Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Truman's decision to use the A-bomb

I've been posting a number of different perspectives here on the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombings and various implications of them.

Although I disagree with his position that he takes, i.e., that he would not have used the bomb had he been in Harry Truman's place in 1945, religious scholar Martin Marty uses the kind of reasoning that I think is appropriate in considering this issue ("Would You Have Dropped the Bomb?" Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/Aug print edition) :

First, an acknowledgment: Among post-Franklin D. Roosevelt presidents, Harry S. Truman is my favorite. I would not judge him casually.

Second, a handicap: Were I a pure pacifist, that "no" would come more easily. However, I am a peace-minded realist who reckons with the occasional necessity of participation in war. I saw then, and I see now, no way for the United States to have avoided its encounter with and response to Japanese militarism.

And third, a preliminary: I empathize with President Truman and the many, many thousands of G.I.’s (and their families) who were in jeopardy and might have lost their lives had there been an invasion of Japan.

Strategic bombing in the Second World War

Marty also puts his analysis of the first use of the atomic bomb in the larger context of the "strategic bombing" of the Second World War, which the US continues to use, including in the Iraq War.  The effectiveness and desirability of strategic bombing is highly questionable.  And while the decision-makers at the time did not know then what we know now about the results, that understanding has to be incorporated into our looking back at the decision to use the bomb in 1945.

But he also makes use of the post-Hiroshima understanding of nuclear weapons as qualitatively different from conventional explosives - and even other "weapons of mass destruction" like chemical and biological weapons.

... the unleashing of the almost unlimited destructive potential of atomic warfare meant a qualitative leap in mass violence, even for what our nation conceived as a good goal: an earlier end to the war.

This distinction is crucial, as those who grapple with the question of dropping the first bomb on Hiroshima - the second bombing, of Nagasaki, is much further beyond the range of the morally defensible - must also allow that the United States, its allies, and enemies had been bombing civilian centers since 1941. Yet the atomic bomb’s fearsomeness, its pandemic effects of radiation,and its capacity to end not only lives but civilizations, made it that much worse than the firebombings that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Tokyo andlsewhere. This is what represented the quantum leap indestructive potential and occasioned more reasons for moral opposition.

Historian Barton Bernstein has studied the Truman administration and the decision to use the bomb in particular.  This 1995 article of his unfortunately does not appear to be available online: "Understanding the Atomic Bomb and the Japanese Surrender: Missed Opportunities, Little-Known Near Disasters, and Modern Memory" Diplomatic History Spring 1995.  But he discussed the issues in that article as well as I've ever seen presented.

Bernstein makes the critical distinction between evaluating the decision to use the bomb given what policymakers knew at the time, and the retroactive analysis of the decision and its implications. He puts the decision into that critically important framework of conventional strategic bombing and the assumptions behind it.  And he stresses the ways in which the Second World War reshaped people's thinking about war:

World War II was a terribly bloody war. It killed many millions and maimed many more. It helped transform morality. It ushered in the atomic age. It dramatized the dark side of human capacity and prompted some to redefine "human nature." In America, the war - with its barbarism - was a helpful midwife in the shift in liberal sensibility from the optimistic rationality of John Dewey to the emphasis on the pessimistic irrationality of Reinhold Niebuhr. For some, the names of Buchenwald, Dachau, and Auschwitz would be joined, perhaps uneasily, to Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo, and occasionally also to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were not moral equivalents, because intentional genocide and intentional mass killing of some non-combatants were not morally identical, but all were powerful testimonials to the fact of massive deaths organized by nation-states, implemented by modern warriors, and endorsed by their civilian populations.

Strategic bombing took an enormous toll on civilians.  The idea behind it was to strike targets like armaments factories and key transportation centers.  But those were typicallyt in or near large urban areas like Berlin, Tokyo and Hamburg.  Lots of civilians were inevitably killed, even when the bombs actually managed to strike a "strategic" target.

Deliberately killing civilians was a violation of the laws of war.  Bombing a city for strategic purposes, even knowing that tens of thousands of civilian deaths would be "collateral" damage, was legal.  And it was generally accepted by all sides inb the Second World War as morally legitimate in war.

As anyone can imagine who witnessed the war fever over the Iraq War in the US and the defenses of criminal, sadistic torture by war fans, as the Second World War progressed British and American concern over "collateral" civilian deaths was progressively eroded.

In discussing the discussion over the bombing of German targets late in the war, Tami Davis Biddle writes ("Sifting Dresden's Ashes," Wilson Quarterly Spring 2005):

The absence of debate [about civilian casualties] reflected the degree to which the years of war had hardened attitudes.  In September 1939, Roosevelt had issued an appeal for every government engaged in war to affirm publicly that it would not be the first to bomb civilians or "unfortified cities." In response, the French and British jointly declared that they would spare civilian populations and government property.  The Germans said that they welcomed the president's appeal and would bomb only military targets, but their attacks on Warsaw and Rotterdam quickly rendered these claims hollow.  By 1945, the last tatters of the pledges of 1939 to protect noncombatants were removed.

How Japan was to be conquered

To understand the context of 1945 decision-making on the A-bomb, we have to remember that Truman and most of his advisers did not have the understanding described by Martin Marty above of atomic (and later nuclear) weapons being qualitatively different from conventional weapons.  The immense destructive power of atomic weapons made it in practice impossible to limitrisk to acceptable levels once other countries developed the bomb.

Truman, George Marshall, Henry Stimson and others involved int he process saw the A-bomb as a bigger version of the bombs already being used. (I don't want to overstate the point; they clearly new that this was a major scientific and technological breakthrough.) And, as Bernstein writes - also a critical point - "Truman did not really expect [except for a brief burst of enthusiasm recorded in his diary on June 18] that one [atomic] bomb or two would produce a speedy Japanese surrender."

In the period since, the American folklore version has tended to be, we dropped the A-bombs and then the Japanese surrendered, recognizing America's infinitely superior technological power.  If we look at the use of the A-bomb as a surefire war-ending decision, then we inevitably frame any analysis of it in terms of other possible alternative ways to end the war.

In August 1945, the plan for defeating Japan involved the following major elements: (1) a naval blockade; (2) continued conventional strategic bombing, to be supplemented by the atomic bombings; (3) an invasion by the Soviet Red Army into Japanese-held Manchuria and Korea in August; (4) an American invasion of Kyushu (Japan's third-largest island) in November; and, (5) an American invasion of Honshu (the main island) around March 1946.

It was hoped that Japan would surrender sooner rather than later in this process.  But the A-bomb was still a largely unknown quantity.  There had been one successful test of a bomb.  There were three bombs remaining in the arsenal.  Each of the four had a different design.  The one successful test at Trinity had been done with the bomb in a stable position.  There was no guarantee that any of the three remaining ones would work under the conditions of being dropped from a plane - or even work at all.

Bernstein examines the five most plausible alternatives to the use of the bomb and gives his reasons for why they are problematic.  Although his article is no simple polemic in favor of the decision to use the bomb; he clearly takes the possible alternatives seriously.

1. The only alternative to using the bomb that was seriously considered by Truman and his advisers was a non-combat demonstration. This would have involved inviting Japanese observers to see a test of the A-bomb in hopes that seeing its destructive power would make them realize their military prospects were hopeless.  The problems with this approach are fairly obvious.  For one thing, there were only three bombs left, none of them exactly like the one tested.  If the demonstration test failed, it might even strengthen Japanese resolve to fight on.  If the demonstration succeeded but the Japanese did not surrender, there would have been only two bombs remaining - again neither of them sure to explode properly.

And historical information now available casts great doubt on whether such a demonstration would have met its purpose.  Bernstein writes:

In retrospect, given what we now know of the strong opposition among the "miltiarists" in the Japanese government even after two atomic bombings and Soviet entry, it is difficult to believe that a non-combat demonstration, even if preceded by a warning, would have produced a surrender before 1 November 1945 and the likely invasion of Kyushu.  ... And the likelihood is even skimpier of a warning, wouth such a demonstration, being successful.

The Soviets entered the war after the Hiroshima bombing but before the Nagasaki blast.

2. Another alternative would have been to modify the surrender terms and guarantee that the Emperor could remain.  Bernstein argues that the retention of the Emperor - which was eventually the one condition granted in the surrender terms - was not the only sticking point prior to the use of the A-bomb and the entry of the Soviets.  "The militarists wanted honor, which meant far more than just a guarantee of the imperial system," he writes.  He believes that the Japanese prior to the bomb would have insisted also on no postwar occupation, "self-disarmament  and holding their own war crimes trials.  The United Nations coalition was simply not prepared to accept a condition of no occupation, in particular.

3. The third alternative he discusses to pursuing Japanese peace feelers.  Bernstein mentions several such initiatives.  But he argues that they were simply to weak for American policymakers to have taken seriously.  Especially because the US had access to secret high-level Japanese cables that indicated little intention to negotiate a peace at that point.

4. Another possible alternative would have been to wait until the USSR entered the war before dropping the bomb.  Bernstein thinks that in retrospect this may well have been a "missed opportunity" to avoid the use of the A-bomb.  Yet he concludes:

But such a possibility was not adequately understood in late July or early August.  And delaying the A-bomb would have seemed a very risky, and unnecessary, gamble - far too risky for men not seeking to avoid its use.

The latter point is worth stressing.  There was a general assumption that the bomb would be used when it was available.  Truman and his advisers were not seeking to avoid its use.

5. The last alternative he examines is relying on conventional bombing and the naval blockade without the use of the A-bomb.  Bernstein believes that this was the alternative with the most potential.  But here again, we're dealing with a counter-factual possibility:

But the question remains, to be asked even after nearly a half-century, whether Japan's military leaders would have been willing to surrender, or whether they would have insisted on fighting at Kyushu and perhaps at Honshu, too?  The movement from recognizing defeat to offering surrender can be jagged, and the process can be filled with self-deception, the quest for glory, and the faith in hope.  Surrender, for many leaders, can be the most devastating failure - an event to be resisted at great cost to self and others.

I find Bernstein's argument compelling.  Certainly in retrospect, I would prefer to have seen more effort to avoid the use of the A-bombs.  But in terms of the decision that Truman and his advisers had to make, based on their state of knowledge at the time, I believe that I would have made the same decision in their place.

Post-bombing considerations

But even if one argues, as I do, that the decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki was justifiable for Truman, there's no need for pretending that there weren't ugly sides to that decision.  On August 11, 1945, just after the two bombings, Truman wrote to Samuel McCrea Cavert, the General Secretary of the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, a message that reflected much of the mood of the time. Cavert had cabled Truman that "many Christians [are] deeply disturbed over use of atomic bombs against Japanese cities because of their necessarily indiscriminate destructive efforts [sic] and because their use sets extremely dangerous precedent for future of mankind."

Truman responded:

Nobody is more disturbed over the use of Atomic bombs than I am but I was greatly disturbed over the unwarranted attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor and their murder of our prisoners of war.  The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.

When  you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him like a beast.  It is most regrettable but nevertheless true.

Yet just two days before, Truman had written to Senator Richard Russell in a very different vein.  The fact that he used similar imagery in a seemingly opposite way indicates to me that Truman at that point was conflicted in his view of the bombing:

I know that Japan is a terribly cruel and uncivilized nation in warfare but I can’t bring myself to believe that, because they are beasts, we should ourselves act in the same manner.

For myself, I certainly regret the necessity of wiping out whole populations because of the "pigheadedness’ of the leaders of a nation and for your information, I am not going to do it unless it is absolutely necessary. It is my opinion that after the Russians enter into war the Japanese will very shortly fold up.

My object is to save as many American lives as possible but I also have a humane feeling for the women and children in Japan.

Additional resources:

The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb: Documents: this Truman Library site provides some of the key original documents.

This Web page for a course at the University of Colorado has a number of links to documents and commentary: Debating the American Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb.

The American Experience | Race for the Super Bomb: Web site of a PBS program on building the bomb.

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