Howyadoin,
I remember reading or seeing somewhere that the US provided the Japanese government with a film of the Trinity A-bomb test to give them a warning and opportunity to surrender, which they refused to do. Can anyone confirm this?
Also, is it true that the Japanese refused to surrender after the attack on Hiroshima because they were gambling that the US could not produce another weapon?
Thanks!
-Rav
I’ve never heard of the U.S. giving the Japanese a film of the Trinity tests prior to the dropping of the A-Bomb. I can’t say it didn’t happen but it would surprise me if this turned out to be true.
We did, however, drop several hundred-thousand leaflets on Japan saying something to the effect of “Surrender or else” which of course were studiously ignored.
After the first a-bomb dropped Japan still wasn’t interested in surrendering. After the second one landed the military still wasn’t in any mood to surrender (except if the U.S. accepted a ridiculous negotiated peace where Japan kept much of its war won gains). Japan had no idea how many A-Bombs the US possessed which is a good thing since I think it would have taken the US 6 months to make another bomb after the first two were gone. If they had know that they might well have tried to continue the war longer.
It took the intervention of the Emperor to force a complete surrender and even then some faction in the military tried a coup to take the government and continue the war (it didn’t succeed fortunately).
No, the US definitely made no move to warn Japan whatsoever. It was debated in secret, but they decided that the element of surprise was crucial.
No, Japan did not suspect that the US had no more weapons, it took them at least a couple of days to even determine what kind of weapon it was. They had no idea that we could make even ONE bomb, let alone 2. For all they knew, we had an infinite supply of them.
i heard somewhere tht the Japanese govt./ whoever’s in charge of this kinda stuff. insisted that the first bomb was a natural disaster, and that the americans had done nothing more than predict it.
maybe i’m wrong. But that got into my head somehow! and i wanna know how!
No, the US did not provide a film of the Trinity test to the Japanese. Consult THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB by Richard Rhodes.
The story I heard from my “War Since Napoleon” professor was that we announced on the front pages of newspapers across the country the general idea behind the nuclear bomb the day after the first one was dropped. The Japanese scientists had calculated how much uranium would be needed for a nuclear bomb (or perhaps got the information from the German scientists who had made the same calculations) and concluded incorrectly that we could not possibly have enough uranium for any more of them. After the second one was dropped, all they knew was that they were wrong.
That’s a pretty speculative argument, waterj2. The Germans had been misinformed by Heisenberg that an atomic bomb would take many tons of fissile material, which is one reason they abandoned their bomb program. Whether Heisenberg made an error or was deliberately lying is unknown even unto today. But this is also a reason why the Japanese did not initially believe this was an atomic weapon. If anything, they didn’t believe we could make even ONE atomic bomb, so the weapon was beyond anything they could imagine.
The closest the Allies came to warning Japan was this. The Japanese leaders evidently didn’t feel too threatened, as mentioned here.
As Whack-a-mole has already pointed out, the US did make warnings, but only non-specific ones. As the Scientific Panel of the Interim Committee designated with making recommendations to the President, Ernest Lawrence, Arthur Compton, Fermi and Oppenheimer convened in the immediate aftermath of Trinity to see whether they could think of something short of direct use on a Japanese city (but including using one of the bombs in a demo) that might convince them to surrender. They couldn’t. If the issue of releasing the film had been specifically raised, I presume that the counter argument would be that the Japanese would (not unreasonably) dismiss the film as faked.
A correction on the timescale. The US had a third core ready for shipment to Tinian on August 13th, so a third attack would have been a matter of weeks rather than months. On p226-7 of Dark Sun, Rhodes notes that in the autumn of 1945, Oak Ridge was producing enough U235 for 6 Little Boy/Hiroshima weapons a year and Hanford enough plutonium for ten to twelve Fat Man/Nagasaki ones. Not all of these need have been earmarked for strategic bombing against civilians, since tactical use as part of an invasion was being considered.
(There appears to be some confusion on Rhodes’ part about what then actually happened. On p261 he says that the Bikini test in July 1946 used two out of the lone trio of cores that the US had at the time. However, on p765 of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, he claims that in June 1946, they had nine Fat Man bombs, though only initiators for seven. Hewlett and Anderson don’t seem to give specific numbers in The New World, 1936/1946 (Penn State, 1962), but their remarks on p631 point to a severe shortage in 1946. That peacetime rates failed to match Groves’ 1945 estimates is not significant - the programme ran into severe administrative problems as wartime personnel left at the first opportunity.)
In Playboy’s interview with the founder of Sony, Akio Morita, he says that, during the war, he was in the Japanese Army’s science department to develop new weapons. They concluded that an atomic bomb would be too expensive and take much too long. So they concentrated on trying to build a ‘death ray’ to shoot down enemy planes.
When Hiroshima was destroyed Morita said that everyone in the department new it was an atomic bomb. However they were surprised that America had the resources to build one so quickly.
Although he doesn’t say so, they may have gambled that we didn’t have any more.
Well, one problem for the Japanese military high command was that Hiroshima was so obliterated that nobody outside knew what the fuck happened. For the first time, a city was wiped out in a single blast. Although firebombing at the end of WWII had similar effects; a firestorm didn’t occur in seconds.
If the USA was threatening utter destruction, as Truman declared at Postdam–something like “[or else] face a ruin of destruction from the air that the like of which has never been seen on Earth [my paraphrase]”, it seems like the Japanese weren’t buying or didn’t believe an A bomb possible.
Once the first bomb had been dropped, the US was dumbfounded at a lack of response. The US (and Japan) weren’t prepared for the utter destruction that occured. The US didn’t realize that there was nobody left in Hiroshima that could communicate what happened, and the Japanese military didn’t realize why that occured.
There was also pressure for the military to drop two bombs no matter what, just to prove that the US had more than one bomb. And if you [Japan] don’t surrender, more will follow.
The 2 books that wampus and bonzer mention are good reads on the subject of the creation of the A bomb and H bomb.
It’s not a myth then, people actually read the articles. 
On a more serious note, from Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts:
“When the second atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, in 1945, the United States had only one more atomic bomb in reserve. But the second attack convinced Emperor Hirohito to surrender. He has concluded that the first bomb, on Hiroshima, was not a fluke, and that the U.S. could produce more of the terrible weapons.”
In fact, General Clarke decided well before Hiroshima that there would be two attacks for precisely that reason.
That’s simply not true. Plenty of people survived the initial explosion. Even a bomb as big as an A-bomb dissipates over distance. Sooner or later there’ll be people at the edges who survive and can relate what they saw (even if their story sounded crazy at the time).
In addition, the Americans were quite aware of what they had on their hands. They had done the Trinity tests if nothing else. The full magnitude (burning city, radiation poisoning, etc.) may not have been entirely understood or at least appreciated but they knew they’d get one helluva BIG bang. I’d bet money that America expected at least a few people to survive (they knew they’d smash most of the city but not all of it to the point of 100% casualties).
Within the space of a few days, Japan experienced the following: a thousand plane air raid on Tokyo (which destroyed a majority of the city); the atomic bombing of Hiroshima; the Soviet declaration of war and overrunning of Manchuria (the Red Army advanced at approx 50 miles per day); and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. Considering all of the above along with Japan’s already precarious military and economic status, Emperor Hirohito decided to call it a day.
It’s difficult to determine exactly what weight each of these factors held in leading to this decision. It’s certainly impossible to declare what might have happened in the absense of any of them. In my opinion, the people who propose that a practice demonstration of the atomic bomb before Japanese witnesses would have guaranteed a surrender are arguing against history. Whatever else you say about it, the bombing of Hiroshima was an effective demonstration of what the bomb was capable of. Despite this, Japan didn’t surrender until after a second city was bombed. There’s no reason to assume a practice bombing would have achieved anything the actual bombing did not.
whack-a-mole–sure, there were survivors of the blast, my point was that the first dropping of an Atomic Bomb was unprecendented. Hiroshima was destruction unexperienced–ever.
You say survivors could relate what happened?
To whom and how? There weren’t modern means of communication back then. The second bomb followed quickly–3 days at the most?
I agree lots of people survived, but I think they would be in such a state of total shock, if not physically fucked up, that it would hinder the word to Tokyo. To read about the survivors’ experiences is pretty grim–paint shadows and skin falling off and worse.
It’s been years since I’ve read Rhodes’ book about the “Making of the Atomic Bomb” but I pretty sure I’m still correct in saying the Japanese didn’t understand what happened at Hiroshima when the Nagasaki bomb dropped.
If I’m wrong, this MB is about clearing up ingnorance.
On further reflection, I guess I should add that even if the Japanese military command did get word of the bomb’s effects, wasn’t their structure of command so rigid that they couldn’t evaluate the facts in time?
If they did have the info on Hiroshima, they were probably debating it while a plane flies to the second target. Small comfort for the citizens of Nagasaki (which wasn’t even the primary target that day, IIRC).
Not really. The Tokyo firebombing that preceded the Hiroshima blast was far more destructive, both in terms of area destroyed and casualties. But in terms of quality rather than quantity, nothing has ever come close to a whole city evaporating in a single instant.