by Gar Alperovitz
Alfred A. Knopf, New York. 1995
847 pages, no illustrations. $32.50
This is a deeply
disturbing book which should be avoided by anyone who has no wish to
upset cherished beliefs about the end of “the last good war.”
What makes the book so troubling is not its premise, that the reasons
for America’s deployment of atomic weapons against Japan were very different
from present-day popular perceptions. After all, historical revisionism
is a staple of the publishing industry. This book hits home because
its shocking allegations are extraordinarily well-documented. Source
materials are not only cited but are exhaustively reproduced in the
text. The author’s credentials are impeccable and his approach to the
subject is scholarly to the point of being tedious. The book is ponderous
rather than sensational. It is a book you wade through rather than read,
but you come out the other side with information that is terrible to
contemplate.
The most common
justification of the bomb’s use – that it saved untold American and
Japanese lives by ending the war without an invasion – is based upon a
false premise. By the time the decision was made to use the atomic bomb
neither President Truman, nor anyone in a position to influence him, believed
that an invasion would be necessary to end the war, bomb or no bomb.
Military leaders
who went on record as believing that the war could have, and should
been won without bomb included: Admiral Ernest J. King; William D. Leahy;
Chester W. Nimitz; “Bull” Halsey; General Douglas MacArthur; Dwight
Eisenhower; Carl “Tooey” Spaatz; even Curtis E. LeMay commanded 20th
Air Force which flew missions.
“It
wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing...”
--Dwight D. Eisenhower
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The official U.S.
Strategic Bombing Survey (1946) concluded that, by mid-summer of 1945,
“The Japanese leaders had decided to surrender and were merely
looking for a sufficent pretext to convince the die-hard Army Group
that Japan had lost the war and must capitulate to the Allies. The entry
of Russia into the war would almost certainly have provided this pretext...”
Again, bomb or no bomb, a full invasion of Japan “would not have
been necessary” and even the initial Kyushu landings scheduled
for November were judged to be only a “remote” possibility.
On July 11, 1945
the U.S. intercepted an “extremely urgent” cable from the
Japanese Foreign Minister to the Japanese Amabassador in Moscow stating
that “We are now secretly giving consideration to the termination
of the war....”. The Emperor desired that the war “be quickly
terminated” but “so long as England and the United States
insist upon unconditional surrender the Japanese Empire has no alternative
but to fight on...”
In the summer of
1945 it was widely recognized that the single greatest impediment to
Japanese capitulation was their fear that “unconditional surrender”
meant that the Emperor would be tried and hanged as a war criminal.
Such action was never seriously contemplated and, indeed, the Allies
saw an intact and cooperative Emperor as vital to restoring peace to
Japan. As the author points out, “[E]very top presidential civilian
and military adviser up to this point in time [July 18, 1945] except
[Secretary of State James] Byrnes – as well as Prime Minister Churchill
and the top British military leadership – clearly and directly urged a
clarification of the unconditional surrender formula.” No such
clarification was offered.
Of over-riding
concern to Truman and Byrnes in the weeks prior to Hiroshima and Nagasaki
was the question of whether and when the Soviet Union would declare
war on Japan. Prior to the bomb’s first successful test at Alamagordo,
New Mexico on July 16, Russia’s promised entry into the Pacific
war was encouraged as the event which would almost certainly bring about
an immediate Japanese surrender. Developments in Eastern Europe, however,
were making clear the cost of any partnership with Stalin. After Alamagordo,
Truman and Byrnes saw the bomb as a way to end the war without Soviet
involvement. The trouble was, the combat-deployable bomb wouldn’t
be ready for at least two weeks. To forestall a Soviet-brokered end to
the war the surrender terms were not clarified and the Japanese peace
initiative through Moscow died on the vine. An atomic attack on Japan
before Stalin’s projected mid-August entry into the war became
a top priority, both as an instrument for ending the war and as a demonstration
to render the post-war Soviets more tractable. As it happened, the Hiroshima
bomb was dropped on August 6 and Russia declared war on Japan two days
later. The next day Nagasaki was bombed and Japan surrendered on August
14.
In the book’s second
section the author attempts to track the evolution of the popular notion
that the atomic attacks prevented an invasion. This proves to be a far
more difficult task than documenting the beliefs, concerns and motivations
surrounding the weapons’ actual use. The very fact that most Americans
fully expected and dreaded the coming invasion, only to have that cloud
suddenly lifted by a force they hadn’t known existed, created an impression
of miraculous salvation that would have been inevitable even without
outside reinforcement. Alperovitz documents, however, that there was
significant and systematic official encouragement of this misconception
by the U.S. government. He marvels, somewhat naively, at the reluctance
of veterans to accept the overwhelming evidence that America’s use of
the atomic bomb in World War II was not militarily justifiable. “Time
and again, the question ... has become entangled with the quite separate
issue of our anger at Japan’s sneak attack and the brutality of her
military.” He notes that “we have often allowed ourselves
to confuse the issue of modern research findings with criticisms of
American servicemen. ... The men serving in the Pacific in 1945 were
prepared to risk their lives for their nation. By this most fundamental
test they can only be called heroes.” He’s right, of course, but
the Smithsonian’s experience with the Enola Gay exhibit demonstrates
that the difficulties Americans have in dealing with what happened at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot be so easily assuaged.
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