Truman Was Right to Drop the Atomic Bomb

The clock was ticking that morning of August 6, 1945 as the Enola Gay struggled into the air with a full load of fuel and the massive Little Boy atomic bomb. President Harry Truman had rolled the dice hoping that the shock of seeing entire cities destroyed by single bombs would persuade the Japanese to call it quits. History records that the president guessed correctly. But every August there are services of mourning in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, filled with accusations that the United States is guilty of a war crime for the bombings. If history is a guide, there will also be assertions and articles to the effect that just a hint from President Truman that the Japanese emperor could stay on his throne would have brought the war to an end in a matter of days.

The butcher's bill for the war in the Pacific was totaled up on August 15, 1945, when Japan's surrender was announced. That's fact. Any suggestion that the Japanese might have surrendered in mid-August without either an invasion or the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the sixth and ninth is speculation.

What would have happened had the Allies meeting in Potsdam, Germany sent word to Japan that Hirohito would stay on the throne if the Japanese surrendered? The Japanese gave no hint they would go that far. Rather, they asked the Soviet Union, still officially neutral, to communicate to the Allies that Japan would accept the Potsdam Declaration under four conditions. The first was possible: the Imperial Institution would continue. The other conditions were intolerable: The Japanese army would not be disarmed by the Allied armies. Only Japanese courts and Japanese law would govern any war crimes trials. The final Japanese condition was that their country would not be occupied except for a token presence.

If those were the only terms on which Japan would accept the militarily inevitable, the war would need to continue long enough to convince even the die hards of the Army and Navy high commands that further resistance was suicide.

Truman's choice is often framed as "the Bomb or the Invasion," Operation Olympic/Coronet. Not so; the choice was between the bombs, which might force an end to the war in days, and all other scenarios. The other means to an end of the war were cruel. A blockade would starve the country. The Soviet invasion of Manchuria and Korea would result in Stalin's planned occupation of Hokkaido. U.S. conventional bombing of Japanese cities would continue until the Army Air Forces literally ran out of targets. The rail network used to distribute food would be further wrecked. And, of course, Operation Olympic, the invasion of Kyushu might actually be needed, putting millions of Japanese and Americans at risk.

What every alternative to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has in common is the long time before its effects would crush Japan's will to continue the battle.

The maritime blockade of the home islands was in effect, and had cut the flow of food from farms in Korea, on Hokkaido, and in Northern Honshu to the Japanese people. Almost all stocks of fuel and minerals were sunk before they reached Japanese ports, leaving the Army and Navy at a standstill.

Food shortages were taking effect. When the U.S. occupation began, the Tokyo food ration was down to 900 calories a day, not quite the 600 calorie level in a Nazi concentration camp, but bad enough that the weak and elderly were already dying. Some in the Imperial government had predicted food riots and civil war by December. But not in August, or September.

B-29 bombing raids were destroying one Japanese city every week. Had the war gone on for another month, four or more cities would have been burned to the ground. Roughly one Hiroshima a week. But by August the Japanese population and government had become accustomed to relatively slow destruction; there was time to recover somewhat between raids, to extinguish some fires, evacuate some people, and set up some kind of temporary shelter. This reprieve blunted the shock of the continuing raids.

As July turned into August, the situation required shock therapy. The slow decline of the Japanese fortunes had to be recast by a sudden and catastrophic event. Something was needed to change the perception in Tokyo that fighting on to satisfy some code of honor and loyalty to the emperor was preferable to peace.

The Allies desperately wanted to avoid invading Japan. Our anticipated death toll was north of 100,000 Allied soldiers and sailors, and in fact every Purple Heart medal actually awarded through the Persian Gulf War came from the never-needed stock ordered for the invasion of Kyushu. The battle for Okinawa showed the Allies that Japan would struggle until the last civilian was killed.

The destruction of Hiroshima should have brought an immediate Japanese surrender, but it did not. Three days later Nagasaki was obliterated. It was a strategic city, a major port and home to the great shipyard where the Musashi, one of the largest battleships in history, was built. It had other factories making steel, arms, ordnance and electrical equipment. As at Hiroshima, small machine shops essential to the large factories were embedded in the surrounding neighborhoods where the workers lived.

If the destruction of Nagasaki didn't end the war, a third atomic bomb was ready for shipment to the Pacific Theater for use on the nineteenth of August. Truman ordered a halt to the shipment, a hiatus to see what the Japanese would do. Conventional bombing was also interrupted. More nuclear weapons were being built at a rate of at least three bombs a month. If Olympic had faltered, several would have been available for use in November.

Nagasaki gave rise to urgent meetings with the emperor in attendance and, most extraordinarily, intervening. On the morning of August 10 Japan notified the Allied governments that it would accept the Potsdam terms with "the understanding that the said declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the prerogatives of His Majesty as a Sovereign Ruler." After accepting additional points demanded by the West, in particular a requirement that the emperor be subordinate to General Douglas MacArthur, the Japanese civilian government surrendered.

But the Japanese military continued to fight, so conventional strategic bombing resumed on August 14. Still more meetings took place in the Imperial Palace. Late on the evening of the fourteenth a weeping Hirohito ordered an end. The next day, and despite threats of a coup by the Army, the Japanese people heard the voice of their emperor announcing the nation's capitulation. Hirohito explained that the "enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb." The Soviet invasion did not rate a mention.

The butcher's account was marked "Closed."

No more Americans, Britons or Japanese would lose their lives in a continuing battle. It took eight days and a second atomic bombing to get from bombing Hiroshima to surrender. How much longer would it have taken for a continuing conventional war to have convinced the Japanese government to quit? We can never know, but we do know this: the Pacific war did not continue for an additional day or week or month.

From all the alternatives facing him, President Truman chose the right one.

A disclosure: my father was a U.S. Navy Seabee officer training for Operation Olympic. His orders were canceled.