The Only Correct Decision, Part IIIDropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not only justified, but the best possible decision given the circumstances.
This is the final part of a three-part series of historical essays breaking down the decision and impact of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan. You can find Part I and Part II here. Dropping the Atom BombsThe Atomic BombingsAll of the available information at the time and in the full light of historical hindsight shows the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan was the best possible outcome for the Americans, the broader group of Allies who fought in the Pacific (not including the Soviet Union), and even the Japanese civilian population. We have already understood the situation on the ground as of the decision point, summer 1945. We have seen the actual alternatives, as well as those that the revisionists claim would have been better. We have delved into the intransigent attitude of the Japanese government and military hierarchy, showing conclusively that surrender was nowhere near imminent in early August 1945, despite the massive headwinds facing that Empire. Now, we must understand the way the bombings unfolded in the halls of power in Washington and Tokyo, how the decision was made – including the secondary decisions on timing, targeting, and messaging – how the Japanese eventually capitulated, and the aftermath of all of these events. The development of atomic weapons was not a purely American quest; all of the major powers in the war were seeking to harness this novel discovery and use it for both civilian energy generation and military purposes. Britain was the first to seek an atomic weapon in a concerted and significant fashion, beginning serious research on the subject as early as 1941 and then cooperating significantly in the successful US-led Manhattan Project after 1943. British and Canadian scientists played key roles in the bomb’s development and worked assiduously to ensure the Anglosphere allies were the first to benefit from this world-changing technology. The joint effort was crucial in ensuring the atomic bombs were ready in time to end the Pacific war. The Nazis began basic attempts at harnessing nuclear fission in 1939, after German scientists discovered the reaction a year earlier. The effort was deemed unlikely to make a major impact on the war by the Wehrmacht, but continued as a side project through the end of the war. In spite of mutual distrust between scientists and government officials, a small workforce, and an even smaller budget, the Nazis were well on their way to atomic breakout when the Allies began to close the pincers on Berlin, ending any serious effort at building the bomb – something that all humanity should be grateful for. Their attempts at creating atomic weapons were stymied not only by relative government disinterest, but also by the persecution and exile of Jewish scientists, many of whom would play critical roles in the Manhattan Project. The Imperial Japanese had their own atomic weapons program as well. Several Japanese scientists were involved in atomic research before the war and were given the go-ahead in 1941 to launch research into a weapons program by the most powerful figure in Japanese military politics at the time, Army Minister Hideki Tojo. Similar to their German counterparts, the program was plagued by issues of government buy-in, lack of coordination, and underfunding. Multiple competing projects existed during the war, none of which coordinated with one another, leading to duplicative efforts and confusion. Regardless, Japanese government officials sought the base materials for nuclear fission throughout their imperial conquests in Asia and efforts at weaponizing fission continued until the laboratories focused on this research were destroyed by American bombardment. The Soviet Union was nowhere near as advanced in the process as these other powers, but it had a trump card up its sleeve: its deep penetration of the Manhattan Project and the American wartime government. Via its rampant espionage efforts, including by the nuclear scientist Klaus Fuchs, a verified Soviet agent, Moscow had incredible visibility into the top-secret US atomic plans. Stalin himself was kept up-to-date with the development of the atomic bombs, even as American policymakers sought to keep the Soviets in the dark about this wonder-weapon. In fact, Stalin knew more about the specifics and progress of American atomic weaponization and development than did President Truman upon his ascension to the top office in April 1945. This espionage allowed the USSR to rush to a bomb within four years of the end of World War II, eliminating the American atomic monopoly before it could be used to press the Soviets into retreat. The US effort – the only such project that was successful – was a whole-of-government one. The Manhattan Project began in earnest in 1942, later than many of its rivals. But it was the only effort that had the full backing of the national government, military officials, and scientists, all working within one system towards one goal. It received direct buy-in from Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself and was a massive undertaking. It involved high-level theoretical research, applied research, mining of critical mineral ores, production of components, bomb assembly, testing, and finally, use. It had almost unlimited manpower and funding, as well as a heap of brilliant scientific minds, including myriad Nobel Prize-winning chemists and physicists. At its peak, the Manhattan Project employed over 125,000 people across dozens of sites in the US, Britain, and Canada. Over the course of the war, approximately 500,000 people worked on the effort – many of whom had no idea that their work was contributing to the atomic bomb; this comes out to about 0.4 percent of the entire contemporary American population, or one in every 250 people. The funds allocated to the effort were about $2 billion, nearly a whole percent of the US military spending during the war. This may not seem all that significant, but this was money that was essentially hidden from Congress in a democratic system – no easy task. Interestingly enough, Truman, before he became vice-president, was the leader of a senatorial effort to track down wasteful spending and war profiteering; he discovered the secretive funding of the Manhattan Project and was easily convinced by military leaders to drop his transparency push around this particular effort given its sensitive nature. He was not, however, told about what the funds were being used for. The massive undertaking that was the Manhattan Project had an inexorable logic of its own. From its instantiation under FDR, through its development process, to the final decision, there was simply no way that the atomic bomb, once developed, would simply be left on the shelf to gather dust. The inevitably of its use was baked into the project from the very beginning. None of the military or civilian political leaders who were involved with the project ever once questioned this assumption, even those who argued against use after the fact. Truman was dedicated to following the Roosevelt legacy as closely as possible during the war, going so far as to retain his appointed officials, maintaining a close relationship with the Soviets, and choosing to not interfere with any of the machinations of policy that his predecessor initiated. As of early August 1945, the decision was made. The alternatives, namely invasion or blockade and bombardment, remained on the table if the atomic bombs were unsuccessful at bringing Japan to capitulation, but the potential lives saved by avoiding either was more than enough to convince Truman and his advisors, especially given the military developments over the prior months. Truman was already on this path in early July, writing to his wife that “I’ll say that we’ll end the war a year sooner now, and think of the kids who won’t be killed!” This shows that Truman believed both that the Japanese were nowhere near surrender and that he believed an invasion – the most likely alternative at that point – would be an exercise in mass bloodletting. Contemporaneous testimony from Winston Churchill, evinced by a cable he sent to London, agrees; the British leader wrote of Truman that he was tormented by “the terrible responsibilities that rested upon him in regard to unlimited effusion of American blood.” As Truman said years later, “the only reasonable conclusion was the use the bomb.” The next issue to be decided was where to target. Targeting ideas began to be mooted as early as April 1945, once the bombs were shown to be viable, but before the Trinity test in July. A targeting commission was organized by the Manhattan Project leadership, under the aegis of Major General Leslie Groves, the military director of the venture. Groves later described the overall approach and factors involved in target selection:
There are several important aspects displayed in this statement. First, the cities targeted were not purely civilian in nature, but must have had a strong military presence; as we shall see, both Hiroshima and Nagasaki fit this bill. Most Japanese military production was deeply intertwined with civilian life, making the two nigh-inseparable and ensuring that there would be civilian casualties from any such attack. Next, the targets had to have been spared the devastation of LeMay’s aerial incendiary bombardment, limiting the cities that could be selected. Another key factor is left unstated, but can be inferred: that the Americans really did not know how powerful the bombs they were dropping would be. There had only been a single test of an atomic weapon and it was of a plutonium bomb, not the uranium type that would be used on Hiroshima. The effectiveness, scale, and results of the explosion were simply unknown and unknowable until after its use, which precluded using it on an already-demolished urban landscape. Indeed, the aftereffects of radiation were poorly understood by decisionmakers and poorly explained by the scientists who developed the weapon. This is evinced by the fact that future bombs were considered for tactical use in paving the way for Olympic and Coronet; had US leaders known that latent radioactivity would kill after the initial explosion, they surely would not have seriously contemplated sending American troops directly into the aftermath shortly after the bomb was used. The cities that fell into all of Groves’s categories were few in number. The targeting committee ended up settling on three primary options: Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Niigata. They suggested that the aiming point for the bombs should be the city center, as the unreliability of targeting a single bomb in 1945 was well-known. Aiming for the urban core would ensure that the explosion would have the greatest possible effect and would drastically increase the certainty that the military targets therein would be destroyed. Military leaders altered this target selection, removing Kyoto and adding the cities of Kokura and Nagasaki. Kyoto was spared, despite the fact that it had the largest population of any remaining undamaged city, primarily due to its special status as the ancient capital of Japan and core of the imperial dynasty. One might think this would make it into a more compelling target, but American leaders believed, likely correctly, that ravaging this important cultural and political center would make an organized Japanese surrender more difficult to obtain. In the end, the targeting order was as follows: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata, Nagasaki. Why had these cities been spared from LeMay’s aerial assault? The answer lies not in some nefarious political conspiracy to focus entirely on the atomic bombs, but on direct military considerations. None of these cities were home to the primary target for the incendiary bombardment, the aircraft industry. Hiroshima had almost no aircraft industry to speak of, while Nagasaki was a navy town. The cities targeted by LeMay’s bombers were either home to sizable production infrastructure for the Japanese air forces or were part of the broader confabulation of aircraft-centric urban areas. These regions were also far more easily targeted by the nighttime bombing that the US carried out; both Nagasaki and Hiroshima posed challenges for radar-guided night bombing due to their geography and topography. Inclement weather also made successful targeting of these cities more difficult. These military considerations were decisive in sparing these cities from aerial attack prior to the atomic bombings. Much has been made of the revisionist idea that Hiroshima was a purely civilian target, but this could not be further from the truth. In reality, Hiroshima was perhaps the most heavily military-centric urban zone still standing. It was the headquarters of the Imperial Japanese Army’s Fifth Division, held numerous barracks, supply depots, marshalling yards, airports, and military administrative buildings, included various factories and industrial areas dedicated entirely to military production, was the home to the Japan Steel Company, and was used as a primary port of embarkation for Japanese troops. It also was the location of Field Marshal Shunroku Hata’s Second General Army headquarters. These military installations drew in about 43,000 soldiers among the 280,000 or so civilians in the city; this was the highest ratio of soldiers to civilians in any large Japanese urban area. When Hiroshima was decimated, it destroyed a significant portion of Japan’s war-making infrastructure and the troops who would bring that to bear against any American invasion. Nagasaki was more a target of opportunity than was Hiroshima, but it remained a military one. Kokura, home to an enormous military arsenal, was the primary target for the second atomic bomb. Difficult conditions, namely heavy ground smoke and haze, made dropping the bomb there infeasible, even after three attempted bombing runs. Niigata was too far for the B-29 carrying the atomic weapon to reach with enough fuel to safely return to American lines, especially due to a major fuel pump issue that eliminated the ability to use reserve tanks. Nagasaki was far closer and became the best possible option, but the aircrew had the fuel for only a single bombing pass, forcing them to drop the bomb into a clouded-over city center. Its military infrastructure was less significant than Hiroshima’s, but it still served as a key center for the Japanese armed forces. It was home to the Mitsubishi shipyard, Japan’s largest and a facility that could, in time, be used to enhance other aspects of military production. It also was a sizable urban center and potential military base on Kyushu, the island that was the target of Operation Olympic. Destroying it would potentially ease the invasion if the Japanese government chose not to capitulate. Revisionists often claim that the bombing of Nagasaki was most certainly unnecessary and unjustified, as the initial use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima was more than enough to force a Japanese surrender. This flies in the face of all contemporaneous and historical evidence. The Imperial Japanese government did not surrender after the bombing of Hiroshima. They did not even initially believe that the Americans dropped an atomic bomb, despite their own pursuit of such a weapon and the clear public statement by Truman on the matter, which directly said that the Americans used one. The message also leveled a threat at the Japanese government, showing that the Americans would not stop until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally:
The warning could not have been clearer, yet the Japanese leadership still dithered. In fact, some military chiefs, notably the Chief of the Naval General Staff, Admiral Soemu Toyoda, believed that they could use the American attack to their advantage. He argued that the Americans could not possess anything more than a small amount of fissionable material, enough for only a few bombs, and that Japan could successfully pressure Washington via the international community to avoid using any further such weapons. The Japanese government even complained to the Americans via the Swiss that the attack was unfairly targeting civilians, writing that it was contrary to the “basic principles of the international rules of warfare which state that a belligerent does not enjoy an unrestricted right in the choice of methods of attack and that the belligerent shall not make use of any weapon which would cause unnecessary suffering.” This was a galling statement from an empire that routinely engaged in mass murder, rape, torture, and enslavement of civilians, and did so as a matter of official state policy. The Americans knew that the Japanese would be unwilling to surrender after a single bombing, as it would not prove that the US had more weapons and would be willing to use them. That is attested to by many at the time, both in leadership and on the ground, including by a member of the bomb-assembly team on Tinian who recalled that “Everyone felt that the sooner we could get off another mission, the more likely it was that the Japanese would feel that we had large quantities of the devices and would surrender sooner.” The pace of the bombings was thus critical to planting this idea in the Japanese mind and incentivizing surrender. Even those who wished to be on the ‘right side of history’ in their postwar testimony, including aides close to the Emperor, were unwilling to accept the Potsdam terms as offered after Hiroshima. The peace party in the government remained outnumbered by the war party, all the way through the Nagasaki bombing. Admiral Toyoda’s postwar witness is useful here, as he wrote that the War Cabinet meeting had a “rather bullish atmosphere” vis a vis continuing the war on the morning of August 9, the day that Nagasaki was hit. All of this necessitated the second bombing.
The SurrenderBut the destruction of Nagasaki still did not immediately lead to acceptance of the Potsdam terms and a Japanese unconditional surrender. The War Cabinet, colloquially known as the Big Six, was in the midst of debate over the negotiating strategy it would pursue with the United States when the news of the Nagasaki bombing came in. Even after this, the parties were split down the middle, but neither were interested in a direct acceptance of the Potsdam terms. Three of the six sought one additional term on top of the unconditional surrender demand, while the other three – primarily the military hierarchy that truly controlled the decision process – sought four additional conditions. Unconditional surrender this was not. The lone shared condition was preservation of the imperial institution, ensuring the retention of the Emperor as the leader of the Japanese polity. This was no constitutional monarchy and the Emperor would not be a mere figurehead; he would be a supreme religious ruler that controlled the polity directly in his person. This would mean that the Emperor and his imperial advisors would exercise a degree of control over the Japanese people completely at odds with the Allied idea that the citizenry would choose a form of government that represented their interests. If there were to be a parliament, it would serve at the whim of the imperial institution – completely unacceptable to the Allies and alien to the idea of representative democracy. This was a condition agreed by every single member of the War Cabinet. The other three conditions proposed by the military hierarchy would have been even more outrageous to the United States. First, they sought self-disarmament instead of a forced disarmament process controlled by the Allies. This would allow the Japanese soldiery to surrender their arms in an honorable manner to their own superiors, not the enemy that vanquished them. It would also allow for the possibility of certain arms being surreptitiously cached away, leaving the full disarmament of the military incomplete. Second, the Japanese military hierarchy sought to control its own war crimes trials, which would have made an utter farce of the process. It would have been totally unacceptable for the men who committed and directed the systematic war crimes of the Japanese Empire to preside over their own judicial comeuppance. It would have led to total impunity for the worst offenders and the top leadership of the army, upending the entire rationale for postwar tribunals. Third, and most importantly, there would be no Allied occupation of Japan. The idea that the Allies would sacrifice so much blood in a conflict they did not start and yet forego the ability to occupy its enemy and enforce the terms of surrender was patently absurd. As of August 1945, the Allies were discussing exactly how the occupation would function and who would be in charge, not debating the fact of the occupation itself. Combined, these four terms would allow the Japanese to inculcate a myth that they were not defeated, but laid down their arms out of the goodness of their hearts. The Allies learned the lesson from the peace that ended the First World War and were not going to allow it to be repeated in the redux. The War Cabinet was required by its own internal rules and those of the Japanese polity to come to a unanimous consensus opinion that the Emperor would then ratify as his own decision. They were unable to do this, even after more than ten hours of fervent debate. In the end, they pressed the Emperor himself to break the deadlock, a rarity in Japanese politics. He assented. Later that night, near midnight on August 9, the cabinet summarized and continued the debate in the imperial presence. The one-condition party argued that if peace was not agreed on their terms, the country would be utterly destroyed, including the longstanding imperial institution. The four-condition party averred that even if only one condition was added, the military could not guarantee that the soldiery would lay down their arms in accordance with the Emperor’s wishes, destroying the institution in its own way. After hearing these arguments, the Emperor made his decision. He would accept the sole condition that his position at the head of the Japanese polity would be retained, even if reluctantly. The imperial decision was, however, completely nonbinding and extra-constitutional. There was no actual role for him in this process if the cabinet was deadlocked. But the respect and deference he was granted by his underlings won the day. The six agreed to adopt the imperial decision as their own and promulgate it throughout the military infrastructure, as well as transmitting it to the United States. They did agree, however, to continue the fighting if the Allies rejected the additional condition that was proposed – putting the lie to the idea that this was a full acceptance of unconditional surrender. The message sent to the Allies via neutral Switzerland and Sweden was phrased thusly: that the Japanese would accept the Potsdam terms “with the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as Sovereign Ruler.” As the Japanese awaited the American response, they released multiple public statements meant to notify the citizenry of the potential for surrender, all in cryptic terms meant to leave open the possibility of continued resistance if the Allies declined the Japanese offer. On August 11, Japanese newspapers carried a message detailing the devastation of the atomic bombing and lambasting the evils of their enemies, but ended with the following statement, intended to presage the possible surrender:
Given the constant paeans dedicated to fighting to the end that had, to this point, characterized imperial communications to the Japanese people, this was viewed not as a message of impending capitulation, but of continued struggle. Buttressing this public interpretation was the simultaneous publication of a belligerent message from the army leader, Anami, which called back to Japan’s history of fanatical resistance and included the quotation “Even though we may have to eat grass, swallow dirt, and lie in the fields, we shall fight on to the bitter end, ever firm in our faith that we shall find life in death.” This was actually a misapplication of the Army Minister’s words – they were meant to apply exclusively to Japanese regiments in Manchuria fighting the Soviets – but it became a lightning rod for the sizable military factions that would attempt to defy the government’s orders. In the end, the Americans did accept the Japanese offer, but did so in a manner that was consistent with the unconditional surrender terms laid out at Potsdam. Essentially, they rewrote the Japanese proposal to fit within those previously offered terms, arguing that the Japanese conditional acceptance was indeed not conditional at all. The Emperor would remain, but only if the people of Japan chose to retain the imperial institution in a free and open process. The Allied response reiterated that Japan would be fully occupied and under the aegis of a Supreme Commander chosen by the Allies. It implied that the institution of the Emperor might continue if the Japanese people so desired, but it made no promises to this effect whatsoever. This was transmitted to the Japanese government for formal acceptance and B-29 attacks were immediately halted, as they may be construed to be used for more atomic bombings. Still, other aerial bombardment, naval blockade, and invasion preparations went ahead as planned, at least until the Japanese government accepted the reiterated Allied terms. Acceptance of those terms – basically the same ones laid out at Potsdam – was no guarantee. Indeed, the American response initially hardened the resolve of some in the cabinet, including the premier, Admiral Suzuki, previously in the peace camp. He was livid at the response, shifting his position to one of continued fighting unless the Allies explicitly accepted the conditional offer, emboldening the military officials that had been the most reluctant to go along with the Emperor. Suzuki was only talked into the acceptance camp by the Emperor’s close advisor, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal Koichi Kido, who correctly stated that the Allied terms would only get stiffer, not softer if this proposal was rejected. The Emperor concurred, essentially ordering that the Allied terms be accepted unaltered. The defining argument for the Emperor and the peace party, offered by Navy Minister Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, was that if Japan continued its doomed resistance, there was a significant possibility that the populace would become restive and revolt against the government, destroying the imperial institution in a bid to force surrender. This was a nearly unthinkable idea for the Japanese government given the longevity and importance of the position of Emperor in Japanese politics and society, but it became realizable given the dire circumstances and the revelation of the surrender discussions. The populace was notified of both the Japanese conditional proposal and the Allied response by mass American leafletting over major cities, forcing the government’s hand in formally accepting surrender. Without this push, the internal debate – and thus the war itself – may have continued. The myriad arguments that were presented to support the full and immediate acceptance of the reiterated Allied terms, including the direct order from the imperial personage, failed to sway a large percentage of the all-important military hierarchy. Their intransigence was exemplified by the ‘father of kamikazes’, Vice Chief of the Naval General Staff, Admiral Takijiro Onishi, who, in a meeting of top military brass, said “Let us formulate a plan for certain victory, obtain the Emperor’s sanction, and throw ourselves into bringing the plan to realization. If we are prepared to sacrifice 20,000,000 Japanese lives in a special attack effort, victory will be ours!” This genuinely fanatical attitude was not uncommon amongst the military, who saw any attempt by political figures to force its hand as punishable by death. Assassinations of politicians by soldiers had a significant precedent in Imperial Japanese politics over the prior decades, including an attempt on the life of Premier Suzuki in 1936. This was part of the whip hand the military had over government policy, and it remained a clear and present danger in August 1945. And that danger was made manifest in the lead-up to the Japanese surrender by a substantial number of Japanese military officers. They began planning a coup d’état on August 11, shortly after the internal notification of the tentative acceptance of peace, seeking to overthrow the government, kill the ministers in the peace camp, and implement martial law under a totalitarian military regime, forcing the Emperor to go along or risk death himself. They squared this violent assault on the imperial prerogative by claiming that their loyalty was to the Throne itself, not the person of Hirohito, the reigning Emperor. By overthrowing him and continuing the war, they would be showing their dedication to Japan and the historical institution of the imperial system. This was not merely a plan, but an actual attempt at overthrowing the regime. They assassinated unwilling military leaders, including Lieutenant General Takeshi Mori of the Imperial Guards – the unit tasked with protecting the Emperor himself – and occupied the Imperial Palace where the royal family lived. They were only defeated by their inability to capture the Emperor or the recording he made to broadcast the surrender. The plotters committed ritual suicide, as did Army Minister Anami, who very well may have had advance knowledge of the attempt. This fight-at-all-costs attitude was a major concern for the Allies, who were, very reasonably, unsure that an organized Japanese surrender could even be possible. There were Japanese garrisons throughout mainland Asia, the Pacific islands, and the Home Islands. If they were not convinced to lay down their arms, the war would have dragged on for months, even after Tokyo capitulated. The Japanese surrender was only made effective and organized by the extraordinary power of the Emperor himself, who addressed his subjects in a direct radio message. Ordinary Japanese citizens and soldiers had never once heard the voice of the deified Emperor before his radio address explicating and enforcing the capitulation, so his words had an impact that was completely unparalleled. The Emperor’s broadcast included statements about why the nation had initially gone to war and disclaimed the effort to “infringe upon the sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement.” The most critical passage read:
He stated forcefully and directly that Japan would surrender to forestall the “ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation,” as well as “the total extinction of human civilization.” He made clear that this was an order to the military to capitulate and that it should cease any activity that could breed “needless complications, or any fraternal contention and strife.” This radio address was decisive in ending the Japanese war effort in a relatively quick and organized manner, although some holdouts continued fighting, including using suicide attacks. The core of the publicly-stated rationale for surrender was the American use of the atomic bombs, which allowed the Japanese to save face while accepting unconditional surrender. This novel technology was unable to be countered or stopped, so it did not necessarily impugn the fighting spirit of the Japanese military. If not for the technological rationale, it would have been impossible to achieve a timely and peaceful surrender across the wide variety of theaters of combat in the Pacific. The Emperor, in a private letter to the crown prince written a week after the surrender ceremony, reiterated this rationale. And it was most clearly explicated by Premier Suzuki in December 1945, writing that
None of the critical decisionmakers, in their contemporaneous testimony, made mention of the Soviet intervention as a key rationale for surrender. This is the heart of the matter. Without the atomic bombs, Japan would have fought on, and the results would have been catastrophic.
The AftermathThe atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were horrendous in their destructiveness and the scale of civilian death they caused. The city of Hiroshima was almost entirely destroyed when the uranium bomb Little Boy exploded over its center. The power of this explosion was estimated by later experts to have reached the equivalent of about 12,500 tons of TNT, but the airburst mechanism and the geography of the city allowed this to annihilate nearly the whole urban core. Approximately 92 percent of the housing units in Hiroshima were completely obliterated by the bombing. Nagasaki, despite being hit by a much larger plutonium bomb explosion, estimated at the equivalent of 22,000 tons of TNT, fared better. Its hilly topography, combined with the fact that the bomb hit away from the city center and in an area protected by ridges and valleys, spared much more of the city and its population from destruction. Regardless, the ruin was intense. Men, women, and children were incinerated, poisoned by radiation, and deformed beyond recognition. Many died in complete agony, days after the bombs were dropped. The devastation was immense and the civilian casualties were awful in their specifics. Yet the testimonies from survivors was not all that different from those who wrote about their experiences living through the incendiary bombing campaign. These victims, just as much as those who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were killed or wounded in truly apocalyptic fashion – burned, boiled, flayed, and suffocated. These civilians, however, are often ignored by the revisionists who focus exclusively on the atomic bombings. But these forgotten victims were still killed in enormous numbers and deserve the same sympathy as those who died by the atom bombs. The total death toll for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is difficult to pin down in exact terms. Japanese population movements during the war, especially its latter stages, was significant, as urbanites fled combat zones for other cities or the rural countryside. The Japanese government was not conducting regular censuses of their populace during wartime, nor were postwar estimates the most reliable; incentives given for survivors of the bombs led to more claims than were likely given the extant populations at the time. Without an accurate idea of how many people were in these cities before the bombings, accurate casualty estimates are extremely difficult to come to. There are several estimates for each bombing that are worth considering. The best contemporaneous evidence exists for Hiroshima and was cataloged by the local police officials in November 1945. It came up with a total of 129,558 casualties, of which just over sixty percent (78,150) were killed. Another 14,000 or so were missing, along with nearly 40,000 injuries, a third of which were classed as severe. The official Japanese military history, which had access to more primary source documents and testimonies than most later estimates, put the fatalities between 70,000 and 120,000 – an enormous range that shows how challenging making such estimates could be. Various American and Japanese sources made other estimates for both Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the war, using different methodologies and data sets. An assessment by the Manhattan Engineering District, the official title for the scientists and engineers laboring on the atomic bombs, estimated in June 1946 that about 66,000 people died and a further 69,000 were injured at Hiroshima and 39,000 were killed and 25,000 injured at Nagasaki. In March 1947, the United States Strategic Bombing Survey came up with 80,000 deaths and between 80,000 and 100,000 injuries at Hiroshima and 45,000 deaths and between 50,000 and 60,000 injured at Nagasaki. The Japan Economic Stabilization Board released their estimates in April 1949, landing on 78,150 deaths and 151,000 injuries for Hiroshima and 23,753 deaths and 55,000 injuries for Nagasaki. Finally, a joint US-Japan commission working in April 1966 had the following totals: 70,000 deaths and an equivalent number of injuries at Hiroshima and 36,000 deaths and 40,000 injuries at Nagasaki. Revisionist historians, primarily using highly unreliable survivorship data, claim that upwards of 200,000 died at Hiroshima and 140,000 at Nagasaki, but these are politically-driven estimates that have little basis in the primary sources at the time. Altogether, it is highly likely that somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 people died in the two atomic bombings, a staggering figure that does not need to be exaggerated to be meaningful. Despite the fact that this figure is massive and atrocious, it must be compared to the alternatives and other relevant death tolls to show that the atomic bombings were a bad choice that killed more than it saved. As we have seen, the Tokyo firebombing in March 1945 alone killed 100,000 people, not to mention the rest of the urban bombing campaign that continued between March and August. It is likely that this strategic air campaign killed nearly an equal number of Japanese civilians as did the atomic bombs. Had the Truman administration chosen to leave the atomic bombs on the shelf and continue the air war by other means, this total would have inevitably increased. The blockade, as it got tighter and fully strangled Japanese commerce and even internal trade, had the potential to kill millions more. The invasion estimates were just as bad, easily reaching into the millions of Japanese soldiers and civilians, not to mention the Allied casualties that could be reasonably expected. An expanded Soviet invasion would have been immensely destructive as well, easily eclipsing the Japanese civilian death tolls attributed to the atomic bombings, even those high-end revisionist estimates. Of these genuine alternatives, the use of the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was clearly the least-damaging option for the people of Japan. But the people of Japan are not the only civilians to consider here. There were a massive number of Asians in the Pacific islands and on the mainland that were suffering and dying in truly immense numbers under the Imperial Japanese jackboot. Credible historical estimates of the civilian death toll attributable to the Japanese Empire between 1931 and 1945 show that more than 17,000,000 Asian noncombatants were killed, either via neglect or direct Japanese action. This includes more than ten million Chinese, nearly four million Indonesians, a million Vietnamese, and hundreds of thousands each in Burma, Malaya, Korea, the Philippines, and India. These were not citizens of the empire that started the war, as the Japanese were. These were people that had no interest in the conflict, but were purely victims of Japanese aggression. By the end of the war in summer of 1945, approximately 250,000 Asian noncombatants were dying each month at Japanese hands, more than 100,000 per month in China alone. If the atomic bombs ended the war even a month earlier than the alternatives – which is not in doubt based on the weight of historical evidence – they saved more civilian lives than they took. If they ended the war several months or even a year earlier, they saved an order of magnitude more civilian lives than they took. Any narrative of the situation that refuses to account for this objective reality is fatally flawed and unduly privileges the lives of Japanese civilians over the lives of the victims of Japanese expansionism. The atomic bombings also had several unintended salutary effects for both the Cold War and the rest of human history in the decades since. Contrary to the revisionist narrative, the bombs were not meant as a signal to the Soviets and a first step in the nuclear diplomacy that would characterize the twilight struggle between capitalism and communism. Truman was interested in working with the Soviet Union to shape the postwar order in a peaceful manner; he was only convinced against this plan, for which his predecessor FDR laid the groundwork, by the actual actions of the Soviets, crushing freedom in Eastern Europe, rapidly expanding in Asia, and promoting violent communist-aligned governments in China, North Korea, Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East. In 1948, the US government even offered Marshall Plan assistance to the Soviet bloc, including Moscow itself, but was rebuffed in harsh terms, resulting in the Soviet attempt to strangle Berlin and undo the agreed-upon partition of Germany. The fact that the US used these doomsday weapons and had a monopoly on their control until the Soviet test in 1949 allowed the West to hold its own against the onrush of the Soviet steamroller. Soviet conventional military capacity widely outpaced that of Europe and America, but it was forced to hold back to an extent due to the short-lived atomic monopoly. This undoubtedly spared much more of Europe from falling behind the Iron Curtain and being held in bondage under Stalin’s sway. Given the differential outcomes across the 20th century between the communist and capitalist blocs, avoiding further Soviet expansion was a blessing for humanity. It is estimated that totalitarian communism killed upwards of 100,000,000 people during its eight or so decades of existence; surely this figure would have leapt up significantly had the American nuclear umbrella not been used to contain its expansion. Another revisionist claim is that, had the United States not used the atomic bomb, nobody would have and the world would be a more peaceful, safer place. They suggest that the fact of nuclear use is what raised the Sword of Damocles over the heads of the world’s population and led to mutual fear, distrust, and insecurity. This is simply false. There is no way that governments as brutal and horrendous as those of the Soviet Union and communist China would have refused to use these immensely powerful weapons out of principle. They surely did not pull punches when it came to conventional weaponry, so there is no reason that they would have done so with the unconventional. The nuclear weapons and delivery mechanisms developed over the course of the 20th century only became more and more destructive and powerful, vastly eclipsing the strength of the rudimentary bombs dropped from the air on Japan. Had these been used instead, the destruction would have been far greater and the civilian impact much graver. The revisionist narrative also leaves aside the fact that, although nuclear weapons are indeed terrifying in their power, they have led to an unprecedented era of peace among the great powers of the world. Since their advent eighty years ago, there have been no major direct wars between nuclear states. Great power conflict has, historically, been the driver of the most death and destruction leveled against mankind. The 20th century saw the creation and use of conventional weapons that were far deadlier and more accessible than those that preceded it. The threat of nuclear use has been the primary factor in avoiding those weapons being used in a civilizational struggle for global mastery. Nuclear deterrence, by far the most powerful form of deterrence that has ever existed, has kept the world far safer, more peaceful, and more prosperous than it would have been had they never been developed. Additionally, the ending of the Pacific war in an unconditional surrender, achieved by the atomic bombings, has made Japan into a model nation-state. It has written non-aggression into its constitution, focused on internal productivity and technological innovation, and been a boon to global prosperity. It, less than thirty years after the destruction visited on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, became the world’s third-largest economy. It remains in the top five today, despite the massive advances made in the developing world. It is a stalwart ally to the Western democracies, including very close ties to the nation that dropped the atomic bombs on its territory. It has even begun to repair its relations with the countries and people it forcibly subjugated in World War II, a stunning shift in less than a century. There could not have been a better outcome for Japan at the end of a war that it started and prosecuted in an incredibly vicious manner.
ConclusionRevisionist history can be both interesting and useful, exploring undercovered areas, re-examining staid narratives, and shifting focus to people and events that have been traditionally ignored or downplayed. But this sort of positive revisionism works heavily from primary sources, follows historical fact, and embraces uncertainty and nuance. The revisionist narrative around the atomic bombings does none of that. It is extremely confident about its flawed premises, uses moral attacks against those who dispute its grasp of the historical record, and avoids the nuance that is necessary to do good history. It decontextualizes the end of the Second World War, stripping the decision to drop the bombs of any rationale or background. It engages in pat moral framing that discounts the acute challenges faced by the players at the time. And it engages in the cardinal sin of history: presentism. These narratives are not meant to expose the truth of the past, but to forward the politics of the present. That is the antithesis of good historical work. The Allies, particularly the Americans, were immensely justified in the way they prosecuted the Pacific war. They fought against an evil empire that has been retconned into being a victim, purely because of the unique manner in which the war ended. They spared far more Japanese civilians than could have been expected given the fashion in which the Japanese themselves fought. And they helped inaugurate a much better world than the one they faced when Tokyo began its rampage. Their descendants should be immensely proud of this important legacy. They should not be afraid to laud the difficult decision to use atomic weapons to end the carnage and calamity of the Pacific conflict. And they should firmly reject the revisionist narrative that seeks to paint them as the villains of the war. The atomic bombings were justified, necessary, and life-saving. There was only one correct decision, and Harry S. Truman made it. We should all be grateful for that. Click here for Part I of this essay, detailing the build-up to the atomic bombing. Click here for Part II of this essay, detailing the alternatives to atomic bombing. Rational Policy is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Rational Policy that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.
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Thursday, 14 August 2025
The Only Correct Decision, Part III
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