When I began looking into the defeat of the Japanese in World War II, I was surprised to find so much written about the Soviet Union. Of course, the Soviet Union was a major factor in the war against the Germans—it lost more soldiers than any other country in the war.
But how important was the USSR in the Pacific? Quite important, as it turns out. The Soviet Union, the atomic bomb, and the potential invasion of Japan all were tightly entwined in the decisions made in the last days of the war.
This is my third and final post on the American decision to use the atom bomb. I’m not trying to judge the decision. As an educated layperson looking freshly at history, I just want to understand it.
In my first post I pointed out that President Truman knew nothing about the bomb until Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April 1945. The bomb was used less than four months later. Thus, it had enormous momentum and would have been difficult to stop. (Given how ill Roosevelt was, it is strange that he did not inform his vice president of such a major event; one historian calls this failure “disgraceful.”)[1]
In the second post I discussed whether the U. S. demand for unconditional surrender kept the Japanese from surrendering. This remains a genuine question. Had the Americans assured the Japanese that the emperor could remain in his position, the “peace party” in Japan would have been even more eager to end the war.
However, the enormous resistance (and prominence) of the “war party”—even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed and the emperor had prepared a surrender statement—weakens this otherwise persuasive claim. A violent coup to stop the emperor’s surrender statement from being broadcast to the public was almost successful; a general was killed in cold blood and another committed ritual suicide. [2]
Historians tend to write about the causes of events, not about whether those events should have happened. They don’t usually ask if the American colonists should have declared war against Britain or whether Robert E. Lee should have decided to lead the Confederate army.
But some subjects are so momentous that historians have difficulty avoiding moral questions. That is the case with Harry Truman’s decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan in 1945, a decision that continues to be controversial.
According to Tsoyushi Hasegawa, there has long been a debate between orthodox historians and revisionists. The former argue that it was necessary in order to avoid the loss of thousands of lives in an invasion of Japan. The latter say it should not have been used because Japan was essentially defeated already and the actual purpose of the bombings was to send a message to Stalin.[1]
In this and two following posts I want to look afresh at some of the elements that fed into Truman’s decision. I do not attempt to decide whether Truman should have authorized the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, although I may help some readers think about it. Continue reading “A President’s Troubling Surprise: The Manhattan Project”
