During the Rape of Nanking a, “three all policy of burn all, kill all, destroy all’, was enacted against rural north-west china. It is therefore suggested that atrocities committed by the Japanese army could be interpreted, by some, as inhumane much in the same way as the atomic bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These events and the advancement of technology allowed powers the ability to de-humanize their enemies and advocate their complete annihilation.
However, despite the heinous war crimes enacted by the Japanese army, morally it should be noted that the Japanese civilians should not have had to pay for the sins of their Government, which they were made to do by the bombs many times over. Furthermore, it is argued by Mark Selden in ‘The Atomic Bomb’, that the depictions of the Japanese seen through American propaganda and memoirs of Generals, had implicit racist overtones. The Japanese were presented to be ‘barbarous, subhuman creatures, madmen and yellow vermin’ and these ‘inherent’ traits could override any moral hesitation about dropping an atomic bomb.
On the other hand, it aided the Americans to surpass these generalisations and seek to understand their enemy’s culture. Henry Stimson, Secretary of War during this period, felt it was important to understand the role of the Emperor by seeking to understand the national religion of Japanese Shintoism. To the Japanese, the Emperor was no mere ruler chosen by the people or a king with absolute power; he transcended both of these traditional Western forms of leader. This fact goes some way in explaining why the Japanese people would continue to fight and die on his behalf.
The Emperor was considered a direct descendent of the sun goddess, Amaterasu Omikami, and therefore a deity in his own right. The American concern here is that, if fanatical Shintoism was expressed throughout the civilian population and the Emperor continued to resist the terms of an unconditional surrender, then the whole fabric of Japanese society would be destroyed. Therefore, the shock of a nuclear attack, rather than conventional land warfare would be justified in order to achieve the American goal of an unconditional surrender of Japan and the Emperor’s sovereignty.
Dr. Taro Takemi, whom was the former president of the Japan Medical Association, reinforces this view.
When one considers the possibility that the Japanese military would have sacrificed the entire nation if it were not for the atomic bomb attack, then this bomb might be described as having saved Japan.
The atomic bomb clearly displayed the U.S’s overwhelming technological and war making superiority over the Japanese. This was clearly needed for the U.S’s ambition to force an unconditional surrender, so in this case the bomb can be considered, ultimately, successful. However, it could be argued that they had already achieved this tactic by the firebombing of Tokyo rendering the dropping of the atomic bomb less significant.
From March 9th to June 15th almost seven thousand bomber missions were dispatched for incendiary attacks over urban environments, resulting in a loss of only 136 planes. Over one evening on March 10th U.S unleashed a devastating firebombing of Tokyo, where according to Tokyo fire department figures, an estimated 97,000 lost their lives and over 1,000,000 were made homeless.
This shows the U.S had precedent in ruthless devastation towards civilian populations, which was largely overshadowed by the use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This also shows, the incapability of the Japanese to adequately defend its new capital some months before the atomic bombs landed. Japan has to be considered at this time completely defenceless against such intense aerial bombardment, as the U.S forces were given free reign over Japan’s skies.
Therefore, a strong argument that has been used to condemn the use of nuclear weaponry on Japan was to ask whether the bombs were even necessary as a form of pure military strategy. The Japanese Navy and air force was totally decimated by June 1945. With no air force to speak of to contest the dropping of the Nuclear Bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki were completely devoid of any ability to defend to itself. The Americans knew how damaging these air raids were to the Japanese war machine, but as Feis claims in ‘The Atomic Bomb and the End of the Second World War’, they were unwilling to await the gradual descent into helplessness, which would have lead to unconditional surrender.
It was the impatience of the Americans for the war to be drawn to a swift and resounding conclusion, along with saving the lives of Her own servicemen, that resulted in the dropping of the bomb.
To dispute this condemnation of U.S’s apparent over eagerness to unleash its new atomic bomb, it can be seen that Stimson, then U.S Secretary of War, had planned for a Naval and Infantry assault on Japan involving 5,000,000 men. This, however, would have extended fighting well into the latter part of 1946, and would have ended in at least 1,000,000 casualties for the Allied forces due to the honour and fighting strategies of the Japanese soldiers and civilians who were considered to fight all invaders until death in the name of the emperor.
It was also a major concern at the time that even this full-scale assault would not be enough to induce surrender of the large Japanese army that remained which was the main aim of the nuclear bomb.
An important criticism remains, in that the Americans did not give enough time to the Japanese to offer their surrender, which as new evidence suggests they were prepared to do to the USSR. Intercepts of Japanese diplomatic cables revealed to Washington that Tokyo was soliciting Stalin to end the war. This makes it seem as though Japan was in fact ready to surrender but wanted to do in a way that would ‘save face’, by “cutting a deal with the Soviets who were preparing to invade North West China previously occupied by Japan”. The Japanese here expressed a willingness to surrender, on which they considered to be on more favourable terms with the USSR. This evidence goes directly against the majority US view of a ‘never-surrender’ policy ingrained into Japanese culture. This suggests, that if the U.S had given more time to offer better terms of surrender, such as guarantees of the Emperor’s personal safety, they could have avoided the use of the atomic bomb altogether.
The Potsdam Conference had a tremendous effect on the decision to drop the atomic bomb, riding high following Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender of 9 weeks previous, the Japanese were warned with their own “prompt and utter destruction” if they did not offer to unconditionally surrender. The atomic bomb, which had been successfully tested in New Mexico, was not mentioned in the announcement so as not to alert the Russians to its existence. However, it could be argued, that this led to the threat becoming too vague, and could have referred to a land based invasion, something the Japanese would continue to resist. Furthermore, clarification was required as to what would happen to the emperor, if he unconditionally surrendered. It was understood, by the Potsdam Conference that the Emperor had to have his constitutional power limited to allow a new, “fully inclined, responsible Government of a character representative of the Japanese people” to take his place.
A different strategy in criticising the use of the nuclear bomb is to, rather than purely analyse the bomb as a singular moment in Japanese and American history, examine the legacy of atomic war and its profound connotations on the entire human race. Firebombing had now been dramatically surpassed and the arrival of nuclear warfare and the possibility of retaliation, no longer threatened individual cities but entire countries. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, can, in this respect, also be interpreted as a form of message to the USSR of the US’s emergence as the dominant new world power, with superior technology and weaponry.
By dropping the first nuclear weapon on a population, it can be argued that the U.S had created a new scale in how future warfare would be waged. The subsequent Cold War standoff between Russia and the U.S at various junctures, including the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1963, played with the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction.
A further unwanted side effect of the dropping of the first atomic bomb is that it set a dangerous precedent to smaller nation states as they try to gain security from the rest of the world by developing their own nuclear programme. The nuclear bomb has now come to be seen as an ‘equaliser’ to create a level playing field for these smaller states in global negotiations. For example, UN defined modern rogue states such as North Korea and Iran can be seen to be following the US’s example in experimenting with nuclear weaponry, which generally results in a less stable world system.
Alternatives to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been discussed, but it is important to note that these are entirely hypothetical situations that would arise had the U.S not used the bomb on Japan.
The Head of the Far Eastern Department of Foreign Office of the U.S Government speaking on behalf of the entire organisation was unaware of the bomb’s existence until it was dropped, took a stand and protested the Governments policy. It argued for alternative measures to be used, because the current tactic was seen to do, “more harm than good”.
A more intelligent way of proceeding would surely have been to have given publicity to the discovery [of the nuclear bomb] and its possible effects, to have given an ultimatum with a time limit to the Japanese before using it, and to have declared the intention of the Allies to drop a bomb on a given city after a given date by way of demonstration, the date being fixed so as to give time for the evacuation of the city.’
However, there were more concerns raised by this idea of a demonstration as not being effective enough to force the Japanese to surrender unconditionally. There was still the unknown aspect of dropping the first nuclear bomb on a city, if the demonstration failed the US would have lost its chance at ending World War II quickly as the Japanese would no longer take the threat seriously. With hindsight, the bombing can be seen at face value (which is difficult to do given the human casualties) as a genuine laboratory test of a nuclear device. The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima was used to gauge its effectiveness, which it certainly did, but there were at the time, some genuine concerns that it might not detonate.
Whether the critical view that the U.S had alternate reasons for dropping the bomb on Hiroshima other than to hasten the end of World War II, it remains difficult to establish whether or not the atomic bomb was the sole reason for Japanese surrender. The USSR joining the war at this time can be seen to offer a ‘double-blow’, to the Japanese forces, which ultimately led to their unconditional surrender, on the US battleship ‘Missouri’, on the 2nd of September 1945, thereby ending World War II.
To conclude, I believe that I have adequately disproved the argument that the U.S forces were ‘hell-bent’ on using their nuclear bomb, and unwilling to discuss alternatives.
Furthermore, I believe that the key decision-makers and American Generals had by t his time become embittered to the horrors of war and though their decisions resulted in the loss of a further 200,000 civilian lives, it was not taken lightly. I do, however, agree that the total annihilation of the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, could have been avoided if the US, had allowed more time for the USSR to effectively enter the war which would have reinforced their position of military superiority, and extinguished what little Japanese morale remained.
Finally, it is important to note, however, that despite historians views, most moral judgements on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are purely in hindsight, something the key players in the decision making process simply didn’t have.
Roosevelt in his last months in office, was concerned with what the post-war world would look like, because this weapon had the capacity to destroy all mankind. On these “gravest of decisions neither history nor past experience, can give reliable guidance.
Bibliography
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Herbert Feis, The atomic bomb and the end of World War II, Princeton, N.J : Princeton University Press, (1966).
Christopher G. Hamish Hamilton Allies of a kind: the United States, Britain, and the war against Japan, 1941-1945 Thorne,(1978).
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Kyoko and Selden, Mark, ‘The Atomic bomb: voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki N.Y (1989) p.6.
Kyoko, Selden, ‘The Atomic Bomb’, p15.
James Maddox, Robert ,Weapons for victory: the Hiroshima decision Columbia : University of Missouri Press, (1995), p.1.
Alperovitz, Gar, Atomic diplomacy : Hiroshima and Potsdam : the use of the atomic bomb and the American confrontation with Soviet power, London : Pluto Press, (1994), p.154.
L. Stimson, Henry, ‘The decision to use the atomic bomb’, Harper’s Magazine, (February 1947)
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