Truman's decision to use atomic bombs: diplomacy, racism, and revisionist history

Atomic Bomb

Historians like Gar Alperovitz and Martin Sherwin have known for many years, based on declassified U.S. government documents that Japan was going to surrender in 1945 even if the atomic bombs were no dropped and that no invasion would ever have been necessary. Their only condition was that the United States "guaranteed the safety of the Emperor Hirohito," and in the end the Truman administration agreed to this rather than prosecuting him as a war criminal (Sherwin xviii). At the time in the summer of 1945, all the top military and civilian officials of the administration except Secretary of State James Byrnes had already advised Truman to accept the Japanese surrender on this condition. Yet when the Potsdam Declaration was issued in July 1945, Truman and Byrnes removed the condition that would have allowed the emperor to remain in power. As Herwin put it, "for forty years, the American public had been misled about the decision-making process," as indeed most of it still is even today (Sherwin xv). From secret documents declassified over the last thirty years, Alperovitz and Sherwin also proved conclusively that Truman, Byrnes and Winston Churchill regarded the atomic bomb as an instrument of diplomatic coercion to win concessions from the Soviets in Eastern Europe and Asia, and that they dropped it on Japan as a demonstration of resolve that they had the will to use it on Russia. Americans like to see themselves as the "good guys" in history and still regard World War II as "the good war" that destroyed fascism in Europe and Asia, and do not like to imagine that racism, brutality, and cynical calculations of postwar power politics were also present on their side, but the record shows this was indeed the case with the decision to use the atomic bombs on Japan (Sherwin xvi). Therefore, the official version put forward in 1947 by Henry Stimson that the atomic bombs were used to save American lives, was incomplete at best, for other factors such as racism, ending the war before the Russians occupied more territory in Asia and using the threat of nuclear weapons in coercive diplomacy were all important factors.

Henry Stimson and the Official Explanation

In his 1947 Harper's Magazine article, former Secretary of War Henry Stimson asserted that the atomic bombs were used on Japan to end the war and avoid an invasion that might have cost up to a million casualties, and this was the official position of the U.S. government. He hardly mentioned the Soviets or the use of the bomb in atomic diplomacy, although he was always concerned about the problems of postwar control of nuclear energy once these weapons had been used. Stimson had written that "there was as yet no indication of any weakening in the Japanese determination to fight rather than accept unconditional surrender. If she should persist in her fight to the end, she had still a great military force" (Stimson 9). For this reason, his primary concern was using the atomic bomb to end the war quickly and decisively. The Japanese army still had two million troops in the home islands and it had not been destroyed like the navy and air force. Instead, it had lost relatively few casualties in fighting a series of bitter defensive battles on the Pacific islands, and still occupied China and most of Asia. Stimson thought that an invasion and occupation of Japan would lead to huge numbers of casualties, perhaps up to one million, and that the Japanese would continue to use kamikaze tactics and continue to fight to the death. Yet Stimson also added that "Japan is not a nation composed wholly of mad fanatics of an entirely different mentality from ours" (Stimson 11), and he recommended that it be allowed to surrender while retaining a constitutional monarchy. From documents declassified in the past thirty years, historians no know that this was an almost unanimous recommendation to President Truman from most American political and military leaders. This recommendation was not included in the Potsdam Declaration in July 1945 and the Japanese government rejected it as "unworthy of public notice" (Stimson 13). In spite of this, Stimson still argued that the use of the atomic bombs tipped the political balance in Japan in favor of the liberal peace faction.

Racism, Revenge and the War without Mercy in the Pacific

Racism on both sides was certainly a factor in the Pacific War, right up to the time the atomic bombs were used. Battles in the island hopping campaign were fought without mercy, with few prisoners taken, while the American public was also eager for revenge for Pearl Harbor and the Bataan Death March. Even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, over sixty Japanese cities were firebombed into oblivion, including a raid on Tokyo on March 9, 1945 that created not simply a firestorm but a lake of fire -- a true hell on earth. For the U.S. And Britain, calls for the total extermination against the Japanese were routine, at both the popular and elite levels, as were depictions of the Japanese are monkey-men. In this theater of the Second World War "it is easy to forget the visceral emotions and the sheer race hate that gripped virtually all participants" with led to the conflict becoming literally merciless and remorseless (Dower 55-56). German atrocities and genocide against the Jews, Gypsies and Slavs were known during the war, although they were not played up in the Western media and popular culture nearly as much as Japanese war crimes against civilians and prisoners of war, at least not until after Germany was defeated. Even publications like the New York Times and New Yorker regularly used terms like "Japs," "Nips" and "yellow monkeys," as did almost all civilian and military officials. In 1943, half of all American soldiers surveyed believed that the Japanese would have to be totally exterminated to bring peace to the world, while Admiral William Halsey simply told his men that he expected them to kill all "Japs" and make more "monkey meat." General Sir Thomas Blamey told the Australian troops in 1942 that the Japanese were subhuman beasts who could hardly comprehend anything except being killed, and in 1945 Elliott Roosevelt stated that at least half the Japanese civilians would have to be killed off by the bombing campaign (Dower 72-73). American anthropologists, sociologists and psychologists joined in by describing the Japanese as naturally cruel, bullying, sadistic, aggressive, mentally and emotionally stunted, and lacking individual personalities. Liberal scientists like J. Robert Oppenheimer sounded callous in official documents, reporting casually that the bomb was unique in that "it detonation involves the production of radiation and radioactive substances" that would be ten billion times high than the lethal dose and exterminate all life on a square mile radius (Oppenheimer to Gen. Farrell, May 11, 1945). American newspapers celebrated the power and destructiveness of the new weapon in triumphalist terms when the government finally revealed the secret, and even a liberal paper like the San Francisco Chronicle ran in insert story under its headline about Hiroshima being obliterated titled "Japs Cancel Rail Service near Target" (San Francisco Chronicle, August 7, 1945). Of course, the city itself had been 'cancelled', as Nagasaki would be by the plutonium bomb two days later.

Military and Civilian Opposition to the Use of the Bomb

Although largely unknown at the time, behind the scenes a number of scientists and military and civilian officials opposed using the atomic bombs. McGeorge Bundy, who had helped Stimson prepare his memoirs and write his 1947 article in Harper's, also came to the conclusion that Japan probably would have surrendered without the use of the bomb or an invasion (Alperovitz 23). In private, Stimson had also warned Truman shortly after he became president that the existence of this new weapon "made cooperation with Stalin a necessity, not a choice" (Sherwin 143). Dwight Eisenhower thought that the bomb was an "awful thing" and its use was "completely unnecessary," and in 1945 he personally urged Truman not to use it since the Japanese were already defeated (Alperovitz 24). Douglas MacArthur, William Leahy, George Marshall and other military leaders were also on record at the time in opposing use of the atomic bomb. Arthur Compton, one of the leading national scientific advisors, transmitted a memorandum from the University of Chicago scientists that called for "a technical but not a military demonstration of the bomb," out of concern that military use would lead to a postwar arm's race (Compton to Secretary of War, June12, 1945). Joseph Davies the former ambassador to Moscow also warned Byrnes that threats and atomic diplomacy would not work with Stalin and in fact might backfire. He was correct in this prediction, but at the time Byrnes was in no mood to listen. Given the fact that the complete record about the decision to use the atomic bomb was declassified on forty or fifty years after the war ended, the American public simply never knew the full truth about why these weapons were used.

Conclusion

Virtually none of this information in the classified documents was available to the public at the time or for decades afterward, so most citizens only knew that the atomic bombs were dropped to end the war and save American lives. In reality, racism, the desire for revenge against Japan and most importantly, the intention of using the bomb as an instrument of diplomatic and military coercion in the postwar period were all factors in the decision, although it was also done over the protests of many military and civilian leaders. Henry Stimson confirmed this official version of events in his 1947 article, although his explanation was far from complete. In records that were kept secret for decades, Stimson showed that he was well aware of the political and diplomatic uses of the atomic bomb that went far beyond the defeat of Japan. He even noted in the secret records that he and Truman agreed that the Potsdam meeting should be delayed until the test was successful. Behind the scenes, he was also concerned that the use of these weapons and the threat to use them on the Soviets might lead to a postwar nuclear arm's race, and this is indeed what happened. Far from making the Soviets more tractable, Joseph Stalin simply ordered a speedup of work on their own bomb, which was tested in 1949. Nor did the Russians withdraw from Eastern Europe or other areas that they had conquered during the war, so in this sense the Byrnes-Truman version of atomic diplomacy was a failure.