The Lessons of Hiroshima
NAM, News Analysis, Ronald Takaki, Posted: Aug 06, 2007
Editor's Note: Racial hatred against the Japanese and the thrill of possessing 20,000 tons of TNT prompted President Truman to unleash bombings against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, changing the course of world history, says Ron Takaki. Takaki, professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Hiroshima: Why America Dropped the Atomic Bomb (Little Brown).
Sixty-two years ago, on Aug. 6, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima changed the course of world history. We still live in the shadow of Hiroshima, though most of us do not know why or how it happened.
The U.S. deployment of this weapon of mass destruction did not have to happen.
In fact, from a military point of view, Gen. Douglas MacArthur considered the bombing “completely unnecessary.” In July, when MacArthur learned that Japan had asked Russia to negotiate surrender with the United States, he told his staff: “This is it. The war is over. Hold everything in place for Olympic and Coronet [names for the invasion plans], but drop all work on them and get busy on the occupation.” The general knew there would be no need for an invasion.
In July, the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed President Harry S. Truman that the enemy was already prepared to surrender, asking only for the retention of the emperor. The joint chiefs thought the emperor would be needed to order Japan’s armed forces to lay down their arms. They advised the president that the United States should simply accept a conditional surrender and declare victory.
Driven by strategic rather than military concerns, Secretary of State James Byrnes wanted to delay the ending of the Pacific War. He wanted more time to test the still-experimental weapon in New Mexico, and if it worked, to deploy it against Japanese cities. His aim was to intimidate Russia, then a U.S. ally but which was emerging as an enemy in what would become the Cold War. Byrnes calculated that “our possessing and demonstrating the bomb [on Japan] would make Russia more manageable in Europe.” He was willing to kill hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians as a way to send an intimidating message to Russia’s Joseph Stalin.
President Truman did not fully share Byrnes’ strategy and preferred to work cooperatively with the Russians. In his diary on June 7, 1945, he wrote: “I’m not afraid of Russia. They’ve always been our friends and I can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t always be.” The people of Russia “evidently like their government or they wouldn’t die for it. I like ours, so let’s get along.”
American, British and Russian leaders met at the Potsdam Conference to decide how to end the Pacific War. Secretary of War (now known as the Secretary of Defense) Henry L. Stimson had visited Japan on many occasions and had fond memories of Kyoto’s beauty and appreciated its cultural and religious significance. This led him to remove the ancient cultural center from the list of cities targeted for atomic attacks. Stimson believed that through reason, peace could be negotiated.
At the conference, Stimson honored the advice of the joint chiefs of staff and wrote into the draft of the Potsdam Declaration a provision to allow the “continuance” of the emperor, with certain conditions. But, as he recorded in his diary, “the president and Byrnes struck that [provision] out” of the final version of the Potsdam Declaration.
Context is critical to understanding why Truman ignored both the advice of his joint chief of staff and his secretary of war. In Europe, the enemy was defined as the Nazis, not the German people; in the Pacific, the enemy was defined as the “Japs,” or the Japanese people. The conflict between the United States and Japan was racialized on both sides. Japanese government urged all Asians to fight a race war against white Americans, calling them “wild beasts,” monsters, and devils. The U.S. government and media portrayed the Japanese enemy as demons, savages, and a “monkey race.”
This wartime American hatred toward the Japanese was rooted in a long history of anti-Asian attitudes and fear of “the Yellow Peril.” Truman himself was part of this culture of prejudice. In a letter to his future wife, Bess, dated June 22, 1911, he wrote: “ I think one man is as good as another so long as he’s honest and decent and not a nigger or a Chinaman…It is race prejudice I guess. But I am strongly of the opinion that negroes ought to be in Africa, yellow men in Asia, and white men in Europe and America.” During World War II, Truman was swept into the maelstrom seeking revenge for Pearl Harbor, determined to destroy what he denounced as “Japs,” “fanatics,” “savages,” and “beasts.”
Beyond context, there is the matter of the individual. Truman was surprised when Franklin D. Roosevelt chose him to be his running mate in order to avoid a deadlock between the liberal Henry Wallace and the conservative James Byrnes. As the vice president, Truman found himself isolated by Roosevelt and kept uninformed about foreign policy. According to his daughter, Margaret, Vice President Truman referred to himself as “a political eunuch.” He had been given very little responsibility.
When Roosevelt suddenly died, in a flash, Truman became president, to use his own words, “more or less by accident.” In his diary that night, he worried about his ignorance of foreign policy: “I knew the president had a great many meetings with Churchill and Stalin. I was not familiar with any of these things.” Truman felt “overwhelming responsibilities” crashing in on him.
“I was plenty scared,” he admitted years later, “but, of course, I didn’t let anybody see it.” Instead, Truman hid his insecurity behind a façade of masculinity and toughness. His favorite bluster had its origins in the gun-slinging West: “The buck stops here.”
Truman carried his racialized rage against the “Japs,” and also his anxiety about his inexperience to Potsdam. The top-secret news of the successful test of the atomic bomb in New Mexico immediately boosted his self-confidence. In his diary, he excitedly recorded the thrill of possessing new “dynamite” – 20,000 tons of TNT. Now, he could bully Japan. In the Potsdam Declaration, Truman issued an aggressive and rigid ultimatum: Japan must accept “unconditional surrender” or face “utter devastation.” The Japanese government rejected the ultimatum.
At 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 6, Naoko Masuoka was on a school trip in Hiroshima. She and her friends were singing about the cherry blossoms when she heard someone cry out: “A B-29!” “Even as this shout rang out in our ears,” she recalled, “there was a blinding flash and I lost consciousness.” Some 70,000 people, mostly women and children, were instantly incinerated. Three days later, an atomic attack was unleashed on Nagasaki.
On Aug. 10, the Japanese government offered to surrender, but on the condition that it be allowed to retain the emperor. At that point, Truman realized that his ultimatum had not worked. He immediately ordered that the third atomic bomb not be dropped. Truman met with Secretary of State Byrnes and Chief of Staff Admiral Leahy. Infuriated by Japan’s stipulation, Byrnes insisted that the surrender be “unconditional.” Leahy argued strongly for accepting Japan’s terms. “Some of those around the president wanted to demand his [Hirohito’s] execution,” he wrote in his memoir. “If they had prevailed, we might still be at war with Japan.” Truman agreed to allow Japan to keep the emperor and the war came to a ghastly end.
But it was not Leahy’s pressure alone that led Truman to change his mind on unconditional surrender.
The day after the bombing of Nagasaki, Truman privately told cabinet member Henry Wallace that “the thought of wiping out another 100,000 people was too horrible,” and that he did not like “the idea of killing all those kids.” This was a feeling Truman would never be able to acknowledge publicly.
The history of this world-shattering event offers us lessons on war, race, leadership, reason, judgment, and the importance of cross-cultural understanding. Those who do not know history, a philosopher warned, will be doomed to repeat it. Hiroshima is a past that is not even past, and we ignore it at our peril.
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