May 11

Blog #18 – Rethinking the Atomic Bombs

A lot of second guessing has gone into America’s use of atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945, even starting with former general and future president Dwight Eisenhower in 1948 who did not want America to be the first to use nuclear weapons.

According to the previous article in Portrait of America, “The Biggest Decision: Why We Had to Drop the Atomic Bomb” by Robert J. Maddox, the author worked on disspelling some of the myths that have popped up since 1945.  The generals may have overestimated the Allied casualties, but the June 8 meeting with Truman stated that General George Marshall estimated that only 31,000 casualties would be inflicted during the invasion of Kyushu (Operation Olympic).  What intelligence sources had discovered in the days before Hiroshima, the Japanese Imperial Command had correctly guessed what the Allies were planning and had reinforced Kyushu with over 500,000 (actually over 900,000 but the Allies didn’t know that at the time). 

So, logic follows that Truman made the decision to drop the bomb in order to spare more lives, mainly American lives, from a costly invasion. 

But did Truman drop the bombs to intimidate the Soviets?  The war in Europe was over, and critics have claimed that the U.S. was trying to get the Soviets to either withdraw from Eastern Europe or at least be more open to agreeing with U.S. demands.  However, Stalin was given the info about the success of the Trinity test (from spies) and therefore knew about the atomic bomb.   Whether or not he felt intimidated was not recorded. 

Another sticking point was whether Japan was ready to surrender.  According to the Maddox article, Japan had sent peace feelers out through the Soviets but some members of the Japanese government (those with the power) wanted to continue fighting to protect Emperor Hirohito from prosecution of war crimes.  What role he played has been (and still is) debated, but the military could see the writing on the wall with the prosecutions beginning in Germany after the discovery of the concentration camps.  Would the emperor be retained as part of the Allies sticking to unconditional surrender terms?  Or, as Truman had mentioned, would they soften on this one sticking point in order to end the war earlier to save hundreds of thousands of lives?   The problem with interpreting the signals sent by the Japanese government at this time is that it sent mixed signals depending upon who was being asked.  If it was a military officer, he was willing to fight to the end.  If it was a politician, some kind of compromise was possible by the summer of 1945. 

Furthermore, what would have happened to the Allied prisoners of war captured by the Japanese scattered throughout Asia if the Allies had invaded Japan in November 1945?  Chances are, they might have been killed or tortured so they wouldn’t be of any use to an invading Allied army. 

Is it possible to judge an historical era from 70 yrs later, especially one so fraught with controversy since the 1994 Smithsonian exhibit?   See links below:

http://www.afa.org/media/enolagay/chrono.asp

http://www.nytimes.com/1994/08/30/us/smithsonian-alters-plans-for-its-exhibit-on-hiroshima-bomb.html

Your job: examine at least 2 of the issues discussed in the blog (things Truman probably had on his mind when weighing the decision to drop the bomb), and use/reference at least two of the documents in the handout I gave you today (Wed. May 11).  What would you have advised President Truman do under these circumstances?  Why? 

Due Thursday, May 12.  250 words.

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Posted May 11, 2011 by geoffwickersham in category Blogs

60 thoughts on “Blog #18 – Rethinking the Atomic Bombs

  1. geoffwickersham (Post author)

    I think that the decision to drop the bomb was a good one in terms of winning the war. As said in Document 3,”Such an effective shock would save many times the number of lives, both American and Japanese, than it would cost.” It got the job done without losing thousands of soldiers and maybe even risking the victory. Also, both the U.S. and Japan had about the same amount of soldiers, and with the Japanese defending, it would be very risky to send an equal force to attack them. America would have lost many soldiers due to defenses and fortifications just trying to land the troops ashore. This is also supported by Harry Truman in Document 6: “I wanted to save a half million boys on our side…” However, the decision to drop the bomb was morally controversial. The bomb destroyed hundreds of years of work and city growth. It also wiped out half a million people, and affected another half a million. Those affected live through horrid experiences, seeing some people melting from the explosion and mentally affecting them for the rest of their lives. I also do not think that Truman dropped the bomb to intimidate the Soviets, and if he did, then it was morally wrong. Bombs should not be dropped to show off military power and to scare off other countries. It should be used very rarely, and only to stop wars from prolonging. I think that without the bombs, the war could have gone on much longer.
    Erick D.

  2. geoffwickersham (Post author)

    More by Sam Kepes:

    My belief that dropping the bombs was the right thing to do is also supported by President Truman. In doc 6 he says that “I wanted to save a half million boys on our side… I never lost sleep over my decision”. This would have been an argument I would present to him, that he could be saving many American lives, and it would have worked.

  3. Claire Fisher

    I don’t think that we can accurately assess the decision that was made by President Truman to drop the atomic bomb. That period of time was too long ago and we can’t really know for sure exactly what was going on. I do think though, that whether dropping the bomb was right it or not, it did succeed in forcing Japan to surrender. As Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson says in 1947 “I felt that to extract a genuine surrender from the Emperor and his military advisors, they must be administered a tremendous shock which would carry convincing proof of our power to destroy the empire.” I think that for the issue of forcing Japan to surrender, dropping the bomb was a good idea and would have advised President Truman to do so because I think that Henry Stimson was right in that the Japanese Empire would not have surrendered without that shock.
    On the other hand, I’m not so sure that dropping a bomb on Japan to save American lives justified our actions. I think killing is killing, whether it’s your side or theirs. In Document 6 when Truman comments on his final decision, he says “I wanted to save a half million boys on our side…I never lost any sleep over my decision.” I think that his statement simply makes him sound like a terrible person. Let’s save the boys on our side, who cares about the other side’s civilians. I think that this reason is invalid and self- centered and based on this reason, I would have advised President Truman not to drop the bomb.

  4. Devan Moosherr

    I do not think we will ever truly understand what Truman had on his mind when he was weighing the decision to drop the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima or not. Killing that many people and wiping an area completely off of the face of the earth is a pretty big deal. In Document 2, Major General Curtis LeMay says “There are no innocent civilians…The entire population got into the act and worked to make those airplanes or munitions…men, women, and children.” That adds insight that maybe they felt no remorse about dropping the bomb and felt that it was the right thing to do. Document 6 says, “I wanted to save a half million boys on our side…I never lost any sleep over my decision.” That comment adds insight that Truman was pretty set with his decision on bombing Hiroshima and he did not feel bad about it. I really feel bad that we did this to the people that were affected. It was a terrible thing to do and we should have found a better way to end the war. So many innocent people were killed that had nothing to do with the war and it was not fair to them or their families. This bomb drop was not just about ending the war, it was more about proving America’s dominance over other countries in the world.

  5. Nathan Willey

    I personally do not think that President Truman knew the extent of what he was doing when he made the decision to drop the atom bomb. He defiantly knew that people were going to die and that there was going to be a lot of damage but the fact is killing that many people takes a lot of thought and decision. In Document 2 it says that Major General Curtis LeMay said “There are no innocent civilians…The entire population got into the act and worked to make those airplanes or munitions…men, women, and children.” This quote shows that many Americans didn’t feel that the Japanese people were human. They felt they were animals or insects whose lives were obviously expendable if it was for the benefit of the great Untied States of America. Another document that might hint to that same idea is Document 6. It has a quote of President Truman saying “I wanted to save a half million boys on our side…I never lost any sleep over my decision.” Which shows that the President may have thought about the benefits of dropping the bomb but he may not have necessarily have thought about the pain that was caused on the Japanese people when he dropped the bomb. I think that overall the decision was a good one because it ultimately ended the war. I do believe that there could’ve been a tad more thought into the consequences of it. Whether or not it was technically a good decision is not my choice but the facts are all there so I do believe it was beneficial to drop the bomb.

  6. Indya Sanders

    If I was one of Truman’s advisors and was asked to give an answer on dropping the bombs, I would to say I have mixed thoughts on the situation. I wouldn’t be able to make this life changing decision because one I don’t have enough knowledge on the situation and two I already know the affects. My opinion also would be inconclusive because the mindset in that particular timeframe was completely different. However I will try to express my opinions toward the situation. Making these decisions needs an open-minded stable person to be the judge. I think the government should have given them more time to surrender as stated in Document 5. You can’t rush the decision to bomb in entire country, because you are still dealing with people’s lives and jeopardy of retaliation. Truman should have really heeded the instruction of scientist in Document 4 to really think and consider what they are using. However many people like Major General Curtis LeMay in Document 2 didn’t look at the Japanese civilians as innocent people but people whose first goals were to “make airplanes or munitions…. Men, women, and children”, I think he truly felt like everyone was the enemy. I think Truman also agreed with Document 3 when the Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson said there needs to be a “tremendous shock”. I think that I would not have let off the bomb. But, if they truly were afraid of an invasion, felt like they “saved a half million boys on our side”, “Never lost any sleep over any decisions” then more power too them.

  7. charles zuccarini

    if you looked at this from a military perspective then dropping the bombs on japan was an easy descision. massive casualtys to the enemy troops and supplyers and not a single casualty on our side. it even caused the war to end faster. though most people wouldnt look at it from just a military stand point and put a more humanistic veiw into their descision. the secratary of war henry L. stimson said in doc. 3 “such an effective shock would have saved many times the number of of lives, both american and japanese, than it would cost.” (reffering to the bombs). while from an outside source (wikipidia) shows how the estimates of how many japanese died as a result of the bombs were around 150,000 at the least. then in accordance to doc. 7 the maximum estimate, if we had launnched a full scale invasion, of casualtys would be around 46,000 total for both sides. then in doc. 6 when president truman said “i wanted to save a half million boys on our side… i never lost any sleep over my descision.” from the evidence shown in these documents it has clearly been shown that we wern’t looking out for the best interests for everybody we were just looking for the best intrests for ourselves. we didnt suffer any casualtys while putting thousands of people through some outstandingly horrific inhumane conditions. though i can see why presidend truman did decide to drop the bombs i would have strongly advised him not to have due to the inhumane, un-moral things that happend to those directly affected by his descision.

  8. Courtney Stewart

    If I had the power to give President Truman advice on the atomic bombs I would advise him not to drop the bombs. Although the bombs were seen as a safety defense mechanism since the Soviets already knew about the bomb and the Trinity test the dropping of the bombs were a waste of money and space. I feel that with the power of having a bomb you should use the power intelligently. In my opinion it would be better to not have a bomb created at all. I think that nuclear warfare is a step beyond war and is over the limits. The fact that America built bombs and then the Soviets built bombs created the potential for million of innocent people to die for the arrogance of ignorant egos.

    I think that what happened in Japan is a continuation of this point, I am in agreement with Eisenhower (Doc. 5) when he states that dropping the bomb was unnecessary. I truly agree with him when he talks about how Japan was trying to find a way to surrender. I feel that Americans could have found a better solution to get our Men home, than dropping the bomb and hurting many innocent people. The comment that Truman makes in (Doc.6) highly bothers me because it almost as though he has no regards for the Japanese children, and mothers that were hurt,killed, and emotionally ruined.

  9. Denny Walsh

    When Truman was making the decision of whether or not to drop the atom bomb he had to take into account the massive amount of troops that would be lost if we had made a full scale invasion. By this point it was clear that Truman just wanted the war to be over and he wanted an unconditional surrender which required more force to acquire. Such a surrender according to document 3 could only be achieved by a tremendous shock such as the one that would occur after the droppings of the bombs. Without dropping the bombs we could have ended up stuck in a war in which our enemy was never willing to give up. Truman also may not have thought of the use of nuclear weapons as as big a deal as many people would believe that he must have. The reason for this being that throughout the period of his decision making we were still bombing cities just not with nukes yet. According to document 1, since July of 1943 we had been bombing cities, and some of these cities had even more casualties than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is likely that the use of nuclear weapons simply felt like a more efficient alternative to the firebombings that were so common up to this point. I think that if we hadn’t dropped nukes on Japan but had firebombed them like we did to Germany, then even if there were just as many casualties people wouldn’t care quite as much about the decision. Under these circumstances I would have told Truman to drop the bombs, or at least 1 of them because it was an easy demonstration to the Japanese that resistance was futile and that we had the power to completely destroy them if it came to it.

  10. Lenny Gross

    In dropping the bomb, Truman had made the mistake of blaming the nation of Japan for bringing war upon our nation, when actually, civilian society there remained to be innocent in helping Japanese war effort for the most part, Major General Curtis LeMay said in document two “There are no innocent civilians…The entire population got into the act and worked to make those airplanes or munitions…men, women, and children.”, this is completely fiction, there are innocents. Truman ruined the lives of the 166,000 men woman and children. In document six, Truman said, “I wanted to save a half million boys on our side… I never lost any sleep over my decision.” We didn’t think about our actions when making the biggest choice in the history of war. We were being selfish, American life is worth the same of Japanese life, and killing a person, whatever culture is something that shouldn’t happen. However, in war terms, I believe that dropping the A bomb was a necessary step in ending the world war and taking Japan out of the picture. Nuclear warfare should never be used again though; the destruction would be world ending, literally. With the ridiculous amount of nuclear war heads in Russian and American arsines, the world would be destroyed in minutes. I agree with Eisenhower in that the bomb should not have been dropped. It may have worked in shutting down the Japanese, but no country should ever need to suffer such loss during war. No war is worth the destruction of two cities and 166,000 innocent lives.

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