THE ATOM BOMBS IN JAPAN:
the case for and against

Should atomic bombs have been used on Japan? During World War II, the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, were destroyed by atomic bombs dropped by the United States military on August 6 and August 9, 1945, killing at least 100,000 civilians outright and many more over time. One of the primary reasons given for the usage of the bomb was that it would force Japan to surrender unconditionally. Can atomic warfare be considered a strategy for world peace?

The case for the bomb
Supporters of the bombing concede that although the civilian leadership in Japan was cautiously and discreetly sending out diplomatic communiqués as far back as January of 1945, following the Allied invasion of Luzon in the Philippines, Japanese military officials were unanimously opposed to any negotiations before the use of the atomic bomb.

While some members of the civilian leadership did use covert diplomatic channels to begin negotiation for peace, on their own it could not negotiate surrender or even a cease-fire. Japan, as a Constitutional Monarchy, could only enter into a peace agreement with the unanimous support of the Japanese cabinet, and this cabinet was dominated by militarists from the Japanese Imperial Army and the Japanese Imperial Navy, all of whom were initially opposed to any peace deal. A political stalemate developed between the military and civilian leaders of Japan with the military increasingly determined to fight despite the costs and odds.

Historian Victor Davis Hanson points to the increased Japanese resistance, futile as it was in retrospect, as the war came to its inevitable conclusion. The Battle of Okinawa showed this determination to fight on at all costs. Nearly 200,000 Japanese and 12,000 American troops were killed in the most bloody battle of the Pacific theater, just 8 weeks before Japan's final surrender. When the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945 and carried out operation August Storm, the Japanese Imperial Army ordered its ill supplied and weakened forces in Manchuria to fight to the last man, an order which it carried out. Major General Masakazu Amanu, chief of the operations section at Japanese Imperial Headquarters, stated that he was absolutely convinced his defensive preparations, begun in early 1944, could repel any Allied invasion of the home islands with minimum losses. The Japanese would not give up easily because of their strong tradition of pride and honor: many followed the Samurai code and would fight until the very last man was dead.

After the realization that the destruction of Hiroshima was from a nuclear weapon, the civilian leadership gained more and more traction in its argument that Japan had to concede defeat and accept the terms of the Yalta Proclamation.

According to some Japanese historians, Japanese civilian leaders who favored surrender saw their salvation in the atomic bombing. The Japanese military was steadfastly refusing to give up, so the peace faction seized on the bombing as a new argument to force surrender. Koichi Kido, one of emperor Hirohito's closest advisors stated that "We of the peace party were assisted by the atomic bomb in our endeavor to end the war." Hisatsune Sakomizu the chief Cabinet secretary in 1945 called the bombing "a golden opportunity given by heaven for Japan to end the war." According to these historians and others the pro-peace civilian leadership was able to use the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to convince the military that no amount of courage, skill and fearless combat could help Japan against the power of atomic weapons. Akio Morita, founder of Sony and Japanese Naval officer during the war, also concludes that it was the atomic bomb and not conventional bombings from B-29's that convinced the Japanese military to agree to peace.

Supporters of the bombing also argue that waiting for the Japanese to surrender was not a cost-free option. The conventional bombardment and blockade were killing tens of thousands each week in Japan, directly and indirectly, and the U.S. Navy's 'Operation Starvation' was aptly named. Also, as a result of the war, noncombatants were dying throughout Asia at a rate of ~200,000 per month.

The Americans anticipated losing many soldiers in the invasion of Japan, although the actual number of expected fatalities and wounded is subject to some debate and depends on the persistence and reliability of Japanese resistance and whether the Americans would have invaded only Kyushu in November 1945 or if a follow up landing near Tokyo, projected for March of 1946, would have been needed. Years after the war, Secretary of State James Byrnes claimed that 500,000 American lives would have been lost - and that number has since been repeated "authoritatively", but in the summer of 1945 US military planners projected 20,000-110,000 combat deaths from the initial November 1945 invasion, with about three to four times that number wounded. Regardless of precise figures, however, it is certain that when the bombs were dropped and Japan quickly surrendered a large number of American lives were saved.
In addition to that, the atomic bomb hastened the end of the Second World War in Asia liberating hundreds of thousands of Western citizens (including about 200,000 Dutch) and 400,000 Indonesians ("Romushas") from Japanese concentration camps. In addition, Japanese atrocities against millions of Chinese were ended.

Supporters also point to an order given by the Japanese War Ministry on August 1, 1944. The order dealt with the disposal and execution of all Allied POW's, numbering over 100,000, if an invasion of the Japanese mainland took place.

In response to the argument that the large-scale killing of civilians was immoral and a war crime, supporters of the bombings have argued that the Japanese government waged total war, ordering many civilians (including women and children) to work in factories and military offices and to fight against any invading force. Father John A. Siemes, professor of modern philosophy at Tokyo's Catholic University, and an eyewitness to the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima wrote: We have discussed among ourselves the ethics of the use of the bomb. Some consider it in the same category as poison gas and were against its use on a civil population. Others were of the view that in total war, as carried on in Japan, there was no difference between civilians and soldiers, and that the bomb itself was an effective force tending to end the bloodshed, warning Japan to surrender and thus to avoid total destruction. It seems logical to me that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of war against civilians.

Opposition to use of atomic bombs
The Manhattan Project had originally been conceived as a counter to Nazi Germany's atomic bomb program, and with the defeat of Germany, several scientists working on the project felt that the United States should not be the first to use such weapons. One of the prominent critics of the bombings was Albert Einstein. Leo Szilard, a scientist who played a major role in the development of the atomic bomb, argued "If the Germans had dropped atomic bombs on cities instead of us, we would have defined the dropping of atomic bombs on cities as a war crime, and we would have sentenced the Germans who were guilty of this crime to death at Nuremberg and hanged them."

Their use has been called barbaric as several hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, and the choice of areas heavily populated by civilians. In the days just before their use, many scientists (including Edward Teller) argued that the destruction power of the bomb could have been demonstrated without taking the lives of so many.

It has been argued that the use of atomic weapons against civilian populations on a large scale is a crime against humanity and a war crime. The use of poisonous weapons (due to the effects of the radiation) were defined as war crimes by international law of the time. Some have argued that Americans should have done more research into the effects of the bomb, including radiation sickness and the terrible burns that followed the explosion.

Some have claimed that the Japanese were already essentially defeated, and therefore use of the bombs was unnecessary. General Dwight D. Eisenhower so advised the Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, in July of 1945. The highest-ranking officer in the Pacific Theater, General Douglas MacArthur, was not consulted beforehand, but said afterward that there was no military justification for the bombings. The same opinion was expressed by Fleet Admiral William Leahy (the Chief of Staff to the President), General Carl Spaatz (commander of the U.S. Strategic Air Forces in the Pacific), and Brigadier General Carter Clarke (the military intelligence officer who prepared intercepted Japanese cables for U.S. officials.

Others contend that Japan had been trying to surrender for at least two months, but the US refused by insisting on an unconditional surrender. In fact, while several diplomats favored surrender, the leaders of the Japanese military were committed to fighting a 'Decisive Battle' on Kyushu, hoping that they could negotiate better terms for an armistice afterward—all of which the Americans knew from reading decrypted Japanese communications. The Japanese government never did decide what terms, beyond preservation of an imperial system, they would have accepted to end the war; as late as August 9, the Supreme Council was still split, with the hardliners insisting Japan should demobilize its own forces, no war crimes trials, and no occupation. Only the direct intervention of the Emperor ended the dispute, and even after that a military coup was attempted to prevent the surrender (although it was easily suppressed).
Some have argued that the Soviet Union's switch from wary neutral to enemy on August 8, 1945 might have been enough to convince the Japanese military of the need to accept the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (plus some provision for the emperor). As it happened, the decision to surrender was made before the scale of the Soviet attack on Manchuria, Sakhalin Island, and the Kuril Islands was known, but had the war continued, the Soviets would have been able to invade Hokkaido well before the Allied invasion of Kyushu.

Other Japanese sources have stated that the Atomic bombings themselves weren't the principal reason for capitulation. Instead, they contend, it was not the American atomic attacks on August 6 and August 9, but the swift and devastating Soviet victories on the mainland in the week following Stalin's August 8 declaration of war that forced the Japanese message of surrender on August 15, 1945. Certainly the fact of both enemies weighed into the decision, but it was more the fear of Soviet occupation that hastened imperialistic Japan's acceptance of defeat.

Many critics believe that the U.S. had ulterior motives in dropping the bombs, including justifying the $2 billion investment in the Manhattan Project, testing the effects of nuclear weapons, exacting revenge for the attacks on Pearl Harbor, and demonstrating U.S. capabilities to the Soviet Union. Scientists who had worked on the project later noted that they were pressured to finish the bomb by a set schedule, one which was timed to coincide with the Russian entrance into the Pacific theater, and one which additionally implied that the war would be potentially over very soon.

The Americans dropped the bombs without any warning. If they had dropped the bomb with a warning, then they would have given the civilians time to leave, and the Americans could have still shown the Japanese the potential of the bomb, so that they would be scared into surrendering. Similarily, the Americans could have dropped the bomb in a less populated area to show them how powerful it was.

The two atomic bombs were not the only attacks that killed large numbers of Japanese civilians. An estimated 100,000 people died when America firebombed Tokyo in March 1945. The decision to bomb Nagasaki only a few days after Hiroshima raises separate issues. Some people hold that most of the arguments for the use of the atomic bomb do not justify dropping the second one on Nagasaki. In his semi-autobiographical novel Timequake, Kurt Vonnegut said that while the Hiroshima bomb may have saved the lives of his friends in the U.S. armed forces, Nagasaki still proved that the United States was capable of senseless cruelty.