Harry S. Truman (33rd President of the United States 1945--1953)
Yes, Truman, too, was well aware that dropping the bombs played no part in bringing the war to an end, no part in saving American lives. When he told the American public that dropping the bombs saved lives, he didn't misspeak, he lied.
Japan Had Already Been Defeated Prior To dropping the Bomb
After the war had ended, the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey (a board consisting of more than 1,000 individuals, both military and civilian), was tasked by U.S. Secretary of War Henry Stimson with the examination and analysis of U.S. involvement in WW II. The Survey concluded in 1946 that "Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."
But it was not only with the advantage of hindsight that this conclusion was reached. General Eisenhower (Supreme Commander of the allied forces in Europe) and General MacArthur (Supreme Commander of the U.S. Army in the Pacific) came to the same conclusion before the bombs were ever dropped. I don't think there's any question that both General Eisenhower and General MacArthur would have done whatever was necessary to spare their troops the horrors of a ground invasion. But the fact is that neither of them believed that a ground invasion of mainland Japan was necessary.
Eisenhower recalls his reaction to U.S. Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, upon hearing of the successful atomic bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. Eisenhower told Stimson that he believed "that Japan was already defeated, and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary." Eisenhower couldn't have been any clearer in his response: dropping the bomb was "no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives." Nearly twenty years later Eisenhower's views on the use of the bomb remained unchanged. In a 1963 interview with Newsweek he unequivocally stated that prior to the atomic blast at Hiroshima "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing." Contrary to Truman, the bombs were not dropped to ward off a ground invasion. Contrary to Truman, the bombs were not dropped to save American lives. So why the bombs? Why the complete and utter annihilation of two Japanese cities with densely-packed civilian populations?
General MacArthur was of the same mind as Eisenhower. MacArthur saw no military justification for dropping the bombs . However, unlike Eisenhower, MacArthur's opinion was never sought by the Truman administration. In fact MacArthur didn't even learn of the existence of the atomic bomb until five days before it was dropped on Hiroshima. There is a reason for this. Months earlier, in the Spring of 1945, MacArthur sent one of his top generals, Major General George Kenny, to Washington to explain that the Japanese were nearly ready to surrender; that there was no longer any need to wait for the war in Europe to end, or for a Russian assist in the pacific, before claiming victory against Japan. Kenny was sent back to inform MacArthur that those in the War Dept. were not convinced. So there was no reason to seek out MacArthur's opinion on the use of the bomb; the Truman administration was already well aware that MacArthur saw no military value in its use.
After the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, MacArthur said that "the war might have ended weeks earlier if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor." MacArthur is here referring to a telegram Japan sent to our ally, the Soviet Union, on July 22 (weeks before the bombs were dropped) indicating that Japan was ready to surrender to the U.S. with the one condition that it be permitted to keep the largely symbolic and ritualistic leadership of the emperor intact. The U.S. rejected these terms of surrender. However, three weeks later on August 10 -- one day after the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki -- the U.S. accepted the terms of Japan's July 22peace offering, allowing Japan to keep its emperor.
So, again, why the bombs? Why did the U.S. wait until after the bombs were dropped before accepting Japan's terms of surrender? Why all the senseless and needless killing of hundreds of thousands of men, women, children, and babies? MacArthur's pilot, Weldon E. Rhoades, wrote in his diary one day after the bombs were dropped: "General MacArthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster."
Brigadier General Bonner Fellers (in charge of psychological warfare on MacArthur's wartime staff) stated that "the atomic bomb neither induced the Emperor's decision to surrender nor had any effect on the ultimate outcome of the war." Commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz tells us that Japan was already defeated prior to dropping the bombs. "The atomic bomb," he said , "played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan." The commanding general of the U.S. Army Air Forces, Henry H. Arnold wrote in his 1949 memoirs that "it always appeared to us that, atomic bomb or no atomic bomb, the Japanese were already on the verge of collapse." Major General Curtis E. LeMay, commanding officer of the Twenty-First Bomber Command, said at a press conference a month after the bombs were dropped that the atomic bomb "had nothing to do with the end of the war at all." Similarly, General Carl Spaatz, in charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific, said that even if the bombs hadn't been dropped "the surrender would have taken place just about the same time." Major General C. Chennault concurs : "Even if we had not used the bomb the result would have been just the same."
Many highly placed civil servants in the War Department were also of like mind. The assistant Secretary of War, John McCloy, said that "we missed the opportunity of effecting a Japanese surrender, completely satisfactory to us, without the necessity of dropping the bombs." The Under Secretary of the Navy, Ralph Bard, said that "the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb." Lewis Strauss, Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy, said that "the Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate," and that "such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion." Ellis Zacharias, Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence, states emphatically that "it was the wrong decision" to drop the bombs. "It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds."
The United states dropped atomic bombs on the civilian populations of two Japanese cities knowing full well that months earlier Japan's surrender was already a done deal. In the words of Herbert Hoover , 31st president of the United States, "the Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945...up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped [in August]; ...if such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the bombs." In the words of Winston Churchill , Prime Minister of England during the war: "It would be a mistake to suppose that the fate of Japan was settled by the atomic bomb. Her defeat was certain before the bomb fell."
You can be sure that if Churchill was aware of this, Truman was aware of it as well. And, indeed, this is what the record indicates. Walter Brown, assistant to Secretary of State James Byrnes, says that at a meeting three days before the bombs were dropped Truman agreed that Japan was "looking for peace." Truman was informed by Generals MacArthur and Eisenhower, as well as his own chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, that dropping the bombs served no military purpose in the defeat of Japan. After the bombs were dropped, Leahy reacted with disgust to the behavior of the country he had served with such distinction all his life. "The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki," he said, "was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender." In being the first to use these monstrous weapons, and, more than that, to use them against civilian populations, Leahy said "we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."
So, again, why?
Brigadier General Carter Clark, the military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables for Truman and his advisors, put it this way :
when we didn't need to do it, and we knew we didn't need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn't need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs.
Cold? Heartless? You bet. Barbaric and revolting? No question. The inhumanity of it all couldn't be more telling. The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki was especially brutal and cruel. Knowing of the horrendous horrors that had already been unleashed in Hiroshima, three days later the U.S. did the same thing to the civilian population of Nagasaki. And they did so without ever seeking Japan's surrender in the three day interim. Why? Because Japan's surrender was never the issue. That was the pretext. The bombs were dropped to make a point. There were political reasons for nuking those two high-density civilian populations, and the United States was not going to let Japan interfere with its political agenda by way of an untimely surrender. The dropping of the second bomb on Nagasaki was part of a political maneuver that had already been decided upon -- a one-two punch stratagem designed to strike fear into post-war Russia (our ally in the war against Germany) and convince them to accept their subordinate position on the postwar world stage.
Atomic Bombs Were Dropped On High-Density Civilian Populations In Japan To Make A Political Statement
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