Was it Necessary to Drop the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki for the end of World War II?
Introduction
World War II ended suddenly when two atomic bombs were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. This was on 8 August 1945. Afterward, the Soviet Union open war on Japan and begin a successful steamroller advance across Machuria. Three days after the first bomb destroyed Hiroshima, another atomic bomb was dropped in the city of Nagasaki. As the story goes, the bombings shocked the Japanese imperial inner circle, which led to Emperor Hirohito to unprecedentedly intervene in war-planning negotiations and surrender on 10 August. The U.S. president at the time, Harry S. Truman, considered the offer, after which the Secretary of State, James Brynes, corralled a response stating that the Japanese surrender should be considered “unconditional.” On 14 August, Japan agreed, and the Emperor broadcasted the surrender the following day. This marked the end of the nuclear war. Many policymakers argue that the atomic bombs in Japan were the preceding cause that led to the surrender. However, historical studies of Japan’s decision expose that the Japanese were mostly concerned with the Soviet Union’s involvement in the war. The Japanese surrendered in the war, knowing that their emperor system would be retained.[1] This paper argues that the war could have ended without using the atomic bombs on Japanese cities since Japan had already been virtually defeated and were seeking better terms of surrender. Therefore it was not necessary to use atomic weapons.
To understand the suddenness of the end of the war, a complete reexamination of how, when, and why the United States dropped the nuclear bomb — the very issues that have connected such a significant number of Americans throughout the previous sixty years. For the individuals who grew up knowing that “the bomb ended the war,” thinking as far as suddenness may appear to be difficult to accept. Numerous Americans have been shown the historical backdrop of the nuclear bomb as though it were obvious, from the earliest starting point, that atomic bombs would, by their very nature, urge the Japanese to give up. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Before 14 August 1945, nobody thought that two bombs would be enough: if the Japanese did not surrender after the first one, then many more would be needed. Examining the attitudes towards the bomb before one was dropped over Hiroshima, and the after the other one was dropped in Nagasaki but before the surrender, “historical evidence reveals that a sizable group of decision-makers did not believe the bomb would have the power to end the war immediately.”[2] Some historians delineate that even if atomic bombs were not used, or the Soviet Union seized from entering the battle. Without an Allied attack of Japan, the war would have come to an end before 31 December 1945. Even before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States was destroying cities in Japan with conventional bombs, and Japan was offering almost no resistance. The United States used atomic bombs on a country that had already been defeated, and some of whose officials and leaders were looking for terms of surrender. The Japanese were ready to surrender, and therefore it was not necessary to drop the atomic bombs on them. According to the Supreme Commander of all Allied Forces, Dwight Eisenhower, in July 1945, the Secretary of War Stimson, visited the Allied Forces central station in Germany, told him that their American government was preparing to drop a nuclear bomb on Japan. Dwight was one of the people who felt that there were suitable motivations to examine the knowledge of such a demonstration. He voiced his grave apprehensions, first based on his belief that Japan was at that point defeated and that dropping the bomb was unnecessary.
Truman stated that it was very difficult for him to choose whether or not to drop the atomic bombs on the Japanese. However, he believed that the bombs saved Americans and the Japanese as well since it marked the end of the war. However, after the war, to this day, the United States’ use of atomic bombs in Japan has had both proponents and detractors. As Michael highlight in his book, “the use of atomic bombs against Japanese cities in the final days of World War II still generates enormous interest and controversy, primarily because of concerns over the moral justification of these actions.”[3] For Truman, the matter of military justification of the use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki simply did not look like a live question. Some people may feel that in being the first to use the atomic bomb, America had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages, and therefore their actions cannot be justified.[4] Then again, it was clear that the United States soldiers and civilians had become weary from four years of war, and Japan had suffered enough damage already from the war.
By 1945, Japan’s military position was perilous. Japan’s victories had been few and short-lived since the reversal at Midway Island in 1942. “The American and Allied conquests in the Pacific from late 1942 on – at Guadalcanal and New Gyines, Tinian and Saipan, the Philippines, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa – were, of course, devastating Japanese defeats.”[5] In mid-1843, General Douglas MacArthur hurled Operation Cartwheel against Japanese military forces in New Guinea. After being beaten by Australian forces at the Finschhafen coast town, Japan retreated towards the interior of the island. Many Japanese men died, and of the 70,000 soldiers assigned in the 79th Regiment, only 67 survived. “After Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo realized that Saipan would provide Americans with airfields with a bombers distance of Japan, he declared it ‘an impregnable fortress’ in the spring of 1944 and sent thousands of troops to reinforce it.”[6] Later in February and March 1945, Emperor Hirohito ordered his soldiers to raise the cost of America’s island campaigns, and as a result, General Tademichi Kurabayashi sacrificed his entire force of 20,000 men where 7,000 men died. The few who survived these dreadful battles could not have been optimistic that Japan could be able to hold out. Had they been aware of the atomic bomb projects by the United States, they would have been convinced that the game was over for Japan. Japan, due to the shortage of resources, could not be able to make their own atomic bombs. They were short of funds, uranium ore, electricity, and did not have enough confidence that such a bomb was worth pursuing. By the time the American troops laid siege to Okinawa, the Japanese had produced only a fleck of U-235, and on 13 April, American bombers attacked. More than 500,000 Japanese were burned out of their homes. The suffering of Japanese soldiers and the fact that they could not produce an atomic bomb of their own was not enough to shake the cabinet’s resolve to push on in the fight. By now, the Americans had already landed on Okinawa, and the Japanese officials were not willing to give up.
Hirohito was a real war leader. He strongly believed in his men and believed that Japan could become victorious, “even after touring his ravaged capital following the American incendiary attack of 9-10th March 1945, Hirohito seems to have believed that his people’s moral was holding up and that a final battle for the homeland was a reasonable project.”[7] He encouraged his appointed officials to remain confident of victory and encouraged them to fight on. However, by June 1945, the tide had changed. The Americans’ defeat of Okinawa was a devastating blow on Hirohito’s leadership. The unconditional surrender of the German ally had diminished spirits significantly, even before the magnitude of America’s path to victory became clear. After leaving Japan to face America alone in the war, Germany declared that there was a possibility that the Soviet Union would retract its April 1941 Neutrality pact that it had made with Japan, even though it had remained another year before its expiry. Some Japanese officials suspected that the Soviet Union members had agreed to enter the war against Japan in order to get the Asian territorial concessions made by Churchill and Roosevelt. This turns out to be true as it came to pass on 5 April when the Soviet Union renounced the Neutrality pact. Japan was now in double trouble as Russia was now allied with both Britain and the United States, who were fighting Japan.
The decision of the Soviet Union to renounce the Neutrality Pact came as a blow to the wishful thinkers of the Japanese leadership as they previously had high hopes that Japan, by focusing solely on protecting the home islands against America, could wear the enemy down and win improved terms of surrender. The involvement of the Soviets against Japan, together with America and its Allied forces, meant disaster for Japan. The danger posed encouraged the hastening of ‘peace feelers’ undertaken by several Japanese officials in different European capitals, but none of the efforts to pursue the definition of unconditional surrender bore any fruits. The peace feelers spread across Western Europe but were never authorized by the cabinet and were renounced when discovered. Japan’s attempts with the Russians grew frantic, and by late June, Japan had reached the crucial moment when the Emperor became aggressively involved in the effort to terminate the war.
Postwar detractors of the United States’ decision to use the nuclear weapon charged, among other things, that the peace feelers from Japan were genuine, that Hirohito urgently sought to bring the war to an end, as long as his position was assured and that he could pull the cabinet with him to give up if America gave him assurances much like those tardily provided after the bombs had dropped and the Russians had joined the war.
As mentioned previously, America’s decision to drop the nuclear bombs was highly unnecessary. As we have seen, Japan had already been virtually defeated since many of the Japanese soldiers had died, and even though Japan still had millions of troops left to fight in the war, the willpower of the leaders had diminished, and expectations of winning the war were far-fetched. Before the bombings, the Japanese leaders had started looking for ways to make peace by seeking better surrender terms, which were unsuccessful. Additionally, Japan had suffered a lot form America’s strategic bombing tactics, which was “a loosely defined term that meant in its most general sense bombing that was not conducted in support of a specific tactical operation— was “precision.”[8] It is imperative to note that in 1945, American citizens and those of other Allied nations tremendously supported the decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To most of these people, ending World War II in the quickest way possible was an objective appropriately urgent to vindicate the use of any weapon necessary. Nevertheless, the use of atomic bombs by America inevitably became a major source of controversy. “One reason some people dissented from the prevailing consensus was the terrifying nature of those weapons…the dreadful mushroom cloud over Hiroshima had barely dissipated, and the bomb that would destroy Nagasaki had not yet been dropped before the warning was heard that America’s use of an atomic bomb against Japan had opened the door to a future nuclear war that could destroy civilization.”[9] It was not long before some observers began making arguments that from a strictly practical military perspective, by the summer of 1845, Japan was on the verge of surrender, and it was not necessary for America to drop the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end the war.
The question as to whether it was necessary for America to use atomic bombs in Japan can also be based on moral issues. In his book, Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II, Ronald Schaffer highlights that “when people cause events to occur that is as cataclysmic as the destruction of the Japanese cities, it is natural to wonder how they thought about the moral issues involved. Did the Americans responsible for the way Japan was bombed reflect on those issues? How did they justify what they did?”[10] As Ronald further highlights, it is difficult to find answers to these questions, especially for the historian, who apart from experiencing problems of faulty memory, rationalization, and gaps in the record, has to disentangle matters related to ethics from an intricate of political and military deliberations weighed by those who played leading roles in the war against Japan: the generals, military leaders, scientists, technical specialists, and presidents together with their high civil advisors. When questioned about the moral considerations that led to the decision to bomb japan using atomic bombs, some Army Air Force Leaders said that the main aim was to end the war and therefore it did not bother them to kill thousands of Japanese soldiers and civilians, as long as it did the job. Many leaders undermined the charge that America had acted immorally in the Pacific war. They deny that the U.S. had crossed some moral boundaries when it dropped the atomic bombs. For instance, as Ronald notes in his book, General LeMay argued that “it was no more “wicked” to kill people with nuclear weapons than to break their heads with rocks. In his memoirs, he noted how the Romans had dealt with Carthage and reminded his readers of the way victorious armies in ancient times had slaughtered the inhabitants of fallen cities.”[11] Many people involved in the attack of Japan with atomic bombs believe that it was necessary. Others contend that the use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki enabled humans to realize the destructive power of such nuclear weapons and therefore avoid the use of such weapons in the future to avoid such destruction and wipe out civilization. The people who argue that it was necessary to drop the atomic bombs also argue that a conventional invasion of Japan, which was scheduled to begin on the island of Kyushu in November 1945, would have led to the loss of many Japanese and American lives. During spring in 1945, when it was realized that the war was in its final stages, Truman received a letter urging him to negotiate an end to the war and save millions of Americans that might die in an invasion. However, General Douglas MacArthur did not predict the numbers to be that big. He predicted that he would suffer about 90,000 casualties in the first 90 days of a possible invasion.
The attention on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is morally justifiable only with regards to censuring a few centuries of military improvement. It very well may be censured, yet no one has the foggiest idea of what improvement it makes. The rationale of the flintlock ran its course ineluctably to Hiroshima. In any case, the central reality that played out was this: Over time, the qualification among military and regular citizens got indefensible. War battling started in the industrial facility and finished with the officer at the front. The corridors of war were in the city.
It was not difficult to predict how battle would go. From any conformist military point of view, as previously mentioned, by the summer of 1945, the Japanese had already lost the war. Japan’s navy rested on the bottom of the Pacific, and the Japanese air force could not do anything to prevent the consistent raids by B-29 bomber fleets that had been systematically bombing Japanese cities since March. Additionally, the supply lines to the Japanese soldiers in China and other territories had been cut, and the Japanese petroleum stocks were nearly finished. However, despite all these unfavorable conditions, the Japanese military was convinced that a decisive battle might have the capability to inflict many casualties on American armies coming ashore in Kyshu, and Truman would give in and grant important concessions to end the war. This clearly shows that the Japanese were ready to end the war but did not want to end it without being granted the surrender terms they desired. Here, historians are firmly grounded. American cryptanalysts knew that the government of Japan was eagerly pressing the Russians for a hand in obtaining a negotiated surrender. The Allies insisted on unconditional surrender, and the Japanese wanted to be assured that their imperial dynasty would be left untouched. Truman knew this at the time but made the decision to drop the atomic bombs regardless.
The scale of the attacks and destruction caused in Japan broke the warrior spirit of the Japanese, bringing to a close century of uncontrolled militarism. The horror of the systematic bombing that Japan had suffered must also be given credit following 50 years in which no nuclear weapon was used, and no major war existed between powerful nations. It is this mixture of horrors and good outcomes that accounts for the American contradiction about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Conclusion
The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sparked a lot of controversy, on the basis of whether it was necessary to drop the bombs and end the war and on an ethical and moral basis. As seen in this report, Japan, prior to the United States dropping the atomic bombs, was on the verge of defeat and was actually seeking surrender terms with minimal success. Additionally, Japan had already been severely damaged by the constant attacks and systematic strategic bombings, especially in Tokyo, which led to the loss of thousands of lives of both Japanese soldiers and civilians. Even though many people believe that the bombing was justified because America had previously warned Japan of massive destruction to come, the overall destruction that was caused by the atomic bombs cannot be justified. Dropping an atomic bomb and destroying a whole city and killing more than 200 000 people seems harsh, but at the same time, it would be rather rash to say that it was not well thought of, as it has been discussed in this report. As unjustified as it appears, Japan was not ready to give up easily without the proper terms of surrender. It appears that America’s decision to drop a nuclear bomb in Japan is totally unjustified, subsequent to dropping one bomb Japan was all the while reluctant to give up unconditionally. This shows how solid the Japanese were in their beliefs, but at the same time, it does not detract from the harm these bombs did to Japanese cities and to numerous innocent lives lost.
Bibliography
Craig, Campbell, and Sergey S. Radchenko. The atomic bomb and the origins of the Cold War. Yale University Press, 2008.
Gordin, Michael D. Five days in August: how World War II became a nuclear war. Princeton University Press, 2015.
Kort, Michael. The Columbia guide to Hiroshima and the bomb. Columbia University Press, 2007.
Rotter, Andrew J. Hiroshima: The world’s bomb. OUP Oxford, 2008.
Schaffer, Ronald. Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II. Oxford University Press, 1988.
[1] Craig, Campbell, and Sergey S. Radchenko. The atomic bomb and the origins of the Cold War. Yale University Press, 2008. 103.
[2] Michael D., Gordin Five days in August: how World War II became a nuclear war. Princeton University Press, 2015.
[3] Ibid, 7.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Andrew J., Rottler, Hiroshima: The world‘s bomb. OUP Oxford, 2008, 178.
[6] Ibid, 178.
[7] Ibid, 181.
[8] Ibid, 19.
[9] Michael, Kort. The Columbia guide to Hiroshima and the bomb. Columbia University Press, 2007. 14.
[10] Ronald, Schaffer. Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II. Oxford University Press, 1988. 149.
[11] Schaffer, Ronald. Wings of Judgment: American Bombing in World War II. 152.