Because August 6 and August 9 have come around again. And I'm being urged to see the Oppenheimer film, and read this or that review of it. And because it all still really matters to me (and us?). I'm impelled to share and talk about three statements relevant to our atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August of 1945:
1. What the Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, said in his August 15, 1945 speech announcing the Japanese surrender: The enemy has begun to employ a new and most cruel bomb, the power of which to do damage is, indeed incalculable. Should we continue to fight, not only would it result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation, but also it would lead to the total extinction of human civilization.
2. What James F. Byrnes, President Harry Truman's personal representative in matters regarding the Manhattan Project (and later Secretary of State), said in June of 1945: We don't need the Bomb to force Japan to surrender, but possessing and demonstrating it will make the Russians more manageable in Europe.
3. What my Japanese girlfriend, Midori, said to me one evening in early August of 1957: I don't remember any bombing.
Hirohito's surrender speech is often taken as evidence that the Bomb was the crucial factor causing Japan to surrender. Saving the perhaps million American lives expected to be lost if we had to invade the Japanese home islands. For many Americans, that interpretation has been emotionally satisfying, making our use of the Bomb effective and justifiable. Even life-saving.
The reality, however, was US conventional air power had by the first of August already mostly destroyed 68 of Japan's largest cities, and the top Japanese command didn't see that the atomic weapons made that much difference. What got their attention was that on August 9 the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and invaded Manchuria, northern Korea, and Sakhalin Island. While an American invasion of any of the Japanese home islands was months away, and the Japanese had been hoping to negotiate an acceptable peace settlement in that time period, Japanese intelligence was reporting the Russians would invade the northernmost home island, Hokkaido, within the next two weeks. The only way the Japanese could avert that catastrophe was to surrender to the Americans immediately.
Seen in this light, the Emperor's putting the blame on the Bomb is best understood as a face-saving measure, avoiding placing any blame on their military or the government. No conventional power could be expected to win against such "incalculable" nuclear power.
But the statement's relevance today? It seems to me a remarkably prescient description of our present Situation in regard to nuclear weapons. Isn't it now generally accepted that should the nuclear-armed states continue to "fight" in the sense of maintaining, developing and threatening to use ever more lethal and even supposedly "usable" weapons (neither the US nor Russia being willing to pledge a "no first use" policy), the eventual result, by miscalculation or in desperation could be (and some say almost certainly "would be" the total extinction of human civilization?
The statements by Jimmy Byrnes and Midori put "should we continue to fight" in an even stronger light. WWII in the Pacific was a contest of empires, the 1941 attack on the US fleet at Pearl Harbor being their response to the US having placed a virtual embargo on oil and rubber reaching Japan from Southeast Asia. In August of 1945 we see the contest of empires continuing, but with Russia taking over the role that Japan had played. In a real sense, the global "fighting" of empires has been continuous over at least the last century and a half, only now and then breaking out in overt warfare.
The Manhattan Project to build the Bomb was begun early in WWII when our nuclear scientists informed President Roosevelt that Germany had begun Bomb research. When Germany surrendered in May of 1945, that left Japan as the possible target. And of course the Bomb was a factor in ending the war. But as the Byrnes statement shows, the US top leadership was well aware of the new contest of empires they were entering. And recognized the global strategic value of demonstrating for Josef Stalin's benefit that we had the Bomb and were willing to use it. At the time, however, recognizing that use of the Bomb against Hiroshima and Nagasaki would send a powerful message to the Soviet Union could not be said out loud in public. The Byrnes statement was a strictly in-house remark, not revealed until years later.
What my girlfriend Midori said to me in early August of 1957 sheds more light on the real but ulterior, can't-be-said-out-loud intentions and purposes of top US leaders during the war. Our conversation took place in her tiny apartment in Yokosuka, Japan, a medium-size city hosting Yokosuka Naval Base, which had been a major Japanese naval base in WWII. It guards the entrance to Tokyo Bay and is only about 30 miles south of Tokyo. So the top Japanese command would probably have been able to see a mushroom cloud rising over Yokosuka. But the base was taken over by the US Navy at the end of the war and is still today the major US base in the western Pacific. I was there in 1957 courtesy of the US Navy, my ship stationed there that year.
Midori and I had been children during the war, but old enough to be aware and remember things that happened. Or didn't happen. That she didn't remember bombing was a stunner to me. The next morning I went up to the signal bridge of my ship to take a look at the base. I saw some new construction, but also many really old and obviously un-bombed buildings and facilities. I was back then a youthful Patriot, and it was difficult for me to accept the idea that my vaunted US Navy had never targeted such a strategically important base. Since then, however, I have done various searches from time to time, finding no evidence of any significant US attacks on Yokosuka Naval Base during the war.
What this has to mean is that early in the war the top command of the US forces – secretly – put the highest priority on preserving Yokosuka Naval Base, so that it would as soon as possible at the end of the war be available as our base, projecting US power over East Asia, then and now. Contest of empires, indeed!
The question (and/or threat), "should we continue to fight" remains. The last serious proposal I know of to put an end to the contest of empires was President John F. Kennedy's call for an end to the US vs Russia Cold War, in his speech at American University in June of 1963, in which he declared,
Let us not be blind to our differences – but let us also direct attend to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.
It seems such a reasonable, sensible proposal. But silenced by Kennedy's assassination just five months later. It's little known that Kennedy and Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev had been conducting a secret, back-channel conversation trying to find ways to reduce the risk of nuclear war. When he heard the news of Kennedy's death Khrushchev called the assassination "a heavy blow to all people who hold dear the cause of peace and Soviet-American cooperation."
If the Kennedy of the American University speech was in office today, what might he propose? Perhaps inviting the Russian Federation to join NATO? Or just abolish NATO? Think about it, eh?
I would much appreciate your sharing thoughts on any or all of this screed, either in comments here or by email to vineyzeke@gmail.com. Thanks for caring – Jim Allen
PS, just so you know – I have found one report that one of the Doolittle raid bombers in April of 1942 dropped one bomb on Yokosuka Naval Base on its way to Tokyo; doing little damage. Then near the end of the war, in July of 1945, the US Navy launched a dive-bomber attack on the battleship Nagato, which was parked (and out of diesel fuel) on the far eastern edge of the base, avoiding any damage to the base or the city. While Midori didn't remember bombing, she did experience strafing, the mention of that bringing tears to her eyes. I'm pretty sure that strafing was by US fighters trying to protect those dive bombers by suppressing anti-aircraft fire from the many AA emplacements in the hills surrounding the base.
