrase it.
We can wish for a better stopper for the bottle but the genie was going to be at least pushing on that stopper before the 20th century ended in almost any conceivable time line.
T
Our own connection to this – DIL’s family was out of town visiting relatives when the bomb was dropped. So glad, as she is a great wife for our son, and a great mother to our grandkids.
Most of us have seen those photos of Nagasaki and Detroit, then and now. Reality is that a city can recover and prosper after a nuclear bomb — but it cannot survive decades of one-party Democrat rule.
Yet no-one ever counts up all the lives that have been stunted or ruined by corrupt Democrat government in Detroit. It is a bit like the way the media gets excited by the drama when a couple of hundred people unfortunately die in a plane crash — yet ignore the thousands of people who die each year in car accidents.
Kurchatov was the great engineer of the program at arzamas 16 he certainly had help from a daisy chain of people like ted hall and melita norwood
Wells had predicted apocalyptic war if not the means in signs of things to come
Frank was on Aaron MacLean’ s School of War podcast last month and made several interesting comments, largely based on his archival research
First, there wasn’t really a major internal argument about how the war ended in the US until well into the sixties which was when a lot of the archival material became available, but not as of yet the critical radio-intelligence material. That’s the stuff in which we were able to monitor the internal Japanese deliberations in near real-time.
Second, he states that Hirohito turned against the war and wanted to surrender after Hiroshima but before Nagasaki and the Soviets. He only had the opportunity to intervene because the inner cabinet, what Frank called the “Big Six” remained deadlocked after Nagasaki.
Third, the members of inner cabinet were aware, through Japan’s failed atomic project, of the enormous difficulties in producing sufficient fissile material for a bomb. Therefore they weren’t overly concerned about the Hiroshima bomb because they didn’t think the Americans had really solved the fissile material issue and therefore didn’t have any bombs left. Hornfischer in his “Fleet at Flood Tide” tells the story of the enormous pressure put on the service crews in Tinian to assemble the Fat Man bomb for Nagasaki, a complicated plutonium implosion design, because the Americans wanted to drop it very soon after Hiroshima to give the Japanese the impression that the Americans had many such bombs.
I believe it was also Hornfischer who told the story of a captured American flier who gaslighted the Japanese that yes the Americans had many such bombs. In reality, there was only one more bomb ready to go and apparently the target was going to be Tokyo. Would the Japanese have surrendered if they knew we only had one more bomb ready to go even if they suspected it was for Tokyo?
As a general note, many people who said the bombing(s) were gratuitous point to comments made by Nimitz and other naval officers in the years after the war that the bombs were unnecessary. Those using the Navy’s claims should be taken with a grain of salt as the Navy had its own plan for ending the war which was blockade that would have spared American lives but starved millions of Japanese, hardly humanitarian. Also the Navy was already looking to its role in a post-war future dominated by the atomic age.
Archival work man.
Here is a claim that we could have had a bomb by August 17:
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/8718/did-the-united-states-have-a-third-atomic-bomb-to-drop-on-japan
I remember reading that there was not any material available and the earliest a third bomb could be dropped was possibly October. This was one of the reasons given that some sort of demonstration wasn’t considered. That would have only left one bomb for a fairly extended period. I find it unlikely that a third bomb could have been transported to Tinian in eight days, even if it had been ready in Los Alamos.
This book goes into detail about the Japanese actions and the various maneuvers by the different factions just before the surrender.
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Die-Defeated-Forgotten-American/dp/0306823381
Remember that the cabinet had resorted to assassinations in the run up to the war to settle policy differences. There were attempts to prevent the Emperor’s radio address announcing the surrender.
Projections were that a blockade would starve at least 5 million Japanese by spring. They would have certainly starved if we invaded added to however many were killed in the invasion. One of the strategies for impeding the landings was to have them met by large numbers of women and older children with sharpened sticks. They were supposed to mob the landing troops and delay them to make the machine guns more effective. The machine guns would have been fired through the Japanese mob.
In 1945, for all its culture and history, Japan had become a death cult. This greatly reduced the room for negotiation. They were making some half hearted attempts at starting negotiations through their Moscow embassy.
Mike, thank you so much for the mention of the School of War podcast. I started it yesterday and am listening to it at work. I’m very impressed with the people Aaron MacLean has on.
Thanks again.