In 1945, President Truman gave permission to US Army to use atomic bombs in Japan to make them surrender and finally end the World War II, and he succeeded because Japan did surrender after the use of the bombs. At first, most people were glad that the war was finally over, however, after people have learned the effects of the bomb, they have became cynical about the topic. People have divided into two groups, which are traditionalists, state that the bomb was necessary to end the war and Truman took the logical action, and revisionists, people who criticize Truman and argue that Truman’s use of A-bomb was unnecessary and that it is morally unacceptable. There are some big questions about the bombing and points that both sides still argue about. These are, “Was using the Bomb moral or unmoral?”, “Would Japan surrender if the conditions were changed”, and “Could Truman do anything else?”. Both revisionists and traditionalists have strong arguments, but after reading both sides I decided to argue that best option that Truman could take was bombing Hiroshima, it was necessary and the most pragmatic option.
Revisionists see the bombing as a “crime against humanity” (Awan. 16) because Hiroshima bombing have killed around “250,000” (17) people, so they support the argument that Truman is a war criminal. “How could the killing of 100,000 civilians in a day for a political purpose ever be considered anything but a crime?” (Powers. 31) While it is true that many people died during the battles, many people don’t see Japan as evil as Germany, so that they feel sympathy over the civilians who died in Japan but don’t feel anything about German civilian casualties. About this hypocrisy, BBC Historian, Professor Duncan Anderson stated that: ”Despite the firestorms in German cities, despite the murder and rape of millions of German women and children by the advancing Soviets, the defeat of Nazi Germany is still seen in terms that are morally unambiguous.” (52) After German military’s notorious actions, did German civilians had to be murdered or raped? The moral answer is no. That’s not what happened in Germany, many civilians died and raped by soldiers because their government was “evil” but, many turn a blind eye on what happened there. However, Japan wasn’t all that innocent. Looking at Rape of Nanking (1937), The Bangka Island Massacre (1942), The Bataan Death March (1942), The Sandakan Death March (1945), Murder and cannibalism on the Kokoda Track (1942), Conscripting women for sexual slavery in Japanese Army brothels (1937-1945) shows that Japan committed many war crimes. There is an estimation, by R.J Rummel, of “3,000,000 to over 10,000,000”(1) total deaths and thousands of rape victims. Most of these people were “Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, Filipinos, and Indochinese, among others, including Western prisoners of war.”(1) Japan wasn’t an innocent country and they were a threat to both Asia and Europe and they were dangerous as Germany. They didn’t care about the “rules of the war”, so they had to be stopped. Another related argument is that Hiroshima wasn’t a military target. Thomas Powers stated that: “calling Hiroshima an army base seemed a cruel joke” (32). But, Hiroshima had military importance, “It contained the 2nd Army Headquarters, which commanded the defence of all of southern Japan. The city was a communications centre, a storage point, and an assembly area for troops.” (Avalon Project. Chapter 6). Also, Emperor asked everyone to work for their nation. The ones who were too young or too old to work left the city because of a “systematic evacuation ordered by the Japanese government” (Avalon Project, Chapter 6). The population of Hiroshima was “380,000” (Avalon Project, Chapter 6) in the pre-war era. But until the bombing, it “steadily decreased” (Avalon Project, Chapter 6). Thus, Hiroshima wasn’t a civilian target and even though bombing it had some disputes over whether if it was unmoral or not, Hiroshima was the right target and Truman shouldn’t be blamed for casualties of Japan.
Revisionists, such as Gar Alperovitz, claim that US leaders made “it harder for Japan to surrender” (22) by not letting Japan keep their emperor and asking for an unconditional surrender, so that Japan wouldn’t surrender and they can try their new weapon on Japan. Opposingly, traditionalists argue that if Japan did actually wanted to surrender, they would accept the unconditional terms, however they didn’t want any intervention by the Allies after their surrender. Professor Duncan Anderson states that: ”the Japanese were demanding very much more than a guarantee of the emperor’s safety, for example a guarantee of no Allied occupation of Japan, before they would consider serious negotiations.“ (57) This is unacceptable because, as I said in the last paragraph, Japan was a danger to both Asia and Europe, they were a global threat, and letting go a country, just like that, is not a great way to prevent future conflicts and wars, which is the main reason behind a peace treaty. He was “an all-powerful warlord, who had guided Japan’s aggressive expansion at every turn.” (Anderson. 57) Japan had a military regime that was very aggressive and had expansionist politics. Allies didn’t want to let the military leaders who started the war in the first place, stay in control. In an hypothetical scenario, where they didn’t make Emperor accept the surrender, even though some military leaders would surrender, many of them wouldn’t, for example the soldiers in Chinese mainland, and they would continue fighting independently. But, when the Emperor surrenders, every military leader must surrender, because he is the highest on their hierarchy. Thus, letting Japan keeping their Emperor might cause problems, after a while. Allies didn’t make it harder for Japan to surrender, they were thinking ahead of time and wanted to prevent potential future conflict.
Most important question about this argument is, could Truman do anything else? Allies were thinking about an invasion to Japanese main island through Kyushu. There are some arguments over the number of causalities. Thomas Powers says, General MacArthur believed that they would “suffer about 95,000 casualties in the first ninety days—a third of them deaths.” (26). Revisionists, use these numbers to show that there would be less casualties, if USA did an invasion instead of using their nukes. Also they say that the Japanese army was mostly gone. “The Japanese navy mainly rested on the bottom of the ocean; supply lines to the millions of Japanese soldiers in China and other occupied territories had been severed; the Japanese air force was helpless to prevent the almost nightly raids by fleets of B-29 bombers, which had been systematically burning Japanese cities since March; and Japanese petroleum stocks were close to gone.” (Powers. 27) However, most estimates made by the army were lower than the estimation made by others. Anderson states: “These were shown to be the product of General MacArthur’s desire that an invasion should take place, one that he would command…” (Anderson, 56). MacArthur was trying to convince the president so that he could lead the one of the biggest invasions that would take place in the war. Thus, people shouldn’t take his estimations as fact because he was merely trying to persuade Truman to let him attack. As a general he wanted to achieve success in an invasion. Also, other researches made by Japanese and Western historians, after the war, show that Japan had “8,000 aircraft” (Anderson, 57) ready to do kamikaze attacks, kamikaze boats, “over two million well equipped regular soldiers, backed by a huge citizen’s militia.” (Anderson, 57) Huge citizen’s militia is a very important aspect, because guerrilla warfare is very difficult to handle, it’s much harder to fight a war, in a country, where everybody, even little kids, are potential threats. Any reasonable president would say no to an invasion like that and it would be very inconsiderate. Letting thousands of Americans die just not to use a new weapon technology would have been illogical. Truman did the right thing by not letting anything to his luck and using to bomb saved many lives from both sides.
In conclusion, maybe the discussion between traditionalists and revisionists will never come to a conclusion. The Hiroshima Bombing wasn’t a crime against humanity or a war crime, because Truman thought about other options and chose the best for his country. He wanted to end the war quickly as possible and with lowest number of casualties that he could achieve. Until US used the A-bomb on Japan, Japanese weren’t thinking about surrendering, they were going to fight with everything they left. Truman did everything and gave more than one chance to Japan and tried to make them surrender, at the end, his last option was the A-Bomb to make Japan surrender. Ergo the bomb was necessary.
Works Cited
Alperovitz, Gar. Hiroshima After Sixty Years: The Debate Continuous. Wednesday, August 3, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
Anderson, Prof. Duncan. Nuclear Power: The End of the War Against Japan. Published on BBC
History: 2005-06-22. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/nuclear_01.shtml
Avalon Project. The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Powers, Thomas. Hiroshima: Was it Right? The Atlantic Monthly, July 1995
Potsdam Declaration. Proclamation Defining Terms for Japanese Surrender Issued, at Potsdam, July 26, 1945. http://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/etc/c06.html
Rummel, R.J. Statistics Of Japanese Democide Estimates, Calculations, And Sources. Statistics of Democide, 1997.
U.S. Department of State Archive. The Yalta Conference, 1945.
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