I wrote this for the 70th Anniversary of the atomic bombings of Japan. It appeared in an anthology at Georgetown University. This is taken from a late draft, but the editing is still a bit rough.
Roads Taken and not Taken: Thoughts on “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” Plus-70
By Michael F. Duggan
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita… “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
-Robert Oppenheimer
When I was in graduate school, I came to characterize perspectives on the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan into three categories.
The first was the “Veterans Argument”—that the dropping of the bombs was an affirmative good. As this name implies, it was a position embraced by some World War Two veterans and others who had lived through the war years and seems to have been based on lingering sensibilities of the period. It was also based on the view the rapid end of the war had saved many lives—including their own, in many cases—and that victory had ended an aggressive and pernicious regime. It also seemed tinged with an unapologetic sense of vengeance and righteousness cloaked as simple justice. They had attacked us, after all—Remember Pearl Harbor, the great sneak attack? More positively, supporters of this position would sometimes cite the fact of Japan’s subsequent success as a kind of moral justification for dropping the bombs.
Although some of the implications of this perspective cannot be discounted, I tended to reject it; no matter what one thinks of Imperial Japan, the killing of more than 150 thousand civilians can never be an intrinsic good. Besides there is something suspect about the moral justification of horrible deeds by citing all of the good that came after it, even if true.1
I had begun my doctorate in history a couple of years after the fiftieth anniversary of the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, and by then there had been a wave of “revisionist” history condemning the bombings as intrinsically bad, as inhumane, and unnecessary—as “technological band aides” to end a hard and bitter conflict. The argument was that by the summer of 1945, Japan was on the ropes—finished—and would have capitulated within days or weeks even without the bombs. Although I had friends who subscribed to this position, I thought that it was unrealistic in that it interjected idealistic sensibilities and considerations that seemed unhistorical to the period and the “felt necessities of the times.” Was it realistic to interject 1990s moral observations onto people a half-century earlier in the midst of the most destructive war in human history?
This view is was also associated with a well-publicized incident of vandalism against the actual Enola Gay at a Smithsonian exhibit that ignited a controversy that forced the museum to change its interpretive text to tepid factual neutrality.
And then there was a kind of middle-way argument—a watered-down version of the first—asserting that the dropping of the bombs—although not intrinsically good—was the best of possible options. The other primary option was a two-phased air-sea-land invasion of main islands of Japan: Operation Olympic scheduled to begin on November 1, 1945, and Operation Coronet, scheduled for early March 1946 (the two operations were subsumed under the name Operation Downfall). I knew people whose fathers and grandfathers were still living who had been in WWII, and who believed with good reason that they would have been killed fighting in Japan. It was argued that the American casualties for the war—approximately 294,000 combat deaths—would have been multiplied two or three fold if we had invaded, to say nothing about the additional millions of Japanese civilians that would have likely died resisting. The Okinawa campaign of April-June 1945, the viciousness and intensity of the combat there and appalling casualties of both sides were regarded as a kind of microcosm, a prequel of what an invasion of Japan would be like.2
The idea behind this perspective was one of realism, that in a modern total war against a fanatical enemy, one took off the gloves in order to end it as soon as possible. General Curtis LeMay asserts that it was the moral responsibility of all involved to end the war as soon as possible, and if the bombs ended it by a single day, then using them was worth the cost.3 One also heard statements like “what would have happened to an American president who had a tool that could have ended the war, but chose not to use it, and by doing so doubled our casualties for the war?” It was simple, if ghastly, math: the bombs would cost less in terms of human life than an invasion. With an instinct toward the moderate and sensible middle, this was the line I took.
In graduate school, I devoured biographies and histories of the Wise Men of the World War Two/Cold War era foreign policy establishment—Bohlen, Harriman, Hopkins, Lovett, Marshall, McCloy, Stimson, and of course, George Kennan. When I read Kai Bird’s biography, Chairman, John McCloy and the Making of the American Foreign Policy Establishment, I was surprised by some of the back stories and wrangling of the policy makers and the decisions behind the dropping of the bombs.4 It also came as a surprise that John McCloy (among others), had in fact vigorously opposed the dropping of the atomic bombs, perhaps with very good reason.
Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy was nobody’s idea of a dove or a pushover. Along with his legendary policy successes during and after WWII, he was controversial for ordering the internment of Japanese Americans and for not bombing the death camps in occupied Europe, because doing so would divert resource from the war effort and victory. He was also the American High Commissioner of occupied Germany after the war and had kept fairly prominent Nazis in their jobs and kept out of prison German industrialists who had played ball with the Nazi regime. Notably, in the1960s, he was one of the only people on record who flatly stood up to President Lyndon Johnson after getting the strong-armed “Johnson treatment” and was not ruined by it. And yet this tough-guy hawk was dovish on the issue of dropping the atomic bombs.
The story goes like this: In April and May, 1945, there were indications that the Japanese were seeking a settled end to the war via diplomatic channels in Switzerland and through communications with the Soviets—something that was corroborated by U.S. intelligence.5 Armed with this knowledge, McCloy approached his boss, Secretary of War, and arguably father of the modern U.S. foreign policy establishment, “Colonel” Henry L. Stimson. McCloy told Stimson that the new and more moderate Japanese Prime Minister, Kantaro Suzuki, and his cabinet, were looking for a face-saving way to end the war. The United States was demanding an unconditional surrender, and Suzuki indicated that if this language was modified, and the Emperor was allowed to remain as a figurehead under a constitutional democracy, Japan would surrender.
Among American officials, the debates on options for ending the war included many of the prominent players, policy makers and military men like General George C. Marshall, Admiral Leahy and the Chiefs of Staff, former American ambassador to Japan, Joseph Grew, Robert Oppenheimer (the principle creator of the bomb), and his Scientific Advisory Panel to name but a few. It also included President Harry Truman. Among the options discussed was whether or not to give the Japanese “fair warning” and if the yet untested bomb should be demonstrated in plain view of the enemy. There were also considerations of deterring the Soviet, who had agreed at Yalta to enter the war against Japan, from additional East Asian territorial ambitions. Although it was apparent to Grew and McCloy, that Japan was looking for a way out, therefore making an invasion unnecessary, the general assumption was that if atomic bombs were functional, they should be used without warning.
This was the recommendation of the Interim Committee, that included soon-to-be Secretary of State, James Byrnes, and which was presented to Truman by Stimson on June 6.6 McCloy disagreed with these recommendations and cornered Stimson in his own house on June 17th. Truman would be meeting with the Chiefs of Staff the following day on the question of invasion, and McCloy implored Stimson to make the case that the end of the war was days or weeks away and that an invasion would be unnecessary. If the United States merely modified the language of unconditional surrender and allowed for the Emperor to remain, the Japanese would surrender under de facto unconditional conditions. If the Japanese did not capitulate after the changes were made and fair warning was given, the option for dropping the bombs would still be available. “We should have our heads examined if we don’t consider a political solution,” McCloy said. As it turned out, he would accompany Stimson to the meeting with Truman and the Chiefs.
Bird notes that the meeting with Truman and the Chiefs was dominated by Marshall and focused almost exclusively on military considerations.7 As Bird writes “[e]ven Stimson seemed resigned now to the invasion plans, despite the concession he had made the previous evening to McCloy’s views. The most he could muster was a vague comment on the possible existence of a peace faction among the Japanese populace.” The meeting was breaking up when Truman said “No one is leaving this meeting without committing himself. McCloy, you haven’t said anything. What is your view?” McCloy shot a quick glance to Stimson who said to him, “[s]ay what you feel about it.” McCloy had the opening he needed.8
McCloy essentially repeated the argument he had made to Stimson the night before. He also noted that a negotiated peace with Japan would preclude the need for Soviet assistance, therefore depriving them of any excuse of an East Asian land grab. He also committed a faux pas by actually mentioning the bomb by name and suggesting that it be demonstrated to the Japanese. Truman responded favorably, saying “That’s exactly what I’ve been wanting to explore… You go down to Jimmy Byrnes and talk to him about it.”9 As Bird points out,
[b]y speaking the unspoken, McCloy had dramatically altered the terms of the debate. Now it was no longer a question of invasion. What had been a dormant but implicit option now became explicit. The soon-to-be tested bomb would end the war, with or without warning. And the war might end before the bomb was ready.” but increasingly the dominant point of view was that the idea of an invasion had been scrapped and in the absence of a Japanese surrender, the bombs would be dropped.10
After another meeting with what was called the Committee of Three, most of the main players agreed “that a modest change in the terms of surrender terms might soon end the war” and that “Japan [would be] susceptible to reason.”11 Stimson put McCloy to work at changing the terms of surrender, specifically the language of Paragraph 12 that referenced the terms that the Japanese had found unacceptable. McCloy did not mention the atomic bomb by name. But by now however, Truman was gravitating toward Byrnes’s position of using the bombs.
After meeting with the president on July 3, Stimson and McCloy “solicited a reluctant invitation” to attend the Potsdam Conference, but instead of traveling with the President’s entourage aboard the USS Augusta, they secured their own travel arrangements to Germany. Newly sworn-in Secretary of State, James Byrnes, would sail with the president and was a part of his onboard poker group.12 The rest, as they say, is history.
At Potsdam, Truman was told by the Soviets that Japan was once again sending out feelers for a political resolution. Truman told Stalin to stall them for time, while reasserting the demand for unconditional surrender in a speech where he buried the existence of the bombs in language so vague, that it is likely that the Japanese leaders did not pick up on the implications.13 Japan backed away. Truman’s actions seem to suggest that, under Byrnes’s influence (and perhaps independent of it), he had made his mind to drop the bombs and wanted to sabotage any possibly of a political settlement. As Bird notes, “Byrnes and Truman were isolated in their position; they were rejecting a plan to end the war that had been endorsed by virtually all of their advisors.”14 Byrnes’s position had been adopted by the president over the political option of McCloy. As Truman sailed for home on August 6, 1945, he received word that the uranium bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” had been dropped on Hiroshima with the message “Big bomb dropped on Hiroshima August 5 at 7:15 P.M. Washington time. First reports indicate complete success which was even more conspicuous than earlier test.” Truman characterized the attack as “The greatest thing in history.”15 Three days later the plutonium bomb “Fat Man” fell on Nagasaki. The Soviets entered the fighting against Japan on August 8. The war was over.
Given Byrnes’s reputation as a political operative of rigid temperament and often questionable judgment, one can only wonder if the dropping of the bombs was purely gratuitous. Did he and he president believe that the American people wanted and deserved their pound of flesh almost four years after Pear Harbor and some of the hardest combat ever fought by U.S. servicemen?16 Of course there were also the inevitable questions of “what would Roosevelt have done?”
With events safely fixed in the past, historians tend to dislike messy and problematic counterfactuals, and one can only wonder if McCloy’s plan for a negotiated peace would have worked. One of the most constructive uses of history is to inform present-day policy decisions through the examination of what has worked and what has not worked in the past, and why. Even so the vexing—haunting—queries about the necessity of dropping the atomic bombs remain as open questions. The possibility for a political resolution to the war seems at the very least to have been plausible. The Japanese probably would have surrendered by November, perhaps considerably earlier, as the result of negotiations, but there is no way to tell for certain.17 As it was, in August 1945, Truman decided to allow the Emperor to stay on anyway, and our generous reconstruction policies turned Japan (and Germany) into a miracle of representative liberal democracy and enlightened capitalism.
Even if moderate elements in the Japanese government had been able to arrange an effective surrender, there is no telling whether the Japanese military, and especially the army, would have gone along with it; as it was—and after two atomic bombs had leveled two entire cities—some members of the Japanese army still preferred self-destruction over capitulation, and a few even attempted a coup against the Emperor to preempt his surrender speech to the Japanese People.
This much is certain: our enemies in the most costly war in human history have now been close allies for seven decades (as the old joke that goes, if the United States had lost WWII, we would now be driving Japanese and German cars). Likewise our Cold War enemy, the Russians, in spite of much Western tampering within their sphere of influence, now pose no real threat to us. But the bomb remains.
Knowledge may be lost, but an idea cannot be un-invented; as soon as a human being put arrow to bow, the world was forever changed. The bomb remains. It remains in great numbers in at least nine nations and counting, in vastly more powerful forms (the hydrogen bomb) with vastly more sophisticated means of delivery. It is impossible to say whether the development and use of the atomic bomb was and is categorically bad, but it remains for us a permanent Sword of Damocles and the nuclear “secret” is the knowledge of Prometheus. It is now a fairly old technology, the same vintage as a ’46 Buick.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki broke the ice about the use of these weapons in combat and will forever live as a precedent for anyone else who may use it. The United States is frequently judgmental of the actions and motives of other nations, and yet the U.S. and the U.S. alone is the only nation to have used nuclear weapons in war. As with so many people in 1945 and ever since, Stimson and Oppenheimer both recognized the atomic bomb had changed everything. More than any temporal regime, living or dead, it and its progeny remain a permanent enemy of mankind.
Notes
- For a discussion of the moral justification in regard to dropping the atomic bombs, see John Gray, Black Mass, New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2007, pp 190-191.
- For an account of the fighting on Okinawa, see Eugene Sledge, With the Old Breed, New York: Random House, 1981.
- LeMay expresses this sentiment in an interview he gave for the 1973 documentary series, The World at War.
- Generally Chapter 12, “Hiroshima”. Kai Bird, Chairman, John J. McCloy and the Making of the American Establishment, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992, pp. 240-268.
- Bird, p. 242.
- Bird, p. 244.
- Bird, p. 245.
- Bird, p. 245.
- Bird, p. 246.
- Bird, p. 250.
- Bird, pp. 247-248.
- Bird, p. 249-250. Averell Harriman and Elie Abel, Special Envoy to Churchill and Stalin, 1941-1946, New York: Random House, 1975, 493.Bird, p. 251. It should be noted that most of the top American military commanders opposed dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. As Daniel Ellsberg observes: “The judgment that the bomb had not been necessary for victory—without invasion—was later expressed by Generals Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Arnold, as well as Admirals Leahy, King, Nimitz, and Halsey. (Eisenhower and Halsey also shared Leahy’s view that it was morally reprehensible.) In other words, seven out of eight officers of five star rank in the U.S. Armed Forces in 1945 believed that the bomb was not necessary to avert invasion (that is, all but General Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army, who alone believed that an invasion might have been necessary.’ [Emphasis added by Ellsberg]. See Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine, New York: Bloomsbury, 2017, pp262-263. As it happened, Eisenhower was having dinner with Stimson when the Secretary of War received the cable saying that the Hiroshima bomb had been dropped and that it had been successful. “Stimson asked the General his opinion and Eisenhower replied that he was against it on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hate to see our country be the first to use such a weapon. Well… the old gentleman got furious. I can see how he would. After all, it had been his responsibility to push for all of the expenditures to develop the bomb, which of course he had the right to do, and was right to do.” See John Newhouse War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989, p. 47. Newhouse also points out that there were numerous political and budgetary considerations related to the opinions of the various players involved in developing and dropping the bombs. One can only hope that budgetary responsibility/culpability did not (or does not) drive events.
- Harriman, p. 293.
- For his own published account of this period, see James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly, New York: Harper Brothers & Company, 1947.
- See Robert Dallek, The Lost Peace, New York: Harper Collins, 2010, p. 128. Dallek makes hit point, basing it on the Strategic Bombing Survey, as well as the reports of Truman’s own special envoy to Japan after the war in October 1945.