On August 9, 1945, the U.S. dropped the second atom bomb, this time on Nagasaki. Hiroshima gets the most attention for being first, but Nagasaki was the one that ended the war. Initially, the Japanese city of Kokura, an important manufacturer of munitions, was the target. However conditions over Kokura made the bomb delivery difficult and the bombers went to Nagasaki as their secondary target.
The Japanese government had not reacted to the Hiroshima bomb on August 6. The war council still insisted on four conditions for surrender: the preservation of the Emperor, disarmament being the responsibility of the Imperial Headquarters, no occupation of the Japanese Home Islands, Korea, or Formosa, and delegation of the punishment of war criminals to the Japanese government. After Nagasaki, Japan dropped all of the conditions except preserving the Emperor, and he announced the surrender.
Probably it would have been better if World War II could have been ended without opening the Pandora’s box of atomic weapons. But, it’s difficult to say that their discovery would have been far off in any case. However, I have little patience for those who make the American decision to use the atomic bomb as unconscionable and try to paint Japan as a sympathetic victim. Japan was under the leadership of war mongers and, once that type gets control, it is difficult to dislodge them. Their treatment of conquered peoples had been deplorable, and their defense was tenacious. The bombs made victory swift and complete. Internalization of the defeat by the population and the resulting peace could be structured in a way that made pernicious “stabbed in the back” (post WWI Germany) or “Lost Cause” (post Civil War South) mythologies less likely to arise. This is to say nothing of the Americans who would not have to die invading Japan to end World war II.
The formal surrender of Japan would take place on the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945. We don’t need to be proud of the bombing at Nagasaki but neither, I think, do we need to be ashamed of it.
Dog, utter and complete defeat leaves little earth for pernicious mythologies to sprout. But surrender of Imperial Japan was not preordained by the nuclear fallout. There were factions of Japanese leadership that wished to continue the war even at the potential risk of future nukes. And given the-then current demolished state of nearly all Japanese cities, the rubble could only bounce and be rearranged.
There are also those that argue that the entry of the Soviet Union was the event that precipitated the surrender and that the nukes were not the conclusive event requiring surrender.
Truman, was without options. Had he not used the weapons and hundred of thousands of American lives and millions of Japanese lives would have been lost in the invasion, he would have suffered a fate worse than political death. If the weapons had not produced surrender, he had at least given the nukes a shot at the Japanese at being bombed to the surrender table.
The debated “demonstration drop” on Tokyo Bay or a deserted island could have been rationalized away by the Japanese last stand faction as overhyped or underperforming. And perhaps not capable of being repeated. Had the US owned three or four nukes in August of 1945, a demonstration blast could have been a range-finding straight left hand.If the Japaneses wished to block the punch or duck it, they could. But the right hand was cocked and ready with the knockout blow.
But Truman had only two and he had to use them. Moral judgements will continued to made and debated. But real politik left Truman only one option. The one that might work.
I agree with Mr. Masson’s comments. For those who would like a lengthier analysis that tries to fit the use of atomic bombs into the context of the times, “Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45” by Max Hastings is an excellent book. The title may foreshadow Mr. Hastings conclusion, but it’s still a worthwhile read.
I might be guilty of trying to find silver linings, but I believe that one outcome of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the fact that the world was introduced to nuclear weapons not as theoretical constructs or demonstrations on deserted islands but as hideous weapons that did awful things to people, causing agonizing deaths in horrible ways that no one had imagined possible. I believe that we owe the lack of nuclear weapons use since 1945, at least in part, to the horror visited on Japan and to the world’s revulsion to that horror.
Japan was no sympathetic victim. But I do not know what to make of the blood red mist that the hear and flames carried up to the to the bomber crews when Tokyo was cooked on March 9, 1945. Far more Japanese were incinerated in the firebombing raids than the two nuclear blasts. It is hard to develop a scale of unconscionability when General Curtis LeMay was walking around his office repeating the word “Dresden.”, a city of no military value that And when 2000 tons of incendiaries have an equivalent effect of a few pounds of enriched uranium or plutonium.
The use of nukes at the end of World War Two may have chilled their use for awhile. But only the threat of unacceptable retaliation has kept nukes in their boxes. Hence the reason North Korea, India, Pakistan and Israel own them. And Sadam prayed for them. Leaders and their war-whooping citizens have very short memories, always believing that this time may be different.
War consistently finds the howling heart of evil in human beings. No shame in that, is their?
I cut off some of my last post. LeMay ordered the firebombing of Japan. But LeMay had no illusions. He said that if the US lost the war, he would be tried as a war criminal. On that point he was correct. Victory hands the pen of absolution to the winners and consigns the gallows and the archaeologists’ spade to the vanquished.
Dresden was a German City of disputed military value that was firebombed in February of 1945.
I heard an interview yesterday with a professor at the Army War College. He made many good points
First, the US was war weary and running out of men and materials. (I had heard this about the European Theater, also). Second, the US wanted to keep the Soviet Union out of the war. The Soviets where able to attack Japanese occupation forces in Manchuria and walked over them and into Korea. (It took them only 11 days.) This was an event the US did not want o happen and a strong precpitating factor in the Japanese surrender.
China was also a big factor in the US desiring the war to end. There were many Japanese Occupation forces in China that the US did not wish to take on. And the Soviet Union could turn south and invade China.