In the summer of 1945, the President of the United States Harry Truman was seeking a decisive strike against the Japanese Empire. In spite of many victories of the allies during 1944 and 1945, Truman believed that the Emperor Hirohita would insist that his generals continue the struggle. The United States had suffered 76 000 casualties in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and the Truman administration anticipated that a prolonged invasion of Japanese territory would bring even more devastating losses. Nevertheless, Washington elaborated plans for a final assault against Japan that was called Operation Downfall.

The estimates of the possible mortalities were terrifying. The heads of the General Staff estimate that the victims would be 1.2 million. Admiral Chester Nimitz and General Douglas MacArthur foresaw over (US) 1000 losses daily, while the Navy Department estimated that the total would reach four million. They calculated that the Japanese enemies would suffer up to ten million losses. The daily Los Angeles Times, a bit more optimistic, projected “only” a million deaths.

From these figures, it was hardly surprising that the United States decided for the nuclear option when they dropped the “Little Boy” bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 and then the “Fat Man” on Nagasaki on August 9. Japan surrendered 24 days later, thus avoiding the terrifying estimates of millions of US deaths cited here.

“This is the narrative taught in the schools of the United States. But as with so many other historical versions, it was excessively simple and historically false”[1], says Alan Mosely in an article published in the Russian “Strategic Culture Online Journal”, on December 31, 2018.

When President Truman approved the deployment of the new atomic bombs, he was convinced that the Japanese planned to continue the war to the bitter end. Many have argued that the estimates of victims obliged him to act with caution for the lives of US soldiers who were in the Pacific, but this version ignores that other figures close to Truman had reached the opposite conclusion.

General Dwight D Eisenower said: “I was against the use of the atomic bomb for two reasons. First, because the Japanese were ready to surrender and it was not necessary to strike them with the horrendous bomb. Second, because I hated that our country would be the first to use this weapon”.

The same argument was employed by then Secretary of War Henry Stimson in 1945, who recalls in his memoires: “I expressed my grave doubts, in the first place because I believed that Japan had already been defeated and that it was quite unnecessary to launch the bomb, and in second place because I believed that our country should not scandalize world public opinion through the use of a weapon whose deployment, in my opinion, was not obligatory as a measure to save US lives. It was my belief that Japan was, in those moments, searching for a way to surrender with as little cost as possible.”

Fleet Admiral William Leahy, the highest ranking military figure on active service during the Second World War and one of the principal military advisors of Harry Truman, wrote in his book I Was There, published in 1950: “The use of this barbarous weapon in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not of any material use in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender due to the effective maritime blocking and the successive bombing with conventional arms.”

The review Foreign Policy writes that the most critical day for Japan was August 9, the first day on which the Japanese Supreme Council met to seriously discuss the rendition. The date is significant, not because it was just after the bombardment of Hiroshima, but because it was day after the Soviet Union entered the theatre of the Pacific war, invading, on three fronts, Manchuria occupied by the Japanese. Before August 8, the Japanese had hoped that Russia would be an intermediary in the negotiations for the end of the war, but when the Russians declared against Japan, they became an even greater threat for the Japanese than the United States.

The position of Russia, in fact, obliged the Japanese to consider unconditional surrender. Up until then, they were only open to a conditional surrender that would guarantee the Emperor Hirohito some dignity and protection in the face of judgements for war crimes. Foreign Policy concludes with the opinion that, as in the European theatre, Truman did not defeat Japan, Stalin did.

Truman never repented publically for his decision to employ the atomic bombs. Nevertheless, later studies, supported by testimony of surviving Japanese leaders who were involved, have witnessed that Japan would have surrendered anyway, if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, and even if Russia had not entered the war, or an invasion has not been planned or contemplated.

17 de abril de 2019.

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)

Originally published in the daily ¿Por Esto? Of Mérida, México.

Blog of the author: http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/