One possible factor influencing Truman’s mindset was WWI and its aftermath. Truman, along with Pershing and a number of other US officers, were strongly opposed to the idea of armistice. Their reasoning was that unless Germany were decisively beaten on the battlefield, they were likely to display the same belligerence again. Which is exactly what happened. This may have led him to believe that anything less than an absolute defeat of the Japanese empire would be insufficient.
[Moderating]
While this thread started off as a factual question, I think it’s drifted to the point that it’s a better fit for Great Debates. Moving.
I think that, combined with a few other things- extreme war weariness, the recent horrific casualties invading Iwo Jima and Okinawa, with the realistic expectations that an invasion of mainland Japan would be similar, except on a much larger scale, and the vitriolic intensity that the Pacific war was generally fought with (somewhat fueled by racism, somewhat fueled by post-Pearl Harbor anger), combined to make the use of nuclear weapons in combat a done deal.
I mean, I would suspect that everyone involved on the US side was probably not thinking “Let’s show the Russians for post-war political purposes” or “Let’s not nuke them, they’ll surrender in 4-6 months anyway”. They were almost certainly thinking “Let’s end this shit any way we possibly can, as soon as we possibly can, and fuck the Japanese, they started this. Drop that nuke.”
I mean, how much hand wringing would there have been in say… 2005, if we’d bombed part of Kabul knowing Osama bin Laden was hiding out there? I suspect that the decision to bomb a target in the city and the potential of collateral damage and civilian casualties would not have been significant considerations in the minds of the war planners, politicians or civilians at that point. I suspect that the decision to use nuclear weapons was very similar in 1945, except bolstered by years of US casualties and Japanese atrocities.
Oliver Stone is a movie producer and not a historian. The answer is emphatically no, this was created by whole cloth. See Post 6 by @Dissonance above. The US had Magic and was reading the diplomatic and military codes and we knew they had explicitly rejected the idea of surrendering even with the emperor spared.
An interesting point is the misconception of the status of the Emperor. A lot of people think of Inca emperors who had to be obeyed completely.
Japanese emperors were never “worshiped” per se. They weren’t gods or ever treated like gods and never the same status that Abrahamic religions would see their gods.
It was more like they were sacred rather than divine. For most of Japanese history, the emperors had limited powers. The Emperor knew that he couldn’t order the surrender unless the military agreed, and as already been discussed in the thread, there still were officers who disagreed. It’s less known, but a couple of the commanders overseas initially refused to surrender.
It’s a little confusing, but not only was there the Cabinet but also the War Council, of which four of the Big Six members were also in the Cabinet. Although the Cabinet needed to formally approve the surrender, the War Council which also included the Chiefs of Staff of the Army and Navy was in many ways more important in the convoluted decision making process. There was also Imperial Conferences in the presence of the Emperor and included other senior advisors such as the President of the Privy Council.
While decisions make in Imperial Conferences were supposed to be final, they would sometimes get run around.
While this may seem unimportant to many, it’s one of the reasons that these decisions were both difficult to make and easy to break.
As I continue to read about this issue, it seems that there is another part of the calculus: If the Japanese war went on too much longer, the Soviets would become more involved and therefore have a greater role in post war governance. A quicker end to the war would be useful to prevent them from establishing that influence.
Here’s more support for the argument that the US decision to use the bomb included a consideration of its effect on relations with others (and was therefore not simply predicated on Japanese acceptance of the terms of surrender)
Now, of course, this is just one historian’s opinion piece. But it does that include a link to a declassified document, from May 1945, that mentions the purposes of using the weapon:
Is it really that fanciful to think that the US had reasons to use the bomb that were separate and apart from whether the Japanese wanted to continue their monarchy?
From all I can gather, it was indeed Truman’s decision to make, and I don’t see anything to suggest that he would have bombed Japan if they had immediately accepted all terms of unconditional surrender. But I also don’t think that this limits the analysis, since there were certainly parts of Truman’s advisors who saw this as a strategic opportunity.
Fortune conducted a poll post-war in December 1945 which found 22.7% of respondents wished we’d had the opportunity to drop “many more” nukes on Japan before they had a chance to surrender. Flat out genocidal attitudes towards Japan were fairly common during the war as well. From John Dower’s War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War:
Public opinion polls in the United States indicated that some 10 to 13 percent of Americans consistently supported the “annihilation” or “extermination” of the Japanese as a people, while a comparable percentage were in favor of severe retribution after Japan had been defeated (“eye for an eye,” “punishment, torture,” etc.). In an often-quoted poll conducted in December 1944 asking “What do you think we should do with Japan as a country after the war?.” 13 percent of the respondents wanted to “kill all Japanese” and 33 percent supported destroying Japan as a political entity (the identical question asked for Germany on the same date omitted the option of killing all Germans, and found 34 percent of the American respondents in favor of destroying Germany as a nation). Like the soldier who confessed in 1945 that their goal had become killing rather than simply winning, even after the war ended and the Japanese turned their energies to the task of peaceful reconstruction, a surprising number of Americans expressed regrets that Japan surrendered so soon after the atomic bombs were dropped. A poll conducted by Fortune in December 1945 found that 22.7 percent of respondents wished the United States had had the opportunity to use “many more of them [atomic bombs] before Japan had a chance to surrender.”
The argument that Truman may have dropped the bomb even had Japan surrendered is a damn serious accusation of him contemplating a horrific war crime.
It’s one thing to devastate a city in order to bring the swift end to the deadliest total war in the history of the world.
It’s entirely another thing to unleash such devastation on a defenseless foe which has already agreed to surrender. Refusing to accept an unconditional surrender for the purpose of intimidating third parties would be nothing other than a war crime.
I can’t see how the suggestion that they would have is anything but an apparently baseless accusation of criminal intent.
This is an extraordinary claim which requires extraordinary evidence, for which there is nothing. Nothing at all in any of your links which suggests that this was actually being contemplated as a possibility.
To suggest that this should be considered as a possibility, you must address the war crime aspect of it and if the Truman administration, including Truman himself would commit such a horrific act.
This is entirely different than the question if bombing an enemy which wouldn’t give up also had another aspect of demonstrating to the world (read the USSR) the power of the bomb for other reasons (intimidation).
That can also be shown to not be a deciding factor, which will be discussed in another post, but the implication that Truman would have committed this war crime is absurd.
While further researching this topic, I ran across this.
It’s an hour and 12 minute-interview with Walker, and but there is also a transcript.
For those with more of a life than me, here is a summary of the key points, as I see them.
The debate needs to be in context of WWII, a massive conflict that killed perhaps 80 million people around the world.
After Germany was defeated, there was no prospect that the war with Japan would end soon or easily.
Japan was in dire straits, and some of the leaders knew that. They really should have surrendered in '44.
The key objective in the summer of 1945 was to end the war as quickly as possible. Service members were still dying and many more would die. The question was how to end the war.
Japan had large numbers of troops in China, Manchuria and Japan, although the quality of those at home wasn’t the best.
The bomb was designed to be used against our enemies and the assumption was that it would be used. It’s not like there were people in the government suggesting to Truman that it not be used.
Sec. of State Byrnes was convinced that the atomic bomb would help him in the negotiations with the Soviets, but Truman didn’t listen to him concerning the bombing of Japan because Byrnes wasn’t in the military and Truman listened to his military advisors for military matters.
Roosevelt was very concerned in the beginning of 1945 about the large number of Japanese troops in Manchuria and wanted the Soviets involved to tie them down. The blockage wasn’t as tight in January as it was later in spring and summer and they were concerned the troops would be recalled to Japan.
They discussed this at Yalta. Stalin was happy to get the concessions for more power in Asia in return. He agreed to enter the war within three months of the defeat of Germany.
Truman’s main objective at Potsdam in July was to get Stalin to commit to entering the war in August.
The US believed Japan would accept a constitutional monarchy and Japan was believing that they would be getting to keep their current type of government.
When the ambassador to Russia and the foreign minister were corresponding concerning possible negotiations with Russia, there is one famous wire which said that the only obstacle to surrender was the Allies’ demand for unconditional surrender. Some scholars have jumped on that as proof that they were ready to surrender if we had only modified the term.
However, Gen Marshall has the Chief of Intelligence, a general with experience in Japan, and he believed it possible to be a ploy to appeal to war-weariness in America. The US believed – with good reason – that Japan was not ready to surrender.
The two shocks of the atomic bombing and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria really hit them hard.
He stressed how much Truman wanted to end the war quickly.
He also discusses Truman’s reaction to the bombing and many other topics, but this is already long enough.
It’s clear that the modifying the terms would not have induced the Japanese to surrender sooner:
Also, the various discussion among the people in the State Department about possible benefits was not a major factor is the decision to drop the bomb.
It’s very interesting, and I will get the book.
An excellent book that has been referenced in other threads on this topic:
“Racing the Enemy”, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa
I’ve been doing some reading on the topic in the last few days, and it seems that much of @Moriarty 's assertions go back to Hasegawa’s thesis in Racing The Enemy.
I haven’t read Racing the Enemy (yet), but from what I can tell in the historiography, Hasegawa’s work led to new understanding of the maneuvering among the Japanese decision makers regarding the decision to surrender - indeed it seems to now be the standard take on the subject. He was also able to access a lot of archives in the former Soviet Union that were unavailable or unindexed/uncatalogued when Richard Frank wrote Downfall. So it’s a useful work from that standpoint.
Hasegawa’s look at the decision-making process from the U.S. side appears to be a little more suspect. I’d advocate that folks citing him would take a look at Frank’s commentary on Hasegawa at a history round table. It’s 38 pages, including footnotes, but I’ll reproduce the summary here:
Racing the Enemy is vitally important because it will move the debate over the end of the Pacific War to a much sounder footing as to the realities of 1945. It provides a quantum leap in our understanding of many political elements of ending the Pacific War, particularly in Japan and the Soviet Union. This work, however, distorts the whole picture by minimizing the military elements in both coverage and analysis, although it does properly acknowledge the issue of compliance of Japan’s armed forces with the surrender decision. The most provocative argument that President Truman and Secretary of State Byrnes deliberately dropped a guarantee of the imperial institution from the Potsdam Proclamation to assure Japan’s rejection and thereby justify the use of atomic weapons does not rise above a weak inference. It further ignores powerful evidence to the contrary.
A couple more… trenchant… commentaries on Racing the Enemy are a critical look at Hasegawa’s book, which references the historiography explicitly, and a rather sarcastic look at a couple of incidents from RtE where the author felt Hasegawa’s commentary on the primary source concealed rather than revealed.
Hasegawa’s thesis seems to be that once the atomic bomb had been demonstrated, Truman’s policy on forcing Japan’s surrender changed. Where previously he was attempting to involve the USSR so as to share the burden in terms of loss of life and treasure, he decided to try to keep the USSR out, and adhering to the unconditional surrender terms was a way to keep Japan fighting so that he could then use the bomb.
This is pretty darn serious in itself, though defensible in terms of national policy - but the criticism of Hasegawa’s book seems to be that he used this thesis to drive his interpretation of the facts, rather than the other way around.
Pretty much the whole world was pretty racist back then.
Thank you for at least acknowledging that there were some factions in the government who wanted to use the bomb, and who had purposes separate from Japanese surrender in mind.
I started with a (admittedly loaded) question, and I appreciate being able to refine my understanding of this part of American history. Clearly, there were a lot of competing interests, but I accept your point that there is no evidence that Truman ever sought to scuttle peace talks to be able to use the bomb.
As I’ve thought about this, though, I will note some things:
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the US had already been firebombing cities, creating mass destruction. The bombing of Tokyo is estimated to have killed 100,000. So at that point the US had already blurred the lines between the soldiers of Japan and the people of Japan, and it seems that there was some intended psychological impact that these attacks were supposed to have. So I don’t really think it’s fair to dispute a claim about possible US motives on the basis that “it’s a war crime”, when the country had already demonstrated that they were willing to use death as a form of intimidation.
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The need to use the bombs has been considered controversial from the very beginning. I’ve learned that the explanation that the US did it to avoid greater loss of life in a land invasion was the official US narrative from early on, and was done in reply to those who said that the US could have ended the war a different way (this includes claims from people like General MacArthur).
And while I can’t vouch for credibility, HERE is another disputed take about the need for the bomb (although I do note that it does not address the issue, referenced in an earlier post above, of convincing generals in the field to accept surrender):
Actually, I’d refer you to Gar Alperovitz (and also Martin Sherwin), who seems to come up the most as I read on this topic - such as the op ed, below.
Totally agreed. The US was not an outlier. But it’s also why I don’t think it’s absurd to entertain the notion that the US wasn’t worried too much about killing hundreds of thousands of Japanese in one fell swoop, or why they may have believed that Japanese people had inherently barbarous or loathsome traits, justifying their use as a political pawn.
If I understand this argument correctly, it derives in part from Truman’s personal account of the Potsdam meeting and his discussions with Stalin.
On July 17th, he alludes to some upcoming “dynamite” that will change the US/Russia dynamic.
The next day, after he is told of the successful testing of the bomb, Truman tells Stalin (who already had foreknowledge) and then discusses the importance of the bomb.
My emphasis
From these words, you might see where the idea gets its origins.
New Year’s interfered with a timely reply and then things got busy.
I’m not sure what you are thanking me for, because the sentence you quoted says the Byrnes interest in that aspect was meaningless. You would expect that Byrnes and the State Department would be interested in the aspect of the reaction by the Soviets, because the negotiations with the Soviets would be the responsibility of the State Department and they had no responsibility for ending the current war, which was the domain of the military.
Where the revisionist are wrong here is that the decision to drop the bomb was made by Truman on the advice of the military concerning how to get Japan to surrender. That was really the driving force of the decisions they were making in the summer of '45.
There was no debate or vote in a hypothetical war council on something like (1) if dropping the bomb was a good idea because it could cause the Japanese to surrender or (2) if dropping the bomb would be a signal to Russia.
Thank you for acknowledging Truman didn’t seek to scuttle peace talks but again, no. There wasn’t any “competing interests” and hence it’s impossible for that to be “clear.”
There was one single driving force, to force Japan to surrender, and another team tagged along with a vague, hypothetical of it somehow being able to help in future negotiations, what ever that means. What is clear, however is that the thoughts from the Sec. of State didn’t play any part in the decision making process for dropping the bombs.
For there to be competing interests, there would have had to have been a debate on dropping the bomb with some people saying yes, some people saying no, some of the yesses would be to making Japan surrender, and others to intimate the Russians. They had a bomb and they used to to try to make Japan surrender. Who cares what Byrnes was thinking. It didn’t matter.
There are people who argue that the fire bombings of Japan were war crimes, but that is outside of the scope of this debate. (They were horrific and I’ve written before about the personal experiences of my ex-wife’s parents as children in the firebombing. It was a horrible war and took horrible measures to end it. However, that is a question for another thread.)
Whatever the status of the firebombings war crime or not, refusing to accept a surrender from the Japanese in order to destroy a city in Japan for the express purpose of intimidating USSR, another country, is completely different than bombing the civilians of Japan to force the Japanese government to surrender.
You initially suggested that was the purpose of the atomic bombing, but seem to be backing off from that now so if you are no longer arguing that then it’s a moot point.
The complexity of the controversy is such that statements can’t always be taken at face value, even the active players. People’s interests can color their judgments and that must be examined with evaluating their arguments.
Had Japan not surrendered, the US and Allies were planning on invading Japan in Operation Downfall, with the proposed Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu on November 1, 1945. It would have been a massive effort and a large number of casualties. That would be followed in the spring of '46 with Operation Coronet.
There are questions about how many casualties were expected by the leaders at the time. Truman approved Olympic on June 18, '44 after being give the estimation of 40,000 total US casualties, which seems insanely low now, but it’s an interesting story.
In Okinawa, the US suffered between 75k to 82k casualties of a final invading force of 250,000 combat troops , against 76,000 IJA troops. In Kyushu, the initial invasions plans were based on very low numbers of IJA troops, and by August, they had drastically increased.
Magic intercepts where showing the buildup of Japanese troops on Kyushu. The Navy was worried enough they were having second thoughts about Olympic but MacArthur was discounting the intelligence. One thought is that because Olympic would have been his show, he didn’t want to cancel his day in the sun.