Hiroshima and Nagasaki: "Sending a Message" to Uncle Joe

One of the best books on this subject is Gar Alperovitz' The Decision to Use The Atomic Bomb, published in 1995. In it one would learn that only a few years after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Admiral William D. Leahy, Chairman of both the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and Combined American-British Chiefs of Staff during the war allowed the following statement to be included in his memoirs:

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender..."

None other than Dwight D. Eisenhower also went public with a statement about the decision to use the bomb. Recalling the moment he was informed by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that the bomb would be used against Japanese cities Ike wrote:

"I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandated as a measure to save American lives."

Perhaps even more revealing are the results of an extensive study by the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey published less than a year after the war which concluded that Japan would likely have surrendered in 1945 without the atomic bombings, a Soviet declaration of war or an American invasion.

If, as these highly authoritative sources suggest, the bomb was not needed to end the war, then why exactly was it used?

Alperovitz' book makes it clear that the Japanese had been putting out numerous peace feelers through various diplomatic channels from late 1944 on. The only real sticking point was the fate of the Emperor, whom they had been taught to worship as a living god. The Japanese ruling class feared that any diminution in the traditional status of the Emperor, to say nothing of the humiliation of imprisonment or execution, would tear the fabric of their society apart, possibly paving the way for a communist takeover. American psychological operations analysts were in agreement.

President Roosevelt had, however, enunciated a policy of "unconditional surrender" at the Casablanca Conference of January, 1943. Apparently, he was channeling Ulysses S. Grant when the idea simply "popped into his mind." Neither Churchill, who believed such a formula to be unnecessarily restrictive, nor even his own advisors at the conference were consulted beforehand.

Truman, who succeeded Roosevelt in April 1945, paid public fealty to the policy of unconditional surrender while gradually moving towards private acceptance that the war with Japan might be ended soon, without further losses on either side, by making some accomodation for the Emperor. Then, he somewhat abruptly reversed his position. Why?

Truman's closest foreign policy advisor during this period was his newly appointed Secretary of State, James F. Byrnes. Byrnes was a conservative Democrat and former Senator from South Carolina who had also been chosen by Roosevelt to head the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, a superagency charged with coordinating all federal agencies in the production, procurement and distribution of war materials. And it was Byrnes, alone among Truman's advisor's, that urged him to stick to the policy of unconditional surrender and to use the bomb against the Japanese at the earliest opportunity.

Byrnes real motives had very little to do with ending the war with Japan. Simply put, his thinking was that a live demonstration of this devastating weapon would frighten the Soviets into being more cooperative on issues such as the status of post-war Germany and Eastern Europe.

It apparently never occurred to either Truman or Burns that the Soviets might have infiltrated the Manhattan Project and would soon have a bomb of their own. Also revealing is the complete lack of understanding of the character of Stalin. While it's true that he had a near nervous breakdown when Hitler invaded the U.S.S.R in June, 1941, he quickly regained his trademark steely composure once he realized that all was not lost. Here was a man who had sent millions of his own people to their deaths or a life of misery in the GULAG. The thought that he would care a wit if one or two cities were blown to kingdom come, as long as the vast Soviet nation was still intact, just strains credulity.

So, 60 years ago to this day the U.S. sent its message to "Uncle Joe" Stalin paid for with the unnecessary death, disease and destruction rained on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.