On the clear morning of August 6, the first atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima, destroying over 70 percent of the city, and killing about 80,000 residents with temperatures rising to several million degrees centigrade. Three days later, on August 9, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Over 20,000 people died instantly. In the weeks following the bombs, thousands more Japanese died from the after effects of the radiation exposure of the blast.
We tend to focus today on the bomb as some kind of key decision of 1945, that all the leaders were agonizing on whether to use the bomb or not. In the framework of mid-1945, President Truman and those around him had no sustained and serious doubts about using the bomb. The situation had developed into a war of racial savagery that resulted in a decision to drop an atomic bomb as an act of liberation to prevent further suffering. Many historians have argued that if in the Potsdam Declaration, had Truman allowed the emperor to remain, the Japanese might have surrendered before the atomic bomb was dropped.
Although Japan initially started the war with the U.S, with its ruler, emperor Hirohito being more concerned about how to preserve emblems of the legitimacy of his rule than about his people, we might wonder whether the level of violence used during the war by the U.S, and in particular the use of two atomic bombs, actually prevented further bloodshed, or were these justifications merely excuses made to cover the true reasons behind the use of the bombs?
We can identify two major opinions in the historiography of the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. On one side, there are the Feisians (after Herbert Feis) who argue and build evidence to prove that the major reason the bomb was used was the desire to end the war as quickly and with minimal casualties.
The other "historiographic stream" (Hixson 128), is called the Alperovitzian (after Gar Alperovitz), who argues that the atomic bomb was used in order to end the war quickly to minimize Soviet involvement in the defeat of Japan, sending a warning to the Russians regarding postwar attitudes.
There is also evidence that the bombs were used, partly due to prevent public backlash against the large amount of spending done on the Manhattan Project. It was almost like a justification for spending "$2 billion on the Manhattan Project, and diverting scarce war-time resources to that project." (Hixson 236). How else could President Truman and his officials explain this spending, if the atomic bomb wasn't going to be used against the enemy - especially if the war continued past 1 November 1945, and thousands of Americans died in the invasion?
Many believe that speculation on events that never happened does not provide us with facts. One such historian is Stanley Goldberg, who disregards the notion that "if the atomic bomb had not been used, Japan would not have surrendered to the allied invasion of their home islands" (Hixson 127). A decade after the war's end, President Truman stated in his autobiography that, "those attacks probably saved half a million lives of American soldiers, sailors, and marines, and prevented numerous British fatalities and vast number of Japanese deaths." At first it might seem reasonable to see the logic behind this statement, however according to Rufus E. Miles Jr., had the secret files necessary to examine this subject been released just after the war, many of these estimates "would have been forced to conclude that the number of American deaths prevented by the two bombs would almost certainly not have exceeded 20,000 and would have been probably much lower, perhaps even zero." (Hixson 139). There is evidence that very few of Truman's advisers could see all the issues with the use of atomic bombs. The advisors and those close to Truman who knew about the bomb were all in favor of its use, but the majority of the people around him that were against their use also didn't know much about the bombs themselves.
There are also arguments about the moral justification for Truman's decision. Both Truman and his Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, presented the issue "as if the sole alternative to the use of atomic bombs was an immense, long, and bloody invasion of the heartland of Japan, but neither provided any support for this belief" (Hixson 141). One reason the Japanese did not accept the Potsdam Declaration was the condition of "Moral Demilitarization" (Brown 243). According to Delmer M. Brown, the use of the bombs could have been avoided if the U.S. hadn't put such harsh conditions for the Japanese, such as the "elimination for all time the authority and influence of those who have deceived and misled the people of Japan into embarking on world conquest."
There have been studies that provide at least five alternatives to the drop of atomic bombs that would result in far less casualties on all sides. "The use of the atomic bombs must have been based largely on other considerations that the saving of huge number of American lives. Yet the myth persists that this was the most important factor in the decision" as cited in Hixson. The following is a brief description of each of these alternatives, and the reasons behind their rejection.
The first, but least likely of these possibilities was called a non-combat demonstration as a dramatic warning. This idea was rejected by the Scientific Advisory Panel and also by the Interim Committee, mostly because of the concern that if the bomb did not work properly, it might embolden the Japanese, or Allied POWs might be moved into the demonstration area and be killed by the bomb. Because each of these risks was deeply troubling, and because there was no strong desire to avoid the combat use of the bomb, the alternative of a non-combat demonstration was easily rejected. "Also, the military officials knew that no tru indication of the destructive power of the atomic bomb could have been demonstrated to nonscientific observers by a test drop over Tokyo Bay." (Marx )
The second alternative called for a modification of the unconditional-surrender demand and an explicit guarantee of the imperial system. Some American leaders, most notably Undersecretary of State Joseph Grew and Secretary of war Stimson, pleaded for this strategy - not as an alternative to the Atomic bomb, but rather as a way, they hoped, of avoiding the invasion. President Truman and the new secretary of state James F. Byrnes feared a political backlash in America, where Hirohito was likened to Hitler and judged a war criminal.
The third alternative was the pursuit of Japan's peace feelers. In June of 1945, one
Japanese diplomatic group proposed continuation of the emperor and retention of Korea and Formosa as the main terms for surrender. The OSS chief in Switzerland responded favorably, but these Japanese negotiators failed to evoke any interest in Tokyo for their venture.
Some also called for a delay in the use of the atomic bomb until well after Soviet entry into the war. No top American leader including President Truman saw Soviet entry into the war as likely to be decisive without the use of the Atomic bomb, before the scheduled invasion, which would not offer an alternative to the use of the bomb.
Lastly, there was the reliance on heavy conventional bombing and naval blockade.
Probably the most likely way of achieving a Japanese surrender before November 1945 without the use of the atomic bomb, was by continuing the siege strategy of the heavy bombing of Japanese cities - terror bombing and the destruction of military and industrial installations - and the strangling naval blockade, including mining operations. The problem was that for most of the top ranking officials, the heavy bombing and naval blockade served as a supplement - not as substitutes - to the use of the atomic bomb.
The fact is that for President Truman and his top advisors in 1945, the use of the atomic bomb was never a question. For them, the important question was how militarily to produce Japan's surrender, and sometimes what kind of surrender was likely. Before Hiroshima, only one high ranking official questioned the use of the Atomic bomb, and that was Admiral Leahy, who only ethically disliked the use of the bomb, but never stated that it should not be used. (Hixson)
In 1945, American leaders were not seeking to avoid the use of the atomic bomb. Its use did not create ethical or political problems for them. Thus, they easily rejected or never considered most of the so-called alternatives. Even by framing a post-Hiroshima analysis in terms of alternatives to the use of the atomic bomb, there is some risk of distorting history by seeming- though not intending- to imply that American leaders before Hiroshima considered these various approaches, with the single exception of a non-combat demonstration, as alternatives to the bomb. In examining these so called alternatives, post- Hiroshima analysts can conclude that these strategies, with various probabilities, might have served as alternatives to the bomb by producing a surrender before November 1945. But that is the view from a post-, not pre-, Hiroshima perspective. In the pre-Hiroshima months, when and if these strategies were considered, and delaying use of the bomb went unconsidered, they were not examined (with the exception of the non-combat demonstration) in terms of avoiding the use of the bomb but sometimes assessed within the context of avoiding the invasion. Even the siege strategy of bombing and blockade, though often linked to the November invasion, raised for policymakers the hope that it might compel a Japanese surrender before the November invasion. Put bluntly, for American leaders, avoiding the dread invasion, even if "only" twenty-five thousand Americans might die in the attack, was major concern. Avoiding the use of the bomb was never a real concern for policymakers.
There is also evidence that the "war department superiors took all the steps possible to make sure that the atomic bomb played a role in bringing the war to an end. Indeed, Groves and those from whom he took orders were fearful that the war would end before the atomic bomb was used." (Hixson 128). Indeed the Interim Committee advised Truman to drop the bomb without warning and as soon as possible on a Japanese military or industrial target. In a statement made on August 6, 1945, President Truman said: "The fact that we can release atomic energy ushers in a new era in man's understanding of nature's forces." (Widmer 456). In this statement one can see the pride he takes in the development and use of atomic weapons, which implies that he and his advisers had no intention of listening to the many scientists that were against the use of such weapons.
The noteworthy counter argument to the use of the atomic bombs, for whatever reason they were used, is that all justifications of why the bombs were used in Japan have treated the question as if one had to choose between two alternatives. The truth of the matter is that there is no reason why one could not have believed that the use of the bomb would result in saving lives and also serve the purpose of stopping postwar Soviet ambitions. As Leon V. Sigal states, in the end the decision to use atomic bombs on Japan "became part of the bureaucratic strategy of a handful of senior American officials with stake in dropping the bomb on Japan to head off opposition in the scientific community, lest that opposition succeeded in widening the range of options the president on wartime use, which questions the legitimacy of the reasons justifying the drop of the bombs." (Sigal 329-330)
