Why did the U.S. drop atomic bombs on two densely packed civilian population centers when the U.S. was well aware that the war in the Pacific had already been won?

::::::::

(Article changed on August 11, 2013 at 21:49)

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. -- George Orwell

I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever. -- Thomas Jefferson

This month marks the 68 ^th anniversary of the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each year commemoration ceremonies are held in those cities in mournful remembrance of the more than 200,000 who died as a result of those horrific blasts.

It was not until 2010, 65 years later, that the first official delegation of the U.S. government was in attendance to pay its respects at the Hiroshima ceremonial. U.S. attendance in Nagasaki followed in 2011. This year will be the fourth consecutive year that President Obama will have instructed the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, John Roos, to be in attendance. Roos has wisely used this opportunity to serve as a spokesman for nuclear disarmament. During his first appearance at the Hiroshima ceremonial in 2010 he said:

For the sake of future generations we must continue to work together to realize a world without nuclear weapons.

This first ever attendance by the U.S. Ambassador in 2010 met with mixed reactions in Japan. Some saw this as a welcome sign that the U.S. was getting serious about its stated commitment to nuclear disarmament. Others were not so generous in their evaluations, feeling that an event of this magnitude warranted the presence of a sitting president. Given Obama's oft-stated pro nuclear disarmament stance, his attendance at the Hiroshima commemorative ceremonial would send just the kind of message so many Japanese have long been waiting for. Still, there are those Japanese for whom the mere presence of a sitting president at these events falls far short of what they feel is required, hitching any real progress on the disarmament front to a sincere heartfelt U.S. apology for what they see as the wholly unjustified and unnecessary atomic bombing of two major Japanese civilian population centers.

Right-Wing Fabrication of Obama's Intended Apology

The 68 ^th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Japan this August once again finds the U.S. Ambassador to Japan, John Roos, in attendance, and, as has been standard fare since his first appearance in 2010, there will be no apology. But what I'd like to focus on here for a moment is the lead-up to last year's 2012 anniversary. Several months prior to this, right-wing media made much of a Wikileaks-released diplomatic cable claiming to tell of plans President Obama had to apologize for America's 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during his 2009 visit to Japan. Investors Business Daily castigated Obama for his alleged plans to "apologize" to Japan "for defending freedom" and "for winning with devastating finality the war Japan started." The National Review Online, Rush Limbaugh, The Drudge Report, and Fox News, among other right-wing media outlets, followed Investor Business Daily's lead, claiming that the only reason Obama's planned apology failed to materialize is that Japan had the good sense to disapprove of the plan.

The White House denied that there ever was any plans to apologize to Japan for America's WW II atomic decimation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the Wikileaks cable bears this out. Following a meeting with Japan's Vice Foreign Minister, the U.S. Ambassador to Japan cabled Secretary of State Clinton expressing Japan's concern that a visit by Obama to Hiroshima, coming on the heels of Obama's previously expressed commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons, would fuel speculation, particularly among anti-nuclear groups, whether an Obama apology might be in the offing. Japan worried that such speculation would play into the hands of these anti-nuclear groups, providing them with greater visibility and a stronger voice in their efforts to garner increasing public support for their anti-nuclear agenda. The diplomatic cable was sent, then, not to ward off a planned Obama apology as Obama's detractors have claimed, but rather to ward off any speculation that such an apology might be in the works, and that an Obama visit to Hiroshima might serve to provoke. To this end, Japan's foreign ministry recommended that both governments do what they can to keep all such speculation to a minimum, and that this could be accomplished by having Tokyo be the primary focus of Obama's 2009 visit. End of story.

The story that an Obama apology was in the offing was an outright fabrication that has since been exposed, and yet, as far as I am aware, there have been no retractions. Investors Business Daily, the National Review Online, Rush Limbaugh, the Drudge Report, and Fox News, let the lie stand.

But what is most disturbing about the media's coverage of this right-wing intentional deception is that no one in the media asked the all-important question: What if Obama actually did have plans to apologize to Japan on behalf of America for its atomic incineration of two Japanese high-density civilian population centers? What of it? What exactly is the crime in this? Might it just be that such an apology is in order, and long overdue? The media has given no consideration to this at all. Instead, the entire focus has been on whether Obama is guilty or not of having had plans to apologize for America. The right-wing conservative media assumed Obama's guilt, the left-leaning liberal media came to his defense, and the mainstream media, where it wasn't following the right wing's deceptive lead, reported on the controversy. The important issue in all of this -- the moral justification, or lack thereof, of America's atomic bombing of Japan -- was entirely ignored.

Is Apologizing When You've Said Or Done Something Detestable Un-American?

What is most disconcerting about all of this is not that right-wing disinformation outlets intentionally misrepresented the aforementioned diplomatic cable as the basis for making false accusations against Obama, but that in the present political climate the idea of America apologizing to the Japanese people for its use of nuclear weapons on civilian populations should be viewed as something shameful. What is shameful is that the offering of such an apology, or even the contemplation of such an offer, should be construed as constituting a smear on one's character and a betrayal of one's patriotic duty.

If it comes to a parent's attention that their child has thrown a rock through a neighbors window, intentionally or accidentally, the parent marches the child over to the neighbors home to claim responsibility, offer an apology, and make amends by paying to have the window replaced. Perhaps the child must forfeit a portion of his weekly allowance until the window is paid in full. Or maybe the child must do odd jobs for his neighbor until his earned wages are sufficient to cover the window's replacement. However this gets worked out, the point here is that anyone raised with any sense of justice, morality, and civic responsibility, knows very well that when a wrongful act is committed, intentionally or otherwise, an apology is in order. And not just an apology. One must also make amends for the wrong that has been done.

Let's be charitable and say that the vast majority of us know this. How is it, then, that in the minds of a great many Americans, perhaps even a large majority, America's behavior in the community of nations is somehow seen as constituting an exception to this common knowledge?

One-time presidential candidate, and former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, believes that America should never apologize for anything that it does. Though he acknowledges that America has made mistakes, he makes it quite clear that those mistakes should never be cause for an apology: "I will never, ever apologize for America." Romney has even written a book with this unrepentant, haughty celebration of wrongdoing as its centerpiece: No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.

Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), speaking at a Conservative political Action Conference, said that we should "never, ever, ever" apologize for anything America has done, is doing, or might do in the future.

Former Governor of Alaska and one-time vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, marked her departure from office with the following appeal to a crowd of well-wishers: "Let us continue to love our country, be proud of our country, never apologize for our country." We are asked to believe that love of country and pride in our national heritage are somehow indissolubly linked to an arrogant and disdainful rejection of the most basic of moral requirements.

George H.W. Bush, while campaigning for President, promised that he will "never apologize for the United States. Ever. I don't care what the facts are." Yes, you heard that right. He doesn't care what the facts are. America may have erred -- America may have violated every moral precept there is -- but there will be no apologies. Bush bases this morally deficient declaration on the belief that America is "the only hope for freedom and democracy" in the world. How the latter, even if true, serves to justify the former is anybody's guess.

How utterly bizarre all this is. In the minds of these political hacks, America's perceived greatness confers upon it immunity from accountability for its moral transgressions, no matter how grotesquely barbaric those transgressions may be. But what is particularly disturbing about this mindset is that it is very likely shared with the majority of Americans.

Politicians, by nature, are publicity hounds. They run their lives as though it were a popularity contest. Approval, acceptance, and the status quo, are the standards against which everything they think, say, and do, are measured. They wouldn't make the kind of absurdly obnoxious and repugnantly immoral public statements quoted above unless they had good reason to believe that the majority of Americans shared their sentiments. They make these kinds of statements because doing so plays well in the polls.

Apparently, in the minds of most Americans America can do no wrong. An act that would be perceived as profoundly immoral if any other nation were behind it, is seen as being quite acceptable and even laudable when it is America that sits in the driver's seat. No matter how grossly immoral a particular action may be, when America is the actor that action is somehow magically transformed in light of America's perceived exceptional greatness into something good, wholesome, and even holy -- certainly nothing deserving of an apology.

I can think of no better example of this than America's 1945 atomic bombing of the two high-density civilian population centers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Official Story

Sixty-eight years ago, August 6, 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb to ever be used in warfare on the civilian population of Hiroshima, Japan. Three days later a second atomic bomb was dropped on the civilian population of Nagasaki, Japan. All toll, nearly a quarter of a million civilian men, woman, children, and babies lost their lives in those blasts. Of those who survived the blasts, many were maimed for life and many more would later die slow, painful deaths due to radiation poisoning and various forms of cancer.

In Hiroshima, a city with a population of 290,000, the initial death count by the end of August 1945 was estimated at 100,000. By the end of 1950 the estimated death toll had risen, according to some estimates, to 200,000. In Nagasaki, a city with a population of 240,000, including 400 prisoners of war, it's estimated that some 70,000 were killed by the initial blast, with 140,000 dead within the next five years.

The official story at the time was that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military targets whose destruction was necessary to bring the war to an end. This was a lie. The American public was also told that leaflets were dropped warning the inhabitants of these cities of the impending destruction and that they should leave. This, too, was a lie. The official story tells of President Truman's decision to go nuclear on Japan as a necessary last resort designed to hasten a Japanese surrender, thereby saving American soldiers the horrors of a ground invasion of the Japanese mainland. As we will see, this, too, was a lie.

The official story claims that dropping the bombs saved the lives of many thousands of American soldiers which otherwise most certainly would have been lost. In October 1945, two months after the bombs were dropped, Truman wrote in his diary:

It is certain that [using the bomb] hastened the end of the war. We know that in this way we saved the lives of several thousand American and allied soldiers who would certainly have perished if we had not used the bomb.

But, over time, it seems that Truman found moral justification for dropping the bombs increasingly hard to come by. Over time the retelling of the official story changed. As the blood on Truman's hands grew dry and crusty and increasingly difficult to remove, the number of American lives saved as a result of dropping the bombs took a sharp upward turn. Here is Truman again just two months later on December 15, 1945:

It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood was worth a couple of Japanese cities...

In just a matter of months, the number of American soldiers whose lives were saved went from "several thousand" to a "quarter of a million." A year later, late 1946, finds Truman's estimate of the number of American soldiers saved as a result of dropping the bombs increased by another quarter of a million:

A year less of war will mean life for three hundred thousand, maybe half a million, of America's finest youth.

Two years later, October 1948, Truman reveals that he was actually doing Japan a favor by dropping the bombs:

In the long run we could save a quarter of a million young Americans from being killed, and would save an equal number of Japanese young men from being killed.

Five years later, in January 1953, the number of American lives saved by dropping the bombs doubles yet again. Truman estimates the number of casualties that would have resulted from an invasion to be "as much as a million, on the American side alone, with an equal number of the enemy."

Finally, in 1959, still unable to assuage his blood-drenched conscience, he concludes that "the dropping of the bombs"saved millions of lives." Millions!

Regardless of the number of American lives Truman claims to have saved, the vast majority of Americans accept the official story as gospel. The indoctrinating media and sixty-eight years of propagandistic history texts from grammar school through high school did its job well. But, except for the fact of the bombs having been dropped, the official story is a lie. Not merely mistaken, but a lie.

In terms of moral justification, the official story no doubt provides a great deal of comfort to a great many Americans. Unfortunately, all indications are that this moral centerpiece of the official story just isn't true. The truth, as it turns out, is so barbaric that it's almost inconceivable.

Second Guessing Truman? Hardly

Clifton Truman Daniel, President Truman's grandson, was in attendance at last year's commemorative ceremony in Hiroshima. Days earlier he also met with survivors of the atomic blasts in Tokyo. Understandably, Truman's grandson was unapologetic:

I can't second-guess my grandfather. He always said that he made that decision to end the war quickly. That's what he believed"

There is certainly something to be said for Clifton's take on his grandfather's decision to drop the bombs. A common refrain of those finding rest for their moral souls in the official story is that we are not really in a position sixty-eight years later to be second-guessing a decision made under great pressure in the most horrendous of circumstances, and that, given this, we ought in all fairness to give Truman the benefit of the doubt. But, you see, in pointing to the inhumanity of this nuclear holocaust I am not second-guessing Truman sixty-eight years later. Rather, I'm listening to a diverse cadre of highly placed civil servants in Truman's administration, and highly honored members of the American military in command positions, who were right there in the thick of those horrendous, high-pressure circumstances, and who were largely free of the kind of vested interests that had Truman and some few others in his administration clinging to the official story. Also, many of those whose views I'll be visiting here knew far more about the situation on the ground than Truman did. Many of them were also far better informed than Truman about the Manhattan Project (the allied effort to build an atom bomb). When Truman took over the presidency in mid-April 1945 upon FDR's death he still didn't know that there even was a Manhattan Project. Just a few short months before the bombs were dropped, Truman was still completely out of the loop.

Those who out of a sense of patriotic duty may not want to second-guess Truman's decision sixty-eight years later should know that they are second-guessing nearly everyone else who was in a position to make an informed judgment. The overwhelming consensus of those in the know at the time tells us that neither the atomic bombing of Hiroshima nor the atomic bombing of Nagasaki were necessary to end the war. All of the following high-profile civil servants and military commanders have emphatically stated that for all intents and purposes the war in the pacific was over months before the bombs were ever dropped:

General Dwight Eisenhower (WWII Allied Commander),

General Douglas MacArthur (Supreme Commander, U.S. Army, Pacific Theater),

Brigadier General Carter Clark (The military intelligence officer in charge of preparing intercepted Japanese cables for Truman and his advisors),

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz (Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet.)

General Carl Spaatz (In charge of Air Force operations in the Pacific)

Major General C. Chennault

Admiral William D. Leahy (Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman),

Herbert Hoover (31 ^st President of the United States)

John McCloy (Assistant Sec. of War),

Ralph Bard (Under Sec. of the Navy),

Lewis Strauss (Special Assistant to the Sec. of the Navy),

Leo Szilard (The first scientist to conceive of how an atomic bomb might be made - 1933)

Ellis Zacharias (Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence)

Paul Nitze (Vice Chairman, U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey)

James Byrnes (US Secretary of State)

Henry Stimson (U.S. Secretary of War)

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 Truman 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 Bombs

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 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.

In Eisenhower's autobiography, Mandate for Change (p.380), 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." According to Eisenhower, and contrary to Truman, the bombs were not dropped to ward off a ground invasion. 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 (and here, pp.65, 70-71) 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 22 peace 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 (and here, p. 500) 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," 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. According to Herbert Hoover, 31 ^st 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."

And Winston Churchill, England's Prime Minister 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."

Of course, Truman was also well aware of Japan's defeat prior to dropping the bombs. 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. Why? Japan's surrender was already assured without the bombs. Surely surrender would soon be following on the heels of Hiroshima's decimation. So, again, why the second bomb?

The answer is as simple as it is grotesque. The second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki because Japan's surrender was never the issue. Getting Japan to surrender 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

It had been agreed at a conference in Yalta in February 1945 that the Soviet Union would join the U.S. in its war against Japan three months after the Germans were defeated in Europe. At the Potsdam conference between Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union in July this was reaffirmed. Germany had surrendered on May 8, and so the Russian army would be marching into Manchuria on August 9, 1945, and soon thereafter on into the Japanese mainland. Truman welcomed Russia as an ally in the war against Japan, but felt that the agreements hammered out at the Potsdam conference had given far too much ground to the Soviets, with several Soviet-occupied countries annexed as Soviet Socialist Republics, and a number of East European countries becoming Soviet Satellite states. Truman was firm in his conviction that there would be no repeat performance of this with the defeat of Japan, and with the success of the first atomic bomb test in mid-July Truman felt that he was now in a position to make this very clear to Stalin: there would be no Soviet influence in postwar Japan as the Potsdam conference had agreed there would be for postwar Europe. As Truman noted in his diary in July 1945:

Anxious as we were to have Russia in the war against Japan, the experience at Potsdam now made me determined that I would not allow the Russians any part in the control of Japan... force is the only thing that the Russians understand.

The important question for Truman was how to impress upon the Russians that Japan was not to go the way of a divided Germany as per the Potsdam agreement. The decision to bomb the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki into oblivion was Truman's answer to this question.

As the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey made very clear, it was of the utmost importance to Truman that "Japan"capitulate to US occupying forces rather than Soviet," and that they do so prior to Russia getting its foot in the door. As per the Yalta agreement in February, Russian boots were due on the ground in Manchuria on August 9, and would be in Japan soon thereafter. Unless a Japanese surrender to U.S. forces could be effected prior to Russia"s invasion of the Japanese mainland, Russia would be justified in laying claim to a share in the spoils of a U.S/Soviet victory over Japan. The bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, Nagasaki on August 9, and the U.S. acceptance of Japan's terms of surrender on August 10, was to insure that this would not be the case; that, unlike postwar Germany, in postwar Japan the U.S. alone would be calling the shots. The complete annihilation of two entire Japanese cities would be a show of just the kind of "force" Truman felt the Russians were sure to understand.

Wouldn't A Simple Demonstration of America's New Weapon Be Sufficient To Contain the Russians?

Was there no other way for Truman to get his point across to the Russians short of incinerating nearly a quarter of a million people? Why not simply provide the Japanese leadership with a demonstration of the enormous destructive power of America's new weapon? Wouldn't this be sufficient to effect a Japanese surrender? And if the demonstration was conducted prior to the Russian army"s advance into Japan, wouldn't this be sufficient to dash any hopes the Russians had of sharing in the control of postwar Japan?

This is precisely what Strauss had in mind when he suggested to his boss, Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, that an atom bomb be dropped "over some area accessible to Japanese observers and where its effects would be dramatic," but would involve no loss of life:

...a satisfactory place for such a demonstration would be a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo. The cryptomeria tree is the Japanese version of our redwood... I anticipated that a bomb detonated at a suitable height above such a forest... would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will... Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation...

Why wasn't a demonstration of this sort ever performed? Why did Truman choose instead to drop the bombs on two Japanese high-density population centers? According to Thomas K. Finletter, Chairman of US Air Policy Committee, there simply "was not enough time" to organize a demonstration prior to Russia's August 9 entry into the war against Japan:

There was not enough time between 16 July when we knew at New Mexico that the bomb would work, and 8 August, the Russian deadline date, for us to have set up the very complicated machinery of a test atomic bombing involving time-consuming problems of area preparations, etc... No, any test would have been impossible if the purpose was to knock Japan out before Russia came in - or at least before Russia could make anything other than a token of participation prior to a Japanese collapse.

Even if we assume the best and grant that there was no time to prepare a demonstration before Russia's entrance into the war against Japan, this hardly justifies dropping nuclear bombs on defenseless civilian populations. Yet Finletter's statement reads as though dropping atomic bombs on the civilian populations of two Japanese cities was a perfectly acceptable alternative to setting up a demonstration given that the U.S. was having time-sensitive logistic problems in doing so. It's as though he said, "Well, we really did want to provide a demonstration for the Japanese leadership, but we just couldn't get it all together in a time frame that suited our political ambitions, so we decided instead to drop the bombs on two heavily populated Japanese cities and kill a couple of hundred thousand innocent civilians. What other choice did we have? It was the only rational thing left to do."

Diabolical? The Inhumanity Of It All Runs Deeper Still

We have still not gotten to the real reason behind the decision to drop atomic bombs on two Japanese cities. Until now I have been far too charitable in accepting the idea that the bombs were dropped to impress upon Stalin that the Soviets would have no part in the management of postwar Japan. As morally depraved as that is, the truth is far more damning.

If the purpose in dropping the bombs, whether on human populations or on a forest of cryptomeria trees, was to effect a Japanese surrender prior to Russia's entry into the war, the bombs were completely unnecessary. There was no need for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nor was there even need of a demonstration of any kind. If the purpose of the bombs, was to effect a Japanese surrender prior to Russia's entry into the war, this surrender was obtainable three weeks earlier without recourse to the bomb simply by accepting Japan's July 22 ^nd peace offering. This bears repeating: If the purpose of the bombs, was to effect a Japanese surrender prior to Russia's entry into the war, this surrender was obtainable three weeks earlier without recourse to the bomb simply by accepting Japan's July 22 ^nd peace offering.

As noted, that offer was rejected, ostensibly because it came with the proviso that the Japanese be permitted to retain the institution of the emperor and thus fell short of the unconditional surrender the U.S. demanded. But, as MacArthur noted earlier, when Japan surrendered three weeks later, after the bombs had fallen and Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been utterly destroyed, it was agreed that the institution of the emperor would remain intact anyway.

So asking us to believe that Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have been spared if only there were enough time to set up a demonstration is just so much nonsense. Clearly, Truman felt it necessary to use the bombs, and he felt it necessary to use them on civilian populations. Otherwise, why wait until after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been decimated and their inhabitants incinerated before accepting Japan's July 22 ^nd peace offering, emperor and all.

What kind of twisted rationale lay behind this madness? The bombs were not used to bring a conclusive end to the war -- that was incidental, and already a given. Nor, as noted earlier, were the bombs dropped to avert the horrors of a ground invasion, and thus to save American lives. Nor, as we now understand, were the bombs dropped to insure that the Russians would have no part in determining the fate of a postwar Japan. Insuring that there would be no interference from Russia in the management of postwar Japan via Japan's timely capitulation to U.S. forces was important to Truman, but the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was in no way necessary to achieving this. Again, Japan's surrender could have been effected weeks before the agreed upon August 9 date of Russia's entry into Manchuria and subsequent ground invasion of the Japanese mainland.

So why? Why the bombs?

Though the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki played no necessary role in keeping Russian influence out of postwar Japan, the evidence is overwhelming that it did play, and was intended to play, an important role in U.S. efforts to contain, and even reverse, Russia's growing influence in Europe.

Several weeks before the bombs were dropped, Leo Szilard, the first scientist to conceive of how an atomic bomb might be built, had a meeting with Truman's Secretary of State, James Byrnes, in which Szilard expressed his concern that by revealing that we had "the bomb and using it in the war against Japan, we might start an atomic arms race between America and Russia which might end with the destruction of both countries." Byrnes' mind was elsewhere. According to Szilard:

Byrnes... was concerned about Russia's postwar behavior. Russian troops had moved into Hungary and Rumania, and Byrnes thought it would be very difficult to persuade Russia to withdraw her troops from these countries, that Russia might be more manageable if impressed by American military might, and that a demonstration of the bomb might impress Russia.

When Byrnes spoke to Szilard of providing the Russians with a "demonstration" of the bomb he was not speaking of the kind of non-lethal demonstration that Strauss suggested in which an atomic bomb would be dropped over a forest of Japanese cryptomeria trees. No. The demonstration Byrnes had in mind had as its target fully populated Japanese cities. Why leave anything to the imagination? Important as it was to Truman that the Russians know that the U.S. had this enormously destructive new weapon, apparently it was also important to him that the Russians understand that the U.S. was quite capable of using this new weapon, and had no qualms about using it against civilian populations. As Truman's Secretary of State made very clear:

...it wasn't necessary to use the bomb against the cities of Japan in order to win the war but our possession and demonstration of the bomb would make the Russians more manageable in Europe.

Two days following his meeting with Byrnes, Szilard had another meeting with J. Robert Oppenheimer, head scientist for the Manhattan Project. Here, once again, the idea is further reinforced that the real purpose in the nuclear massacre of more than 200,000 civilians was to send Russia a clear, unequivocal message of America's postwar hegemonic intent. At this meeting Szilard told Oppenheimer that he "thought it would be a very serious mistake to use the bomb against the cities of Japan." Oppenheimer disagreed:

Well, don't you think that if we tell the Russians what we intend to do and then use the bomb in Japan, the Russians will understand it?

In effect, the U.S. was saying to the Soviet Union: "Observe our great power, and how we don't hesitate to use it. You know what we expect of you, and if you know what's good for you you'll behave yourselves." And the fact that Stalin knew the U.S. used the bomb when there was absolutely no military necessity for it to do so, and that the bomb was used against a civilian population, no doubt made this message all the more terrifyingly persuasive, as Truman no doubt intended. In short, the purpose in dropping the bombs was to scare the bejesus out of Russia, and there is no question that the U.S. succeeded in doing precisely that. The U.S. couldn't have been more explicit in its invitation to the Soviets to begin the nuclear arms race just as Szilard had feared.

So Begins the Cold War, the Nuclear Arms Race, and the Era of Nuclear Terror "Diplomacy"

With Truman's decision to use nuclear weapons on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cold war era of nuclear diplomacy had begun. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not used as weapons of war, but rather as uniquely persuasive negotiating tools to effect a political settlement with our Russian allies, a settlement that would serve as a constant reminder to Russia of its subordinate status on the postwar world stage. Truman's Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary that following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there developed in the State Department "a tendency to think of the bomb as a diplomatic weapon," and that "American statesmen were eager for their country to browbeat the Russians with the bomb held rather ostentatiously on our hip."

The real purpose in incinerating two high-density civilian population centers, says Stimson , was "to persuade Russia to play ball." We also read in notes jotted down after his talks with President Roosevelt of "the necessity of bringing Russian orgn. into the fold of Christian civilization," and of the bomb as the means to accomplish this. So even before Truman took over the presidency upon Roosevelt's death in April 1945 -- long before the bomb had been built and tested -- the idea that the real purpose of the bomb was to keep the Russians in check was already in circulation. America's use of the atom bomb for this purpose was no mere afterthought.

General Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan project from 1942 to 1946, says he never bought into the idea that Russia was our "gallant ally:"

There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge, any illusions on my part, but that Russia was our enemy, and that the project was carried out on that basis. (emphasis mine)

Joseph Rotblatt, physicist and early contributor to the Manhattan project, recounts how in March 1944, nearly 18 months before the first successful atomic bomb test, he was shocked to hear General Groves say in casual conversation:

"You realize, of course, that the real purpose of making the bomb is to subdue our chief enemy, the Russians!"

This would have come as news to the atomic scientists at Los Alamos, New Mexico working on the Manhattan Project. They believed they were in a race against time to develop the bomb before the Nazis. If such a bomb could be built it was imperative that the "good guys" get there first. The only problem with this narrative, as General Groves makes quite clear, is that it just isn't true.

As early as mid-1943 the U.S. had learned through their British allies that the race with the Nazis to produce the bomb was pure fiction. By mid-1943 the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) had gathered enough evidence to convince them that the German atomic bomb program had already petered out. The scientists recruited for the Manhattan project had been duped.

Hard to believe that America would use nuclear weapons against an already defeated nation's defenseless civilian population to serve as an advertisement for its global postwar political ambitions -- an inducement to friend and foe alike to capitulate to U.S. peacetime demands and interests? Of course it"s hard to believe, it's completely contrary to the propagandistic narrative we've been fed all our lives. Killing nearly a quarter of a million people just to make a political statement and advance one"s political ambitions? That's not America! Indeed, that's the very definition of terrorism: using violence or the threat of violence as the means to achieve political ends. It's terrorism with a vengeance. Americans just don't do that kind of thing. Americans would never behave in such a horribly depraved and cruel manner. But, in fact, we did. And, as Part II of this article will make devastatingly clear, we still do. And it won't stop until America awakens to the truth about itself, and, openly acknowledging that truth with a show of genuine heartfelt remorse, proceeds to make amends where amends are due.

**********************************************

America's Nuclear Madness Makes A Comeback: Terrorism With A Vengeance (Part II) (To follow next week)

Authors Bio:

Short Bio: Rob Quinn taught Philosophy for ten years at the University of Oklahoma (OU), and the University of Central Oklahoma (UCO). Prior to this he worked as a therapist in an in-residence psychiatric facility for disturbed young children. Rob is a long-term practitioner of Transcendental Meditation. His 16 year-old beloved dog, Topper, died. He loves his cat, Shushima. Presently, Rob is nearing the completion of a book entitled "The Essential Self... A World-maker's Manifesto for Magicians of the Impossible"