READ: Nuclear Weapons

First read: preview and skimming for gist

Second read: key ideas and understanding content

1. Where was nuclear fission discovered? How did it get into the hands of the American military?
2. What was the Potsdam Declaration?
3. According to Peter Zimmerman, Japanese cities were being bombed every week, with about as many people dying every week as died as a result of the nuclear bomb attack on Hiroshima. What claim does this evidence support?
4. Why did the Japanese surrender, according to Tsuyoshi Hasegawa?
5. What ‘race’ did the United States, Soviet Union, United Kingdom, China, France, and India participate in after the Second World War?

Third read: evaluating and corroborating

1. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa argues that the Soviet Union played a considerable role in Japan’s surrender, more so than American use of nuclear weapons. Do you find the author’s argument convincing? Why or why not? Use evidence from materials from this Era to support your claim.

Nuclear Weapons

Background

The political-historical debate

“Truman’s choice is often framed as ‘the Bomb or the Invasion,’… Not so; the choice was between the bombs, which might force an end to the war in days, and all other scenarios. The other means to an end of the war were cruel. A blockade would starve the country. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria and Korea would result in Stalin’s planned occupation of Hokkaido. U.S. conventional bombing of Japanese cities would continue until the Army Air Forces literally ran out of targets. The rail network used to distribute food would be further wrecked…

What every alternative to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has in common is the long time before its effects would crush Japan’s will to continue the battle.

The maritime blockade of the home islands was in effect, and had cut the flow of food from farms in Korea, on Hokkaido, and in Northern Honshu to the Japanese people…

Food shortages were taking effect. When the U.S. occupation began, the Tokyo food ration was down to 900 calories a day, not quite the 600 calorie level in a Nazi concentration camp, but bad enough that the weak and elderly were already dying. Some in the Imperial government had predicted food riots and civil war by December. But not in August, or September.

B-29 bombing raids were destroying one Japanese city every week. Had the war gone on for another month, four or more cities would have been burned to the ground. Roughly one Hiroshima a week. But by August the Japanese population and government had become accustomed to relatively slow destruction; there was time to recover somewhat between raids, to extinguish some fires, evacuate some people, and set up some kind of temporary shelter. This reprieve blunted the shock of the continuing raids.

As July turned to August, the situation required shock therapy. The slow decline of the Japanese fortunes had to be recast by a sudden and catastrophic event. Something was needed to change the perception in Tokyo that fighting on to satisfy some code of honor and loyalty to the emperor was preferable to peace.

The Allies desperately wanted to avoid invading Japan. Our anticipated death toll was north of 100,000 Allied soldiers and sailors…The battle for Okinawa showed the Allies that Japan would struggle until the last civilian was killed” (Zimmerman).

“On July 16, the first atom bomb was tested successfully at Alamogordo, N.M. On July 17, Truman sat down to talk with Stalin. And on Aug. 6, a bomb would fall on Hiroshima, ultimately killing an estimated 130,000 Japanese and changing the world…

Most Americans assume the reason Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed was simply to prevent a costly invasion of Japan.

However, the newest documents have strengthened the theory that other considerations—especially the new weapon’s impact on diplomacy toward the Soviet Union—were involved.

The invasion of Japan—which President Truman claimed might cost up to a million casualties—was scheduled to begin on Nov. 1…(Documents of the time suggest that many planners foresaw far fewer casualties.)

But by the mid-summer of 1945 Japan was in a very bad way. How allied intelligence understood the situation at the time was detailed in a report to the American and British Combined Chiefs of Staff…

‘The increasing effects of sea blockade and cumulative devastation wrought by strategic bombing…has already rendered millions homeless and has destroyed from 25 percent to 50 percent of the built-up area of Japan’s most important cities…A conditional surrender…might be offered by them at any time…’

Adm. William D. Leahy, who served as chief of staff to the President and presided over the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in his diary in mid-June that ‘at the present time…a surrender of Japan can be arranged with terms that can be accepted by Japan and that will make fully satisfactory provision for America’s defense against future trans-Pacific aggression.’ Afterwards, Leahy would reflect that ‘the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan…’

Likewise, Eisenhower would later state that ‘it wasn’t necessary’ to hit the Japanese ‘with that awful thing’” (Alperovitz, 1985).

“…Stalin was an active participant, not a secondary player, as historians have hitherto depicted, in the drama of Japan’s surrender. He was engaged in skillful Machiavellian${}^1$‍ diplomacy to manipulate Japanese desires for negotiated peace to his own ends. He was involved in intense negotiations with the Americans and reacted decisively to American maneuvers. He bullied the Chinese into accepting the Soviet terms, and ruthlessly pursued diplomacy and military operations to secure the territories to which he felt entitled.

The study also casts the Americans use of the atomic bomb in a wider setting. The bomb provided a solution to the previously unsolvable dilemma that faced Truman: to achieve Japan’s unconditional surrender before Soviet entry into the war. Truman issued the Potsdam Proclamation, not as a warning to Japan, but to justify the use of the atomic bomb. I challenge the commonly held view that the atomic bomb provided the immediate and decisive knockout blow to Japan’s will to fight. Indeed, the Soviet entry into the war played a greater role than the atomic bombs in inducing Japan to surrender” (Hasegawa, 5).

“While the Big Three were meeting at Yalta on February 14, Konoe submitted his memorandum to Hirohito. ‘I regret to say that Japan’s defeat is inevitable,’ the prince began. ‘Defeat will damage the kokutai,${}^2$‍ but public opinion in America and England has not gone far enough to destroy the kokutai…Therefore, we should not be worried about defeat itself. What we must worry about is a Communist revolution that might accompany defeat.’ Konoe then indicated that the Soviet Union would be interested in expanding its influence in Asia, just as it had in eastern Europe. Sooner or later the Soviets would interfere in Japan’s domestic situation…the only way to save the kokutai would be to negotiate with the United States and Britain as soon as possible, an action that would require the direct intervention of the emperor against the military” (37).

The aftermath