REVIEW ESSAY
Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb. By RONALD TAKAKI. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1995. Pp. 193, ISBN 0-316-83122-0.)
Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later. By ROBERT J. MADDOX.
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995. Pp. 215, ISBN 0-826-21037-6.)
On August 6, 1945, an American plane dropped an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Three days later, another similar bomb was dropped over Nagasaki. Both cities were utterly destroyed. Some 300,000 people died, half of them instantly, the other half as the result of burns and radiation (Takaki, 47). Eight days after the first bomb was dropped, the Japanese authorities sent "supplementary wire 353," announcing unconditional surrender in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration terms (Maddox, 145).
Fifty years later, the controversy over whether the use of atomic bombs was necessary to put an end to the war with Japan still rages. The two books reviewed here-both published in the aftermath of the controversial National Air and Space Museum's Enola Gay exhibit in the autumn of 1994-address this subject from opposite points of view. On the one hand, Ronald Takaki's Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb, follows the revisionist theory of "atomic diplomacy" first proposed by Gar Alperovitz in 1965, holding that the bombings were not a military necessity. Instead, Takaki argues that they were dropped only to awe the Soviets and make them more "manageable" in bilateral post-war negotiations. On the other hand, Robert J. Maddox's Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later, holds the classic view that dropping the bombs was the only possible way for the U.S. to avert a bloody invasion and secure a Japanese surrender.
Ronald Takaki begins his reasoning by discrediting the argument most widely used-that it would save half a million American lives that would be lost in an invasion of Japan-to justify the atomic bombing. This is the argument used by President Truman in his memoirs, claiming that he got this estimate for battle deaths from Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall (Takaki, 22). Takaki successfully convinces the reader that both President Truman and General Marshall knew the actual casualty estimates were significantly lower. According to Takaki, in June 15, 1945, the Joint War Plan Committee's report ordered by President Truman gave an estimate of 193,500 total American casualties--including 40,000 killed--for the planned assault on Japan (Takaki, 23). On June 18, General Douglas McArthur, the supreme commander of Allied forces in the Pacific, concurred with the Joint War Plans Committee's figures. In a memo to General Marshall, General MacArthur stated "I regard the operation as the most economical one in effort and lives that is possible" (Takaki, 24).
In addition, Takaki cites two of the most important military leaders of the time, General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Admiral William D. Leahy, noting the bombs were militarily unnecessary because Japan was already on the verge of surrendering to the U.S. (Takaki, 30, 31). Takaki also informs the reader about Japanese attempts to negotiate a peace through the Russians. The message he cites, however, does not help his argument in any significant way: "We cannot consent to unconditional surrender under any circumstances" read the message the Japanese government sent on July 21, 1945, to its representative in Moscow, "even if the war drags on and more blood must be shed, so long as the enemy demands unconditional surrender, we will fight as one man against the enemy in accordance with the Emperor's command" (Takaki, 33). Takaki claims the Allies' demand for "unconditional surrender" was an important obstacle in procuring an early Japanese surrender. He also implies that President Truman ignored recommendations to abandon the term because American public opinion was very much in favor of such a demand.
In the following chapter, Takaki deals with the complex post-war negotiations between the U.S. and Russia. His objective is to prove that President Truman was trying to bully the Soviets- by means of U.S. nuclear monopoly-into accepting U.S.-British terms regarding the future of Central and Eastern European countries. This is crucial in proving the revisionist argument that the dominant reason behind the atomic bombing of Japan was in fact "atomic diplomacy." In order to do this, Takaki profusely cites both President Truman's and Secretary of State James Byrnes' memoirs from the Potsdam Conference. Comments such as "[the bomb] might well put us in a position to dictate our own terms at the end of the war" by Byrnes, and "Force is the only thing the Russians understand" by President Truman are tremendously compelling pieces of evidence for the reader (Takaki, 62, 60).
However, here Takaki's argument evidences a serious flaw. Notwithstanding all this "tough talk" by the Americans at Potsdam, history shows that Russia did impose its own conditions regarding the settlement of the Polish, Rumanian, Yugoslavian, and Manchurian "problems." Furthermore, if President Truman was-as Takaki claims-aware that Japan was on the verge of surrender, then why was he so anxious "to get from Russia all the assistance in the war that was possible" (Takaki, 57) when he knew this could only result in more U.S. concessions to the Soviets? Again, even after the U.S. successfully demonstrated its new powerful weapon over Japan, the Soviets ended up with all of their original claims in the Pacific. So much for U.S. "atomic diplomacy."
The next argument Takaki uses to sustain his view is what he calls "the Racialization of the Pacific War" (Takaki, 71). This chapter, the longest in the book, is loaded with information directed to convince the reader of both the racist background of American society, and President Truman's own racist beliefs, which allegedly played an important role in the use of the atomic bomb against Japan. The evidence includes quotes from newspapers and magazines of the time depicting the Japanese as "apes," and "loathsome buck-toothed little yellow savages," messages from American commanders to their men right before battle "Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs," comparisons with the Indian wars during the American expansion to the west, and references to the discrimination against Chinese and Japanese immigrants in the 1800s. There are allusions to President Truman's family background as slaveholders in a frontier settlement in Missouri. There is even a passing mention of Truman's mother being a supporter of the Confederacy during the American Civil War (Takaki, 94).
Throughout the chapter, Takaki presents President Truman as a racist coming from a racist background. There are three entire pages dedicated to the numerous occasions on which Truman used the word "nigger." By the end of the chapter, Takaki notes that President Truman opposed the internment of Japanese Americans during the war, and in the following years "acquired an impressive civil rights record" (Takaki, 98, 99). But it is already too late; the reader is left with a bad taste for the author's arguments and intentions. It is one thing to consider race and Truman's feelings about it among the many factors that could have led to the use of atomic bombs against Japan, but to make it the most extensively examined matter in the book detracts from the credibility of Takaki's whole argumentation.
Moreover, the race argument collapses under a more intellectual examination. Dehumanization of the enemy was a fairly common practice in all sides of the conflict. Takaki himself notes that the Japanese considered themselves "the sole superior race in the world," and routinely portrayed the Americans as "hairy, twisted-nosed savages" (Takaki, 72, 73). It is also difficult for the reader to believe that the bomb would not have been dropped over Germany provided the war in Europe had lasted longer. Takaki quotes General Groves remembering that "if the European war was not over before we had our first bombs he [President Roosevelt] wanted us to be ready to drop them on Germany" (Tataki, 19) During the wholesale conventional bombing of civilian targets in Germany an estimated 100,000 people died after the leveling of Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945 (Takaki, 27); this also discredits the argument that Japan was treated differently. Although Takaki successfully backs the revisionist argument in the first chapters, the rest of the book fails to persuade the reader to embrace his opinion.
The other book reviewed here is Robert Maddox's Weapons for Victory: The Hiroshima Decision Fifty Years Later. As mentioned before, Maddox's book sustains the classic theory that the bombs were used in order to force a Japanese surrender and avoid losing thousands of American lives in an invasion. Maddox's book is easy-to-read, entertaining, and enlightening. Like Takaki's book, each chapter in Maddox's work is profusely documented, and it includes a ten-page selected bibliography that, curiously enough, the former lacks. The book conveys the impression of a thoroughly researched work.
Maddox begins-again like Takaki-by tackling the subject of estimated American losses in an invasion of Japan. He also adopts the same figures from the Joint War Plan Committee's report Takaki uses for his argument (40,000 soldiers killed). However, Maddox adds that these figures were based on the assumption that the Japanese had about 350,000 defenders ready by mid-June. According to Maddox's sources, the planner's report was based on "singularly poor intelligence", and by late July "new data placed the number of defenders at 545,000" (Maddox, 4). The casualty figures advanced by the planner's report-other of Maddox's sources reckons-"might have been surpassed in a single day by kamikaze attacks on packed troop transports" (ibid). When he later returns to this subject, Maddox places the number of Japanese defenders closer to 900,000 by the time the invasion was scheduled to begin (Maddox, 126). However, Maddox really closes his argument on this issue at the very beginning of the book when he writes: "...the notion that he [President Truman] would have considered the sacrifice of forty thousand (or twenty thousand or ten thousand) American lives acceptable had it not been for the opportunity to awe the Soviets is droll" (Maddox, 3).
Regarding the comments made by General Eisenhower and Admiral Leahy, Maddox notes Eisenhower's misgivings about the bomb were expressed to Secretary of War Stimson and not to President Truman, while Leahy's represented his attitude in 1950, at the time when his memoirs were published (Maddox, 4).
Maddox examines at length the questions of the Japanese overtures for a Soviet mediation with the Americans, and the controversial Allied demand for "unconditional surrender." Citing Japanese diplomatic and military messages the Americans were able to read-thanks to decryption codes known as MAGIC and ULTRA respectively-Maddox convinces the reader that Japanese "peace feelers" were "at best efforts to avoid the consequences of defeat through a negotiated peace and at worst cynical efforts to exploit American war weariness" (Maddox, 84). In Japanese foreign minister Shigenori Togo's own words to his ambassador in Moscow: "we are not asking the Russians' mediation in anything like unconditional surrender."
According to Maddox, President Truman inherited the term "unconditional surrender" from his predecessor, who used it for the first time after the Casablanca meeting with Churchill in 1943 (Maddox, 6). Both the British Prime Minister and Soviet Premier Stalin agreed with the policy. Truman accurately believed any deviation from such a policy would be considered by the Soviets as "a perfidious attempt to deny them the results of Yalta and to maintain Japan intact as a counterweight against them in the Pacific" (Maddox, 95). When asked in Potsdam about the Soviet position toward unconditional surrender, Stalin replied, "No change" (ibid). Furthermore, Maddox notes the Japanese "never indicated openly in any intercepted messages that retention of the Emperor was the only prerequisite for surrender" (Maddox, 147). When the Potsdam Declaration was issued asserting that unconditional surrender did not mean the end of the Japanese nation-which was as close as the American could get to guarantee the preservation of the Japanese imperial system without infuriating the Soviets-the Japanese government made no inquiries to Washington about the emperor or the real meaning of the Declaration (Maddox, 110).
Soviet-American negotiations is the subject more thoroughly examined in the book. Nowhere in Maddox's detailed accounts of the events preceding the Potsdam Conference, or during the meeting itself, can the reader find any hints of "atomic diplomacy" on the part of the American team. On the contrary, Truman had been convinced by his advisers--even hard liners such as Ambassador Harriman--that Stalin was a "rough, tough Russian whose word could be trusted," who represented "those in Moscow who genuinely sought cooperation" (Maddox, 36). In Potsdam, Truman sacrificed Manchuria, Port Arthur, and Dairen, to obtain from Stalin "a commitment that he would fight the Japs," all this after word had been received that the atomic test had "succeeded beyond predictions" (Maddox, 92). The fact that Truman only told Stalin about the atomic bomb at the end of the conference rather than during it, is a simple but compelling argument against any "atomic diplomacy" (Maddox, 99).
Always displaying the same sober and objective judgment, Maddox explores many other facets of this historic event, among them one that has been largely ignored by other authors and which I personally consider of tremendous importance--understanding of the consequences of using nuclear weapons. It is easy for us now, after all that has been published about the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to abhor and condemn the use of atomic bombs. We know exactly the consequences of such an act, but President Truman did not. The fact is, nobody at the time did, not even Robert Oppenheimer. Maddox cites the famous scientist's comments after word arrived about the mysterious deaths of those who survived the blasts in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: "This is of course lunacy,"said Oppenheimer, "measurements made after the test explosion indicated that there would be no appreciable [radioactive] activity on the ground and what little there was would decay very rapidly" (Maddox, 152). The best proof of Oppenheimer's confidence is the photograph in Ronald Takaki's book where the smiling scientist poses at the very site of the first atomic explosion in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
It is unlikely the debate will ever be resolved, although all available information regarding the dropping of the first atomic bombs on Japan has been exhaustively scrutinized for decades. Tataki and Maddox offer studies that intelligibly reveal the complexity and variety of forces at work in human interaction and state decision making. However, the "truth" is often very difficult to ascertain, even from the vantage point of half a century of hindsight.